In The Cradle of Industry and Liberty

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@ Above: Foerderer leather plant, located along the Pennsylvania Railroad near Frankford, as surveyed in 1895. At this time the company employed about 1,500 workers who made Foerderer’s famous Vici Kid leather products. It later grew to some 5,000 employees. HEXAMER GENERAL SURVEYS, MAP COLLECTION, FREE LIBRARY OF PHILADELPHIA. FOERDERER LEATHER Robert Foerderer (1860-1903) served an apprenticeship in the Philadelphia leather works of his father, a German immigrant from a long line of leather craftsmen, before opening his own shop. After much experimentation, Foerderer developed a new method for tanning kidskin leather and proudly named his product Vici Kid (“Vici” is Latin for “I conquered”). By 1890 Foerderer was operating a leather factory with 100 workers on Frankford Creek near the neighborhood of Frankford. In 1892 he opened a much larger Right and below: Workers at Foerderer Leather in 1920. At right is the un-hairing and trimming department; below is the lime house. PHILADELPHIA COMMERCIAL MUSEUM COLLECTION, PENNSYLVANIA STATE ARCHIVES. IN THE CRADLE OF INDUSTRY AND LIBERTY 72
factory nearby. This became the largest leather plant in the world, employing up to 5,000 workers and processing over nine million skins a year. The company made shoes, gloves, and leather accessories from Foerderer’s famously soft and supple kid leather. Robert Foerderer died in 1903 at the age of forty-three, while in his first term as a U.S. Congressman. His son Percival took over management of the company and operated it for thirty-some years until closing it in 1937 during the Great Depression. THE WORKFORCE The lives of the foregoing Philadelphia captains of industry are enshrined in history, but what of the workers who labored in their factories and made their products, who were they? It is difficult to generalize about a workforce that at the turn of the twentieth century numbered over a quarter of a million workers employed in thousands of establishments across the city. However, some general characteristics of the Philadelphia manufacturing workforce in this period are discernible. The first is that it was mostly native-born as opposed to immigrant. While other cities attracted huge numbers of unskilled immigrant workers who took all manner of menial manufacturing jobs, such workers were a minority in Philadelphia. The city never received the massive numbers of immigrants that New York City did, but the main determining factor was the nature of Philadelphia’s manufacturing environment: the specialty companies that dominated the city’s industrial sector employed primarily highly-skilled workers, offering the kind of jobs that were more likely to be learned over generations and passed down through families than made available to unskilled new arrivals. Many of the latter could not find employment in Philadelphia and moved on to work in the coal mines, railroads, and steel mills of northeastern and western Pennsylvania. The Jewish and Italian immigrants who made up a large percentage of Philadelphia’s early twentieth-century new arrivals are an exception; many of them settled in the city and did textile outwork or labored in the sweatshops of Old City and the riverwards of South Philadelphia. @ Above: Disston workers, undated late nineteenth-century photo. Disston employed mostly English workers in this period, a reflection of both founder Henry Disston’s heritage and the strong tradition of English metal working. The company workforce became more diverse in the twentieth century. DISSTON COLLECTION, HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF TACONY. Below: Female workers at Artcraft Silk Hosiery Company in the Juniata neighborhood near Frankford, 1930. Running textile machinery was a common job for women in this period. PHILADELPHIA COMMERCIAL MUSEUM COLLECTION, PENNSYLVANIA STATE ARCHIVES. CHAPTER FOUR 73
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IN THE CRADLE OF INDUSTRY AND LIBER
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IN THE CRADLE OF INDUSTRY AND LIBER
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CONTENTS 4 FOREWORD 6 ACKNOWLEDGEME
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@ Michael A. Nutter, Former Mayor,
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For the historical images that enli
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This is a history of manufacturing
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While other manufacturing centers w
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@ Above: Workers at Midvale Steel p
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aircraft that dates to the earliest
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would hold into the early nineteent
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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 and 66: makers, 20 stove manufacturers, 12
Page 67 and 68: and lace, in which Kensington manuf
Page 69 and 70: through exploitation of their worke
Page 71 and 72: @ Left: Yard locomotives at Midvale
Page 73: among the largest in the world at t
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
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neighborhood. The increased product
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Humphrys is one of the oldest manuf
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The Doherty brothers realized, to s
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Centrally located off the Pennsylva
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Jersey and Delaware. Outgrowing the
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Philadelphia is famous for its appr
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injection molded plastic to enter t
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had expanded from smaller pieces fo
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for many years and they know the fi
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furnace as well as a custom flame h
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and Salmon Streets. The company wou
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The company capitalized on the stra
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discharges. The supercapacitors are
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products that are custom designed t
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Today manufacturing matters, now mo
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LEADERSHIP SPONSORS Historical Publ
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