In The Cradle of Industry and Liberty

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From toys to heavy weapons,
Philadelphia manufacturers made an
exceptionally wide range of products in the
early twentieth century.
Above: Women assembling dolls at
the A. Schoenhut toy company in 1912.
At its height, Schoenhut employed about
400 workers at its Kensington factory.
STILL PICTURE RECORDS SECTION,
NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION.
Below: Large guns made for the U.S. Navy
by Midvale Steel Company in an undated
early twentieth-century photograph.
At its peak, Midvale employed about
7,300 at its sprawling Nicetown plant.
MIDVALE COLLECTION,
HISTORICAL AND INTERPRETIVE COLLECTIONS OF
THE FRANKLIN INSTITUTE, PHILADELPHIA.
THE “ SECOND
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION”
The late nineteenth/early twentieth-century
period is sometimes referred to as the
“Second Industrial Revolution,” an era characterized
by huge bureaucratic corporations
carrying out manufacturing on a massive
scale. The first industrial revolution had
been the early nineteenth-century transition
from shop-based artisan work to mechanized
factory production; the second was a major
increase in the scale and scope of this activity,
fueled by late nineteenth-century advances
in technology, transportation, and communication.
While manufacturing reached massive
proportions in certain Philadelphia industries
in this period, the city’s many smaller specialized
manufacturers remained the backbone
of its industrial sector. The 1890
census showed that Philadelphia
had 298 different lines of industrial
businesses.
Another unique characteristic
of manufacturing in Philadelphia
in this period was the number
of firms that remained familyowned
and -controlled rather
than becoming publicly traded
corporations. The Association
of Centenary Firms and
Corporations in the United States,
founded in Philadelphia in 1889 to honor
American companies at least 100 years old
that were still controlled by their founding
families, issued its second edition of member
profiles in 1916. Of the fifty-seven nationwide
companies profiled, fifteen were
Philadelphia manufacturers, the most by far
of any city. The oldest in the nation was the
Philadelphia brewer and maltster Francis
Perot’s Sons Malting Company, founded in
1687. Other Philadelphia manufacturers
that were profiled include paint and chemical
companies, tanners and saddlers, iron
founders, paper manufacturers, makers of
tools, clocks and watches, tin plate, tobacco,
and snuff. Two of these companies have
already been mentioned in these pages: paint
manufacturer Wetherill & Brother, founded
in 1762, and auger and bit manufacturer
Job T. Pugh, founded in 1774.
WORKSHOP OF THE WORLD
As Arthur Shadwell noted in 1906 in
Industrial Efficiencies, it would take a whole
book to list the many different manufacturers
active in Philadelphia in the early years of
the twentieth century. There were thousands
of them. A partial list of the number of
Philadelphia manufacturers active in various
industries between 1909 and 1912 includes:
545 iron foundries and machine shops,
496 tobacco manufacturers, 456 men’s and
351 women’s apparel makers, 174 medicine
and druggist preparations manufacturers,
160 cotton mills, 147 furniture manufacturers,
129 makers of confectionery products,
48 breweries, 40 silk factories, 32 soap
IN THE CRADLE OF INDUSTRY AND LIBERTY
62