In The Cradle of Industry and Liberty

More documents

Recommendations

Info

First • Hosiery and knit goods • Carpets & rugs other than rag • Hats, fur-felt • Locomotives • Dyeing & finishing textiles • Upholstering materials • Cars, street railway • Oilcloth & linoleum • Sporting & athletic goods • Sand & emery paper & cloth • Saws • Shoddy (recycled wool) • Surgical appliances & artificial limbs Second • Sugar refining, excluding beet sugar • Clothing, women’s • Millinery & lace goods • Fertilizers • Paper goods, not elsewhere specified • Umbrellas & canes • Mineral & soda waters • Petroleum refining Statistics tell the story. Out of Philadelphia’s population of 1,293,697 in 1900, 259,197 workers ten years old or older who were gainfully employed were engaged in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits, some twenty-five percent of the population over the age of ten. The total value of goods manufactured in Philadelphia in 1909 was $746,076,000, exceeded only by that of New York and Chicago. The following list from Manufacturing in Philadelphia 1683-1912 outlines the industries in which the city was first, second, third, and fourth in the United States in value of products in 1900: Third • Printing & publishing • Foundry & machine shop products • Bread & other bakery products • Chemicals • Paint & varnish • Leather goods • Boxes, fancy & paper • Marble & stone work Fourth • Clothing, men’s, including shirts • Cotton goods and cotton small wares • Patent medicines, drugs, etc. • Furniture & refrigerators • Copper, tin, & sheet-iron products • Soap • Confectionery • Electrical machinery, apparatus, etc. • Furnishing goods, men’s • Shipbuilding, including boatbuilding • Food preparations Philadelphia at this time truly was, as Shadwell noted, “primarily a manufacturing place.” As a counterpoint to its 100 pages of mind-numbing facts and statistics, Manufacturing in Philadelphia, 1683-1912, offers a wonderfully descriptive visual picture of the city’s industrial landscape in the early 1910s: From the tower of the Bromley Mill at Fourth and Lehigh Avenue there are more textile mills within the range of vision than can be found in any other city in the world. For miles in every direction is seen the smoke of thousands of mills and factories. To the northeast one continuous line of factories extends through Frankford to Tacony, six miles away. To the northwest through the smoke rising from the Midvale works at Nicetown the mills of Germantown are seen. To the west another line of mills stretches to the Falls of Schuylkill and Manayunk. To the southwest are Baldwin’s and the foundries and mills of that section. To the south are the hat and leather factories and to the southeast are Cramp’s Shipyard and the numberless industries clustered along the river. Beyond all these are the mills and factories of South and West Philadelphia, some of them eight miles away. TEXTILES The vantage point from which the above visual survey was taken, the tower of Joseph Bromley’s Quaker Lace Company mill at Fourth Street and Lehigh Avenue, was in Kensington, the heart of the city’s textile industry. Philadelphia was the greatest textile city in the world in this period and Kensington was its center of gravity. Other neighborhoods such as Germantown, Manayunk, and Frankford remained important textile centers, but by the late nineteenth century the largest concentration of the city’s textile firms was in Kensington. The neighborhood that had long been known for its individual handloom operators—“the paradise of the skilled workman” as one weaver called it—now became renowned for its textile mills and factories. Some thirty thousand workers were employed in 400 textile firms in Kensington in 1910. The carpet industry was especially extensive; Kensington mills produced some threequarters of the ingrain carpets made in the United States in 1909. Likewise with tapestry IN THE CRADLE OF INDUSTRY AND LIBERTY 64
and lace, in which Kensington manufacturers were responsible for almost ninety percent of the nation’s output, and with clothing, particularly hats, with the John B. Stetson Company the world’s leading maker of hats in this period. @ Above: Interior of the Hardwick & Magee Carpet Factory at Sixth Street and Lehigh Avenue in Kensington, 1925. Companies like Hardwick & Magee, Bromley, and others made Kensington one of the largest carpet manufacturing centers in the world in the early twentieth century. PHILADELPHIA COMMERCIAL MUSEUM COLLECTION, PENNSYLVANIA STATE ARCHIVES. Left: This detail from Manufacturing in Philadelphia, 1683-1912 includes a chart showing how Philadelphia led the nation by far in the value of textile products manufactured in 1909. Accompanying the chart is a note that, “While some may question the right of Philadelphia to be called the largest manufacturing city in the world, none can successfully dispute the statement that it is the largest textile city in the world.” CHAPTER FOUR 65
Page 1 and 2:
IN THE CRADLE OF INDUSTRY AND LIBER
Page 3 and 4:
IN THE CRADLE OF INDUSTRY AND LIBER
Page 5 and 6:
CONTENTS 4 FOREWORD 6 ACKNOWLEDGEME
Page 7 and 8:
@ Michael A. Nutter, Former Mayor,
Page 9 and 10:
For the historical images that enli
Page 11 and 12:
This is a history of manufacturing
Page 13 and 14:
While other manufacturing centers w
Page 15 and 16: @ Above: Workers at Midvale Steel p
Page 17 and 18: aircraft that dates to the earliest
Page 19 and 20: would hold into the early nineteent
Page 21 and 22: technology, transportation, and com
Page 23 and 24: age had joined the Religious Societ
Page 25 and 26: Philadelphians lived in the city’
Page 27 and 28: “and many boats, which are useful
Page 29 and 30: Quaker merchant Thomas Masters purc
Page 31 and 32: INDUSTRY INVENTORS Manufacturers in
Page 33 and 34: Quaker upbringing. Known as the “
Page 35 and 36: MAKING A CASE FOR AMERICAN MANUFACT
Page 37 and 38: up cotton manufacturing operations
Page 39 and 40: After receiving a patent for the en
Page 41 and 42: The Globe Mill on the Cohocksink Cr
Page 43 and 44: @ Opposite: Detail from 1849 map sh
Page 45 and 46: of the town’s total population. S
Page 47 and 48: On a positive note, a group of Fran
Page 49 and 50: factories with a powerful energy so
Page 51 and 52: and flagship for Commodore Matthew
Page 53 and 54: @ Left: Penn Steam Engine & Boiler
Page 55 and 56: Garrett & Eastwick Locomotive Works
Page 57 and 58: seen. The episode brought Hagner co
Page 59 and 60: United States, the nation’s de-fa
Page 61 and 62: The turn of the twentieth century p
Page 63 and 64: in various categories at the Centen
Page 65: makers, 20 stove manufacturers, 12
Page 69 and 70: through exploitation of their worke
Page 71 and 72: @ Left: Yard locomotives at Midvale
Page 73 and 74: among the largest in the world at t
Page 75 and 76: factory nearby. This became the lar
Page 77 and 78: she writes of the sad circumstances
Page 79 and 80: @ Clockwise, starting from the top:
Page 81 and 82: BEER AND TOBACCO Beer making contin
Page 83 and 84: MILK AND ICE CREAM Like any major c
Page 85 and 86: the Philadelphia Phillies. Located
Page 87 and 88: and a half later from a city of man
Page 89 and 90: After major cutbacks in the auto in
Page 91 and 92: into countless lunchboxes throughou
Page 93 and 94: hangar space in 1980 at Northeast P
Page 95 and 96: is the nation’s largest manufactu
Page 97 and 98: fuel for local industries, current
Page 99 and 100: centralize operations in the buildi
Page 101 and 102: BOOKS AND ARTICLES Bridenbaugh, Car
Page 103 and 104: Sutcliffe, Andrea J. Steam: The Unt
Page 105 and 106: Penrose, Bartholomew & Thomas shipy
Page 107 and 108: PARTNERS IN BUILDING PHILADELPHIA H
Page 109 and 110: @ Left: An early Kingsbury advertis
Page 111 and 112: PARTNERS IN BUILDING PHILADELPHIA 1
Page 113 and 114: Aerodynamics. The name DeVal was a
Page 115 and 116: packaging and shipping; and nondest
Page 117 and 118:
Another step in product advancement
Page 119 and 120:
PHILLY CASE From the basement of a
Page 121 and 122:
Under Yost’s direction, The Rowla
Page 123 and 124:
The story of Tioga Pipe is a classi
Page 125 and 126:
neighborhood. The increased product
Page 127 and 128:
Humphrys is one of the oldest manuf
Page 129 and 130:
The Doherty brothers realized, to s
Page 131 and 132:
Centrally located off the Pennsylva
Page 133 and 134:
Jersey and Delaware. Outgrowing the
Page 135 and 136:
Philadelphia is famous for its appr
Page 137 and 138:
injection molded plastic to enter t
Page 139 and 140:
had expanded from smaller pieces fo
Page 141 and 142:
for many years and they know the fi
Page 143 and 144:
furnace as well as a custom flame h
Page 145 and 146:
and Salmon Streets. The company wou
Page 147 and 148:
The company capitalized on the stra
Page 149 and 150:
discharges. The supercapacitors are
Page 151 and 152:
products that are custom designed t
Page 153 and 154:
Today manufacturing matters, now mo
Page 155:
LEADERSHIP SPONSORS Historical Publ
show all

In The Cradle of Industry and Liberty

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?