Читать книгу Memoirs of Milwaukee County, Volume 5 - Josiah Seymour Currey - Страница 42

Arthur Jeremiah Sweet, consulting engineer, by his services to his city in the street lighting and city planning fields, has earned a prominent place among those who have helped in especial degree to upbuild Milwaukee.

Mr. Sweet comes of a family which, for several generations, has borne an honorable part in the annals of Oneida county (P. O. Maynard), New York. Jonathan Sweet, great-grandfather of the subject of this sketch, born at East Greenwich. Kent county, Rhode Island, came to Oneida county, New York, in 1817, where he purchased a farm of two hundred acres, located about one and one-half mile north of the city of Utica. Jonathan Sweet soon established himself as a successful farmer and a man of affairs in the community. His son, Jeremiah Sweet, followed in the footsteps of his father and worthily upheld the family traditions. A man who combined successful management of his own business with an active interest in public affairs, Jeremiah Sweet became a local leader in the organization of the republican party, as a representative of which party he served in the New York state legislature during the Civil war. William Henry Seward Sweet, son of Jeremiah and father of the subject of this sketch, was educated at Yale College and the Albany (N. Y.) Law School and admitted to the bar just prior to the outbreak of the Civil war. A man of strong idealism and of keen interest in public affairs, Seward Sweet enlisted in the Union army as soon as the magnitude of the Civil war struggle became apparent, serving until the end of the war in the One Hundred and Forty-sixth New York Regiment, in which he rose to the rank of captain. He was captured in the battle of the Wilderness and for nine months was confined in various southern prisons. At the close of the war Seward Sweet removed to North Carolina, where he became prominent in political affairs. During the reconstruction period he served as a member of the constitutional convention and of the state senate of North Carolina. Though a strong republican and Unionist, he stood out in aggressive opposition to the dominant "carpetbagger" group that sought to exploit the state for personal ends and became a recognized leader of the minority which opposed abuses of the political power then held by northern newcomers to the state.

Shortly after removing to North Carolina, Seward Sweet married Emily Richardson, whose father, Horace Richardson, was a well-to-do farmer of Oneida county. The Richardson family was a Massachusetts family of old Revolutionary stock, Samuel Richardson, the first of the line in America, having been one of the founders of Woburn, Massachusetts, about 1635.

Seward Sweet, an only son, during the later years of his father's life came back to live on the Oneida county farm. Here the subject of this sketch was born December 20, 1879.

Arthur J. Sweet received his early education in the district school of his township, in a private school of Utica, New York, and in the Utica Free Academy. Originally planning a teaching career in the field of philosophy, he entered Cornell University and graduated in 1901, with the degree A. B. Changing his plans for his life work, he spent the next two years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in which time he successfully completed three years' work in the course of electrical engineering. In 1903 he entered the employ of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and a year later was placed in charge of the efficiency engineering work of the company, this subject being one which was just beginning to receive attention in American shop practice. He continued in this work for the Westinghouse Company until 1906, when he became assistant chief inspector for the Western Electric Company at their Hawthorne (Ill.) plant, in this position continuing his work in the efficiency engineering field. A year later the Westinghouse interests recalled him to their employ and he became illuminating and development engineer for the Westinghouse Lamp Company, with headquarters at Bloomfield, New Jersey. Again it was his lot to take active part in the creation of a new line of scientific specialization, illuminating engineering. This employment was destined to determine the subject of his active work for many years.

In 1909 he became assistant chief engineer of the Holophane Company at Newark, Ohio, later becoming commercial engineer of that company. During this period he undertook, on behalf of his company, an analytical and research study of the street lighting problem considerably more extensive and exhaustive than any study made theretofore or thereafter in the decade next following. This work brought him considerable prominence and scientific standing in his profession but incurred the hostility of certain powerful commercial interests in the electrical field.

At this time, Milwaukee's street lighting service was at a particularly low level, with one possible exception being the poorest of any city of similar size in America. Mr. Sweet's street lighting studies had convinced him that changing social conditions were demanding radically higher standards of street lighting service than those which characterized even the foremost practice of American cities; and he believed these new standards were attainable without great increases in cost by eliminating certain very serious elements of waste then characteristic of street lighting practice.

In 1913 Mr. Sweet removed to Milwaukee to engage in consulting practice as a member of the engineering firm of Vaughn, Meyer & Sweet, with the very definite purpose of demonstrating on a large scale his street lighting views by applying same to Milwaukee's then existing needs. Mr. Sweet's proposals met with the opposition of The .Milwaukee Electric Railway & Light Company and received but little encouragement from the Milwaukee common council. He then conceived the ambitious idea of educating the entire community as to the fundamental considerations of the street lighting problem. Pursuing this idea, he inaugurated a speaking campaign before civic, professional, business and social organizations and even before small groups of citizens especially gathered for such addresses. His activities soon gained the support of various civic bodies, with the result that his firm was employed to draw up plans for a new street lighting system. These plans, presented about the middle of 1915, embodied radical advances in street lighting practice yet entailed a cost less than five per cent in excess of the average of the twelve American cities nearest Milwaukee in size. Opposition to the new street lighting plans remained active and more or less effective for some months, but a referendum in April, 1916, on the question of issuing seven hundred and fifty thousand dollar bonds to carry out the first unit of the new street lighting system, was carried by so overwhelming a vote that further opposition ceased. The completion of the street lighting system and the public approval accorded thereto are matters of recent record at the time this sketch is written. The Milwaukee street lighting system has become a center of influence which is permanently affecting American street lighting practice.

.Mr. Sweet has taken an active interest in Milwaukee city planning activities and has been one of the more active members of a group of citizens closely cooperating with the Public Land Commission in the development and promotion of a worthy city plan for Milwaukee.

Though lacking some of the qualities required to make a successful practical politician, Mr. Sweet has taken a keen interest in politics, in which his sympathies and views are of a strongly progressive cast. Since the progressive party movement of 1912 in separation from the republican party, Mr. Sweet has been a strong advocate of a new political party. In 1919-20, he served as state chairman for Wisconsin of the Committee of forty-eight, a national movement looking toward a new political party.

March 4, 1907, Mr. Sweet married Dea C. McClusky of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They have two children, Hubert R. and Arthur P. Sweet.

Mr. Sweet's especial contributions to Milwaukee have been an exceptionally competent technical knowledge in the fields of street lighting and city planning, together with great energy and political effectiveness in winning public support to his views. At the same time Mr. Sweet has afforded a high example of good citizenship through an active interest in public affairs, a notable honesty and unselfishness of purpose and great energy in promoting those things which he conceives to be to his city's interest.