Читать книгу St. Louis - The Fourth City, Volume 2 - Walter Barlow Stevens - Страница 5

"The culture of hemp has occupied the attention of our farmers, and a rope-walk will shortly be erected in this town. Thus we have commenced the manufacture of such articles as will attract thousands of dollars to our territory; thus we will progress in freeing John Bull and Jack Ass of the trouble of manufacturing for us." – Missouri Gazette, March, 1809.

A century ago the first newspaper, when not nine months old, began to urge the importance of home manufactures upon St. Louis. "Manifest destiny" was a favorite theme with writers, but the men who made St. Louis never overlooked the importance of supplementing natural advantages with enterprise. In the early days the supremacy of the settlement, town and city depended upon distributive commerce. St. Louis was a distributing center. Fortunes were made and the city waxed rich and powerful through the bringing of all kinds of manufactured products and their distribution to great and growing sections of the country. But the permanence of St. Louis' prosperity, the enduring growth of traffic, came with a new character. As productive commerce became more and more important St. Louis was built for the generations to come.

In its issue of January 31, 1811, the Missouri Gazette announced: "An event not viewed as of public importance itself may yet be highly interesting from the reflections to which it gives rise. An English gentleman, Mr. Bridge, of considerable capital, arrived here on Tuesday evening last, with his family, for the purpose of establishing himself in this place. We understand he has brought with him the machinery of a cotton factory and two merino rams. Such an immigrant is an important acquisition to the country."

The water power mill on Chouteau's pond ran without competition for years. A saw mill was established at the foot of Ashley street, on the ground overlooking the river. It was the first saw mill west of the Mississippi. In connection with it the owner, Sylvester Labbadie, operated a grist mill. The power was a tread mill on which patient oxen walked slowly, by their weight making the wheel go around. The age of steam had not arrived for St. Louis. Manuel Lisa, at a later period, ventured some of his profits, made at fur trading, in a mill on the river bank. Slowly but surely St. Louisans of the old and new stock felt their way into the industrial field.

When St. Louis became a town the north boundary was described as "beginning at Antoine Roy's mill, on the bank of the Mississippi." Years afterwards the landmark was called "Roy's tower." Tradition had it that the tower was built as part of the fortification of St. Louis. The great, circular, stone tower stood on the river bank, above high water, at a point between Morgan and Ashley streets. The tradition that the tower was built for military purposes seems to rest on the similarity to Spanish construction of that character. Truth of history seems to be that the tower was inspired by industrial activity in St. Louis. Antoine Roy was one of the pioneer millers. He operated by wind power. His was probably the first wind-mill built in St. Louis. The great arms projected from the stone tower in such a manner as to catch the full strength of the wind blowing up the river. St. Louis had two other mills at that time – Auguste Chouteau's and Gregoire Sarpy's – but they were run by water. Antoine Roy was one of the well-to-do citizens of St. Louis. His name appears on the first tax list made after the American flag was raised. The valuation put upon his holdings was $3,000. The tower was still standing in the days of the daguerreotype, forty years after it was first listed by an American assessor. It was one of the most interesting relics of St. Louis when the picture was taken, about 1847. Antoine Roy was also known as Roi. He was twice married, first to Felicite Vasquez and later to Mary Louise Papin.

In 1815, the 11th of November, Christian Smith informed the people of St. Louis that on the next evening "the first batch" of crackers and biscuits would be "drawn" from his "bake shop," and the citizens were "invited to send and make trial." The town had been incorporated about six years when the trustees passed an ordinance that "no loaf of bread shall be vended at a price greater than twelve and one-half cents."

The Grimsleys were Virginia people, a large family of them. Nimrod Grimsley, the head of the Kentucky branch, moved to that state. Thornton Grimsley was not born until after the family settled in Kentucky. He came out to St. Louis in charge of a stock of goods while he was still apprenticed to a saddlery manufacturer at home. That was in 1816, when Thornton Grimsley was eighteen years of age. When he reached the age of twenty-one and the end of his apprenticeship he took six months of schooling with the proceeds of extra work done by him during his apprenticeship. At the end of that time he became the representative of his employer in charge of the St. Louis branch, and three years later he went into business here for himself. Recognizing the demand which must come in the southwest for what he knew most about, Grimsley opened a small saddlery shop. He invented the dragoon saddle. The government adopted the Grimsley saddle, and for many years would have no other. Grimsley's saddle factory became one of the institutions of the west. It did more government work than any other factory in the country. Thornton Grimsley was of striking appearance. He was of large frame and wore side whiskers at a time when that style was exceptional. In the brilliant militia uniforms of the period his figure was imposing. There was rarely a great celebration in St. Louis during the second quarter of the century, with which Thornton Grimsley was not associated as grand marshal.

James Richardson, who came from Virginia much earlier than Grimsley's arrival, and settled north of the city, was a saddler. He constructed a side saddle and presented it to one of the Spanish governors for his wife. The governor was so well pleased that he gave Richardson a grant of a thousand arpents of land.

The French habitants of St. Louis raised tobacco in their common fields. Tobacco was manufactured in only crude forms until after the American occupation. In 1817 Richards & Quarles had "a tobacco manufactory" on the cross street nearly opposite the post-office. About 1840 the newspapers spoke of tobacco as "another item of our trade which is swelling every year into much greater importance." Missouri was raising 9,000 hogsheads of tobacco in 1841 and sending all but 500 hogsheads to St. Louis. As a tobacco market St. Louis grew until the receipts in 1876 reached 29,204 hogsheads.

The Catlin family had much to do with the development of the tobacco industry. The first of the St. Louis Catlins came from Connecticut and brought with him a valuable knowledge about the manufacture. He was Dan Catlin. He established in North St. Louis a factory which was one of the most important local industries of its day, 1840. Dan Catlin had two sons, Daniel and Ephron, both children when the family moved from Litchfield. Daniel Catlin grew into the management of the tobacco manufacturing, and taught other St. Louis manufacturers how much there is in putting products with attractive brands on the market. The Catlin tobacco company expanded into an institution giving employment to more than 400 people. Ephron Catlin, three years younger than Daniel, chose the drug business in preference to tobacco manufacturing. The brothers, both men of splendid physiques, were conspicuous in a community where stalwart young manhood was not exceptional. They married sisters, Misses Justina and Camilla Kayser, daughters of Henry Kayser, one of the foremost civil engineers of the west.

Christopher Foulks came from New Jersey about 1820, with a knowledge of tobacco manufacture. He became one of the pioneers in that industry. Joseph Liggett was a Londonderry man who settled in St. Louis and married Elizabeth Foulks, daughter of the pioneer tobacco manufacturer. The son, John Edmund Liggett, was born in St. Louis in 1826. He was one of the pupils of David H. Armstrong in the first public school of St. Louis, and afterwards attended Kemper college in the southwestern part of the city. At eighteen, John E. Liggett left school to go into the tobacco factory of Foulks and Shaw. The head of the house was his grandfather. The junior partner was his stepfather. When the grandfather retired, the grandson became a partner, and the firm was Hiram Shaw & Company. A brother, W. C. L. Liggett, bought out Mr. Shaw, and the new style was J. E. Liggett and Brother. Henry Dausman bought out the brother after five years. The tobacco manufacturing went on, growing under Liggett and Dausman. In 1873 George S. Meyers bought out Dausman. Hiram Shaw Liggett, son of John E. Liggett, grew into the business. Through four generations the plant grew into one of the great industries not alone of St. Louis but of the country. A vast fortune was built up with the profits of carefully conducted manufacturing. In the family through the generations was always a devotion to the cause of education which found expression in princely gifts to institutions.

Before the Civil war St. Louis was selling manufactured tobacco in every state and territory of the United States. The Lewis brothers, who started in Glasgow, Missouri, in 1837, had ten years later removed to St. Louis, and developed greatly their business, keeping a branch at Glasgow. They manufactured annually millions of pounds of fine cut and plug. They exported to Europe as well as supplied a home market, which included all of this country. Twenty years after the war St. Louis had become the second largest tobacco manufacturing center, being surpassed only by Jersey City. In 1908 St. Louis was maintaining the position it had held for years as "the place where more tobacco is manufactured annually than in any other place in the world." That year of depression in some industries showed an increase in the products of St. Louis tobacco factories to 75,750,000 pounds, as compared with the 65,980,000 pounds of 1907. The product of the six tobacco manufacturing establishments of St. Louis in 1907 was valued at $21,127,654. In 1910 the volume of the" tobacco business of St. Louis was reported by the Business Men's league to. be $50,000,000.

The Drummonds were of Scotch ancestry. James Drummond was born in Scotland. He was a soldier in the Revolution. His son Harrison moved west from Virginia and settled on a farm in St. Charles county. James T. Drummond was born in St. Louis in 1834. His brother, John Newton Drummond, was born on the St. Charles county farm two years later. While they were young men, the Drummonds became interested in tobacco manufacture. John Newton Drummond left the farm to work in a factory. James T. Drummond, after teaching school and after being a traveling salesman for his father-in-law, James Tatum, put his savings into a small tobacco factory at Alton about the beginning of the Civil war. His brother joined him. After the removal to St. Louis, the business grew to immense proportions.

Sam Gaty was an orphan eleven years old when, taking an old shot gun which had been his father's, he left the people with whom he had been placed, made his way to Louisville and bound himself as an apprentice in a foundry. When he had learned the trade, with a companion named Morton, he came to St. Louis. That was in 1828. Martin Thomas had the foundry of the city and James Newell was the expert blacksmith. McQueen was managing the foundry. Gaty and Morton asked for work. McQueen refused to hire them, saying he must have competent men and was going to get them from New York. The steamboat Jubilee, fortunately for Sam Gaty, broke a shaft about that time. To make a new one seemed to be beyond the mechanical resources of St. Louis. Newell, the blacksmith, heard about the trouble. He suggested that Gaty might be able to turn out a steamboat shaft. McQueen was incredulous, but he sent for the youth from Louisville. Gaty said he could make a shaft. "How will you do it?" asked McQueen. "That is my business," replied Gaty. He was given the opportunity and turned out the shaft, the first one manufactured in St. Louis. Later Sam Gaty made the first steam engine built in St. Louis or west of the Mississippi. His fortune after that was a matter of industry and persistent attention to business.

The way in which Gaty prepared for his shaft-making excited great interest in St. Louis. There wasn't a geared lathe in the place. Hunting up two cogwheels of different sizes, Gaty bolted the larger to the face plate of the lathe and the smaller one he put on the center shaft. He arranged his machinery in such an efficient manner that he turned the new shaft in a day and a half. There was a brief controversy over the price of the job. McQueen asked Gaty before he began how much he was going to charge. "One-half of your whole price," said Gaty. McQueen demurred. Gaty, recalling the way in which he had been refused work, said, "Get your skilled workmen from the east to do it." McQueen thought it over and told Gaty to go ahead.

On the reputation acquired in the steamboat shaft incident, Gaty started a foundry. The three partners had a capital of $250. The money was absorbed before the business was well established. Mr. Gaty took a place by the day at $1.25. He went into partnership with his employer and built up one of the largest of the early industries of St. Louis. In his old age he was very wealthy, his success being ascribed to the fact that he stuck to the business and had never risked anything in speculation. In 1840 Mr. Gaty married Miss Elizabeth Burbridge. He was the father of thirteen children.

Philip Kingsland learned the manufacture of iron in his father's shop at Pittsburg. He was put through an apprenticeship which was not only thorough but showed him no favors because he was the son of the proprietor. In 1835, at the age of twenty-six, he came to St. Louis and started a foundry and machine shop. His brother George joined him. The Kingslands later engaged in the manufacture of agricultural machinery.

The 160 foundry and machine shops of St. Louis in 1910 showed a gain of twenty-five per cent in product since 1905. They were employing 7,000 people and the output was valued at $15,000,000. They were making all kinds of tools and engines and iron work for building. They were sending their product to the Orient and all parts of South America.

A steamboat – hull, engines, tackle and all of St. Louis make – came to the wharf on the 25th of April, 1842. Citizens began to talk of a manufacturing city. Hundreds of boats were built here after that. Not one of them made the public impression that the St. Louis Oak did when she steamed down from Captain Irvine's boatyard.

To the Kentuckians who flocked to Missouri about 1830 this city owes the origin and the rise of its hemp market. And with the raw material came the manufacture of rope and gunny cloth and allied products. In 1853 the 63,450 bales of hemp received here were worth $300,000. McClelland, Scruggs & Co. and Douglass & Bier joined with others in the manufacture of rope and hackled hemp under a new patent, and utilized from 2,000 to 3,000 tons of the raw material yearly. Near the shot tower on north levee John L. Elaine conducted large rope works. Just below Park avenue Johnson, Bartley & Lytle had a large rope manufactory. R. B. Bowler came from Cincinnati and organized the St. Louis Rope and Bagging company. St. Louis came to the front in manufacture of wire rope and aerial tramways in a phenomenal manner, sending the product to all parts of the North and South American continents. The output of these plants, including rope and cable of fiber with metal, in 1910 was $6,000,000.

St. Louis became a great market for flaxseed and a center for the manufacture of oil. This was a development promoted by the white lead industry. As Henry T. Blow increased the manufacture of white lead, he encouraged the production of flaxseed and castor beans by importing the seed and the beans and making distribution to farmers who would plant.

Long before the first railroad was built westward St. Louis received by wagon haul of forty miles shipments of gunpowder. The place of manufacture was Gallagher's Mill in Franklin county. John Stanton, for whom a town was named later, was the pioneer manufacturer. He utilized the nitrous earth found in the caves of the foothills of the Ozarks.

Ellis N. Leeds, the son of a New Jersey farmer, laid many thousands of brick in the first ten years he had lived in St. Louis. The journeyman became a director of the Merchants bank, of the St. Louis Gas Light company, of the Cheltenham Brick company, of the Vulcan Iron company, and retired a capitalist after thirty years of active business life.

Nicholas Schaeffer with his three brothers walked over the Alleghany Mountains on his way to St. Louis. The young men and their mother came to America in 1832. They bought a horse and wagon at Baltimore and started to drive to Cincinnati. At Hagerstown the horse was stolen. The mother was given a place to ride in a freight wagon. The sons walked to the Ohio river at Wheeling. Nicholas Schaeffer mixed mortar for seventy-five cents a day, worked in a tannery at fifteen dollars a month, was steward in a hotel, tried flat boating before he came to St. Louis in 1839 and made the beginning of what was to be for forty years the largest soap and candle manufactory in the west. He came from Alsace, then in France, now a German province.

Gerard B. Allen was the son of a manufacturer in Cork, Ireland. He came to St. Louis a young man in 1837 and engaged in contracting and building. From manufacturing lumber he went into iron and established the Fulton Iron Works.

The Garrisons were New Yorkers, sons of Oliver Garrison who ran some of the earliest packets long before railroad days between New York city and West Point on the Hudson. Daniel R. Garrison, with some knowledge of steam engine construction gained in shops at Buffalo and Pittsburg, came to St. Louis in 1835 and was put in charge of the drafting for the Kingsland, Lightner & Co. foundry and engine works. He was just of age. In 1840 Daniel R. Garrison and his brother Oliver began to manufacture St. Louis steam engines. With the rush to the gold diggings Daniel R. Garrison went to California. Oliver Garrison remained in St. Louis building steam engines and shipping them to his brother. Of the first lot of three engines Daniel R. Garrison sold one to the Hudson Bay company. He went to Oregon to deliver it. The main couplings were lost overboard. There was no time to send back to St. Louis for new parts. Daniel R. Garrison, with Indian guides, went 100 miles into the Willamette wilderness, dug some iron ore, built a temporary furnace, smelted the ore and made new couplings. This is said to have been the first manufacture of iron on the Pacific coast. The engine which Daniel R. Garrison built for the boat is said to have been used on the first steamboat constructed on Pacific waters. The Garrisons retired with fortunes from the foundry business. Daniel R. Garrison took up railroad building and management first with the Ohio and Mississippi, now the Baltimore and Ohio, in the fifties, and then with the Missouri Pacific during the war. After the war the Garrisons took up and for ten years carried on the great iron manufacturing industry, the Vulcan and Jupiter works, at the south end of Carondelet.

The original Plymouth Rock stock sent its representatives to the upbuilding of St. Louis. Warren A. Souther and E. E. Souther, who established a house dealing in iron, about the Civil war period, descended from Nathaniel Souther, the first secretary of the Plymouth colony. A branch of this numerous New England family settled in Alton in 1842. From Alton the Southers came to St. Louis. Out of the iron business established by the Southers grew the Souther Iron company and later the Missouri Bolt and Nut company.

One of the chief surprises of a fair held in 1842 was "a St. Louis manufactured stove." This was the initial effort of the Empire Stove Works established by the Bridges. Hudson E. Bridge and his brother began the manufacture of stoves in a modest plant up town. By 1848 they were occupying half a block at Main and Almond. Six years later they had spread to the levee. They were melting ten tons of iron a day and turning out 11,000 stoves a year. That was in 1854. The Empire was one of four stove-making establishments in St. Louis at the time.

The Excelsior Stove Works of Giles F. Filley & Co. had been in operation since 1850. This establishment had finished 20,000 in the third year of operation, using 4,000 tons of iron. These stoves had been shipped to all parts of St. Louis trade territory. They had given the stove manufacturing center of the country, Albany, its fatal shock. A fireproof pattern safe assured the community that the Excelsior Works had come to stay. This safe was like no other in the United States. It had massive brick walls without windows, three stories, an iron roof with an iron shutter which could be opened to let in the light and air. There the patterns of the many varieties of stoves were kept secure from fire.

In 1910 St. Louis was manufacturing twice as many stoves as any other city in the United States. The product that year was 847,000 stoves, which sold for $8,800,000.

A scientific discovery which revolutionized stove manufacture is credited to Giles Franklin Filley. It was of the useful, homely character which might be properly associated with Mr. Filley 's middle name. The discovery came about through Mr. Filley's experiments to find something better than the close iron door which covered the feedhole to his iron furnace. The iron of the door became so hot when the cupola was fired that it soon burned out. The workmen couldn't stand in front of it. Mr. Filley tried a wire screen covering. Rather to his surprise this held the heat within the furnace, did not become so hot as the iron door and lessened the amount of fuel necessary for smelting. It was a saving of expense in the operation of the cupola furnace. At that time the stove manufacturers of the country claimed great improvement in the construction of oven doors which were close-fitting on cookstoves. They went so far as to make double doors with non-conducting material between the plates. The object was to keep all of the heat in the oven. Having observed the efficiency of the wire screen over the cupola door, Mr. Filley tried a gauze wire door to the cooking stove. He discovered it gave a more even temperature; that baking and roasting could be done with less fuel. But perhaps more than all, the cooking with the gauze wire door did not burn and destroy the savory odors.

For a full generation after the cooking stove became general in St. Louis homes, lament was loud and universal that things did not taste as well as they did when done in the old way. The local scientists wrestled with the problem. John H. Tice, who was known locally as the philosopher of Cheltenham, stated the indictment against the cooking stove:

Those whose remembrance runs back half a century, when cooking stoves began to come into use, will recall the fact that their sainted mothers, while lavish in praises of the handiness, convenience and general performance of the innovation, uniformly made one objection to it, namely, that in baking and roasting it did not come up to the old standard. All persons who have passed the meridian of life recall with zest the fine and delicious flavor of the tender beef, pork, lamb, turkey, etc., roasted before the open fire, and hence their own experience can bear testimony to the maternal objection.

The gauze doors determined that it was far better that the ovens should not be airtight for baking; that excessive heat meant annihilation of the distinctive odors of meats and other things. The local scientists agreed that 212 degrees was about the proper standard to accomplish the best oven results and that Giles F. Filley's gauze wire doors operated to maintain such a standard with a saving of wood or coal. A higher range of heat, it was agreed injured the baking.

Hitchcock & Co., in the southern part of the city, also made stoves, and by way of variety turned out 3,000 plows a year. The south as well as the west, before the Civil war, was looking to St. Louis for agricultural machinery.

The immediate vicinity of St. Louis became famous for its fruit. Pomology had its professors seventy years ago. In 1837 the wife of Peregrine Tippet, a Marylander, who called his farm in St. Louis county Cedar Grove, planted apple seeds. She was Susanna Lee, the mother of Mrs. Martrom D. Lewis. From that seed planting came the apple popular several generations ago as "Aunt Susan's Favorite." Norman J. Colman, after much investigation, decided that no part of the United States offered such encouragement to fruit growing as the vicinity of St. Louis. When the Civil war came Mr. Colman had the greater part of what is now known as the Cabanne section covered with a young nursery. He had planned to supply young trees for the starting of thousands of orchards in Missouri and Southern Illinois. The war paralyzed the industry. Mr. Colman was the first Secretary of Agriculture.

As early as 1835-40 several St. Louisans became deeply interested in the subject of wine growing. One of them was Kenneth McKenzie. He made a trip to Europe for the purpose of getting information as to vineyards and as to wine making.

Amadee Berthold brought over from France while he was there a cutting of a celebrated grape. He placed it in a tin pan with earth. At that time a certain allotment of water was made to each passenger crossing the ocean.

Mr. Berthold cut down his allotment until he actually went thirsty in order that he might use the water to nourish the cutting. That vine, for it had rooted when Mr. Berthold reached St. Louis, was planted back of the Berthold mansion on Fifth and Pine streets. It grew to very large size and bore enormously.

Thomas Allen, afterwards the railroad builder, took up grape culture and established a vineyard on the Russell place, near where the McKinley high school is located. Mr. Allen had made for him a gray blouse, such as was worn in the vineyards of Germany. He donned this blouse, and attended -to his grapes daily. He wrote charmingly of the opportunities St. Louis presented for horticulture. In a St. Louis newspaper of September 29, 1846, appeared this acknowledgment: "Thomas Allen of Crystal Springs farm, in the southern part of the city, has presented us with ten varieties of peaches raised this season on his grounds. Mr. Allen has a heavy crop of apples, of which there are thirty varieties; also a large crop of grapes, of which he has twenty varieties."

There were great expectations from 1845 to 1860 that St. Louis would become one of the principal wine markets of the United States. Extensive vineyards were planted. Much careful study was given to grape culture and wine making. One of the experts who passed upon the condition here was a minister, Rev. Mr. Peabody. He claimed that in climate and soil the advantages of the vicinity of St. Louis were superior to any part of the United States, east of the Rocky Mountains. An estimate gave 15,000,000 acres in Missouri tributary to St. Louis suitable for vineyards.

Alexander Kayser was one of those who anticipated great development for the wine industry of St. Louis and vicinity. In 1848 he offered three premiums of $100 each for "the best specimens of Missouri wines, the vintage of three consecutive years." The competitors numbered twenty-seven for the third year. The premium went to Jacob Romel of Hermann on "a wine of pure Catawba grapes."

Gustave Edward Meissner joined the viticulturists of St. Louis. He was a relative of the Roeblings, the famous bridge builders of New York, and before coming to St. Louis had given a great deal of study and investigation to grape growing. Finding the vicinity of St. Louis ideal in respect to soil and climate for viticulture, Mr. Meissner made this his home. He acquired an island in the Mississippi a few miles below the city, called Meissner's Island. There he established a vineyard of 600 acres. At one time his vines were producing 100 varieties of grapes.

A fact that encouraged the St. Louis wine-makers was the discovery of six fine varieties of grapes that seemed to be native to the soil of Missouri, and proof against disease. These early experiments produced wines which experts pronounced excellent in flavor and keeping quality. The grapes grown in the vicinity of St. Louis were declared to yield a "must full of body and having saccharine enough to prevent acetic fermentation."

But notwithstanding all of the natural encouragement for grape growing and wine making the St. Louis market in 1853 received of native wine only nine casks, seven barrels and eight boxes. A hundred years before Cahokia and Kaskaskia across the river were making more wine than that. The wine product of St. Louis in 1870 was $800,000.

The brewing of lager beer in St. Louis began in 1840. Adam Lemp came to this country from Germany. Two years after settling in St. Louis he started a small establishment on Second street between Walnut and Elm. Twenty years later "Lemp's" had become one of the institutions of the city. Upon Second street was a large public hall where people gathered and drank their "lager," as they called it. In the rear of the hall were the manufacturing departments and the vaults where the beer "lagered."

St. Louisans commenced drinking beer in 1810. St. Vrain opened a brewery north of the city and put it in charge of a German brewer named Hab. He made two kinds, strong and table beer. Strong beer he sold for ten dollars a barrel, and table beer for five dollars a barrel. These prices were cash. If produce was taken, St. Vrain charged twelve dollars a barrel. About the same time Jacob Philipson made beer which was retailed "at twelve and one half cents a quart at the stores of Sylvester Labbadie and Michel Tesson, and at various other convenient places." Ezra English made malt beer and stored it in English cave, where Benton Park is now. Then the firm of English & McHose was formed to manufacture beer on a large scale for that day. The rising tide of German immigration made lager beer familiar to St. Louisans before 1850.

In 1860 the Mississippi Handelszeitung gave a list of forty breweries in operation in St. Louis, making 23,000 barrels of beer a year, with a capital of $600,000. The magnitude of the business seemed amazing to the American newspapers. The statistician of the Missouri Republican figured that the consumption in St. Louis was 658 glasses for every person in the course of a year. The product of twenty-seven St. Louis breweries in 1910 was $25,000,000, giving St. Louis second place among the beer exporting centers of the United States. The employees numbered 5,373 and the wages paid to them amounted to $4,416,000. The supplies purchased, most of them in St. Louis, during the year amounted to $15,000,000. The factories and shops furnishing these supplies gave employment to 20,000 people, whose wages aggregated $13,000,000.

In 1854 St. Louis had "a cotton factory, the thread of which had almost superseded all other yarns in the St. Louis market." This industry had not only survived the fire of 1849, but had grown from a little shop near Main and Chestnut to one of the largest plants in the city. It was located on Menard, Soulard and Lafayette streets. It was working up from 1,500 to 1,800 bales of cotton a year and turning out 400,000 pounds of cotton yarn, 90,000 pounds of carpet warp, 40,000 pounds of candlewick, 60,000 pounds of cotton twine, 740,000 yards of cotton sheeting, and 120,000 pounds of cotton batting.

Why St. Louis did not become a cotton manufacturing center has never been made clear. The first spinning mill west of the Mississippi was started here in 1844. It had 800 spindles. A new building was erected. The number of spindles was increased to 1,600. The mill ran steadily and with apparent success until 1857, when it was entirely destroyed by fire. Adolphus Meier inaugurated the industry. He had come from Bremen with a fine education and some capital in 1837. His father was a man of high standing as a lawyer and held the office of secretary of the Supreme court. After seven years in other business in St. Louis, Mr. Meier and his relatives established the cotton-mill. When the mill burned, a charter was obtained from the state and the St. Louis cotton factory was built, Mr. Meier becoming the president. Most of the stock was taken by his firm.

Adolphus Meier was one of the pioneers of manufacturing in St. Louis. He did much more than start the first cotton factory west of the Mississippi. He inspired extensive and expensive experiments to make coke from soft coal in the Belleville district. He established the Meier iron works of East Carondelet. He assisted in building at St. Louis the largest tobacco warehouse in the United States. The Peper cotton press was equipped with hydraulic, presses, in part the invention of Edwin D. Meier, the son of Adolphus Meier. This revolutionized the handling of cotton bales. Christian Peper backed the working out of this problem liberally. There was almost no manufacturing problem to which Adolphus Meier did not lend his aid. The fact that his investments were not always profitable did not dishearten him. One thing Mr. Meier did for manufacturing in St. Louis was of great consequence. He made evident to those who came after that fuel could be laid down cheaper at St. Louis than at any other manufacturing center in the country. A part of this demonstration Mr. Meier brought about by the construction of a turnpike in Illinois from the mines to the bank of the river opposite St. Louis. This was done in 1848. It made possible the transportation of coal to St. Louis through the winter and spring months in which, previously, the supply had run short, with the result that prices soared. Later Mr. Meier headed a company which built and operated the Illinois & St. Louis railroad for the purpose of carrying coal to St. Louis.

In a little shop on Walnut street, across from the Cathedral, William Schotten ground out spices with a hand mill. That was in 1847. Under thirty years of age, he had come from Nuess, near Duesseldorf. St. Louis was a Mecca for the Germans coming to America in that period. Schotten came because others of his countrymen were en route here. The little factory he established was a beginning. The founder with his own hands turned the crank of the mill. Then he went out and made the rounds of the grocers, selling his stock. Before he died in 1874 he saw his business grown to $200,000 a year. In 1897, the house he had established celebrated a semi-centennial anniversary when the annual business amounted to a volume of which the founder had never dreamed.

The development of the sugar refining industry of St. Louis in 1850-60 was enormous. In 1851 the refined sugars shipped away from St. Louis had reached 21,893 barrels, according to the government report. Within four years after that time the amount of sugar refined and shipped from St. Louis was over 100,000 barrels. In three months of 1854 the sales of sugar, molasses and syrups at the St. Louis refinery were over $800,000. In 1850-5 St. Louis imported five times as much sugar as Cincinnati did. St. Louis refined sugars were famous. In 1853 St. Louis imported 50,774 hogsheads, 13,993 barrels and 40,217 boxes and bags. The refining of sugar was one of the principal industries. Of the entire Louisiana sugar crop St. Louis received more than went to all of the Atlantic ports from Maine to Florida. This was the sugar manufacturing and distributing point for the interior of the country.

One manufacturing industry meant others. As the refining of sugar grew in magnitude cooperage became important in St. Louis. The cooper shop was an adjunct of the Belcher refinery. It employed 125 men and occupied a large stone building. In 1853 this shop turned out 121,000 pieces, chiefly barrels and half barrels, to carry the sugars and syrups refined and manufactured by the refinery. This product required 2,000,000 staves, lumber for headings and 800,000 hoop poles and twenty tons of hoop iron. The city that year had a coopers' society with 600 members. So rapidly did the business of the refinery develop that a considerable proportion of the cooperage work was given to outside shops. There were times when the coopers of St. Louis working ten hours a day could not keep up with the demand for barrels and other pieces of cooperage.

The first type foundry in St. Louis was established by A. P. Ladew, the son of an Albany, New York, merchant, who came here in 1838. August Cast landed in St. Louis in 1852, without a penny in his pocket. Leopold Cast brought over with him a press and a limited lithographic outfit. The Casts were natives of Lippe-Detmold, Germany. They had learned the trade of lithography in Germany. They started a little shop on Fourth street where the Southern hotel is. In 1854 St. Louis had a type foundry and St. Louis papers were printed with St. Louis type which sold at New York prices. An entire newspaper outfit could be furnished in St. Louis in twenty-four hours. The city had six lithographic, printing and engraving establishments, four steel and copper engraving and three wood engraving. There were six book binderies and eight book and job offices. The art preservative was worthily and strongly represented. Much of the reputation of St. Louis gained as a center of type manufacturing, the city owes to a German who came from Dresden. He had served a six years' apprenticeship with a great printing and publishing house in his native city; he had worked in the foremost type making shops of Prague, Munich and Frankfort-on-the-Main; he spent some time in England; he came to this country and studied in Boston. In 1874 Carl S. Schraubstatter came to St. Louis and with James A. St. John established a type foundry which became famous throughout the country for the excellence of the product.

When the St. Louis Ice Company was organized in September, 1854, the capital consisted of 1,000 shares of $25 each. The plan of organization contained the following provision: "No one person to be allowed more than eight shares." This met with great popularity. In six days all of the stock was subscribed. When the stockholders organized they chose for trustees such prominent citizens as Asa Wilgus, Kenneth McKenzie, William M. McPherson, John J. Anderson, William W. Greene, W. Patrick, Edward Brooks, John McNeil, T. E. Courtenay, L. Dorsheimer, John B. Carson, George Knapp and B. F. Stout. The company located an ice house on the Levee between Plum And Cedar streets.

Stephen A. Douglas came to St. Louis shortly before the presidential campaign of 1860. He emphasized in an impressive way the opportunities for manufacturing development presented to St. Louis:

I have said that I am glad to be here in your great state, and I am not impolite when I say you are unappreciative of your powers here at this place. I have considered your natural resources; with you nature has been more than lavish, she has been profligate. Dear, precious dame! Take your southern line of counties, there you grow as beautiful cotton as any section of this world; traverse your southeastern counties and you meet that prodigy in the world of mineralogy, – the Iron Mountain married to the Pilot Knob, about the base of each of which may be grown any cereal of the states of the great northwest, or any one of our broad, outspread western territories. In your central counties you produce hemp and tobacco together with these same cereals. Along your eastern border traverses the great Father of Waters like a silver belt about a maiden's waist. From west to east through your northern half the great Missouri pushes her way. In every section of your state you have coal, iron, lead and various minerals of finest quality. Indeed, fellow citizens, your resources are such that Missourians might arm a half million of men and wall themselves within the borders of their own state and withstand the siege of all the armies of this present world, in gradations of three years each between armistices, and never a Missouri soldier stretch his hand across that wall for a drink of water!

About 1855 glass works went into operation at St. Louis. The industry was established at Broadway and Monroe streets by G. W. Scolly & Co. The sand was found a few miles from the city. The lead was here. The pearlash was obtainable from asheries on the Upper Mississippi. Only the clay for pots to stand the intense and prolonged heat was wanting. About that time Charles Semple in digging a well on his farm a few miles out on the Natural Bridge road found just the clay that was required. This clay was made into pots and put to the severest tests at the glass works and stood them. The products of the works began at once to cut into the glass trade of Boston at St. Louis. St. Louis glass was added to St. Louis flour, St. Louis sugar, St. Louis yarn, St. Louis machinery.

The fair fame of St. Louis has made the name of the city a household word for widely varied reasons. In the earlier years of his career Denton J. Snider, then a member of the faculty of the St. Louis high school, during a lecture before a parlor audience, made the assertion that the name of William T. Harris was known to more people than the name of any other St. Louisan. Dr. Harris had developed his theories of education along lines which made the public school system of St. Louis the object of interest and study by educators everywhere. He had established the school of speculative philosophy which was stimulating the minds of thinkers in many countries. Professor Snider made his assertion positively and for a few moments it seemed as if it would be accepted by all who heard him without challenge. Then James A. Waterworth, not long over from County Down, Ireland, of wide mercantile acquaintance abroad, engaged in the insurance business of St. Louis, a reader and a writer in practical fields, questioned the accuracy of Professor Snider's opinion. Admitting all that had been told respecting Dr. Harris, Mr. Waterworth said he thought there was another St. Louisan whose name was known to more people in this and other countries. Mr. Snider called for the name. " Whittaker," said Mr. Waterworth, stoutly. "I believe more people know the name of the St. Louisan associated with the sugar cured ham than have heard of Dr. Harris."

The first Sunday that Francis Whittaker spent in St. Louis he went to the Presbyterian church to hear Dr. Potts. After the service he walked out to the high ground west of Jefferson avenue, and turning about looked long and thoughtfully at the St. Louis of 1848. He had come west with letters that made it possible to choose his location. A brother, Dr. John H. Whittaker, was president of the New York Medical college. Before he left the grove of trees on the ridge, Mr. Whittaker decided that St. Louis was to be his American home. He had come from County Leitrim, Ireland, where his father, of good birth, had held the office of sheriff. Practical knowledge of two kinds of business, widely separated, had prepared Mr. Whittaker for his St. Louis career. There was an apprenticeship served to a packer in Sligo. After that had come several years of experience in a bank. Mr. Whittaker became a pork packer. In the early years of the enterprise he was his own foreman and when work pressed he took his place at the "cutter's table." When he reached home in the evening often his hands were too tired for the knife and fork. Direct shipments to Europe were advocated by Mr. Whittaker with great earnestness as long as he lived. Their importance to the development of St. Louis were in his opinion very great.

In 1858 St. Louis claimed confidently "the largest beef and pork packers in the Union." The Ames family moved west from Oneida county, New York. Nathan Ames and his two sons, Henry and Edgar, were pioneer pork packers in Cincinnati long before "the Queen City of the West" had gained the sobriquet of "Porkopolis." They went there in 1828, but in 1841 they decided that St. Louis was a coming center of commerce, more encouraging than Cincinnati. Henry Ames added to knowledge of pork packing a thorough acquaintance with the river transportation business.

Almost the only industry of St. Louis which the Civil war did not materially injure was pork packing. It was in the hands of a group of men devoted to the Union. When St. Louis began to organize an army, before there was commissary or other preparations to take care of volunteers, these pork packers supplied food to the "Home Guards." Later, when the troops were mustered in faster than the business departments of the army could be organized, these packers supplied food in great quantities, trusting to the government to straighten out the irregularities and to meet the bills. Several firms pursued this policy of doing all that was asked in emergencies and trusting to the government. They gave credit to the government to the extent of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The patriotic course had its reward, although that was hardly foreseen. The War Department patronized the firms which had acted promptly and liberally in 1861. When the war ended the packing industry of St. Louis was flourishing. These firms were Francis Whittaker & Co., Henry and Edgar Ames & Co., and John J. Roe & Co.

The Ames Brothers came to St. Louis with their father, Nathan Ames, in 1841. Two centuries back the Ameses were an old colonial family of Massachusetts. Henry Ames was eight years the older. The brothers were unlike physically and mentally, but between them existed an affection of extraordinary character. Henry Ames was a broad shouldered, square faced man. Edgar Ames was not so heavily built. His face was that of the student and thinker. The lineaments of Henry Ames were those of the intense business man. When paralysis made it impossible for Henry Ames to walk he was carried daily to his counting room, and, sitting in his chair, directed the business. Edgar Ames suffered from gradual paralysis for some years before his brother was affected. The physicians suggested rattlesnake poison as a medicine to check the disease. Henry Ames insisted that the effects of the poison be tried upon him and that the doctors study the result in his case before they experimented with his brother Edgar. He had his way and took six doses, although warned that his condition was entirely different from that of his brother, and that while the poison might be of benefit or harmless to the younger man it might operate badly with him. The poison did make Henry Ames very sick. A variety of business enterprises besides the pork packing industry claimed the attention of Henry Ames. Edgar Ames was fond of books and art. He did much for St. Louis in that direction, but he looked forward to the accumulation of a fortune which would enable him to do a great deal more. Someone asked Edgar Ames why he continued to work so hard. His reply was, "I work to make money to beautify our city." While he was looking forward to the time when he could carry out the plans which he had in mind but was not ready to make public, death came suddenly. Henry Ames and Edgar Ames died within a year of each other. Edgar Ames was only forty-three.

One of the cheeriest of the business magnates of St. Louis in the before-the-war period was the remaining member of this group of packers. John J. Roe settled here about the same time that the Ames family did. He was one of the Ohio river steamboat-men who came to St. Louis to trade, and who decided that residence in St. Louis offered the best opportunities. The devotion of John J. Roe to the Union cause was perhaps more remarkable than the patriotic impulses of Whittaker and the Ames brothers. Mr. Roe had been a slaveholder, but from conscientious belief that the peculiar institution was not right he had freed his negroes. He was of New York birth. His parents migrated to the Ohio river where, at Rising Sun, his father operated a ferry. Roe was a genius as a trader. He rose in steam-boating to the position of captain with a share in the profits. He was so successful that in two years he had become sole owner of the boat. In 1840 he landed at St. Louis with a boat load of merchandise on a trading expedition to the Upper Missouri. The prospects of the city so impressed Mr. Roe that he remained here and started a commission house. This grew into the pork packing business of Hewitt, Roe & Kercheval. James Hewitt & Co. of New York had branches in the West. A few years after Mr. Roe started in St. Louis, the community saw his proverbial good humor tested. A fire swept away the pork packing house. Mr. Roe settled with everybody, kept his cheerfulness and began to build his fortune over again. He had more partners, probably, than any other business man in St. Louis in that day. He went into all kinds of business enterprises. He had investments in steamboats. He was a director in steam railroads and in street railroads, in banks and in insurance companies. And all of the time he was calling acquaintances by their first names, doing helpful acts, bolstering somebody's credit, giving instructions in his business and seeing anybody who wanted to see him. Thirty years afterwards St. Louis produced another business man with like capacity for handling multifarious enterprises and with similar friendliness of manner toward everybody – David R. Francis. "Captain Roe," those best acquainted said, was one of the last of St. Louis "captains." There came a day when the stockholders who were building the Eads bridge were pessimistic; they tired of the assessments and talked of stopping the work. John J. Roe came forward with $100,000 cash to continue the construction. He went to New York, called the large stockholders together, and in thirty minutes there had been subscribed $1,200,000.

On Lafayette avenue, on Compton Hill, Captain Roe laid put one of the show places of St. Louis with ten acres of ground, where he hoped to spend his declining years. But he went ahead at full steam down town. He met one man and asked him why he looked so blue. "I have two thousand barrels of pork to deliver tomorrow," was the reply. "The railroad people say they cannot reach here for three days. Pork has advanced three dollars a barrel." "I'll loan them to you," said Captain Roe, and he wrote the order for delivery. He was passing a young man on the street when he turned back and asked: "You said some weeks ago you wanted to get a bookkeeper's position; have you succeeded?" "No, Captain," was the reply. "Well," said Captain Roe, "go up to Mr. Blank's and tell him that you are the young man I spoke about several days ago. If the place suits you he will give it to you." "The bank does not seem to like this paper," a business man said as he met Captain Roe near the cashier's desk in one of the financial institutions of the city. "Why, what is the matter with it?" asked Captain Roe. "If they don't want it I'll take it." The cashier reconsidered. An agent of the packing house who was going out to buy to the extent of $500,000, came into the presence of the head for his instructions. "All you have to do is to take care of your money and see that you get all the property you pay for," said Captain Roe, and the agent passed out. He was in his sixty-first year and was attending a meeting of one of the many corporations in which he was interested one day of February, 1870, when his voice suddenly failed, the smile faded, the head dropped to one side and Captain Roe was dead.

The meat packing houses of St. Louis increased their product over fifty per cent from 1905 to 1910, selling in the latter year $26,601,000 worth of meats.

One of John Hogan's "Thoughts About St. Louis" in 1854 suggested this advantage of St. Louis as a center of productive commerce:

First, perhaps chiefest, among the requisites for large manufacturing establishments, is an abundant supply of food of all kinds, and at fair living prices. To manufacture extensively in all the various branches of mechanism entering into commerce requires an immense number of hands. To supply these and their families and all dependent upon them, with food convenient for them, absorbs at the best a large amount of the entire proceeds of their labor. Now, one of the immutable laws of trade is, that where the demand is greater than the supply, the price of the article is enhanced. If, then, there is a large concentration of operatives, who from their vocations are necessarily consumers, and not producers of food, unless they are employed nearest to the greatest and most abundant supply, they will find enhanced prices, and, by consequence the pro rata of wages over the amount expended for food is proportionally decreased. But is there any place in the United States where there is a greater concentration of food at fair, we may say first hand prices, than at St. Louis? I doubt whether, as an original and supply-produce point, St. Louis has its equal anywhere.

Audubon, the naturalist, during his visit to St. Louis in 1843, was impressed with the abundance of food supplies from the country immediately adjacent to the city. He wrote to James Hall:

The markets here abound with all the good things of the land and of nature's creation. To give you an idea of this read the following items: Grouse, two for a York shilling; three chickens for the same; turkeys, wild or tame, twenty-five cents; flour, two dollars a barrel; butter, six pence for the best – fresh and really good; beef, three to four cents; veal, the same; pork, two cents; venison hams, large and dried, fifteen cents each; potatoes, ten cents a bushel; ducks, three for a shilling; wild geese, ten cents each; canvas back ducks, a shilling a pair; vegetables for the asking, as it were.

In a land of such plenty the naturalist felt that hotel rates were too high. He added to his letter:

And only think, in the midst of this abundance and cheapness, we are paying at the rate of nine dollars a week at our hotel, the Glasgow, and at the Planters we were asked ten dollars. We are at the Glasgow hotel, and will leave it the day after tomorrow, as it is too good for our purses. We intended to have gone twenty miles in Illinois to Edwardsville, but have changed our plans and will go northwest to Florissant, where we are assured game is plenty and the living quite cheap.

A once promising industry of St. Louis was the building of locomotives. In 1854 a force of 200 men worked in a plant which embraced a pattern-maker's shop, an iron foundry, a brass foundry, a smith's shop, a boilermaker's shop, a sheet iron worker's shop, a coppersmith's shop, a carpenter's shop, a finishing shop and a paint shop. The plant occupied a frontage of 500 feet on South Third street; it turned out all of the parts of locomotives and put them together' in working form. Palm and Robinson were the locomotive builders. They turned out the first St. Louis-built locomotive on July I, 1853, and delivered it to the Pacific railroad. They continued to build locomotives at the rate of about one every five weeks. These were twenty-two ton locomotives. The material to construct one of them, with tender, consisted of 24,500 pounds of cast iron, 9,200 pounds of plate and sheet iron, 12,000 pounds of rolled bar iron, 7,500 pounds of hammered iron, 1,400 pounds of steel, 4,200 pounds of copper and 500 pounds of tin, zinc and brass. A considerable part of the metal which went into these St. Louis-made locomotives came from Missouri mines.

Wilhelm Palm was a highly educated young German fresh from the University of Berlin when he came to St. Louis. For a short time he was assistant editor of the Anzeiger. His experiment in locomotive building at St. Louis was so successful that he retired with a comfortable fortune. It is tradition that the first ten locomotives for the Ohio and Mississippi railroad were constructed in St. Louis, transported by ferry to the Illinois side and put in service on the rails.

Eberhard Anheuser came to St. Louis in 1845 and went into the business of soap manufacturing. He did not become interested in the manufacture of beer until 1860, when he acquired an interest in the Bavarian brewery. William Anheuser, who was a boy of ten when the family left Brunswick, Germany, continued in the business his father had established in St. Louis – soap manufacturing.

In 1860, St. Louis had 1,126 manufacturing industries with $12,733,948 capital, giving employment to 11,737 people and producing $27,000,000 in value. This city fell below Boston, Cincinnati, Newark, New York, Philadelphia, Providence, Pittsburg in manufactures.

Twenty years later, in 1880, St. Louis had come up to 2,886 manufacturing industries, employing $45,385,000 capital and 39,724 people. The products had been increased to $104,383,587 in value. St. Louis was surpassed in 1880 only by Brooklyn, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and Pittsburg. These interesting comparisons were compiled from government census figures and were given in one of the most effective studies of St. Louis from the business point of view in a paper presented before the Round Table in 1882 by Charles W. Knapp.

In 1910 the manufactured products of St. Louis industries reached a valuation of $327,676,000, a gain from $193,691,595 in 1900 as shown by the census. The capital invested in manufacturing at St. Louis in 1910 was $234,199,358. The number of people employed in these manufacturing industries was 125,087.

Two brothers, whose grandfather came from Switzerland to Pennsylvania, brought to St. Louis thorough knowledge of leather manufacture. Both had been apprentices in tanneries. They were Chauncey Forward Shultz and John A. J. Shultz. One was born in Pennsylvania; the other in Maryland. Chauncey F. Shultz came to St. Louis shortly before the civil war. His brother came in 1864. Together these brothers established and developed the Shultz Belting company. The younger brother invented processes which gave to the St. Louis industry wide repute. He manufactured a new kind of rawhide belt which was considered a notable improvement. He introduced rawhide lace leather, the first made in the world. He patented the woven leather belt. In 1908 he was chosen president of the Missouri Manufacturers' association.

The manufacture of clothing on a large scale in St. Louis was one of the industries which became important just after the close of the civil war. Edward Martin, after several years' experience in Cincinnati, came to St. Louis to engage in this business. He associated with him his brothers Claude and John. The Martins were sons of a well-to-do freeholder in County Tyrone, Ireland.

Thirty years ago J. D. Hayes, of Detroit, was one of the best known experts in trade and transportation problems. He wrote to Joseph Nimmo, the government statistician, April 7, 1881, this notable forecast on the probabilities of manufacturing development at St. Louis:

For hundreds of thousands of years before the present race of people were known, the Mississippi and Missouri rivers formed their junction near the place where St. Louis now stands, – those rivers being navigable for so many hundreds of miles in each direction, draining a country rich in agricultural lands, as well as very abundantly supplied with iron, coal and other minerals, together with the great variety of different kinds of valuable timber suitable for manufacturing, all of which could be brought to that point by the natural flow of water, thence onward down to the Gulf of Mexico to reach open and unobstructed navigation all the year round to all parts of the world. This vast region of country along those rivers is capable of sustaining a population of three hundred millions of people, without having more inhabitants to the square mile than some parts of Europe. With such a country, and such natural resources to and from, such a central point would not fail to attract the dullest mind to its future prospects long before the steamboats and railroads had entered into competition in rates with the currents of the rivers in their onward course to the ocean. Therefore, from the beginning to the present time and for all coming time, railroads and steamboats must compete with the currents of those rivers for the traffic of St. Louis; therefore, manufactories at that point enjoy benefits which are in some respects a protection as against interior towns or cities having to pay local or non-competing rates. The St. Louis rates affect the rates on all productions far back into the country each side of the river, as far back as to where the local rates into St. Louis and the through rate from St. Louis added together equal the eastbound rate by rail from the interior cities and towns.

The public are educated to call this natural advantage "discrimination in rates in favor of St. Louis " which is true so far as the other places are concerned, but it is a " discrimination" made by God himself in the formation of the world, therefore beyond the power of railroad managers to change. The manufacturer can with some degree of certainty put his money, energy and material together at that point, looking to the future wants of the vast number of people that are in the west and the millions upon millions that will be there, and go forward with manufacturing enterprises without limit, feeling secure in the ability to compete with any other part of the world.

In the little model shop of Edward Burroughs on Pine street, the son William S. Burroughs, began about 1881 to work out his idea of an adding machine. The Burroughs, father and son, were from New York. Their shop was full of castings and wheels and strange looking things. It was frequented by St. Louis inventors who wanted their ideas put into mechanical form. William S. Burroughs turned out a machine which would do surprising performances in mathematics. Then he began to apply the principles to a contrivance that would set down and add columns of figures. The first lot of fifty counting machines would not stand wear and tear. Fifty of these machines went into the junk heap. More substantial material was employed. In nine years Burroughs produced the machine which would stand the tests and the company formed to manufacture the machines began to turn out large numbers for commercial uses. The adder became almost as common as the typewriter in banks and other business houses.

Several of the most beneficial industries of St. Louis owed impetus if not origin to profits of the steamboat business. In the upper part of St. Louis county was "the Virginia settlement" of the Tylers and Colemans. James Dozier and his father-in-law, John Dudgeon, coming from Lexington, Ky., in 1828, joined this settlement. In 1844, Captain Dozier became one of a coterie of Missouri river commanders, among them Roe, Throckmorton, Kaiser, LaBarge and Eaton. He retired in ten years with a comfortable fortune and established himself in a country home at Dozier's Landing, St. Charles county. Immediately after the war Captain Dozier invested in the bakery business in St. Louis and founded the Dozier-Weyl Cracker company. In 1880 St. Louis was a cracker and bread center, with 215 bakeries, great and small, turning out products valued at $2,000,000 a year. In 1910 St. Louis had 354 bakeries, turning out products to the value of $7,000,000 annually.

The wooden-ware and willow-ware industry and trade were among the early business triumphs of St. Louis. There was quite a trade in wooden-ware during the decade of 1830-40, but it was carried on under the same roofs with hardware. In the summer of 1851 Samuel Cupples came from Cincinnati, bringing a stock of wooden-ware and willow-ware, with which he opened a store in that line distinctively on Locust street near the Levee. Just twenty years later St. Louis ruled the world in this trade. A statement of conditions in 1883 contained the following:

In St. Louis the wooden-ware and willow-ware trade has obtained the ascendancy over that of any other city in America or Europe. Prices for every other city on the continent are fixed here. In the manufacture of these wares a capital approaching in the aggregate $3,000,000 is utilized and upwards of 1,000 hands are employed. One St. Louis firm sells more annually than the combined trade of any other four houses in the same line in the world, and more than the aggregate sales of all of the houses in this line of business west of the Alleghanies. St. Louis is absolutely beyond competition in this line, having the largest manufactory of this character in the world. Not only are these goods, chiefly derived from home manufactories, shipped to every considerable city and town in America, but there is a considerable export to Cuba, South America and to Australia.

At the time the above was written, twenty-five years ago, St. Louis had a five-story paper bag factory that was eating up ten tons of paper daily. There were three oak-ware factories turning out more product than any other establishment of the kind in the country. There was a broom factory using more broomcorn than all of the hand broom factories in the west. It turned out 600 dozens of complete brooms daily. The largest manufactory of axe handles, hoe handles and other kinds of handles in the world was here in St. Louis.

St. Louis wooden-ware houses in 1910 did business to the amount of $18,000,000. The leading house issued a polyglot catalogue costing $10,000. Nearly one-half of the business of the United States in numerous articles of household use classed as wooden-ware was manufactured and jobbed by St. Louis houses. The pioneer St. Louis house in this line was the largest in the country.

The first St. Louis flouring mill equipped with improved machinery and with steam power was at the foot of Florida street. It was conducted by Edward Walsh. That was in 1827. Just twenty years later St. Louis had fourteen large mills. And in 1850 there were twenty-two mills grinding 12,000 bushels of wheat into 2,800 barrels of flour daily. The jolly millers were a power in the business of the city. When they organized their Millers' association, the directors included Gabriel Chouteau, John Walsh, Joseph Powell, C. L. Tucker, Dennis Marks, Dr. Tibbetts, James Waugh and T. A. Buckland.

A milling business of $1,500,000 before the civil war was the industry which Aaron W. Fagin created. The Fagins were Ohio people, having come in the pioneer days from New Jersey. Aaron W. Fagin left the trading business on the Ohio river to settle in St. Louis. In 1849 he built the United States mill and began shipping to all parts of the country. The mill was a mammoth establishment for that day. Every barrel of flour which went out showed on the head a hand holding four aces – hard to beat.

Previous to 1880 St. Louis was the first city of the country in the manufacture of flour. E. O. Stanard, George P. Plant, George Bain, Alexander H. Smith, J. B. Kehlor were feeding bread eaters on three continents. Shortly after 1870 George Bain tried 30,000 barrels on England and went there to introduce it. In 1879 St. Louis shipped 619,000 barrels of flour to Europe and South America. George H. Morgan told the Merchants' Exchange in 1882 that St. Louis millers had $35,000,000 invested and were turning out 12,000 barrels of flour a day.

St. Louis millers recognized early the tendency to localize manufacture. In 1882 they owned and carried on large mills at a dozen points in Illinois and Missouri. Stanard, Tiedeman, Fath, Ewald, Kaufmann, the Kehlors, Mauntell, Borgess, Reuss had mills outside of St. Louis which were producing 750,000 barrels of flour a year, a product properly a part of the trade of St. Louis.

In 1882 the flour of St. Louis manufacture reached 1,850,000 barrels and. the receipts from outside of the city 2,003,000 barrels. That year St. Louis sent 623,000 barrels to foreign countries, 970,000 barrels to the eastern part of the United States and 1,660,000 barrels to the south. Besides these shipments 350,000 barrels were sent direct from mills outside of St. Louis but owned in St. Louis.

The centennial of the furniture industry might have been celebrated last year. In July 1810 Heslep and Taylor informed the public that they had "just arrived from Pennsylvania with an extensive assortment of materials necessary for elegant and plain chairs. They will gild, varnish, japan and paint their work agreeable to the fancy of those who wish to encourage the business in this place."

Three years later Philip Matile, from Switzerland, opened a shop to do more elaborate woodwork. In 1819 came Laveille and Morton bringing flatboat loads of lumber with their wood-working tools stowed on top.

Not until the decades from 1840 to 1860 did furniture manufacture take its place as one of the great industries of the city. In 1847 Paris H. Mason and Russell Scarritt began to make furniture on Washington avenue near Second street. Conrades and Logeman established their business in 1854 and the next year Joseph Peters was making a specialty of bureaus and cabinet work. John H. Crane began in 1855 and so did William Mitchell, although his shop did not become the Mitchell company until 1870. Martin Lammert opened in 1860. The interesting and the significant fact about these furniture makers is the identification of most of their names with the industry to this day. Joseph Peters was a native of Prussia and learned the trade of cabinet making before he came to St. Louis. He worked nine years at the trade in St. Louis before he could get enough capital to open a small shop. In 1908 St. Louis had fifty furniture factories making $5,867,000 in products, giving employment to 7,100 people. St. Louis was exporting furniture to Europe.

The fourth city in population and in manufacturing, St. Louis ranks first in some specialties of productive commerce. Here are the largest shoe house, the largest tobacco factory, the largest brewery in the United States. Here are produced more street cars, stoves and ranges, more American made chemicals than in any other manufacturing center of this country.

In 1905, according to the census experts of the government, St. Louis had obtained first place in the manufacture of carriages, buggies and wagons. The 107 factories engaged in that industry turned out during 1910 vehicles which sold for $10,000,000.

To the notable industries of St. Louis in the first decade of the twentieth century were added electrical products. Incandescent lamps, insulated wire and a great variety of electrical manufactures made up a jobbing volume of $20,000,000 in 1910.

The car building industry of St. Louis is equivalent to the support of a city of 50,000 people. Eight plants in 1910 were employing 10,000 men. They were building every kind of street car and steam car, which ranged from the freight costing $700 to the private palace costing $40,000. They were drawing supplies of mahogany, Oregon fir and other material from great distances and were shipping cars to other countries, one order of $1,000,000 going to the Argentine Republic. The railway equipment turned out by the factories of St. Louis in 1910 amounted to $70,000,000.

The clay products of St. Louis factories – pipe, pottery, fire brick, terra cotta and tiling – amounted in 1910 to $6,000,000, leading every other clay manufacturing center of the United States by fifty per cent. This class of industries gave employment to 3,000 people.

Manufacture of clothing became one of the thriving St. Louis industries between 1900 and 1910. It increased forty-seven per cent in the latter half of the decade. In 1910 the 108 factories employed 8,000 people and had an output of $14,573,000.

In 1910 the shoe factories numbered thirty-two, with seven others in nearby towns, owned by St. Louis manufacturers. These thirty-nine factories employed 20,000 people and made shoes to the number of 26,306,735 pairs, valued at $46,249,161.

Two developments in the productive commerce of St. Louis have been strikingly similar in the successful results. They started thirty years apart. Conditions which confronted them were of like discouraging character. The foresight and superb courage of a handful of men in each of these movements meant a great deal to the industrial progress of this city. The Filleys and the Bridges in the decade of 1840-1850 inaugurated the manufacture of stoves against the opinion of the business community, creating an industry which has grown to nineteen establishments turning out annually products to the value of $7,500,000. Thirty years later the Browns, the Hamiltons, the Desnoyers and a little group of men began a demonstration of the advantages St. Louis offered for manufacture of boots and shoes. They faced the same adverse opinion which failed to deter the pioneer stove-makers. This industry grew until there were thirty-two shoe manufacturing concerns in St. Louis turning out 100,000 pairs of shoes a day, with an annual product of over $25,000,000. The Browns were from New York state. In the decade 1870-80 they sold shoes in the St. Louis territory. To George Warren Brown came the inspiration that shoes for this trade could be made in St. Louis. The house for which George Warren Brown traveled sought to dissuade him from manufacturing by an offer of share of profits in the jobbing. The young man was barely twenty-five when he took his $7,000 of savings, and with $5,000 added for capital started in a loft on St. Charles street the modest beginning of the industry which has proven so much for the advantages of St. Louis as a center of productive commerce. When George Warren Brown went on the road to place the St. Louis manufactured goods, the merchants looked at the samples, gave orders and frankly told the shoe manufacturer they were patronizing him on personal grounds and not with the expectation that his stock would be up to sample. Success came quickly. Hamilton, Brown and company, leading wholesale dealers in the boots and shoes of eastern make, began to manufacture. Others followed. This industry drew to it young men of business judgment and energy rather than large investments of capital. It developed upon brains rather than upon cash. It created for St. Louis a coterie of energetic public spirited citizens. It has done a great deal more for the city than is represented in the addition it has made to the volume of productive commerce. As the business grew into the form of corporations, the ambitious and the worthy were encouraged to become shareholders. The Browns, with the recollection of their own experiences, led in this. One of the most successful of the shoe companies consists of a hundred partners. This single line of manufacture has developed for St. Louis half a thousand business men whose activities and whose influence are widely felt for the common good.