Marion County, Indiana - Chapter with an unread heading (no. 18 of those read), 1884 (part 3 of 3)

Marble-Work. - This is a comparatively recent industry here, and is largely confined to memorial work of one kind or another. The houses are only seven : T. J. Clark & Co., West Washington ; J. R. Cowie, North Delaware ; August Diener, East Washington ; J. P. LePage, opposite west entrance of Crown Hill ; A. A. McKain, East Market ; J. M. Sullivan, West Ohio ; W. C. Whitehead, Massachusetts Avenue. The value of the marble- and stonecutting of 1880, - no report is later except those that are partial or defective, - with 11 establishments and 114 hands, was $237,000.

Brick. - Yards for making and burning brick in the last generation gathered along Virginia Avenue, outside of the town proper, though an occasional one was maintained nearer the centre of settlement. Now they are all clear out of the city, or only in the remotest outskirts, though they have offices in the usual business-places. There are 13 of them now. There were 7 in 1880, producing $53,000 of brick. The secretary of the Board of Trade reports them thus for 1882 (the report for 1883 not being yet completed), showing a loss of 3 yards in the year, but a large gain otherwise :

Oil. - The early manufacture of linseed oil has been described in the general history. There is little to add now, except that after the business had disappeared or diminished greatly for a score of years, it was revived in 1864 by I. P. Evans & Co., who also established a large manufactory on South Delaware Street, at the crossing of the Union Railway tracks. Here the business increased to such an extent that about three years ago it was deemed necessary or advisable to establish a second manufactory, on a still larger scale, on the west side of the river, near the

Ice. - Ice was packed for domestic use and confectionery manufacture as early as 1840, by John Hodgkins, on the sites of the present Catholic school, St. John's Cathedral, and the bishop's residence. It was not for several years, however, that it was packed in quantities to supply a general demand. About the year 1847, Mr. George Pitts began this business, and it has extended till now several large dealers maintain ice-ponds on the low ground between the canal and Fall Creek, while others cut from the canal and Fall Creek, and occasionally from the river. There are some half-dozen packers and dealers in the city now, who supply customers every day by wagons, as bakers and butchers do. They employ about 200 hands altogether in the packing .season, which is very variable in this climate, and in 1880 sold a total value of $67,000 of ice. The business now is much larger, and there are some dealers who supply only ice cut on the lakes in the northern part of the State, cutting none here.

Photography. - The first of the business of sunpainting was done here in 1842 by T. W. Whitridge, as related in another chapter. Improvement was slow, but in the last ten years photography has made as striking advances as any industry in the city. There were 20 establishments here in 1880, producing about $50,000 worth of work. There are 23 here now, doing probably double that amount of work.

Electric Lights. - The Brush Electric Light Company was organized here June 17, 1881, with John Cav6n, so long mayor of the city, as president. The capital is $150,000. A large establishment was built by them on South Pennsylvania Street, below Georgia, and powerful machinery put in, and operations begun within a year after the organizatioi). About 120 lights, each of 2000 candle-power, are maintained, but for private use. The city has not yet seen fit to use the light, though advantageous oflFers have been made it by the company.

The Telephone, - Two telephone companies were organized here in 1878, - one under the control of the Western Union Telegraph Company, using the

Manufacturing Interests Op The City Of Indianapolis

Edison invention, and one managed by Mr. E. T. Gilliland, of the Electrical Manufactory, who used the Bell invention. The former had the exchange in the Western Union telegraph-office, the other was located in the Vance Block. The two were consolidated into the Western Telephone Company in 1879, and the consolidated exchange kept in the Western Union location. In 1882 the Central Union Company was formed, absorbing the others. Very recently the exchange was removed to the building on the southwest corner of Illinois and Ohio Streets, the removal causing a good deal of embarrassment to the citizens as well as the company. There are now about 1000 "renters," as they are called, requiring the services of about 50 persons, though 100 were needed during the removal.

Sewing-Machines. - In 1870 the Wheeler & Wilson Sewing-Machine Company established a factory at the upper end of Massachusetts Avenue, to make the cabinet-work of their machines, and it was carried on extensively for several years. But for some half-dozen years past it seems to have declined, and suspend finally, as no return is made of any of that class of work. Agencies for the sale of machines are numerous.

Indianapolis as a Manufacturing Centre, - The variety, extent, and value of the manufactures, of which the foregoing summary may give the reader an idea, are an assurance that the position as a manufacturing centre which the city has attained is very unlikely to be lost or seriously weakened. The influences that combined to create this impulse continue in their original force, or rather, are stronger than ever. The central position of the city, its central position in the State, or rather in the Northwest, has brought to it from all directions the new lines of communication opened by the locomotive, and in these it has found the advantages by the energetic and sagacious improvement of which it has attained its position. These are the work of man's intelligence and energy, and are, therefore, in no way dependent on the accidents or changes of nature. They are as easily kept as got, and more, for as. population attracts population and business attracts business, the concentration of railways attracts or compels the addition of railways, when new outlets to markets are needed. The city will therefore, in all probability, continue to grow from the roots already sent out, as it has grown in sending them out. But to this probability must be added others of even greater promise. No city in the West, or even in the world, offers such opportunities for illimitable and easy expansion. There is not a foot of ground within ten miles in any direction that cannot easily be built upon and added to her area. Cheap lots are therefore possible for more years and growth than would suffice to make it as large as London. There is no cramping of hills, or streams, or unhealthy localities, to huddle up settlements in any quarter and raise real estate to figures inaccessible to poor men. The health is not surpassed by that of any city in the country or any country. There is nothing in that direction to offset the advantages offered by a flourishing town, with an inexhaustible area of cheap building-lots. The schools are equal to any in the country. East or West, and have been supported with unfailing liberality and unanimity. The public improvements are in good part completed, or advancing to completion, so that the heaviest expenses of preparing for comfortable and profitable residence have been incurred, and will not need to be renewed. Thus it offers the four best inducements to the emigrant, - cheap residence, ample means of education, light taxes, and assured health. Without these the unequaled railroad advantages might have left, and might still leave, it merely a flourishing town, but not a large commercial and manufacturing centre.

But to all the advantages enumerated there must be added another equal to either, if not to all together. This is the city's vicinity to the best coalfield in the world for all classes of manufactures. Fuel is the prime necessity of manufacturing in these days, and is likely to remain so until electricity or Ericsson's concentrated sunlight replaces it. Baw material goes to power to be worked up. The philosophy of this movement need not be considered here. It is enough, in this connection, to .state the fact. Power exists here in such abundance as all the developments of England cannot equal. Within two or three hours' run of us lies a coal-field of nearly eight thousand square miles. We enter it by five.

and soon may by six, different lines of railway, making a monopoly, and consequently a heavy cost of transportation, impossible. The dip of the strata is to the west, thus turning up the outcrop in the direction nearest to us, and making that part which 18 most easily mined also the most easily reached. The seams, in many cases, are mined by drifting in from hill-sides, sometimes by shallow shafts, sometimes by merely stripping off a few feet of the surface soil. The ground above is all capable of cultivation and can support all the men, and more, necessary to work them. Mining, therefore, can be carried on at the lowest possible cost. But more than this, the character of the coal itself increases the facility and consequent cheapness of mining. It is soft and easily broken ; its laminations are easily separated ; it breaks easily across the line of stratification ; in fact, is seamed with lines of breakage crossing those of cleavage. It can be thus knocked out of the seam in large, square masses, or chunks, as one might knock bricks out of a dry-piled wall. This, again, assures easy mining. It is almost entirely free from the dangerous gases that produce such fearful calamities in deeper mines of different coal. It is not saying too much to say that no coal has yet been found anywhere in the world so easily accessible, so cheaply mined, or so free from danger to the miner. These facts alone are enough to assure to the city all the advantages that belong to the possession of inexhaustible fuel and illimitable mechanical power.

But there are other facts besides these that " make assurance double sure." This coal, called block coal, - from the peculiarity above alluded to of breaking into blocks, - is really a sort of mineral charcoal. It contains no sulphur, or so little that no analysis has been able to detect more than a trace of it. It contains enough naphtha to kindle almost instantaneously, and it burns without caking, or melting and running together, as most bituminous coals do. These two qualities - freedom from sulphur and burning without caking - every man accustomed to using coal for steam, or for smelting or working iron, will understand at once to make the Indiana block coal uuequaled for all manufacturing purposes. For iron it is unapproachable, being but little different from charcoal. In fact, much of it is charcoal, as any one can see by breaking a lump. The whole surface will be found mottled by alternate lines of bright and dull black, and the latter are laminations of mere mineral charcoal. It will rub off on the fingers or clothes like charcoal, and it can be scraped up in little heaps of charcoal-dust. The brighter laminations are a sort of cannel coal. The whole mass, instead of the glossy, polished look of Pittsburgh coal, is dull and dark, rather than black, with frequent splotches of grayish hue, like an underground rust, upon it. It is, in all respects, different from the ordinary bituminous coal, which has to be coked before it can be used to smelt or work iron. To its singular adaptation to iron manufacture is due the enormous development of that interest in the city within the past ten years.

The field is calculated, from the facts so far ascertained, to contain over twenty thousand millions of tons of this block coal. This is more than will be worked up by all the population that can be collected on the vast plain about Indianapolis in five hundred years.

Besides the block, the field contains many seams of the ordinary coal, though varying less from the Other than does the Eastern kind. There is every variety for all kinds of work, and all can be obtained with equal ease and cheapness. The whole field is calculated to contain sixty-five thousand millions of tons, much of it close to the surface, none of it so deep as to need the costly shafting and machinery of the English or Eastern mines.

In the possession of this amount of fuel, Indianapolis offers to the manufacturer, and especially to the iron manufacturer, these advantages :

2d. Cheap coal, made cheap by ease of mining, freedom from danger, facilities for approach in mining, and by the capability of the covering country to support the miners.

of railway pcnetratinj; the field in four directions, with the certain addition of a fifth, already on the way to completion. Added to the.se is the probability of a cheap narrow-gauge line, which the recent developments as to the value of that mode of transportation have suggested to men not likely to abandon it. The competition of these lines makes high prices impossible.

4th. Choice of coal. Standing at the junction of five or six lines of coal transportation, each bringing a diflFerent variety or diflFerent grade, the manufacturer at Indianapolis can choose that which suits him best, at a price regulated by strong and steady competition. Bight in the coal-field, he would have to take what was near him, or obtain better at a cost that would make profit impossible. Iron men know well the necessity of adapting coal to ore, and the uncertainty there is of finding one kind yielding an equal product with another. The city is, therefore, a better point for smelting, as well as puddling, rolling, casting, or any other process of iron manufacture, than any other point in the State.

5th. The numerous railway lines centring here afford all possible facilities for obtaining necessary raw material or shipping completed products. We have thirteen lines entering the city, and, counting the old Madison road, fourteen. There are only three counties in the State that are not in direct railway connection with us, that is, that cannot send a passenger from there here all the way by rail. This can hardly be said of another State in the Union, except some of the New England States. There are only these three or four from which a merchant may not come here, do business, and return in the same day, with suitable arrangement of connections and trains. This places every dealer in the State at the doors of our manufacturers virtually.

6th. Besides these advantages, offered to the iron manufacturer especially, the advantages of cheap fuel and unequaled transportation are offered to every class of manufacture. To wood-workers we can show hardly less capabilities of profitable labor than to iron men.

The Coal Trade. - The completion of the Vandalia (then Terre Haute and Indianapolis) Railroad in 1852 was the signal for active operations in the Indiana coal-field, which was cut across the middle by the new line, and opened up to the readiest possible means of transportation. But enterprise proceeded rather slowly at the outset. The value of the new fuel, for new it was to most of the settlers of White River Valley, was not appreciated. It was not better than wood, it was a great deal dirtier, and it did not then appear likely to be cheaper. So the country viewed the opening of its new and great resource with a very indifferent eye. The late generous and philanthropic Chauucey Rose, president of the railroad, fumed and swore because some of his old ties and spikes had been used by a firm from this city in laying a little side track to connect their mine with his line and make business for him. He did not want that sort of business. The first mining attempted by any one in Indianapolis was by John Caven, mayor during the war, and now president of the Brush Electric Light Company, and a partner by the name of Robert Griffith. They opened a surface mine; merely skinning off a few feet of alluvial soil, near the little town of Brazil in the fall of 1852, and prosecuted the enterprise under very great disadvantages all that winter. Then the trouble and expense became too weighty, and they quit and sold out. Some little of this coal was burned in the city, but not much, and what was used was not greatly liked. Gradually, however, as forests were swept away and cultivation extended, wood became dear, and the wartimes and prices made it dearer, and then coal began to find a readier sale. For twenty years the business has steadily increased by the increasing consumption for domestic purposes, and by the increasing number and use of locomotives and stationary engines. In 1880 the consumption of all kinds of coal here was 252,357 tons, of which 25,000 was Pittsburgh coal. In 1882 it was about 350,000 tons. For the past year no returns have been completed, but it is estimated that the increase has been about ten per cent., which would raise the total well up towards 400,000 tons. There are 31 coal and coke dealers in the city.