USA > Vermont > Caledonia County > St Johnsbury > The town of St. Johnsbury, Vt. ; a review of one hundred twenty-five years to the anniversary pageant 1912 > Part 34
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At the time the scale industry was started St. Johnsbury was a small town inconveniently situated for traffic of any sort. All supplies as well as finished products had to be hauled on horse teams to and from Portland or Boston. As the business increased the town began to feel the pulse of new life. Property values ad- vanced, skilled workmen came in; none but sound, intelligent, moral, temperate men were employed; but these were paid gen- erously and personal interest was taken in them and in their families. A reading-room and library was provided for them, and evening lectures were given, sometimes in the new shops. An academy was built and supported entirely by the firm. Education, good order, religion were cherished in every way. Liberal bene- factions began to go out in all directions, and the representatives of benevolent societies soon found the way to this little village up in Vermont. St. Johnsbury finally became the shire town of Caledonia county, railway junction and business and educational centre of Northern Vermont.
From 1842 to 1857 the business doubled in volume every three years. It shared with other industries the financial stress of the latter date; grew with great rapidity during and after the civil war, and with steady advance till 1893. Meantime the origi- nal firm was enlarged; in 1843 Horace and in 1856 Franklin, both sons of Erastus, became partners. Horace, from the date of the incorporation in 1874 till his death in 1888 was president, and in
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all forty-five years an officer in the business. He was also presi- dent of the First National Bank, director in the Tamarack Mining Company, and chief promotor and president of the railroad to Lake Champlain. He was elected Governor of Vermont by a decisive vote for the two years, 1876-7.
The younger brother, Franklin, was fifty years actively in the business, at first chiefly in the mechanical departments, to which he contributed some important patents ; later with larger respon- sibilities as superintendent and president of the corporation. He also filled important positions of trust and honor elsewhere, both in business, political and religious bodies, till his death, in 1895, at the age of sixty-eight years. Another brother, Charles, was partner in the New York house for several years, but after 1858 he resided abroad. William P. Fairbanks, son of Joseph P., was partner for some twenty-five years; a man of superior busi- ness capacity ; he represented this town in the Legislature of 1884- 86; was first secretary and treasurer of the corporation at St. Johnsbury, and later of the branch house at New York, where he died in 1895. Henry Fairbanks, only son of Thaddeus, is vice president.
The founders and managers of the scale business built digni- fied and beautiful homes on happily selected sites, adorned with ample landscape gardening, fine architecture and artistic interiors. But this is not all that they built in the town of their love. Nearly all the churches shared largely in their beneficence ; one of them, the finest architecturally, in northern New England. The Academy which they had founded and sustained for thirty years came to need larger and superior equipment. Accordingly, in 1872, Thad- deus Fairbanks, whose personal gifts to the institution aggregat- ed some $200,000, erected new and commodious structures of brick, with appointments and curriculum corresponding. St. Johnsbury Academy quickly took rank as the first in the state, and among the best in New England, having thirteen instructors, three hundred pupils, and an endowment from E. & T. Fairbanks & Co., of $100,000. St. Johnsbury Athenæum, the first free pub- lic library with endowment in Vermont, was built, equipped and presented to the town in 1871, by Horace Fairbanks ; the Museum
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of Natural Science with its collections was established and endow- ed by Franklin Fairbanks ; and Music Hall, mainly the gift of these two brothers was conveyed to the Young Men's Christian Associa- tion for the public benefit ; to which was added the Association rooms section in the Y. M. C. A. block erected by Henry Fair- banks in 1885.
Altho the original and all other earlier patents have long since expired, the St. Johnsbury Scale Works still remain the largest and most important in the world. The experience of eighty-two years has not only established the correctness of the principle of multiplied levers here first applied, but has enabled the manufacturers, by new patents devised for hundreds of varie- ties of scales, to lead all competitors (400 plus) in the magnitude of the annual output, and in the accuracy, durability and fine finish of weighing machines sent out from this town; on which "one may today with absolute accuracy weigh a ship with its cargo, or the lead which wears from the pencil in writing one's name."
The Fairbanks scales keeping abreast of all industrial pro- gress, are now constructed for every department of trade, manu- facture, agriculture, science, transportation, postal and govern- ment service ; and they have for many years been the standard both in this country and abroad. They are used on nearly all the railroads, adopted in all government departments and public works and in the leading mercantile and manufacturing establish- ments of the United States. The Postal Service requires a very large number; a single order at one time was filled on short no- tice for three thousand scales of range from ounces to tons. Travellers find the St. Johnsbury, Vt., weighing machines used in West Indies, South America, Mexico, Canada, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France, Turkey, India, Siam, Australia, Japan, China. They are announced as standard in the Japanese Postal Service, and in the Chinese Imperial Cus- toms. "Till the arrival of the Fairbanks scales," says a resident in North China, "fifteen per cent of my salary was absorbed in coal ; we are now satisfied with the weight."
Fine exhibits have been made of these machines, and high- est awards rendered at ten international expositions, including
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those of London, Paris, Vienna, Philadelphia, Chicago, Buffalo, and St. Louis. At the Centennial, in 1876, there were one hun- dred and ninety-four complete scales, with as many more supple- mentary articles ; at the Columbian, in 1893, the exhibit required three thousand square feet on the floor of the Liberal Arts Build- ing. In this collection was seen scale No. 421, made and sold in 1843, owned and used by five successive parties, survivor of a fire in 1849, repurchased by the manufacturers in 1893, and in its then weather-beaten estate able to lift its beam and magnify its office among stylish competitors of latest finish, as finely as fifty years before in the Polk and Clay campaign.
Besides furnishing scales for official use at the Chicago Ex- position, the Fairbanks Company displayed sixty-three medals of award, of which eight were gold, thirty-two silver ; among them nineteen from foreign countries.
It should be added that after the Vienna Exposition Mr. Thaddeus Fairbanks, as inventor of the scale, was knighted by the Austrian Emperor, who, through Baron von Lichtenfels, for- warded to him the decoration of the Imperial Order of Francis Joseph. He also received from the King of Siam the golden medal and decoration of Puspamala, and from the Bey of Tunis the diploma and decoration of Nishan el Iftikar, Commander. Being an excessively modest man, not fond of titles or display, he had no use for things of this sort; but his men and towns folk would not let him elude the stroke of honor; to the day of his death he was known and affectionately venerated as Sir Thaddeus.
Until recent years the largest weighing machine in the world was the five-hundred-ton Fairbanks weighlock, erected at Albany, N. Y., about 1854. In 1894, the Watervliet Arsenal scale was built at Troy, for weighing guns in the process of manufacture. This had the greatest capacity for the size of its platform of any scale ever made, viz., six hundred thousand pounds on a twelve by fifteen feet platform, i. e., one thousand six hundred and sixty- six pounds to the square foot. It was remarked that a paper dollar bill on the end of the scale beam when adjusted, disturbed the equilibrium.
The introduction of steel cars of great capacity and weight, and the requirements of the huge grain elevators, has created a
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demand for new scales that shall not only be equal to handling the enormous tonnage, but also to do their work with rapidity and exactness. This is greatly facilitated by the Fairbanks type-regis- tering beam now in universal use, which records promptly and with precision the exact weight of whatever is passing over the platform.
In 1912 fourteen automatic grain scales were installed in the elevators of the Montreal Harbor Commissioners. These have a capacity of five to six thousand pounds per dump twice a minute and will readily weigh from eight to ten thousand bushels of grain an hour. The hoppers take five thousand pounds of thirty-pound per-bushel grain, and the construction is such that it is not neces- sary to change the weights whether operating with light oats or heavy wheat; a new achievement in automatic weighing.
Six railroad track scales have recently been built to meet the requirements of heavy traffic in coal on the Virginia and Pennsyl- vania railroads. These machines are 68 feet in length and are capable of sustaining 400 tons on a four-section platform 57 feet long. They take the weight while the train moves across the platform, each car carrying fifty tons of coal. These are the largest track scales in the world; they are capable of handling a thousand tons of coal an hour.
These and similar scales manufactured at the St. Johnsbury works, will represent maximum capacities. The minimum is seen in the assayer's scale graduated to one-tenth of a grain. Between these extremes the code numbers cover two thousand varieties, but these in actual manufacture have been further modi- fied to include, under different standards and special orders, not less than ten thousand varieties. Many of these are for foreign markets, graduated variously to kilograms, libras, poods, pfunds, skalpunds, okas, catties, etc., according to the country they are to go to. Patterns aggregating many thousands are stored in the fire-proof warehouse, also photographs, prints, diagrams of all that goes out from the factory.
The original firm which began and had continued for half a century in one family, was in 1874 reorganized into a stock cor- poration, with a capital of two and a half million dollars in shares
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of $500 each. The works at St. Johnsbury were during succeed- ing years enlarged and re-equipped ; later auxiliary factories were established at Sherbrooke, P. Q., and Moline, Ill. Between labor and capital at St. Johnsbury 84 years has brought no ripple of disturbance ; mutual good will and friendly union have pre- vailed. The corporation has a record of ownership of 223 patents and trade marks; of these 159 have been mechanical and design inventions by the employees. Valuable prizes have been distrib- uted to the workmen for practical ideas in scale construction. In 1907, this industry held "the United States record for long service men " a good many having been 30 and 40 years in the works, some 50 and 60 years; Col. Frank Walker was for 64 years in the foundry ; a large number own valuable homes in the village.
There are at this writing 1400 men on the pay roll, which dis- tributes about a million dollars annually to citizens of St. Johns- bury. The factory has 40 buildings, with 20 acres floor space ; 5 tons of copper and 50 tons of iron are melted daily ; 4,000,000 feet lumber are consumed a year. The annual output of scales is $6,000,000 list.
SUPPLEMENTARY
1843. History of Scale No. 421. This was a platform scale of the sort used in all the country stores for general merchandise. It was bought by Brackett and Bacon, merchants, in Passumpsic village, Feb. 17, 1834. Five years later the scale was sold with the store to The Farmer's Association, Nath'l Bishop, Clerk. In 1849, the establishment, owned at that time by William Lawrence, was burned out, but the scale was saved. It was owned by William Russell of this town in 1862, and in 1893 was purchased by the Fairbanks Corporation and sent to do duty as a patriarch in the scales ex- hibit of the Columbian Exposition.
1858 During the financial stringency of this year, the men in the scale works presented a paper at the counting room one day in October, express- ing gratitude for favors received and proposing a suspension of the monthly payment of wages till such time as would suit the Company's convenience. The proposition, wholly voluntary on the part of the men, and signed by nearly every one, was accepted with warm appreciation. Early in February following all balances due were paid, and monthly payments resumed. Weekly payments were adopted in 1901.
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1865 The unearthly drone that issues from Fairbanks Village, morn- ing, noon and night since July, is the steam gong ; it is tremendous. This gong takes the place of the old factory bell.
1871 The new gong at the Scale Works makes a more unearthly noise than the old one did, if that is possible.
1869 At the time of the great flood, 800 scales a week were being shipped, and unfilled orders accumulating. A sixty-foot track scale for the Kansas Pacific Railroad was carried off by the waters, resulting in total loss. A new one was built and shipped within ten days. In 1875, there were man- ufactured in one week 175 hay scales, an average of one each twenty minutes of working hours; that week 13 carloads of scales were shipped, aggregat- ing 143 tons weight of scales. This was in October.
1874 Revival of business. Some men took a terrier into the old grist mill building at the Fairbanks works the other day. They came out with 110 rats. The scale registered thirty-four pounds of rat. This disproves the recent assertion of the Springfield Republican that business is dull at the St. Johnsbury Scale Factory.
1874 Congress, in December, made a special appropriation for 3000 new style Post Office Scales, ranging from four pounds to a ton capacity, to be delivered within two weeks. This was a difficult proposition; seven parties bid for the contract. It was awarded to the Fairbanks Company, and the bulk of the order was shipped from St. Johnsbury by mail, in time to reach the Post Offices of the country before the first of January, 1875.
1879 On March 26th a number twelve platform scale built for the Mar- quis of Lorne, Governor General of Canada, was despatched to Ottawa. This scale has a nickel plate beam and is decorated with the Coat of Arms of both Canada and United States.
1882 There were 55,000 scales manufactured in 1880, and 58,000 in 1881. In the year 1882 the number rose to 80,000, at a valuation of $3,000,000. Of these, 9450 were large track scales, and 1000 were hay scales. Twenty car loads a week were sent out during the month of December.
1886 At the Industrial Exposition of Austria-Hungary held in Czerno- witz, the State Prize was awarded to the Fairbanks Scales against four com- petitors. On them were weighed H. R. H. the Archduke Karl Ludwig, Archduke Rainer, the Duke of Wartenberg and others. Considerable toll came in from these notables, which was delivered in a sealed box to M. Block for the Red Cross Society.
1888 About 130 men drive daily to the scale works from three to eight miles, and from five different towns. Fifteen come from the Center, six from Danville; one has driven from the East Village for twenty years, one
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from the Center twenty-two years, one from Four Corners nineteen years. Most of these men rise at half past four in the morning, and drive 2000 miles a year in all weathers.
1893 On the ninth day of February a young man was seen taking his weight on a Fairbanks Scale in Vacaville, California. Someone heard him say that he was brought up within four miles of the factory where that scale was made. The next day he died. In appearance he was quiet and pleasing, but nothing was found to indicate his name or address. His re- mark about the scale factory was the only clue. A dispatch was sent to the Fairbanks office, and after some days he was identified as Robert E. Slater. Meantime-"by strangers honored and by strangers mourned"-the burial service had been rendered him by a man who was brought up within one mile of the same scale factory-Rev. Henry Erastus Jewett, grandson of Gov. Erastus Fairbanks and of Dr. Luther Jewett.
1901 At West Superior, Wisconsin, the Great Northern Railway Com- pany erected the largest elevator in the world, entirely of steel, with capacity of three million bushels of grain. A Pennsylvania Company, underbidding all others, was given the contract for eighteen hopper scales, which were in- stalled early in 1901. On being tested by the state inspector they were con- demned and ordered out. The Mechanical Superintendent of the road came promptly to St. Johnsbury and placed an order for eighteen Fairbanks hopper scales at the price of the original bid. Plans were drafted, patterns made, foundry and machine work pushed, and within a week the first scale was ready to be shipped by express. The earliest train out was the air-line north which carries no express beyond Newport. By telephoning the Cana- dian Pacific office in Montreal, permission was obtained to forward the scale thro by express and to hold the train at St. Johnsbury ten minutes for the purpose of loading it. The scale, which weighed 4331 pounds, was handled by fourteen men who in three minutes time had it on the express car. The expressage on this scale was $600. The other seventeen followed in due time. After installation the inspector subjected them under standard test weights to the severest tests ever given, to which they responded with entire ease and accuracy up to their full capacity of 120,000 pounds each.
During the month of July following, a Fairbanks track scale at Duluth, in the thirteenth year of constant use, weighed accurately a million tons of ore ; a performance probably never before equalled.
At Great Falls, Minn., a forty foot track scale of 100 tons capacity, in constant use eight years without repairs or refittings, recorded 5,467,664,999 lbs. as the aggregate of its operations.
1902 Grocer scale number 536, bought by a merchant in Rushville, Ill., has stood for fifty years on the same spot upon the nail counter, where hun-
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dreds of thousands of nails have been thrown upon it. No repairs have been needed, neither file nor oil have been applied to it; a shingle nail or even a bit of paper lifts the beam as promptly as it did half a century ago.
1903 The weekly payment system which went into effect in October was a very agreeable surprise to the men at the scale works ; the more so in- asmuch as it came unexpectedly only six months after the shortening of the working-day last April.
1904 At the St. Louis Exposition was an ornate scale of polished oak, onyx platform, and registering device that stamped the weights at the rate of 3000 per day. Printed tickets of weight were issued to about 225,000 per- sons who stood upon it ; the heaviest man was 390 pounds, the lightest was nine pounds. Some 15,000 people chose to test their weight on the seventy year old scale, less ornamental but equally accurate; with this was dis- played the original application for a patent, written by Thaddeus Fairbanks in 1831.
1906 Russian cannon converted into scales. Since the war in the east, C. H. Horton has purchased two car loads of gun metal, rapid firing guns, cannon and gun furnishings, recovered from Russian battleships sunk in Port Arthur harbor and the Corean Straits. Russia is the largest foreign purchaser of the Fairbanks scales; at one time before this war 400 cases of scales were shipped to Moscow and 50 cases to St. Petersburg. It is fair to assume that some of this gun metal will find its way back into the Kingdom of the Czar in the more peaceful product of the St. Johnsbury manufactory.
NEW EQUIPMENT
The demand for weighing machines of great capacity and ac- curacy caused by the increasing tonnage of the railroads and by the requirements of the Interstate Commerce Commission have necessitated within recent years important changes in the manu- facturing plant.
The old shops have been almost entirely reconstructed, new and larger buildings erected, heavier machinery installed, the en- tire equipment modernized and perfected. Iron loop work that formerly required a day's work of two men is now done by a ma- chine in sixty minutes ; boxes are neatly nailed by a single drop of an iron lever. Automatic hopper scales are set up and operat- ed as in the great elevators ; an erecting plant served by an overhead electric crane is used for the assembling and erection of the heavier scales. Among the new types of machines now being constructed are the dial scales which are designed for weighing baggage and freight on the railroads.
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SCALE
Two cities, yea seven, claimed the name of Homer as a son born in their midst. Two languages might claim the word SCALE as born in their vocabulary.
The even balance in which Abraham weighed his silver in the trade with Ephron the Hittite was still in use in its primitive form among our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, called by them the bal- ances or scales-"every one hath his scholes with him to market to weigh his silver withal." The shallow pans suspended at either arm of the balance, from their resemblance to a clam shell, scyll, scele, came to be called sceale, hence in Early English-scales, or a pair of scales. This is the clam-shell origin of the word SCALE or "a pair of scales," as sometimes called for even now at the Fairbanks works.
The Romans modified the old balance of equal arms having its fulcrum in the center, by lengthening one arm and fitting to it a sliding poise. This constituted the steelyard type. The long beam was graduated by means of notches to indicate the number of ounces. These notches, scalae, gave to this instrument the identical name scale derived in England from the Anglo Saxon clam-shells.
The SCALE of today is thus doubly certified as of historic origin and name, as well as of a two-fold type of construction- multiplied now into thousands of varieties in the leading scale manufactory of the world at St. Johnsbury.
XXXII
IN THE PUBLIC SERVICE
"A public servant-the choice indeed of a party, but himself above any party-seeing clearly what justice and humanity, the law and the public welfare require him to do, and doing it ; trusting the heart, the intelligence, the conscience of his countrymen, thus leading them up to more perfect justice, union, prosperity and peace." Geo. W. Curtis
GOVERNORS-SECRETARIES-JUSTICES-SENATORS -EDUCATORS- GENERALS-LIEUT. GOVERNORS-FEDERAL JUDGES.
It is noticeable that for a period of sixty years till about 1850 nearly all the men of Caledonia who occupied positions of state were from our neighboring towns. During the next sixty years St. Johnsbury made some contributions to the wider public ser- vice, respecting which mention is made in the groups of two and two that follow.
TWO GOVERNORS
ERASTUS FAIRBANKS-was made Governor of Vermont in 1852. This responsiblity came to him apart from his own seek- ing ; the people chose him as a man in whom they trusted. As early as 1836 while a member of the legislature he had left his mark as a man of sound judgment and ability. One of his col- leagues remarked-"no man of my acquaintance in Vermont commanded more unqualified respect than he; having practical good sense, ready discrimination and great quickness of percep- tion, he was a safe and judicious counselor, and acquired and re- tained in an unusual degree the confidence of all parties." It remains on record that his administration as Governor was firm and judicious and eminently healthful in tone. Matters relating
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IN THE PUBLIC SERVICE
to popular education and social order engaged his special atten- tion. His Thanksgiving proclamation attracted the attention of a well known Massachusetts divine who read it to his congrega- tion as more appropriate than the one issued in his own state.
A notable event in the legislature of 1852 was the enactment of the prohibitory liquor law which was destined to give Ver- mont, as well as Maine, distinction for the next fifty years. To this the Governor affixed his signature with peculiar satisfaction, believing it to be a salutary act and for the public good. It operated against his re-election ; the combined liquor interests of the state opposed it and many others questioned its expediency. The next year there was no choice of governor by the people; of 23,708 votes necessary for a choice Erastus Fairbanks, whig, had 20,849 and John S. Robinson, democrat, had 18,142. This threw the election into the legislature, where on the 26th ballot of the joint assembly Robinson received a majority of one vote. After the lapse of sixty years it is interesting to look back thro the vista of intervening events and observe the oscillation of the figures in that balloting of the joint assembly :-
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