Part 44
Shortly afterwards Mr. Wilson sold out his interest in the firm. A few weeks subsequently he made an agreement with H. F. Wilson, whereby the latter was to perfect and patent a low priced shuttle machine, and assign the patent to the former. In two months the machine was in the patent office, and in 1867 the manufacture was commenced in Cleveland. No money or labor was spared in perfecting the machine, which achieved an instant success and became exceedingly profitable.
In 1868, the Wilson Sewing Machine Company was organized with a paid up capital of one hundred thousand dollars, the principal portion of their stock being owned by Mr. Wilson, who is president of the company. The business of the concern has grown until it now reaches five hundred machines per week, and branch houses have been established in Boston and St. Louis, with general agencies in the principal cities of the United States. Through the rapid development of their business the company have recently purchased a tract of land at the junction of Platt street and the Pittsburgh railroad crossing, in Cleveland, for the purpose of erecting a large building for the manufacture of their sewing machines, that will give employment to between two and three hundred men.
The Wilson Sewing Machine Company is one of the latest established manufactories in Cleveland, but promises to take rank among the most important. It deserves especial mention among the record of Cleveland enterprises, as producing the first local sewing machine that has succeeded, although many attempts have been made.
Albert C. McNairy.
This department of the present work would be imperfect without a reference to the firm of McNairy, Claflen & Co., which ranks among the heaviest and most important contracting firms in the country.
Albert C. McNairy, the head of the firm and a man of great enterprise and energy of character, was born June 14, 1815, at Middletown, Connecticut, and was early engaged in work of a similar character to that now undertaken by the firm. In 1848, he constructed the famous Holyoke Dam, across the Connecticut river at Holyoke, which is over a thousand feet between the abutments, and thirty feet in height. In 1851, he became a member of the bridge building firm of Thatcher, Burt & Co., of Cleveland, whose operations in the construction of bridges were very extensive. In 1864, the firm name became McNairy, Claflen & Co., by the admission of Henry M. Claflen, who had been in the employ of the firm since 1854. In 1866, Mr. Thatcher and Mr. Burt retired and Harvey T. Claflen, (who had been connected with the establishment since 1852,) and Simeon Sheldon were admitted.
From 1851 to a recent date, the Howe Truss Bridge was nearly the only bridge made by the concern. They now are largely engaged in the construction of iron bridges and all kinds of railway cars. The concern has built three thousand two hundred and eighty-one bridges--about sixty miles in the aggregate. The streams of nearly every State east of the Rocky Mountains are spanned by their bridges, and it is a historical fact that not one bridge of their construction has fallen.
Three hundred and fifty men are employed by the firm, and the aggregate of their business reaches two millions of dollars yearly.
The firm is now constructing the New York and Oswego Midland Railroad, from Oneida to Oswego, a distance of sixty-five miles, and furnishing the cars.
The general management of the affairs of the company is in the hands of Messrs. McNairy and Henry M. Claflen. The management of the works is assigned to Harvey T. Claflen, whilst the engineering department falls to the particular superintendence of Mr. Sheldon. The Messrs. Claflen are natives of Taunton, Massachusetts, and Mr. Sheldon of Lockport, New York.
J. H. Morley.
J. H. Morley is a native of Cayuga county, New York. He came to Cleveland in 1847, and commenced the hardware business on Superior street, under the firm name of Morley & Reynolds. This firm continued, successfully, for about twelve years, after which, for some time, Mr. Morley was engaged in no active business. In 1863, he commenced the manufacture of white lead, on a limited scale. Three years subsequently, a partnership was formed with T. S. Beckwith, when the capacity of the works was immediately enlarged. Every year since that time they have added to their facilities. Their factory has a frontage on Canal and Champlain streets, of over three hundred feet. Their machinery is driven by a hundred horse-power engine, and four hundred corroding pots are run. About one thousand tons of lead are manufactured yearly, and find a ready market in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and New York.
Telegraphy.
The telegraphic history of Cleveland is mainly written in the story of the connection with this city of the two leading telegraphers whose biographical sketches are given in this work. The master spirit of the great telegraphic combination of the United States, and the chief executive officer of that combination, have made Cleveland their home and headquarters. Their story, as told in the immediately succeeding pages, is therefore the telegraphic history of Cleveland.
Jeptha H. Wade.
Foremost on the roll of those who have won a distinguished position in the telegraphic history of the West, is the name of Jeptha H. Wade, until recently president of the Western Union Telegraph Company, and who still, although compelled by failing health to resign the supreme executive control, remains on the Board of direction, and is one of the leading spirits in the management.
Mr. Wade was born in Seneca county, New York, August 11, 1811, and was brought up to mechanical pursuits, in which he achieved a fair amount of success. Having a taste for art, and finding his health impaired by the labors and close application consequent on his mechanical employment, he, in 1835, turned his attention to portrait painting, and by arduous study and conscientious devotion to the art, became very successful. Whilst engaged in this work, the use of the camera in producing portraits came into notice. Mr. Wade purchased a camera, and carefully studied the printed directions accompanying the instrument. These were vague, and served but as hints for a more careful investigation and more thorough development of the powers of the camera. By repeated experiments and intelligent reasoning from effects back to causes, and from causes again to effects, he at length became master of the subject, and succeeded in taking the first daguerreotype west of New York.
When busy with his pencil and easel taking portraits, and varying his occupation by experimenting with the camera, news came to him of the excitement created by the success of the telegraphic experiment of building a line between Baltimore and Washington. This was in 1844. Mr. Wade turned his attention to the new science, studied it with his accustomed patience and assiduity, mastered its details, so far as then understood, and immediately saw the advantage to the country, and the pecuniary benefit to those immediately interested, likely to accrue from the extension of the telegraph system which had just been created. Without abandoning his devotion to art, he entered on the work of extending the telegraph system. The first line west of Buffalo was built by him, between Detroit and Jackson, Michigan, and the Jackson office was opened and operated by him, although he had received no practical instruction in the manipulation of the instruments. In the year 1848, an incident occurred, which, though at the time he bitterly deplored it as a calamity, was, in fact, a blessing in disguise, and compelled him perforce to embark on the tide which bore him on to fame and fortune. He was an operator in the line of the Erie and Michigan Telegraph Company, at Milan, Ohio, when a conflagration destroyed all the materials and implements forming his stock in trade as a portrait painter. After a brief consideration of the subject, he decided not to replace the lost implements of his art, but to cut loose altogether from the career of an artist, and hereafter to devote himself solely to the business he had entered upon with fair promise of success.
The first years of telegraph construction were years of much vexation of spirit to those engaged in such enterprises. Difficulties of all kinds, financial, mechanical, and otherwise, had to be encountered and overcome. There were those who objected to the wires crossing their land or coming in proximity to their premises, fearing damage from the electric current in storms. Those who had invested their capital wanted immediate large returns. Some of those who had to be employed in the construction of the lines were ignorant of the principles of electrical science, and their ignorance caused serious embarrassments and delays. Defective insulation was a standing cause of trouble, and telegraphers were studying and experimenting how to overcome the difficulties in this direction, but without satisfactory result. In the face of all these difficulties, Mr. Wade proceeded with the work of extending and operating telegraph lines. In addition to the interest he had secured in the Erie and Michigan line. he constructed the "Wade line" between Cleveland via Cincinnati, to St. Louis, and worked it with success. The "House consolidation" placed Mr. Wade's interest in the lines mentioned in the hands of the Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company, and before long this consolidation was followed by the union of all the House and Morse lines in the West, and the organization of the Western Union Telegraph Company. In all these acts of consolidation the influence of Mr. Wade was active and powerful. Realizing the fact that competition between short detached lines rendered them unproductive, and that in telegraphing, as in other things, union is strength, he directed his energies to bringing about the consolidation, not only of the lines connecting with each other, but of rival interests. The soundness of his views has been proved by the unremunerativeness of the lines before consolidation and their remarkable prosperity since.
Mr. Wade was one of the principal originators of the first Pacific telegraph, and on the formation of the company he was made its first president. The location of the line, and its construction through the immense territory--then in great part a vast solitude--between Chicago and San Francisco, were left mainly to his unaided judgment and energy, and here again those qualities converted a hazardous experiment into a brilliant success. Mr. Wade remained president of the Pacific Company until he secured its consolidation with the Western Union Telegraph Company, to accomplish which, he went to California, in the latter part of 1860, and succeeded in harmonizing the jarring telegraphic interests there. On the completion of this consolidation, Mr. Wade was made president of the Western Union Telegraph Company, his headquarters being in Cleveland.
At a meeting of the Board of Directors, in July, 1867, a letter was received from Mr. Wade, declining a re-election to the office of president. The following resolutions were unanimously adopted by the Board:
_Resolved_, That in receiving the letter of J. H. Wade, Esq., declining re-election to the presidency of this company, we cannot pass it to the officiai files without recording our testimony to the distinguished service he has rendered to the general system of American Telegraphs, and especially to the company whose management he now resigns.
Connecting himself with it in its earliest introduction to public use, and interesting himself in its construction, he was the first to see that the ultimate triumph of the telegraph, both as a grand system of public utility, and of secure investment, would be by some absorbing process, which would prevent the embarrassments of separate organizations.
To the foresight, perseverance and tact of Mr. Wade, we believe is largely due the fact of the existence of one great company to-day with its thousand arms, grasping the extremities of the continent, instead of a series of weak, unreliable lines, unsuited to public wants, and, as property, precarious and insecure.
_Resolved_, That we tender to Mr. Wade our congratulations on the great fruition of his work, signalized and cemented by this day's election of a Board representing the now united leading telegraph interests of the nation, accompanied with regrets that he is not with us to receive our personal acknowledgements, and to join us in the election of a successor to the position he has so usefully filled.
Office of the Western Union Telegraph Company, New York, July 10th, 1867.
William Orton, President. O. H. Palmer, Secretary.
As before mentioned, Mr. Wade remains a director and leading spirit in the Board, where his suggestions are listened to with respect and acted on without unnecessary delay. In addition to his connection with the telegraph Company, Mr. Wade is heavily interested in several of the most important manufactories, in the railroads, and in the leading banks of Cleveland. The wealth he has accumulated is mostly invested in such a manner as to largely aid in building up the property of Cleveland, a city in which he feels a strong interest, not only from the fact that it has been for the past twenty years his place of residence, but that the wealth enabling him to enjoy the beautiful home he has secured there, was made in Cleveland.
It has already been noted that Mr. Wade, when a painter, took the first daguerreotype west of New York. Soon after his entering upon the business of telegraphy, he put into practice, for the first time, the plan of enclosing a submarine cable in iron armor. It was applied to the cable across the Mississippi, at St. Louis, in 1850. Weights had been applied to the previous cables, at regular distances, on account of the sand, change of bottom, drifts, and other difficulties that interfered with the safety of the cable. Mr. Wade conceived the idea of combining weight and protection in the cable itself. He constructed it with eighteen pieces of wire, placed lengthwise around the cable, and bound together with soft iron wire at intervals. While the spiral cordage of hemp, such as was used at that time on the cable from Dover to Calais, would stretch, and allow the strain to come on the cable itself. This invention caused the strain to come on the armor. It was a complete success, and lasted until the line was abandoned. Mr. Wade also invented, in 1852, what is now known as the Wade insulator, which has been used more extensively, perhaps, than any other.
Among the strong points in Mr. Wade's character, is his readiness and ability to adapt himself to whatever he undertakes to do. The evidence of his common sense, business foresight and indomitable perseverance, has been proved by the success attending the various pursuits in which circumstances have placed him. Finding, in early manhood, his mechanical labor undermining his health, he turned his attention to portrait and miniature painting, to which he applied himself so close that after a dozen years or more at the easel, he was compelled to abandon it and seek more active and less sedentary pursuits. Having so long applied himself to painting--the business of all others the most calculated to disqualify a man for everything else--but few men would have had the courage to enter so different a field, but Mr. Wade seemed equal to the task, and with appropriate courage and renewed energy grappled with the difficulties and mystories of the telegraph business, then entirely new, having no books or rules to refer to, and without the experience of others to guide him, and having, as it were, to climb a ladder, every round of which had to be invented as he progressed. But nothing daunted him. Through perseverance and system he succeeded, not only in supplying the United States in the most rapid manner with better and cheaper telegraphic facilities than has been afforded any other country on the globe, but in making for himself the ample fortune to which his ability and energy so justly entitle him. And when care and over-work in the telegraph business had made such an impression upon his health as to induce him to retire from its management, and give more attention to his private affairs, he was again found equal to the emergency, and has proved himself equally successful as a financier and business man generally, as he had before shown himself in organizing and building up the telegraph speciality.
Anson Stager.
One of the most widely known names in connection with telegraphy in the West--and not in the West alone, but probably throughout the United States--is that of General Anson Stager. From the organization of the Western Union Telegraph Company, General Stager has had the executive management of its lines as general superintendent, and the position has not only brought him into close relations with all connected in any way with the telegraph, but has given him a larger circle of business acquaintances than it falls to the lot of most men to possess. The natural effect of his position and the extraordinary course of events during his occupation of that position, have brought him into communication, and frequently into intimate confidential relations, with the leading men in commerce, in science, in journalism, in military affairs, and in State and national governments.
Anson Stager was born in Ontario county, New York, April 20, 1825. At the age of sixteen he entered a printing office under the instruction of Henry O'Reilly, well known afterwards as a leader in telegraph construction and management. For four or five years he continued his connection with the "art preservative of all arts," and the knowledge of and sympathy with journalism which he acquired through his connection with it during this period of his life, enabled him during his subsequent telegraphic career to deal understandingly with the press in the peculiar relations it holds with the telegraph, and has occasioned many acts of courtesy and good will which the managers of the press have not been backward in recognizing and acknowledging.
In October, 1846, General Stager changed his location from the compositor's case to the telegraph operator's desk, commencing work as an operator in Philadelphia. With the extension of the lines westward, he removed to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and then crossed the Alleghenies to Pittsburgh, where he was the pioneer operator. His ability and intelligence were speedily recognized by those having charge of the new enterprise, and in the Spring of 1848, he was made chief operator of the "National lines" at Cincinnati, a post he filled so well that, in 1852, he was appointed superintendent of the Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company. Immediately following his appointment to that position the company with which he was connected absorbed the lines of the New York State Printing Telegraph Company, and General Stager's control was thus extended over that State.
Whilst holding the position of executive manager of the lines of this company, the negotiations for the consolidation of the competing and affiliated lines into one company were set on foot. General Stager warmly favored such a consolidation on equitable terms and set to work vigorously to promote it. On its consummation, and the organization of the Western Union Telegraph Company his services in that respect and his general fitness as a telegraph manager, were recognized by his appointment as general superintendent of the consolidated company. The position was, even then, one of great responsibility and difficulty, the vast net work of lines extending like a spider's web over the face of the country requiring a clear head, and practical knowledge to keep it free from confusion and embarrassment, whilst the delicate and complicated relations in which the telegraph stood with regard to the railroads and the press increased the difficulties of the position. The rapid extension of the wires increased the responsibilities and multiplied the difficulties yearly, but the right man was in the right position, and everything worked smoothly.
The extensive and elaborate System of railroad telegraphs which is in use on all the railroads of the West and Northwest owes its existence to General Stager. The telegraphs and railroads have interests in common, and yet diverse, and the problem to be solved was, how to secure to the telegraph company the general revenue business of the railroad wires, and at the same time to enable the railroad companies to use the wires for their own especial purposes, such as the transmission of their own business correspondence, the moving of trains, and the comparison and adjustment of accounts between stations. How to do this without confusion and injustice to one or the other interest was the difficult question to be answered, and it was satisfactorily met by the scheme adopted by General Stager. That scheme, by the admirable simplicity, complete adaptability and perfection of detail of its system of contracts and plan of operating railroad telegraph lines, enabled the diverse, and seemingly jarring, interests to work together in harmony. Telegraph facilities are always at the disposal of the railroads in emergency, and have repeatedly given vital aid, whilst the railroad interests have been equally prompt and active in assisting the telegraph when occasion arises.
The relations between the journalistic interests of the country and the telegraph, through the various press associations for the gathering and transmission of news by telegraph, have also given occasion for the exercise of judgment and executive ability. The various and frequently clashing interests of the general and special press associations and of individual newspaper enterprise, and the necessity, for economical purposes, of combining in many instances the business of news gathering with news transmission, make the relations between the press and telegraph of peculiar difficulty and delicacy, and probably occasioned not the smallest portion of General Stager's business anxieties. It is safe to say, that in all the embarrassing questions that have arisen, and in all the controversies that have unavoidably occurred at intervals, no complaint has ever been made against General Stager's ability, fairness, or courtesy to the press.
Whilst the Western Union Telegraph Company has been developing from its one wire between Buffalo and Louisville into its present giant proportions, General Stager has had a busy life. His planning mind and watchful eye were needed everywhere, and were everywhere present. The amount of travel and discomfort this entailed during the building of the earlier lines may be imagined by those who know what a large extent of country is covered by these lines, and what the traveling facilities were in the West before the introduction of the modern improvements in railway traveling, and before railroads themselves had reached a large portion of the country to be traveled over.