Читать книгу AMERICA - Joel Cook - Страница 95

The Monongahela River coming from the southward, and the Allegheny River flowing from the northward, drain the western defiles of the Alleghenies, and at Pittsburg unite to form the Ohio River. Each comes to the junction through a deeply-cut canyon, and at the confluence is a triangular flat upon which the original town was built. Like most American rivers, all these have names of Indian origin. Monongahela is the "river of high banks, breaking off in places and falling down." Ohio is a Seneca word, originally pronounced "O-hee-o," and meaning the "beautiful river" or the "fair water," and Allegheny in the language of the Delawares has much the same signification, meaning "the fairest stream." All the Indians regarded the two as really the same river, of which the Monongahela was a tributary. The first white men exploring this region were the French, who came down from the lakes and Canada, when they spread through the entire Mississippi Valley. In 1753, however, Washington with a surveying party was sent out by Virginia and carefully examined the site of Pittsburg, advising, on his return, that a fort should be built there to check the advance of the French, and the next year this was done. Scarcely was it completed, however, when the French sent a summons to surrender, addressed "From the Commander-in-chief of His Most Christian Majesty's troops now on the Beautiful River to the Commander of those of Great Britain." A French force soon appeared, and the fort was abandoned. This began the French and Indian Colonial War that continued seven years, the French then erecting their famous fort and trading-post guarding the head of the Ohio, which they named after the great French naval commander of the seventeenth century, Marquis Abraham Duquesne. Then came Braddock's defeat in 1755, and for some time the region was quiet. Moravian missionary influence, however, had by 1758 detached many of the Indians from the French interest, and after another British attack and repulse, General Forbes came with a large force, and the French abandoned the fort and blew it up. Immediately rebuilt by the English, a Virginia garrison occupied the post, and it was named Fort Pitt. Then a larger fort was built at a cost of $300,000 and garrisoned by artillery, which the enemy vainly besieged in 1763. The next year a town site was laid out near the fort, and in 1770 it had twenty log houses. After the long succession of wars and massacres on that frontier had ceased, the village grew, and business began developing—at first, boat- and vessel-building, and then smelting and coal mining and the manufacture of glass. In 1812 the first rolling-mill started, and the war with England in that year caused the opening of a cannon foundry, which became the Fort Pitt Iron Works. The village of Fort Pitt had become Pittsburg, and expanded vastly with the introduction of steam, and it became an extensive steamboat builder for the Western waters. Railroad connections gave it renewed impetus; natural gas used as a manufacturing fuel was a wonderful stimulant; and it now conducts an enormous trade with all parts of the country, and is the seat of the greatest iron, steel and glass industries in America.

Few views are more striking than that given from the high hills overlooking Pittsburg. Rising steeply, almost from the water's edge, on the southern bank of the Monongahela River, is Mount Washington, three hundred and fifty feet high. Inclined-plane railways are constructed up the face of this hill, and mounting to the top, there is a superb view over the town. The Allegheny River comes from the northeast and the Monongahela from the southeast, through deep and winding gorges cut into the rolling tableland, and uniting form the Ohio, flowing away to the northwest also through a deep gorge, although its bordering ridges of hills are more widely separated. Pittsburg stands upon the low flat surface of the peninsula, above the junction of the rivers, which has some elongated ridgy hills, stretching eastward through the centre. Its situation and appearance have thus not inaptly been compared to a flatiron, the point being at the head of the Ohio, and these ridgy hills making the handle. The city has overflowed into extensive suburbs across both rivers, the aggregate population being more than a half-million. Numerous bridges span the rivers, the narrow shores between the steep hills bearing a mixed maze of railways and factories. Countless chimney-smokes and steam-jets come up in all directions, overhanging the town like a pall; and so impressive is the obscuration, combined with the lurid glare of furnaces and the weird white gleam of electric lights, that the elevated view down into Pittsburg seems a veritable pandemonium. So startling is it on a lowering day that it has been pointedly described by one who thus for the first time looked upon the "Smoky City," far down in its deep basin among the high hills, as appearing like "Hell with the lid off." There are plenty of railways in the scene, and scores of odd-looking, stumpy-prowed little steamboats built high above the water, having huge stern-wheels to drive them, with their noses thrust up on the sloping levee along the river bank, whereon is piled the cargoes, chiefly of iron products. The swift current turns all the sterns down stream, so that they lie diagonally towards the shore. Fleets of flat, shallow coal barges are moored along, waiting to be made up into tows for their journey down the Ohio, as Pittsburg has an extensive river trade, covering over twenty thousand miles of Western waters. Out of the weird and animated scene there come all sorts of busy noises, forges and trip-hammers pounding, steam hissing, railroad trains running, whistles screeching, locomotives puffing, bells ringing, so that with the flame jets rising, and the smokes of all colors blowing about, there is got a good idea of the active industries of this very busy place.

PITTSBURG DEVELOPMENT.

This wonderful industrial development all came within the nineteenth century. There is still preserved as a relic of its origin the little block-house citadel of the old Fort Pitt, down near the point of the peninsula where the rivers join. This has recently been restored by the Daughters of the American Revolution—a small square building with a pyramidal roof. The surrounding stockade long ago disappeared. There is in the Pittsburg City Hall an inscribed tablet from Fort Pitt bearing the date 1764. The old building, which was the scene of Pittsburg's earliest history, for it stands almost on the spot occupied by Fort Duquesne, is among modern mills and storehouses, about three hundred feet from the head of the Ohio. Pittsburg, after an almost exclusive devotion to manufacturing and business, began some years ago to cultivate artistic tastes in architecture, and has some very fine buildings. There is an elaborate Post-office and an interesting City Hall on Smithfield Street; but the finest building of all, and one of the best in the country, is the magnificent Romanesque Court-house, built at a cost of $2,500,000, and occupying a prominent position on a hill adjoining Fifth Avenue. There is a massive jail of similar architecture, and a "Bridge of Sighs" connects them, a beautifully designed arched and stone-covered bridge, thrown for a passageway across an intervening street. The main tower, giving a grand view, rises three hundred and twenty feet over the architectural pile, and, as in Venice, the convicted prisoner crosses the bridge from his trial to his doom. There are attractive churches, banks and business buildings, and eastward from the city, near Schenley Park, is the attractive Carnegie Library and Museum in Italian Renaissance, with a capacity for two hundred thousand volumes, a benefaction of Mr. Andrew Carnegie, originally costing $1,100,000, to which he has recently added $1,750,000 for its enlargement. The residential section is mainly on the hills east of Pittsburg and across the Allegheny River in Allegheny City, there being many attractive villas in beautiful situations on the surrounding highlands.

But the great Pittsburg attraction is the multitude of factories that are its pride and create its prosperity. Some of these are among the greatest in the world—the Edgar Thomson Works and Homestead Works of the Carnegie Steel Company, the Duquesne Steel Works, the Keystone Bridge Company, and others. The Edgar Thomas mills make over a million tons of rails a year, and at Homestead fifteen hundred thousand tons of steel will be annually produced, this being the place where nickel-steel armor-plates for the navy are manufactured. They largely use natural gas, and employ at times ten thousand men at the two great establishments. The Duquesne Works, just above Homestead on the Monongahela, have the four largest blast furnaces in the world, producing twenty-two hundred tons of pig-iron daily. The Keystone Bridge Works cover seven acres, and have made some of the greatest steel bridges in existence. The Westinghouse Electrical Works manufacture the greatest dynamos, including those of the Niagara Power Company, and the Westinghouse Air-Brake Works is also another extensive establishment. In the Pittsburg district, covering about two hundred square miles, the daily product of mines and factories is estimated at $6,000,000.

The two men whose names are most closely connected with Pittsburg's vast industrial development are Andrew Carnegie and George Westinghouse. Carnegie was born at Dunfermline, Scotland, in 1837, and his father, a potter, brought him to Pittsburg when eleven years old. He began life as a telegraph messenger boy, attracted the attention of Colonel Thomas A. Scott, and was by him brought into the service of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Then he entered business, and became the greatest developer of the iron and steel industries of Pittsburg and its wealthiest resident. He some time ago sold out his interests to the Carnegie Steel Company, in which he is largely interested. Westinghouse, born in New York State in 1846, combined with business tact the genius of the inventor. He invented and developed the railway air-brake now in universal use, has established a complete electrical lighting and power system, and was the chief adapter of natural gas to manufacturing and domestic uses, being the inventor of many ingenious contrivances for its introduction and economical employment. He had a gas well almost at his door, for Pittsburg overlaid a great deposit. The enormous coal measures underlying and surrounding the city have been its most stable basis for industry and profit, as the Pittsburg coal-field is one of enormous output. The deposits of Lake Superior furnish the ores for its furnaces, and the railroad development is such that each enormous establishment now has its special railroad to fetch in the ores from Lake Erie, where they are brought by vessels. Across in Allegheny City, where most of these ore-bringing roads go out, about one hundred acres in the centre of the city are reserved for the attractive Allegheny Park, one portion rising in a very steep hill, almost at the edge of the Allegheny River. Upon its top, seen from afar, stands a Soldiers' Monument, a graceful column, erected in memory of four thousand men of Allegheny County who fell in the Civil War. Soldier statues guard the base, and look out upon the smokes and steam jets of the busy city below, and thousands climb up there to enjoy the grand view.