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Miller Bros. Hardware Store

Miller Bros.Hardware Store, Miller Bros. & Keep Hardware Store
Life Span: 1864-1871
Location: 55 State
Architect: TBD

Halpin’s Chicago City Directory for 1864

Miller A. R. & G. H.

John C. W. Bailey’s Chicago City Directory for 1867
Miller A. R. & G. H., (Albion R. and George H. Miller,) hardware, 55 State

Edwards’ Annual Directory in the City of Chicago, for 1870
Miller Brothers & Keep, (A. R. and G. H. Miller and W. G. Keep), hardware and cutlery, whol 55 State

Chicago Tribune, September 10, 1864

An Old Firm In a New Establishment.
The handsomest compliment that can be paid to the growth of our city trade, is to be derived from the evidences of the success of individual firms and enterprises, on the principle that soil is to be judged from its crops, and a tree by its fruits. Such instances and proofs in our vigorous city growth are numerous. One of these, and one we are especially glad to chronicle, is to be found in the new and elegant hardware store of the brothers A. R. & G. H. Miller, No. 55 State street. The store itself is in all its appointments one of the most complete and perfect in the city, being wide and roomy, fitted up with the eye to taste and convenience belongs to the thorough merchant, occupying the whole front of the new first class brick building just finished between Lake and Randolph streets, as above. The business Messrs. M. transfer to their new stand is one any house in their line in the Northwest may well envy, and has been built up by them from a moderate beginning in a small store on the corner of State and Jackson streets.

They had indeed year by year extended their former premises to meet the demands of their increasing business, until it had become one of the largest in their line in Chicago. By their new change of house they have opened one of the largest hardware stores in the city, relinquishing to a successor their stove and tin business. As importers and jobbers in builders’ hardware and cutlery, they are destined to fill from the outset a prominent place in that important department of our city trade. Their city patrons will be glad to know that their extended wholesale facilities will in so much only increase the inducements of their large city retail trade, which they will retain. We take pleasure in chronicling their success, which is well deserved. Their present establishment is one so complete in all its details that we shal1 have conferred a favor on all our readers, who may be inauced thereby to visit the Mesers. Miller.

Chicago Tribune, July 3, 1867

Wholesale Hardware and Cutlery.—Messrs. A. R. & G. H. Miller, the well-known wholesale dealers in hardware and cutlery at No. 55 State street, have formed a co-partnership with Mr. W. F. Keep, and will continue business under the firm name of Miller Bros. & Keep. at the old stand. With enlarged facilities, they will be able to deal with their patrons on even more favorable terms than of yore.

National Watch Company

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National Watch Co, Elgin National Watch Company (1874)
Life Span: 1864-1968
Location: Factory, Elgin, IL
Architect: Charles S. Moseley

Halpin & Bailey’s City Directory for the Year 1863

NATIONAL WATCH CO INVESTORS AND OFFICERS.

Adams John

Carpenter Philo

Culver Howard Z.

Culver, Page & Hoyne

Dickerson Thomas S.

Vandervoort, Dickerson & Co.

Farwell John V.

Cooley, Farwell & Co.

Lawrence Benjamin F.

Ballentine, Lawrence & Co.

Ogden Mahlon D.

Ogden, Fleetwood & Co.

Raymond B. W.

Elgin and State Line R.R. Co.

Wheeler George M.

G. & C. U. R. R.

John C. W. Bailey’s Chicago City Directory for 1867
National Watch Co., B. W. Raymond, pres, G. M. Wheeler, sec, office 154 Lake. (See card Business Register.)
Raymond Benjamin W., prest National Watch Co., 9 154 Lake, h. 130 State
Wheeler George M., sec. National Watch Co office room 5, 154 Lake, res Elgin

Edwards’ Annual Directory in the City of Chicago, for 1870
National Watch Co T. M. Avery, pres. H. Z. Culver, vice pres. Thomas Reynolds, sec. office, LaSalle, sw. cor. Lake

Edwards’ Annual Directory in the City of Chicago, for 1871
National Watch Co T. M. Avery, pres. Hiram Reynolds. sec. 127 and 129 Lake

Edwards’ Annual Directory in the City of Chicago, for 1873
National Watch Co T. M. Avery, pres. Hiram Reynolds, vice pres. Thomas Reynolds, sec. Washington, sw. cor. Green

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1876
Elgin National Watch Co., T. M. Avery, pres.; Hiram Reynolds, sec, 76 Monroe.

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1877
Elgin National Watch Co., T. M. Avery, pres.; George R. Noyes, sec.; room 1, 76 Monroe

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1880
Elgin National Watch Co., F. M. Avery, pres.; Elisha P. Whitehead, sec.; room 1, 76 Monroe

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1884
Elgin National Watch Co., Thomas M. Avery, pres.; Elisha P. Whitehead, sec.; room 1, 76 Monroe

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1904
Elgin National Watch Co., Charles H. Hulbyrd, pres; J. Raymond Perry sec.; 3d fl 131 Wabash av

Chicago Tribune, November 18, 1864

The National Watch Company, of this city, capital $200,000, have located their extensive works at Elgin, Kane county—big thing for that thriving little city, whose citizens in securing it prove that they know what’s o’clock.

Chicago Tribune, February 7, 1865

NATIONAL WATCH COMPANY.
Among the bills now before the General Assembly to become a law, is one incorporating the “National Watch Company.” The corporators are Benjamin W. Raymond, Joseph T. Ryerson, Philo Carpenter, Thomas S. Dickerson, Howard Z. Culver, George M. Wheeler, and Benjamin F. Lawrence. The factory of this company is to be located at Elgin, while the business headquarters will be at Chicago. The company, by the charter, will have power to manufacture, purchase and sell watches, clocks and jewelry. The watches are to be manufactured by the same description of machinery, material, etc., as have been employed by the “National Watch Company” of Massachusetts. In fact, some of the best workmen, including S. C. Bartlett, whose name is on many of the best Waltham watches, were formerly employed in that concern, are connected with this new company. The capital stock of the company is not to exceed $500,000, and I hear that about $200,000 have already been taken in $1,000 shares. This will prove a new and important interest, in the manufacturing economy of Chicago, and will, undoubtedly, prove abundantly successful.

Chicago Tribune, February 28, 1865

ILLINOIS LEGISLATURE
Record of Acts and Joint Resolutions Passed by the Twenty-Fourth General Assembly of the State of Illinois, and Approved by the Governor.
An Act to incorporate the National Watch Company.

Chicago Tribune, June 6, 1866

THE NATIONAL WATCH COMPANY.—The first annual meeting of the stockholders of the National Watch Company was held yesterday, at the office of the company, at room 5, No. 151 Lake street, for the purpose of receiving the annual report of the Board of Directors, and electing Directors and officers for the ensuing year. The President of the company, ex-officio Chairman of the Board of Directors submitted their first annual report, of which we give the following abstract:

The Company was organized in September, 1864, as the National Watch Company of Chicago, with a capital of $100,000, and stock subscribed to about that amount. Several of the best machinists and experts in the manufacture of watches at the East were engaged, and one of their number, Mr. C. H. Moseley, a designer and draughtsman of much experience, was appointed superintendent of the manufactory. As an inducement to the company to locate their works near their city, the citizens of Elgin, Ill. donated them twenty-two acres of land for the buildings and thirteen more acres for the residences of the principal employes. In accepting this site for the erection of their buildings in preference to Chicago, the company avoid the smoke and dust of a large city. A temporary building was put up for making the necessary machinery and implements suitable to manufacture still other machinery for the production of watches. A special charter was granted to the National Watch Company, and approved April 15, 1865, the capital stock of which was to consist of a sum not exceeding $500,000. The stock of the “National Watch Company of Chicago, Ill.,” was then transferred to the “National Watch Company,” and $49,000 more capital subscribed, aggregating $149,000, which has all been paid in and expended. The permanent Buildings have been erected, and are nearly finished. They are built in the most substantial manner of stone and brick, and rooted with slate and tin. The manufacture of watches is now begun. The Board of Directors have opened the subscription books for $100,000 additional stock, to be used in furnishing the buildings and for working capital. $40.000 of this has already been subscribed, leaving but $60,000 more to be taken. The Board congratulate the stockholders upon the success of the work so far, and anticipate a realization of their most sanguine anticipations.

The report was accepted and ordered to be filed. The Company ten proceeded to the election, by ballot, of a Board of Directors for the ensuing year, resulting in the election of B. W. Raymond, B. F. Lawrence, J. L. Ryerson, H. Z. Culver, T. S. Dickerson, G. M. Wheeler and T. M. Avery. The following gentlemen were elected officers for the ensuing year: B.W. Raymond, President; B. F. Lawrence, Vice President, and G. Wheeler, Secretary. The meeting then adjourned.

Chicago Tribune, November 16, 1866

A little more than two years ago a number of enterprising capitalists in this city, stimulated by the unqualified success which has attended the only watch manufactories in this country, at Waltham and Roxbury, Massachusetts, determined to transplant this lucrative branch of industry to this vicinity. For the purpose of establishing the new manufactory on an adequate basis, a company was formed, with a capital of $250,000, and, to insure the success of the enterprise by the employment of men of skill and experience to conduct it, inducements of sufficient magnitude were offered to some of the most talented and capable employes of the old Waltham Company, to bring them out here. Some time was spent, after the company had been formed and the necessary capital paid in, in selecting a place for the location of the factory. All the country towns for a long distance about Chicago, were explored with a view to finding some one where a healthful and beautiful site for the works and workmen’s cottages could be procured, and at the same time near a railway. The best place which could be found was at Elgin, and farther encouragement was offered for the selection of this place by the people of that town, who generously gave twenty-seven acres, in a beautiful location near the river bank, and just within the city limits, for the uses of the company, who still farther increased the extent of their land by the purchase of several acres more. The company was at this time organized with the following officers:

The company having thus fixed the site for their future operations, in December, 1864, the skilled operatives from Waltham came on to take the enterprise in hand. There here eight or ten of these gentlemen; but the principal one, he on whom almost entirely depended the success of the undertaking, was Mr. Chas. S. Moseley a Massachusetts man, who has spent about fourteen years in watchmaking and the various processes connected with it and who. in his conduct of the arduous and responsible duties confided to him, has developed talents of a high order, more than realizing the high expectations of his ability entertained by the company.

The buildings erected under Mr. Moseley’s direction were commodious, elegant and perfectly adapted to the uses for which they were designed. but as we will come to a description of them directly, more need not be said in this connection regarding them. While they were being put up the workmen were busily employed, in some wooden shops down in the centre of Elgin, making machinery for service in watch-making. The infinite care required in every portion of this work, and the limited conveniences at their disposal, prevented their waking very rapid progress—at least, it seemed as if a very large amount of work was put in a very small compass—still when the time came in more into the new house, they had quite a fair show of tools to earnest operations with. The work of making tools for this business seems, however. never to come to an end, and of to the present time there has been no cessation in in it. Little else, indeed has been close in this for a while. than to make machinery. From the first, however, the undertaking has been the air of a predestined success backed as it has been by wealth, talent and energy. and the postponement of practical results in the form of completed work has never shaken any one’s confidence in it. There has been a slight change in the officers of the company, the organization now standing:

Another noticeable change, is in the fact that from the original eight or ten hands, the number of employes in row increased to about seventy, and more are being added as rapidly us they can be procured. To accommodate these hands, the number of cottages have been erected by the company, for the married men, and a large boarding house, three stories high and 86×58 feet in extent, is now being put up for the single folks. The cottages are neat and comfortable and the boarding house resembles rather more an elegant mansion than what a boarding house is generally conceived to be.

Before sketching our visit to the factory, it may not be amiss to insert here some remarks relative to the quality of watch which it is proposed to manufacture here.

The American watches have already the gained the palm superiority over all others, as time-keepers, from the two facts, that are greatly simplified and consequently less liable to get out of repair than either the English or Swiss watches; and, that they are manufactured entirely by machinery, thus securing greater degree accuracy than could ever be attained by hand-work. English watch-makers are surprised to when they come here and see to what an extent we carry the application of machinery in this delicate and difficult business. As will be seen in our description of the process of watch-making there is nothing in the all the minutiae of the works of a watch which is not made here by machines constructed for the purpose, from the cutting of a thread on a screw, one four-hundreth of an inch in diameter, up to the stamping out of a dial plate. The results of this system stamping are, first, a cheapening of the cost; second, the perfect duplication of every part so that the repairing of any broken or worn out portion the works costs very little and may readily be effected. Ten thousand American watches of one be pattern, made by this system. are alike in every part, even to the ten- thousandth of an inch—all equally perfect. This is not the case with with the European watches, which are mainly made by hand, and in which part has to be fitted to a particular watch. Now a few words relative to the character of the watch itself. In this, as in all other pieces of delicate mechanism, the greater the degree of simplicity attained, the nearer is the approach to perfection—if the simplified machine does all that the complicate one is meant to do. The fusee and chain, so necessary. to the old-fashioned verge watch, have servatism retained in the lever watch, where they are not only useless, but an infinite cause of trouble, accident. and increased expense. This objectionable feature has of been entirely wiped out from the American watch and is also disused in the Swiss. Such universal success has attended time-keepers made on this principle that the old prejudice in favor of the fusee and chain as an “equalizer of the force,” is now generally removed in this country, and the American watch is recognized this as the best time-keeper in the world. So much for the watch. Let us now visit the factory where it is made in its most perfect form.

Mr. Moseley commenced the arduous task of founding a watch-making establishment under greater disadvantages than ever before surrounded a design of such magnitude. It is comparatively easy to start an ordinary machine shop, a wool or cotton mill, or any other mechanical enterprise, where one has no more to do than order one’s machinery, all ready made, put up a house to place it in, and then of go to work. Far different were the requirements of the situation in which hold Moseley and his Yankee comrades found themselves, and the manner in which they met and overcame all obstacles, adds another leaf the imperishable laurels which Yankee genius and enterprise have won in a fair race against all the world. The first need was a suitable building, and here Moseley “came out as strong” as an architect. He knew precisely what kind of a building he wanted. and, under his active and intelligent supervision, his ideal was soon realized in a superb structure, the very of perfection of an edifice for the purpose for which it is designed. In addition to being in the highest degree practical, it possesses the advantage of that seeming complete all the while, and still capable of extension in proportion ever to the necessities of the business, without ever destroying its symmetry and beauty, or diminishing its perfect availability in every part. The design is that it shall, when finished, be in the form of an H. At present only about two-fifths are the complete or in other words the cross-stroke and half of the first down stroke of the H. This gives a main building forty feet of square, and two wings at right angles, each one hundred feet in length by twenty-seven in width. The office, the superintendent’s and secretary’s rooms are in the square building. In the wings, either watch-making or the making of tools to make other tools, making to tools, to make still other tools necessary to make watches, are carried on. In addition, there is also a one-story building, or rather a half-basement stuck on the middle of the cross-piece of the H, for the dial-house on one side and the engine-house on the other. So much for the house. The next thing to be done was to get the necessary tools into the house. Here the genius of Moseley became conspicuous. He could not buy any of the hundreds of machines wanted, except a heavy iron planing machine and a couple of large engine lathes. These would do for the coarsest work of building the necessary machinery, but nothing more. Everything required had to made under his direction, and as a single instance showing the immensity of the work before him, we may cite the labor required in one the one small particular. The teeth or cogs on the barrel of one of their watches are cut with what they denominate the “epicycloidal” curve, that form being, for various reasons, deemed the best. Perfect accuracy in cutting these teeth, even to the ten thousandth of an inch, is absolutely necessary. Merely to make the “cutter” or but with which they are the formed, half a dozen intricate machines, each of the most delicate and accurate mechanism are required. To make these machines as many more are needed, and every portion of all these had to be made here, patiently built up under almost as great disadvantages as Adam would have to make a watch in the Garden of Eden. To begin at the very beginning, the castings which they needed could not be got without made by themselves. They would not be accurate.—the sand in which they were made would be too coarse,— the metal would be variable, sometimes too hard, and again too soft. So as the letter A, in the long alphabet of their tribulations and necessities. Moseley and his comrades up an iron and brass foundry, bringing their sand in barrels from New York State and mixing their metals to suit themselves. Then they went at fishing up the castings made there, and putting them together in the beautiful machinery which now fills the building. For all this Mr. Moseley had not a drawing, a plan, a measurement, a model, other than existed in his memory. He remembered, thought out and improved upon machinery for every possible use in his business,—he made working drawings (as admirably finished as if he were naught but a draughtsman),—then he traced pattern drawings,—superintended the making of patterns,—directed the choice of materials, the modes of casting, the finishing,—everything in short, and never made a mistake. Rapidly the work went on urged by his restlessness energy. Fortune, as he ever does, smiled when her frowns were unneeded. and ere long the factory began to fill up with the finest machinery in the world, all however, or nearly all, machinery to make other machinery for use in watch-making.

Having given thus much of a general review of the earlier existence of this enterprise, let us sketch it as it appears at present to an unprofessional visitor, endeavoring in so doing to mystify our readers as little as possible with technical phrases, and at the same time give a tolerably minute description of the several processes of watch making.

One does not march straight into the secrets of this establishment as into a blacksmith’s shop or a rolling-mill. On passing the vestibule and entering the hall, one has to ring a bell, wait until a boy comes, undergo a leisurely inspection by the boy, tell the boy who one wishes to see, wait until the boy finds that individual, wait until the individual comes, and then, perhaps, one may be allowed to enter.

Inside everything is as neat and clean as a private house. The walls are white, the floors fairly polished, the machinery almost noiseless and free from oil and dust while the excellent arrangements for light and ventilation make the place as cheerful as one could imagine or wish.

The first room to our right as we enter is a hall 101 feet by 27, known as the machine shop, under charge of Mr. George Hunter and his assistant, Mr. E. Hancock, both formerly connected with the Waltham Watch Factory. Here thirty men are constantly employed making machinery, either for direct use in some of the various processes of watchmaking, or to make tools and machines for such use. Some thirty or forty lathes, turning and planing machines, etc., are in operation here all the while, yet the noise in not so great as would be made by half a dozen sewing machines, so perfect is everything. There is no rattle of loose machines, no jar of oily based ones, and most of the noise we hear comes from the network of rushing belts overhead. The heavier engines, the large planers for example, are based upon stone piers sunk to the depths of the foundations of the building, and the others are so firmly fixed and so accurately fitted and proportioned that one scarce realizes they are at work, if one does not see them. A noticeable feature in this department is the intensity of accuracy prevailing to everything and the ingenious arrangements for its maintenance. There are “chucks,” “chuck-gauges,” “scamers,” “drills,” “taps,” etc., all of the most delicate measurements, and there are duplicate “standard” pins, gauges, etc., of hardened steel, by which a variation of a thousandth of an inch, either by accident or wear in any part may be instantly detected. As instancing the nicety of these tools, it may be remarked that there are in this assortment “screw-taps” of all sizes from four one-hundredths of an inch in diameter up to 1,200 thousandths and it is actually by hundredths and thousandths that they are measured. To guard against injury or lose of any of these delicate and valuable tools, a record is kept of every one given out, and and what workman has taken it, so that each man is interested in taking care of what is confined to him, and the tools are not allowed to deteriorate in value. The advantages of this system must be readily apparent to any one having any knowledge of mechanics. It would be useless to go into any description here of machines which we shall find in actual operation in other parts of the building—besides we don’t feel quite sure of our ground in describing such unique, delicate and complicated contrivances and would much rather speak of the results achieved by them. Little things here are the most important and at the same time most puzzling. What, per example, can be more confusing to a non-professional than the “train-chuck,” a thing which has “two eccentrics in its face,” fifteen holes of various sizes scattered all over it and yet each one of these holes may successively be brought to the centre for purposes of drilling some one of the many holes in and about the works of a watch. It’s all very simple to tell one that “it’s set by gauges and the shifting is done by the two eccentrics”—it is eccentric all over, and looking at it one hopes, with the old woman looking at the magician’s tricks, “that there ain’t nuthin” wrong in it, after all.” One of the prettiest machines here is the “crank planer,” which will take a shaving of a hair, and one of the most generally useful a press, which, by means of an almost infinite series of punches and dies, stamps out centre, barrel, third, fourth and escape wheels, click springs, and a multitude of other portions of a watch.

From here, where the machinery and tools are made, let us move on to where they are used in the actual manufacture of watches. The first room we visit in this quest is the “movement” department, and, as one of the harmless eccentricities of the business, it may here be remarked that the “movement” is that part of a watch which does not move. It is screwed fast, therefore they call it the movement. It consists of the two “plates,” “bridges,” “potents” and “pillars.” Mr. P. S. Bartlett, an original Walthamite, is in charge here. Here one begins to admire the peculiar delicacy of the business. The two largest screws in a watch are made in this department. One is 123 twenty-five-hundredths of an inch in diameter;—the other is 112 twenty-five hundredths. These, it will be remembered, are are big screws;—the little ones are only 60 twenty-five hundredths in diameter. On these one can scarcely see the thread without an eye-glass. Very pretty little turning machines are at work here cutting out the sunken places on the “bridge” and ” plates” and reducing to regular thickness and smoothness the “potents,” and there are also curious “two-spindle” and “three-spindle” lathes for boring readily different sizes of holes in the plates, etc. Another very interesting machine in this department is that for making the female screws, or places for screws to be fastened in. This ingenious contrivance bores into a piece of metal, making a screw thread as it goes, and on reaching exactly the spot where it should stop, it reverses its action and unscrews itself out of the metal, finishing the “tap” in a fraction of’a second, and all simply by means of a cunning device for reversing the power from a straight to a crossed belt. Everything made here is tested by a gauge which measures down to the five-hundredths of an inch, close enough to register an unevenness in a sheet of tissue paper.

From this we will pass to the “wheels and pinions” or “train,” department, over the machine shop, which is under the superintendence of Mr. J. K. Bigelow another original Walthamite in whom there le much skill. One scarcely knows what to begin on here, what to look at or describe first. Quite a number of good looking girls are at work in the various processes of this department, but ours is strictly a business visit, so we make no note of them. As a gentle hint of the delicacy of the machinery and manipulations we are about to inspect, Mr. Bigelow exhibits first a gauge used here to test the accuracy of the completed work. It registers down to the one-thousandth of an inch—a silky hair from a convenient maiden’s head we find to be just four one-thousandths of an inch in thickness. The butt end of our lead pencil the thing utterly refuses—it does not recognize the existence of anything so big. Naturally we are curious to see what are the things which it is intended this gauge shall measure. The first we see of them is where a man is feeding to a sort of biting machine long pieces of wire, and it chews them up into short pieces,—little fragments of various lengths. These are “pinions” in their crude state. The wire of which they are made is of steel. Stubbs’ best, imported from Englaud. In a completed watch, of the kind now being made here, there me six “pinions” or axles for wheels, which are technically known as the “centre,” “third,” “fourth,” “escape,” “minute” and “cannon.” Another form into which the wire is worked, very much like a “pinion” in certain respects, is the “barrel arbor.” After being cut up, the fragments go through the operation of “centreing,” or, in plain English, being pointed. Then some are ground, or rather turned off, so as to have short, sharp points; others long, sharp points; some with shoulders and others without; entirely too great a diversity for us to describe, but all done by delicate little machines, almost automatic in their action, worked by patient, bright-eyed girls, whose fingers move so deftly that the changes in form seem almost magical, so rapid are they. Yet all is done with the most perfect accuracy. Some of the wire is cut off short, bored out and has cogs cut in it—ten cogs or teeth on a cylinder not larger than the barrel of an ordinary watch-key: These are to work, or “mash,” as the workmen term it, into the centre-wheel. Infinite are the care and nicety bestowed on these minute works. Nothing must vary the fraction of the thickness of a hair from the stipulated size and shape, or it is spoiled; and a great beauty about the machinery employed is that it will not spoil anything, even if the person managing it be unskilful or negligent. The delicate machines which make these pinions or cut the wheels, of which they form the axles, cease their cutting, grinding or whatever else they may be employed at, precisely at the right instant—a stroke too much or one too little is impossible—so all that they make are perfect facsimiles—one the exact model of all the rest. A very interesting process carried on here is the jewel cutting. It is done by Messrs. Hyde & Norval, both very experienced workmen, the former only recently from England and brought here especially for this work. The stones used for Jewels are “aqua marina,” “garnet,” “sapphire” and “ruby,” generally the first two named. The rough stones, as they are found, are sawn into thin. minute slabs by means of a gang saw, the revolving blades of which are of steel charged with diamond dust. These slabs are again cut either into long slender pencils for “pallet” stones or into square bits for jewels. As the former use requires little change in their form and little treatment other than polishing, by means of diamond dust, It is comparatively uninteresting. Jewel cutting is, however, full of interest. The workman uses a lathe and a series of tools, either rough diamonds or steel points charged with diamond dust. Taking up one of the small square or octagonal fragments, he fastens it firmly on the spindle of his lathe, by means of shellac gum. Ihen with a large rough diamond, set in a brass tool, he wears the jewel perfectly round. Next he gives it a convex form, flattens slightly the top of its convexity and drills a microscopical hole half way through. The stone must now be turned round, the hole bored through from the other side, a recess or little sloping made on the edge and then it must be polished to perfect level smoothness by rubbing it on a plate of glass. All this takes little more time to do than to describe, and it must needs be quick, for the completed jewels are only worth ten or twelve cents each, but it must become fearfully monotonous to those who practice it for months and years. Still another pretty operation in this department is the hardening of the wire of which the hair springs are formed. It has been the practice hitherto to import hair springs from Europe. but this company now only import the wire and from it make a quality of springs superior to any in the market. In a little room connected with this department we are shown the model watch for the style now being made here, a “full plate,” and we learn that the system on which the manufacture is carried on is to make by hand a perfect watch for a model and then to duplicate, as nearly ae possible, all its parts for the thousands of its fellows which may be required. The next watch which the company will make, will be the “Raymond” watch, named after the President of the National Watch Company, and the model for this is now in hand. As fast as new styles are demanded they will be got up, and as it is calculated that they will be able to make fifty watches per day when they get in successful operation, we may expect to see their stock ere long filling the market. But, to return to our tour of inspection.

From the intricacies of the “train” department we gladly escape to the large and airy room on this floor where Mr. C. Bagley is doing the jewel setting business, and very interesting we find his work. He has little hollow brass sockets, pounds of them, in which he is to place jewels and by the aid of a curiously contrived gauge lathe he does this almost as rapidly as one can count. In old times, and even yet in some large establishments, the work is done by hand, so we have no little curiosity to see how it is effected so rapidly here. First fastening his setting in a sort of chuck, he lays the jewel he is about to place in it on a narrow steel shelf up aloft on the machine. Then he brings up against it a jawlike gauge which determines exactly the size of the hole which that particular jewel requires to hold it, and before one can say or at least write “Jack Robinson,” a slender steel bit bas glided out, bored the hole and vanished into obscurity again, somewhere in the intervals of the machine. Its all very simple to tell one the bit is exactly half way from the jewel to the axle or hinge of the gauge, and as it cuts only on one side must necessarily make the hole just the size of the jewel—the principle is there, but one cannot help admiring and withal, a little wondering at the ingenuity of the thing. The jewel is placed in the setting, a burnisher rolls the brass down around the edge upon the sloping shoulder on the flat side of the jewel, and the work is complete. Still another process, however, these jewels have to go through. The holes through them have to be made uniform in size, and polished out with diamond dust. To determine the regularity, a peculiar gauge is used.—a thing with a long tapering steel needle, thinner than a hair at its extremity. This needle is pushed into the hole in a jewel, shoved back as far as it will go, and it registers, in twenty-five hundredths of an inch, just how large the hole is. No hole is too small for this thing to measure, if one could poke a hole in the edge of a shadow with a ray of sunlight, this gauge world tell the size of the aperture. Mr. Bagley is the cunning inventor of this thing, and it certainly entitles him to high rank as “a judge of small matters.”

The gilding coms are not yet in operation, so we have only one place more to see about the works. That is the “enameling and painting” department, one where we can admire without being puzzled. Mr. John Webb, an Englishman, who used to be employed in the Waltham Manufactory, is the presiding genius here. In this country there are several men who understand enameling. others who know how to “paint,” and some who possess the art of “sinking,” but they have all been taught by Mr. Webb, and he is probably the only one in the United States who practices and is a master in all the several branches of art connected with the production of a finished watch dial. He is at present instructing several men and girls here in the business, so that in the event of any accident to him, his art may not be lost. Let us, as closely as possible, describe the various processes carried on in this room. The dial plates are of pure copper. Each has three “teet” or pins?soldered firmly to it by a very simple, but ingenious process, and when this is done is ready for the enameler. The enamel, which costs about $6 per pound, is imported from England in great chunks, not unlike broad splashes (sic) of milky glass and is composed of a mixture of sand, nitre, white lead, borax, arsenic, iron and tin. To prepare it for use, it is finely powdered and kept in water. The enameler first lays on a coat of this paste, of powdered enamel and water, on the back of the dial plate, to prevent sudden heat or cold blistering or cracking the upper surface. Then, with a broad square ended knife he smoothly lays on the surface enamel, touching it from time to time on a smooth white cloth to draw the dampness, as much as possible, from the paste. It is then placed on the floor of the furnace where it dries, and from there is moved up to the oven where, at a white heat, the enamel melts and gives a perfectly smooth glassy surface. About sixty per hour may be baked in one oven. There are two ovens here, only one of which is used. The smooth enameled plate is how marked off at regular distances, and the figures and points are painted o with black enamel, which is afterward baked in. This painting is very delicate work, and the artist who executes it here, Mr. Wm. Mealand, has been brought over from England especially for this purpose. It is all done with the finest brushes, even the minute lettering of “National Watch Co. which appears on the face of each dial, in characters one-fourth the size in which this sketch is printed, is done by the brush. Great steadiness of hand, skill of touch and clearness of sight are of course required for this work, but two or three girls to whom the art is being taught here, give promise of becoming adepts in it at no very distant day. Just here it may be remarked that girls show great aptitude for the delicate and painstaking processes of watch-making in all its various departments, some of them, indeed, evincing extraordinary mechanical talent, and that it is now in contemplation to have one-half or even two-thirds of the entire force employed, when the factory is in full working order, from the softer sex. They don’t get tired of monotonous work so soon as men do, and if they could only be kept from thinking about their a sweethearts, would be perfect—as watchmakers.

In painting the figures on the dial the VI is not put on. A machine cuts out the enamel from a circle which covers this point and acids cut away the copper plate, leaving a round hole, The “second dial” is made in precisely the same way as the large dial—cut out in the same way, and is then cemented on the under side of the large plate, thus leaving the “second dial” sunk below the level of the rest of the face of the watch. On some cheap watches and on many Swiss watches this sunken portion of the plate is merely stamped, not cut out; but so fine a surface on the “second dial” can never be procured by this means as by that which we have described.

The process of putting the completed works of the watches together has not yet been begun here, so that we cannot describe it. In a few weeks, probably not more than a fortnight, this will be going on, and the first results of the energy and talent of the “National Watch Company” will be placed before the public.

The power used all through the factory is derived from a thirty-horse power engine, made in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, a very model of strength and beauty.

We have thus endeavored as briefly and at the the same time as clearly as possible to sketch the rise, progress and present condition of one of the most interesting and noteworthy of the many great manufacturing enterprises in this vicinity. We have nothing further to offer in connection with it than an expression of our own hope and confidence that the company will meet with that complete success for which they have striven and which they so well deserve. If talent, experience, and utmost care can ever produce infallible chronometers, that desirable end will be achieved by the “National Watch Company,” and we may expect ere long their time-piece will be indispensable to every man and family in the country to whom “time is an object,” who know that “time tries all,” or who have learned to “watch as well as pray.”

New York Tribune, March 26, 1868
By Albert D. Richardson

MAKING WATCHES IN ILLINOIS.
Making watches by steam, fifteen hundred a month, out on the prairies of Northern Tlinois! Bishop Berkley should have lived to see the day!

But before we tell how it came about, a glance at Western manufactures in general. Few of us comprehend their variety and growth. There are 1,500 woolen factories in the North-West, the most of them built within the last three years. Our best woolen goods are made on the far Pacific Coast. During the war California supplied the Government with its finest and most durable blankets. Miners in the mountains of Idaho, Montana, and Nevada seldom buy imported or Eastern goods when they can got those of California or Oregon manufacture. The great foundries and machine-shops of San Francisco, which turn out everything from a quartz mill to a locomotive, likewise have the preference over those of New-York, St. Louis, or Chicago.

For the West cares a great deal more about quality than price. Whether buying a dictionary or a steamship it needs no injunction to “get the best.” It Is lineally descended from the pioneer Cincinnati merchants who 60 years ago mobbed a Jew trader for introducing pennies and trying to circulate them. To this day it will have no coin so small as one cent; and its strongest phrase for meanness describes a man as “picayunish.”

Utah has many factories of many kinds. Colorado has a paper-mill running at Golden City, a promising manufacturing center, in the very shadow of the Rocky Mountains. Kansas, like her eider sister Utah, takes woolen goods and also agricultural implements. Minnesota, for a wonder has not yet harnessed the gentle Minnebaha to loom or saw; but sprightly Minneapolis is compelling the Falls of St. Anthony-the best water-power on our continent except Niagara-to drive her enormous tub, bucket. and woolen factories, and sawing, planing, and flouring mills.

South Bend. Indiana, also enjoying an admirable water-power, ships furniture and carriages all over the United States, and flouring-mills. mowers, reapers, and heavy wagons through the uttermost West, even to Oregon and Arizona.

St. Louis and Cincinnati manufacture largely, chiefly in iron, steel and brass. Steam engines, saw-mills, flouring-mills, and planing-mills are turned out in enormous numbers, and Cincinnati probably makes more furniture than any other town in the United States.

Chicago, which combines New-England ingenuity with New-York dash, produces all these articles, Yankee notions in general, and many thousand cases annually of boots and shoes, more popular because more durable than those shipped from the East. Near the city is a large clock factory. Until recently injured by fire, it turned out 150 clocks per day. Pine and whitewood for the cases abound in the Chicago lumber yards. Copper from Lake Superior and zinc from Northern Illinois furnish brass for the works. So audacious Chicago actually competes with Waterbury and Bristol even in the New-York market. And-wonder of wonders!—Connecticut already holds more than one household which rings its dinner-bell and goes to the train by an Illinois-made clock.

Four years ago a Chicago jeweler¹ chanced to visit the American Watch Factory in Massachusetts. He became interested in its processes. He returned home and talked about them. Now Chicago believes profoundly that she can do anything which New England can, and many things which New England can’t. Her capitalists turned their attention to the subjeet. Young America—the Lake City contains no Old America—determined that watches must be made in Chicago.

Leading business men went heartily into the enterprise. It was up-hill work, but these gentlemen were accustomed to obstacles. One was B. W. Raymond, who 14 years before had inangurated Chicago’s first railway, which started for that Swiss-like town on the Upper Mississippi where Capt. Ulysses Grant was afterward clerk in a leather store.

At the outset a strong Chicago interest actually fought the railway, thinking it would injure retail trade by enabling country storekeepers to sell as cheap as city merchants! But the young company bought, on three years’ time, the “strap-rail” which the Baffalo and Attica Road had just thrown aside. Mr. Raymond and a friend named Turner came to New York to sell the company’s 12 per cent bonds. But just then Illinois was not even paying the interest on her State bonds; and Chicago was regarded as only a precocious swamp in the Western wilderness. Old capitalists invariably replied to their solicitations—”What! build a railroad out in those wilds? You must be crazy!”

It did seem chimerical; but a young community has the same generous, unquestioning faith in its future as a young man. After six weeks of hardest work, Raymond and Turner sold to a younger class of New-York merchants $30,000 worth of their bonds.

That gave the road a start. It leaped out 15 miles from the ague-stricken city, which then boasted 30,000 people. It stopped on the open prairie just after harvest. Instantly wheat wagons from all the country around swarmed to the daily trains like flies to a lump of sugar. Mr. Raymond and his friends strained their credit and spent their private fortunes to push the road ahead. The first year after 40 miles were completed, it divided 24 per cent on its cost. Land along the track soon rose from $3 to $50 an acre. The experiment was a success, and the system was begun which was to make Chicago a chief among American cities. Seventeen years ago she was the center of 42 miles of railway. Now she is the center of more than 5,000 miles.

In 1864, the lapse of half a generation had not dampened Mr. Raymond’s ardor. He and his associates went into the new enterprise with true Chicago zeal. They organized the National Watch Company with a paid-in capital of $150,000.

The first point was to secure good workmen. Several leading employés of the Eastern company gladly accepted their proposals, tempted by novelty and the larger remuneration which a new enterprise is compelled to offer.

Next, where should their factory be built! Watchmaking by machinery is not fond of the pavements: it finds visitors too plentiful, and the atmosphere too impure. It babbles of green fields. It seeks some cool, sequestered vale of life, free from dust and bores.

Elgin, a little city of 5,000 people on Fox River, 40 miles west of Chicago, had an excellent population, a healthful climate, pleasant surroundings, and the best water power in Illinois. Already it boasted several manufactories. Moreover, Elgin offered to the company, as a free gift, 35 acres of land, a mile from her business center, and subscribed for $30,000 of stock to secure the factory: and therein was Elgin wise in her day and generation. In November, 1864, the first blow was struck. Charles S. Moseley was placed in charge of the new establishment. He had been engaged in the nicest processes of watch making for ten years; was an inventor on instinct, and one of the very first machinists of the United States. Several skilled and efficient helpers also went with him from the East.

These gentlemen had no models, drawings, or measurements of the exquisite machines left behind. They had nothing to begin with save rough timber and crude metal. But, given half-a-dozen trained New England mechanies, a lumber-yard and a foundery, and you may have what you will, from a pen-knife to a ten-cylinder printing press. They constructed machinery and tools for making and repairing watches. With the benefit of ten years’ experience, they introduced many valuable and labor-saving improvements in these multifarious machines. While they invented and built, a spacious three-story factory of brick arose beside the shining river. The works were moved in, and finally, after two-and-a-half years of energetic labor, they completed their first watch in May, 1867.

Now, the manufactory swarms with busy life. It turns out sixty watches per day. To see all its curiostties would require weeks: but two hours will show the visitor enough to ponder on for the rest of his life. Alas for the weakness of words! If he could only descrobe what he sees it would be “a tale to hold children from play, and old men from their chimney corner.”

The works are driven by a steam engine of thirty-horse power. The machine shop, containing thirty workmen, is a mechanical museum. Here are whole generations of tools-not only the implement of to-day, but the father and grandfather used in its construction—and the size of each measured to the thousandth part of an inch.

No longer are manufactories the fithy prisons of twenty years ago. Even this room for rough, grimy labor is elegantly finished with black-walnut and butternut, and well lighted and ventilated, while the machinery runs with marvelous smoothness and quietness.

The name of the other rooms is legion, and their curious machines and processes are numberless. Watch wheels are struck out from thin plates of brass or steel with a punch, which leares their edges roand and smooth. Then a dozen in a pile, held together by an upright standard, which passes through the middle of each, are attacked by a furious little circular saw, which whizzes down the side of the pile, and then up again, cutting one tooth in each wheel as it passes.

Putting the watch together and enameling and painting the dial are the only work done by hand. Even the fine figures and second lines, and the inscription “NATIONAL WATCH COMPANY” are painted on by hand with a tiny brush. These delicate traceries seem to be work for a Lilliputian, or the dainty fingers of Queen Mac herself,

who hath been time out of mind the fairies’ watch-maker, but they are executed by brawny hands overlooked by bearded faces.

The jeweling department is the most wonderful of all. The best watch has fifteen jewels. Garnet, aqua marina, and ruby are chiefly used. They come from Persia, famous for rubies, jasper and chalcedony these many thousand years. But since the development of California we no longer despoil the gorgeous East of her gold; and before many years our barbaric pearl, too, will come from the Rocky Mountains, where many a settler’s wife can pick up a tumblerful of garnets within a dozen yards of her door.

First these precious stones are cut into thin plates. Here are miniature saw-mills which convert logs of ruby and garnet into planks exactly as the giant saw-mills of Puget Sound make huge pines and redwoods into boards. This atom of a circular saw, no larger than a pearl shirt button, though less terrible is just as relentless as the giant circular saw of our great lumber regions, eight feet in diameter, which has brought instant and horrible death to many a heedless workman venturing within reach of its two-inch teeth. These tiny cutters, like most little people, are very exact. They know just where to stop. They are wise saws and modern instances.

The jewel planks are sawed again, into long, square, slender joists which are afterward broken into cubes. One of these cubes is placed in a turning lathe, the workman presses the whirling stone with a diamond chisel when, presto! it is smoothly turned out exactly as a hub or spoke is turned in a wagon factory. Then a revolving microscopic drill bores the hole into it. This is polished by a steel wire charged with diamond dust which revolves one way while the jewel whirls the other. The two combined make 15,000 revolutions a minute! Job mourned that his days were swift as a weaver’s shuttle, but if they were swift as this watchmaker’s jewel his life must have been very fast indeed.

After the jewel is set its hole is measured by a register so minute that it will give the diameter of any hair of your head, or even the infinitessimal thread of a spider web if it is not less than the one-twenty-five-hundredth of an inch! Here are delicate sapphire knives used for cutting brass because they leave a polished surface. Here are pinions or axles barely visible to the naked eye, which the workman only handles with pincers and examines through a magnifying glass. They are made of wire, first fed to a hungry little wolf with muscles of iron and teeth of steel, which ravenously bites them off at proper lengths and then turned in ridiculously tiny lathes.

Here are scores and scores of the most minute and complicated machines, each containing wheels within wheels, to a distracting degree. They are wonderfully automatic. They seem to do their work with human intelligence—when one process is completed suddenly shifting to another quite opposite in nature. Some are actually startling, as if a new Frankenstein had produced a sentient being whom he could neither escape nor control.

Indeed the whole factory is bewildering. It is like an extravagant dream. The watch has a hundred parts. Its manufacture involves a thousand processes. Absolute exactness is indispensable. “The Emperor of Liliput, “says Gulliver, with a fine touch of humor, “is taller by the breadth of my nail than any of his court, which is enough to strike an awe into the beholder.” In one of these minute wheels or pinions a variation of the hundredth part of a nail’s breadth will “strike an awe” into the owner, if not into the beholder.

Here are tiny screws of hardened steel, as shapely and perfect as the piston of a steam engine. Each has in its head a furrow for the screw driver. Each contains seven well-defined threads (200 to an inch) but they are invisible to the naked eye. Indeed, without a magnifying glass, the screw itself looks like a mere filing of steel. A pound of steel in mass costs $1.35. A pound in these screws costs $1.500. But then there are 144,000 screws to the pound.”

It was my good fortune to go through the factory with Mr. Moseley himself. It is, perhaps, most wonderful of all to remember that this quiet, jovial, unharrassed gentleman, hardly in the prime of life, carries all these machines in lus head. The first cotton-mill in America was run by horse power. It was built by an ingemious mechanio who had worked in an English factory, and who constructed all the Amertean machinery without draw. ings or modela. In the midst of his work he forgot the form and function of one Indispensable piece. Tradition affirms that be shut himself in a little room and refused food, drink, or sleep for 43 hours until besieged memory was starved out and supplied the missing link.

If the Elgin factory were to burn tomorrow, we fancy the serene Moseley could reproduce every nice implement, every intricate bewildering machine, without losing a meal or an hour’s sleep. Yet in showing some of these creatures of his brain his eye lingers lovingly upon them, and he cannot conceal the genuine paternal feeling. Most of us are diffused Yankees. He de a concentrated Yankee. The European man seeks recreation in a new opera, a new salad, or a new dissipation. The American man finds relief from toil or idleness by sitting down and inventing something. Thus it is that our Government issues 20,000 patents yearly against 3,000 granted by the British government. Thus it is that most of us number among our acquaintances some lawyer, clergyman, or journalist, whose conscience is never easy unless he patents something at least once in three months. Thus it has been from Benjamin Franklin, who originated a cooking-stove, down to Abraham Lincoln, who patented a new steamboat. Nothing is more American than Samuel Colt, the runaway sailor boy, whittling out a model for his revolver, on shipboard, during the clear tropical nights—Elias Howe, sticking to his sewing-machine through years of poverty and discouragement, and loving it only less than he loved his country—Eli Whitney, frittering away half his life on the cotton-gin, and then growing rich by making improved muskets—Robert Fulton, hooted at as a madman for years, but conquering the world at last—and poor John Fitch, building steamers long before him, but because he lacked Fulton’s tact and persuasiveness, dying by his own hand a weary broken-hearted man.

The Elgin factory employs 250 persons, half of them women. The latter are chiefly farmers’ daughters. One rode alone in a buggy 30 miles to Elgin to find what so many of her American sisters are looking for—Opportunity. They receive from 90 cents to $1 35 per day. They show special capacity for the work, look tidy and cheerful, and find pleasant homes in the pleasant town.

The ten earn $2 per day and upward. Several heads of departments have a coöperative as well as a salaried interest—a wise introduction of this principle by the proprietors.

How skilled labor respects itself! These workmen dress tastefully, have noticeably intelligent faces, and gentlemanlike manners. They are respected socially and politically. One is an Aldernan of Elgin, and, incredible as it may seem to a New-Yorker, in the rural West one may be an Alderman and yet an honest man.

The company now employs a capital of half a million dollars. The managers and proprietors include B. W. Raymond, B. F. Lawrence, G. M. Wheeler, H. Z. Culver, H. H. Taylor, J. T. Ryerson, T. M. Avery, and other leading business men of Chicago. They make six different grades, of which the “B. W. Raymond” is the best. They sell only “movements,” leaving the local dealer to case the watch according to the purchaser’s taste. They propose to supply all reputable houses in the United States with their watches.

Do these watches keep time? That of course is the alpha and omega. We are confident that they do—from the character of the men, machinery, and workmen, and the testimony of disinterested dealers and railway engineers. Several dozen locomotives on the Pennsylvania Railway are already run by them and Western roads, with a just pride in the products of their own section are beginning to introduce them.

The London Illustrated News insists that watehes cannot be made successfully by machinery. The best answer to that theory lies in the fact that a hundred thousand watches are made annually in the United States, simply to supply the demand which their superiority and cheapness have created. They are rapidly driving all grades of foreign watches from our markets. At the beginning of this century there were few watches or clocks in America, and those were imported. The enormous “bull’s-eye” watch, or the wooden clock six or seven feet high, resembling nothing so much as a coffin standing on end, was a rare luxury. Sun-dials and hour glasses were chiefly used to mark the time. Now we supply the whole world with clocks, even to the Fslands of the Sea and the farthest In-dies. Ultimately we shall supply it with watches. In the long run, European hand-labor has no sort of chance against Yankee machinery, directed by Yankee brains.

But where will our watches be made! Thus far the Elgin Company have shipped more than half their work to the East. Capital is worth more in Illinois than in Massachusetts, but labor is as cheap, and living cheaper. If the North-West can compete successfully with New-England in making watches, she can in making anything else; and the Great Valley will become the center of manufactures as well as the seat of empire.—A. D. R.

Harper’s Monthly Magazine, July, 1869

MAKING WATCHES BY MACHINERY.
Abridged to only include Elgin factory.
As we step aboard the Galena train at Chicago we observe the placard, “Pacific Express; does not Stop at Way Stations.” We ponder behind the locomotive for forty miles; then the brakeman ends our reverie by shouting “Elgin.”

Leaving the train, we gaze down upon a far-spreading little city, with court-house, academy, and churches upon commanding knolls, brick blocks and broad streets, cottages pleasantly shaded with oak, maple, and poplar, a woolen mill, a flouring mill, a butt-and-screw manufactory, and a milk-condensing establishment that ships its product to New York—all beside the bright river which cuts the town in twain, and is spanned by a gossamer iron bridge; and over the house-tops, a mile away, the tall chimney of the National Watch Factory.

In the spring of 1864 half a dozen active business men of Chicago, heard a fascinating description of the leading Massachusetts watch factory. To their willing ears it was a story with a moral, and this was the moral: “If Boston can make watches by machinery and largely supply the Northwest, Chicago can make watches by machinery and largely supply New England.” It was the genuine, audacious, self-reliant Western spirit. Practical workmen assured them that with the investment of a hundred thousand dollars in buildings and machinery they could begin to turn out watches. They added fifty per cent to this estimate for a margin, and with that blessed unconsciousness of the difficulties before them, without which no great enterprise would ever be undertaken, they organized the National Watch Company, and in November the work began.

After two years and a half spent in constructing the hundreds of intricate machines and erecting the buildings, in May, 1867, the first watch was completed. Not, however, until long after the first hundred and fifty thousand dollars was exhausted—that barely sufficed for a beginning. Before the enterprise was self-sustaining more than five hundred thousand dollars had been expended, and its owners and friends would doubtless have doubled that sum rather than permit it to fail.

The watch factory of twenty years ago—let pencil and graver fix its humble features ere the place which once knew it shall know it no more forever. The tiny building, with its sign, “John Smith, Watchmaker,” the single room, eight by ten, with its counter, showcase, and window hung with watches, and its one workman, who repaired fifty watches a year, and “made” two or three at odd times. Here and there one of these establishments yet exists, but it is as really a relic of antiquity as a hand-loom or a wooden plow.

The National Watch Factory at Elgin is a specimen of the great museums of machinery and bee-hives of workmen which have pushed it from its stool. The front, shown in our illustration, is two hundred and forty feet long, Several other wings are hidden in the rear. The cars of the Fox River Railway deliver material at the very door.

My first view of the factory yard was toward the close of the noon hour, when the employés were pouring back from dinner. It was a fair picture. On one side the gleaming river, with white and spotted cattle grazing upon its bank; on the other a grove of young oaks, their leaves falling from autumnal frosts; in the foreground scores of ruddy-cheeked girls sauntering back toward their work, while quiet artisans smoked their cigars and meerschaums upon the factory steps and a little platform where a band of operatives discourses music on Saturday afternoons in summer. A dozen young men were jumping, with dumb-bells in their hands, each trial calling out shouts of applause or merriment; and a score of boys playing base-ball as if their salvation depended upon it. Suddenly the great bell behind the factory struck for one o’clock, and the swarm of life poured into the building.

The employés are equally divided between the sexes. I never saw so many boys and girls in an Eastern manufactory. The working day is ten hours. Whenever the welcome bell proclaims the hour of noon, or six in the afternoon, these young people give a whoop like released school-children, and can hardly wait to put away tools and make benches tidy before they join the merry throng streaming homeward.

The average earnings of the girls are something over six dollars per week—in a few cases as high as twelve; those of the boys and men three dollars per day. Board for girls costs about three dollars per week; for men, from five dollars upward. “That little girl,” said the superintendent of the Steel Room to me, “can do any thing in this large department as well as any man in it;” and a number of similar cases were pointed out to me.

The Machine Shop—a hundred feet long, with thirty brawny, bare-armed workmen—is the letter A in the alphabet of the watch factory. Here all the tools and machines are manufactured and repaired. Their name is legion; their sizes are innumerable. They include machines which will take a shaving off a hair, and those which will slice up steel like apples; registers that will measure the twenty-five-hundredth of an inch, and registers that will measure a foot: drills for making holes invisible to the naked eye, and drills almost as large as crow-bars; and so on ad infinitum, I will not attempt to describe the “cams,” “taps,” “clamps,” “quills,” “reamers,” “eccentrics,” “chucks,” and “wigwags.” The one thing which strikes a novice is the wonderful accuracy and minuteness, the beautiful smoothness and polish of every thing. The finest jobs of ordinary machine-shops would be thrown aside here as utterly worthless.

The works of a watch, not counting the plates which form the shell or frame, are of brass and steel in nearly equal proportions. And, by-the-way, why is “brassy” a term of denunciation, and “as true as steel” the language of compliment, when brass may be made nearly as hard as steel, and will take almost as fine a temper? Steel is used in a watch wherever there is great. Strain upon some very slender part. But where there is much friction between two wheels one must be of brass and the other of steel. By some mysterious law of metals these will outlast two wheels of the hardest and most highly- polished steel twice over.

Great sheets of brass and steel are first received in the Punching Room, where an enormous pair of shears cuts them into ribbons. These are lengthened and thinned between a pair of steel rollers, which, if required, will leave them only one-four-thousandth of an inch thick. One of these ribbons is then passed slowly between the punch and die of a huge press, driven by a heavy wheel which a workman controls with his foot. The punch rises and falls with the motion of the wheel, coming down each time with a weight of twenty tons, and with a “click,” cutting out a perfect spoked wheel. The press is an enormous monster which bites out mouthfuls of steel but refuses to digest them. Like most monsters, however, it will do no damage if it is only fed. It leaves the wheels fast in the strip to be knocked out-by hand. With it a man can cut out ten thousand wheels in a single day.

Next we visit the Plate Room. The upper and lower brass plates are respectively the roof and floor of the watch. The upper one must have thirty-one holes bored in it, for pillars, pivots, and screws. A little girl cuts them with a needle-like drill, which revolves like lightning, and goes through the thick plate in a twinkling. Another girl, with a chisel whirling with equal rapidity, cuts away the ragged burs or edges left on the side where the drill comes out. This “countersinking,” which leaves a cup-like depression, is performed wherever a hole is drilled through brass, steel, or jewel.

The four pillars—the posts which are to bind roof and floor together—are made and inserted in the lower plate by a miraculous little contrivance, which a coffee saucer would cover. The punching machine is a behemoth, but this is a fairy. It seizes one end of a brass wire, and in eleven seconds measures off a pillar, turns it down to the required size, makes a screw-thread in each end, cuts it off, and screws one end into the lower plate so firmly that we can not unscrew it with a pair of pincers. But it keeps the workman’s feet busy, and his hands flying as if he played » lively tune upon the piano. He will easily make and insert two thousand pillars in a day. By hand he could hardly make two dozen.

When the brass pieces are finished, all belonging to one watch are stamped with the same number and put into one of ten little boxes hollowed out in a board like birds’-nests. The nests have yet many journeys to make before the eggs are hatched; but the shell or frame is now ready for the works. The upper plate is next engraved. Three men and four girls are kept busy tracing the elaborate scroll-work, and the inscription, B. W. Raymond, Elgin, Illinois, No. 41,280, or J. T. Ryerson, No. 41,290,” as the case may be. The different grades made here are Lady Elgin, B. W. Raymond, Mat Lafin, G. M. Wheeler, H. Z. Culver, H. H. Taylor, and J. T. Ryerson; but the numbering rans consecutively through all.

The screws in a watch number forty-four, or more than one-quarter of all its pieces. The Screw and Steel Department is one of the largest in the factory. Its magical little automats, run by nimble-fingered girls, convert shining steel wire into infinitesimal screws, pare down their heads, and cut slots in them for microscopic screw-drivers. They are polished to perfect smoothness, and then, like every other part of the watch, brought to “spring temper”—the temper of the sword-blade—by heating, which leaves them of a rich, deep blue. The illustration shows the screws of their actual size, and also one magnified 100 times each way, or 10,000 times the actual size.

Here are machines which will cat screws with five hundred threads to the inch; the finest used in the watch have two hundred and fifty. Even these threads are invisible to the naked eye, and it takes one hundred and forty-four thousand of the screws to weigh a pound. A pound of them is worth six pounds of pure gold. Lay one upon a piece of white paper, and it looks like the tiniest steel-filing. Only by placing it under a strong magnifier can we detect its threads and see that it is shining as a mirror, and as true and perfect as the driving-wheel of a locomotive.

Screws for the best compensation-balance are of gold. A ten-dollar piece will furnish material for six hundred and fifty of them. Themcompensation-balance comes from the Punching Room a solid piece of steel as large and heavy as a new penny, and inclosed in a rim of brass. It is ground down, worked out, and polished till it becomes a slender wheel—the outer rim brass, the inner rim and crossbar steel—lighter and thinner than a finger-ring. Through the double rim twenty-two holes are drilled for the screws. A chuck whirls the wheel around—as one would spin & penny upon the table—four thousand eight hundred times a minute, while a lad makes each hole by applying three tiny drills one after the other. He will bore one hundred wheels per day, or apply a drill oftener than once in six seconds from morning till night—to say nothing of the time consumed in fastening on and taking off the wheels and sharpening his drills. Screws of gold or brass are then put in, and the balance is completed. On this little part alone nearly eighty operations have been performed.

Next we step into the Train Room, the largest and pleasantest in the factory.Seventy-five persons with busy fingers sit at six rows of benches extending its entire length, each before some little machine, shaping, smoothing, pointing, grinding wheels, pinions, or pivots.

Cutting teeth in the wheels is done by piling up twenty or more, with an upright shaft passing through the centre of each, and turning a screw to hold them together. The girl in charge then lifts one handle of a little machine, and instantly a steel cutter like a shingle-nail, but with asharp point at one end, is brought against them, whirling so fast that it looks like a perfect wheel. Whizzing down the outer edge of the pile, it cuts a groove or furrow in each wheel. When it reaches the bottom she moves the other handle; the cutter flies up to the top, and runs whizzing down again. A single wheel has from sixty to eighty teeth, but the girl will finish twelve hundred wheels a day. The long, hooked teeth of the scape-wheel, and the horn shaped tooth of the ratchet, are cut with equal facility.

In the Escapement and Jeweling departments we first encounter precious stones, in which pivots of brass or steel will run for generations without any perceptible wearing. In the order of hardness they stand, diamond, sapphire, white or milky ruby, red ruby, garnet, aqua marine. In jewelry they are valued only for their color, in watch-making only for their hardness. Montana begins to supply garnets, but most precions stones come from India, Persia, or Brazil. They are always bought by the carat-the one-hundred-and-twentieth part of an ounce Troy-no matter how large the quantity. They are used not only for jeweling, but also for tools to cut other precious stones or hard metals with. Sapphire is the favorite, because it can be sharpened upon diamond, while a chisel of diamond—the hardest of al! known substances—must either be broken to give it a fresh edge, or sharpened slowly and laboriously against another diamond.

The Dutch are the most famous lapidists in the world. They sent workmen from Amsterdam to London to cut the great Koh-i-noor. They will divide a diamond weighing but one carat into two hundred and fifty little slabs, which look like fairy finger-nails. Inserted in brass handles they become ridicnlous little chisels, which might turn out wheels and axles for Queen Mab’s chariot. Diamond dust also, as white as snow, and finer than flour, has a hundred ases in the factory. An ounce costs five hundred dollars. Metal edges for cutting and surfaces for polishing are “charged” with it; that is, a little of the powder is firmly imbedded in them, and gives them a sharpness which nothing can resist.

Some rare watches are jeweled with diamonds and sapphires, and many with rubies; but for all practical purposes garnets and aqua marines answer as well. The Lady Elgin, an exquisite little time-keeper, has fifteen jewels, all of ruby. Four of the fifteen in the B. W. Raymond are of ruby, the rest of aqua marine and garner. The precious stones are cut into planks, and then into joists, by circular saws, and afterward broken into cubes. Then each is turned out in a lathe, exactly as a bed-post is turned in a furniture factory. By this time it weighs less than one-eighty-thousandth of a pound Troy. It is afterward burnished into its setting—a little circular rim of brass. The hole is made through it with a diamond drill, barely visible to the naked eye, and polished with another wire which passes through it and whirls one way while the jew el whirls the other. The two make twenty-eight thousand revolutions a minute. Finally jewel and setting are inserted in a little depression of the watch-plate, which they exactly fill, and held in place by tiny screws of steel, whose deep blue contrasts plensantly with the bright gilding of the plate.

Every part of a watch must be absolutely accurate, but no part must fit perfectly. To run freely each pivot mnst have a little play, like a horse in harness; otherwise the least bit of dirt or expansion of metal would stop the delieate machinery. So every jewel-hole is left a little larger than the pivot which is to revolve in it for the “side-shake,” and every shaft or axle a little short for the “end shake.” The tiny gauges which measure all the parts make allowance for this—a bit of calculation which they perform with an ense and accuracy un known to poor human brains.

There is another danger to guard against. If the least grain of diamond dust is left in a jewel-hole it will imbed itself firmly in the steel pivot, and then act as a chisel, cutting away the jewel every time the pivot revolves. The new dust of ruby or garnet which this produces will act in the same way—” diamond cut diamond”—until the jewel is utterly ruined; so the utmost care is necessary to see that no particle of diamond dust remains in the watch.

After the jeweling is done the birds’-nest boxes go to the Finishing Room. In following, let us stop to glance at the Dial Department.

The dial, a plain circular plate of Lake Superior copper, no thicker than a silver three-cent piece, is first covered with a paste of fine white enamel, carefully spread on with a knife, to the thickness of three-one-hundredths of an inch. After it dries a little, a workman with a long pair of tongs places the dial flat upon a red-hot iron plate in the mouth of a glowing furnace, watching it closely and frequently turning it. The copper would melt but for the protecting enamel, and, at the end of a minute, when he takes it out it is as soft and plastic as molasses candy. The baking has “set” the enamel, but has left it rough, as if the dial face were marked with small-pox. After cooling it is ground smooth upon sandstone and emery, and then baked again.

Now it is ready for the painters. A girl draws six lines across its surfuce with a lead-pencil guided by a ruler, making ench point for the hours. Another with a pencil of black enamel traces coarsely the Roman letters from I to XII. A third finishes them at the ends to make them symmetrical. A fourth puts in the minute marks. Then the dial goes to an artist, who, holding it under a magnifier, paints the words “NATIONAL WATCH CO.” in black enamel with a fine camel’s-hair brush. The inscription measures three-fourths of an inch from left to right, and less than one-ninetieth of an inch up and down; but even then it is perfectly legible; and the swift, cunning fingers will paint it twice in five minutes.

“Is it not very trying to your eyes?”

“If I were to do it all day, or even for an hour steadily,” the painter replies, ” they would ache terribly. But I put the inscription on two dozen dials, and then rest my sight by painting on the figures, lines, and dots.”

“My father,” observes the superintendent of the room, who is looking over his shoulder, was an English dial painter. Once he traced the Lord’s Prayer with one of these camel’s-hair brushes on a surface one-eighth of an inch long by one-ninth of an inch wide. Half the wing of a common house-fly would cover it. It aged the old gentleman’s eyes twenty years for his work, but he could see objects at a distance just as well as ever.” One can only wonder that it did not strike him blind.

In the Finishing Room we find a drawer full of mainsprings, coiled so loosely that each is as large as a breakfast saucer. One drawn out straight will be two feet long. It is polished like a mirror, and tempered to a beautiful deep blue. A girl coils one to the diameter of a thimble, and then, rifling one of the birds’-nests, inserts the mainspring in its brass “barrel,” the head of which is held in by a groove like the head of a flour-barrel. This circular chamber, only seven-tenths of an inch across, contains the whole power of the watch. One end of the mainspring is fast to the shaft which passes through it, and by which it is turned; the other, as it uncoils, carries around the barrel, and so communicates motion to the train. She puts the parts together temporarily, inserting only screws enough to keep them in place. Her flying fingers sot up ninety watches and empty ninety birds’-nests every day. The latter go back to the Plate Room for more eggs and fresh incubations; here at least there are always birds in last year’s nests.

Hair-springs are made in the factory, of finest English steel, which comes upon spools like thread. To the naked eye it is as round as a hair, but under the microscope it becomes a flat steel ribbon. We insert this ribbon between the jaws of a fine gauge, and the dial-hand shows its diameter to be two twenty-five-hun-dredths of an inch. A hair plucked from a man’s head measures three twenty-five-hun-dredths—one from the head of a little girl at a neighboring bench two twenty-five-hun-dredths. Actually, however, the finest hair is twice as thick as the steel ribbon, for the hair compresses one-half between the metallic jaws of the gauge.

A hair-spring weighs only one-fifteen-thou-sandth of a pound Troy. In a straight line it is a foot long. With a pair of tweezers we draw one out in spiral form until it is six inches long; but it springs back into place, not bent a particle from its true coiling. It must be exquisitely tempered, for it is to spring back and forth eighteen thousand times an hour, perhaps for sereral generations. A pound of steel in the bar may cost one dollar; in hair-springs it is worth four thousand dollars.

After the watch has been run a few hours, to adjust the length of the hair-spring, it is “taken down,” and all the brass pieces sent to the Gilding Room. There each part is polished for electro-gilding. Gold coin in first rolled out into sheets, and then dissolved with acids. At some stages it looks like nauseating medicine, but when it goes into the battery the solution is as colorless as spring-water. But it is a deadly poison. A girl in this room was kept at home for three weeks with sores upon her hand caused by dipping it in the liquid.

Twenty or thirty of the brass plates and wheels are hung by a copper wire in the inner ressel or porous cell of a galvanie battery, filled with this solution, and the silent electric current deposits the gold evenly upon their surfaces. Ordinarily they are left in it about six minutes: the quick, educated eye of the superintendent determines how long. A twenty-dollar gold piece will furnish him with heavy gilding for six hundred watches, but he could make it gild four thousand so that they would look equally well on first coming out; or he cold pat five hundred dollars upon a single one-leaving the gold an inch thick all over the works-and it would look no better. All the pieces come out clothed in yellow, shining gold, and are sent back to the Finishing Room, put together again, and then turned over to the “watchmakers”—the only persons in the factory necessarily familiar with all parts of the watch. A dozen sit in a row, in a very strong light, before a long bench strewn with their minute brushes, tweezers, magnifiers, and glass cases which cover small mountains of wheels and pinions. They insert the balance and hair-spring, see that every thing has been properly fitted, and put on the dial.

Then the watches, each in a little circular tin case, go in boxes of ten to the lynx-eyed Inspector, who scrutinizes every part for the slightest flaw or defect. Here is a box which has passed through his hands. Upon two watches are little slips of paper, one labeled Fork strikes potance”—a slight but needless friction; the other, “Fix the number”— the figures upon some one piece being wrong or illegible. About one-third are thus sent back to the “watchmakers,” after his rigid examination.

The last scene of all is the adjusting. In his quiet little room the Adjuster keeps the Equator and the North Pole always on hand and ready for use in large or small quantities. First he runs the watch eight hours in a little box heated by a spirit-lamp to one hundred and ten degrees Fahrenheit. Then ho runs it eight hours in a refrigerator, where the temperature is nearly at zero. It must keep time exactly alike under these two conditions. If he finds any variation he changes the position of the screws in the compensation-balance, or substitutes now ones, first carefully weighing them in a pair of tiny scales of his own contriving. When we ask him to show us the minutest weight they will indicate he places a bit of whisker upon one end, and adjusts the weight. The speck of hair weighs a trifle over the fifty-seven-millionth of a pound Troy.

The watch is next carefully adjusted to keep equal time in different positions. Then it is ready for the case. Its different parts are composed of one hundred and fifty-six pieces. The old watch, made by hand, contained eight hundred pieces, if we count each link of its chain as a separate part. Reducing the number four-fifths has correspondingly reduced its intricacy, friction, and difficulties of repairing.

The proprietors realized from the outset that they could only succeed by making good time-keepers. To that one result all their energy has been directed. Manufacturing upon this large scale involres the use of so much capital that after a fine watch is finished and running they can not keep it a year for adjusting and regulating, as jewelers used to do under the old method. Most of their watches have gone oat warm from the factory, but they have run with wonderful accurney. The very first half dozen used upon the Pennsylvania Railway were brought in by the engineers at the end of six days, and the greatest variation among them was eight seconds.

The railroad is the great critic. Nowhere else is a watch so severely tested; nowhere else is accuracy so absolutely essential. After careful trial, solely upon their own merits, the Elgin watches have been adopted as the standard upon several of our leading trunk lines. On the Pennsylvania Road alone more than a hundred locomotives are run by them, and they are in use among conductors and engineers upon every railway in the Northwest, and upon the great trans-continental line from Omaha to San Francisco. That is as it should be—the Pacific Railway trains run by American watches.

Several months ago a Swiss imitation, labeled “Chicago Watch Company,” began to appear in our markets. It looks well to unskilled eyes, but is so rough and cheap that the “movement” can be sold for five dollars after paying the import duty. And lately another imitation, bearing the same inscription, but manufactured in an Eastern factory, has made its appearance. Buyers who would be sure of avoiding these spurious watches should purchase only of some reputable and established jeweler, and never of unknown, irresponsible parties, however honeyed and seductive their advertisements. But this counterfeiting, both foreign and domestic, of an American product less than two years old, at least shows that the genuine article has won enviable reputation.

Two facts in the consumption of the Elgin watches are the shadows of coming events. First, fully half, thus far, have been sold in the East, and a large proportion of them in New England. Second, the Company are filling orders for India, which have come from London, without solicitation or advertising abroad. The prairies are beginning to manufacture for the Orient! What will this grow to in the near future, when three Pacific railways bring India, China, and Japan to our doors?

The Company make “movements” alone, dealing with the public only through local jewelers, whom they leave to case each watch according to the customer’s taste or fancy. Making cases—a business quite distinct from making watches—is done on a large scale by two or three houses in the United States, and on a small scale by a great many. Crystals cost the jeweler from two and a half to seventy-fire cents apiece. The finest are made in Europe; cheaper ones in New York and Pittsburg. Gold cases cost from fifty to one hundred and fifty dollars each; silver ones from six to thirty dollars; German silver about three dollars and fifty cents.

Thus we have followed the watch through its various stages until it is ready for the pocket. An expert jeweler working by hand might perhaps make a watch in three weeks. The Elgin factory, with less than for hundred and forty employés, turns out one hundred and twenty-five a day, or one every three days and a half for every worker in the establishment, including all the young boys and girls, the book-keepers and clerks. As eighteen is to three and a half so is machinery to hand-work. In watchmaking alone, within the last fifteen years, Americon inventiveness has increased the efficiency of human labor more than fivefold.

Increase in product always brings a still larger increase in demand. When Denison conceived the daring project of manufacturing three thousand watches a year, his sober friends fancied that he could never find purchasers. Since then our imports have increased enormously. In 1868 we bought two hundred and fifty thousand watches, costing four millions of dollars, from Switzerland alone. Abont one-fifth were gold; the rest silver. An enormous proportion were of the grades which sell without cases for from five to ten dollars each, and which as time-keepers are worth about the value of the powder it would take to blow them up. In addition to this foreign supply, one hundred thousand watches a year are now manufactured in the United States. Still the demand is so great that the Elgin factory is often two or three months behind its orders for the most popular grades. The same is doubtless true in other establishments. It will continue true in the time not far distant when a good watch in a silver case can be purchased any where for ten dollars, and when American factories are turning out a thousand watches a day, for the United States and Europe, and swarming Asia.

But no degree of familiarity can ever take the charm and interest from a great watch factory. It will always be a magician’s palace, which makes the story of Aladdin prosaic and commonplace.

Western Rural, September 22, 1870

National Watch Factory, Elgin, Ill.
The above (right) engraving represents the National Watch Factory at Elgin Illinois,-an enterprise which had its origin with a few energetic and shrewd business men of Chicago In 1864. Two years were spent in erecting suitable buildings, and it was not until May 1867 that the first watch was turned out. Within the brief period intervening between that date and the present this Factory has achieved a reputation for its watches which is world-wide. The different grades of watehes made are the “Lady Elgin,” “B. W. Raymond,” “Mat Laflin,” “G. M. Wheeler,” “H. Z. Culver,” “H. H. Taylor,” and “J. T. Ryerson.”

The testimony as to the excellence of the watches here made is of the most pronounced and satisfactory character. No higher proof of their superior qualitles could be adduced than has been voluntarily furnished by many men, throughout the country, of the highest standing and influence.

A very interesting paper on Ancient and Modern Time Keepers, containing an interesting notice of the works of the National Watch Company, written by the late A, D. Richardson, may be had upon application to the Company, in person or by letter, at Elgin, or corner of Lake and LaSalle streets, Chicago, We give these watches as premiums.

The Merchants and Manufacturers of Chicago, John Wing & Co., 1873

Chicago Tribune March 24, 1874

Let us commence with the ELGIN NATIONAL WATCH COMPANY, not because it is a home institution, but as they have obtained a national reputation for the reliability of the watches manufactured by them. They have been heard from in every part of the civilized world, and in all cases, although often subjected to the severest tests of changing climate and rough usage, wearers have expressed the highest commendation of their time-keeping qualities, adjustment, and durability. The stock of this Company, amounting to $1,500,000, is owned mostly by Chicago citizens, and all the Directors are also favorably known in connection with other branches of business in this city.

The splendid factory is situated at Elgin, occupying over three acres of ground, and only last year there has been added a new building at a cost of $75,000. From the general offices here, in the first story of the American Express Company’s building on Monroe street, near State, the trade is supplied with their delicate and accurate time-keepers. This branch is in the hands of Maj. D. W. Whittle, the General Agent of the Company, who has two sub-agents, one in the East, at No. 1 Maiden lane, New York, and the other in the extreme west, at San Francisco. The latter has several times visited the Sandwich Islands, China, and Japan, introducing there the Elgin watches, and even the King of the Sandwich Islands is wearing an Elgin watch bought at & jewelers shop in Honolulu. During the last year several hundred of their movements have been also exported to England, notwithstanding the high entry duties. The Company is said to have doubled the sales in California and the mining regions, since the introduction of a patent dust-excluder, the only one effectually closing the works. The Elgin National Watch Company manufactures sixteen different movements, ranging in price from $13.50 to $67.50, twelve of them being full plate movements, and four, named Dexterstreet, Gail Borden, Lady Elgin, and Francis Rubie, ladies’ watches.

The yearly increase of the number of women engaged in business, mechanical, professional, and educational pursuits has created a demand among American women for watches that will keep time, Where heretofore ornamentation of caring and novelty of design have been considered sufficient to sell to them the most worthless class of Swiss timepieces.

The Ladies’ Watches of this factory now in market are as complete in beauty of finish and in time-keeping qualities as is possible for watches of similar grades and cost to be. In former years this Company has been annoyed by the sale of cheap imitations, made in Switzerland, which is stopped now by the law of Congress of March 3, 1871, affording protection from frauds of this character. During last year the Company found that s good many watches made by the International Watch Company, of Schaffhausen, were sold to confiding purchasers br the similarity of the name, and to stop this also they changed the name on Feb 28 from “National Watch Company” to “Elgin National Watch Company.”

The Inter Ocean, January 19, 1890

Illinois Watch Case Works.
Elgin, IlL, Jan. 18.—Special Correspondence.
Elgin has taken a fresh start, and the probabilities are that ite growth will be steady and rapid. The latest acquisition is the Illinois Watch Case Works (Eppenstein & Co) from Chicago, which will be rechristened the Elgin Watch Case Works The factory will be located in the northeast part of the city, and employ at first 100 hands, mostly men. The company agrees to add at lest fifty men per year for three years. In conjunction with our noted watch factory this will give the city a still greater prominence in a most desirable way. It is expected to employ 700 hands within five years.

The Inter Ocean, January 26, 1890

Andrew Magnus has been awarded the contract for masonry on she works of the Illinois (Elgin) watch-case factory. The cost is to be $7,650. The building will be 180 feet in length, three stories in height As yet the contract for the carpentry has not been let. The factory will be built as rapidly as possible, as it is intended to ocenty it by May 1. It will be quite an addition to Elgin.

Standard Guide to Chicago for the Year 1891, John J. Flinn, 1891

Elgin National Watch Company.—Located at Elgin, I]I., 42 miles from this city. Take train at Wells Street depot, Wellsand Kinzie sts., via. Galena Division Chicago & North-Western railroad.

This is one of the most extensive as well as the most interesting industries carried on in Chicago or vicinity. Some idea of its character may be obtained at the outset, from the fact that three thousand hands are employed in the works: that a daily average of 1.800 watch movements are turned out, running in value from $4 to $90; and that 540,000 movements were turned out in 1890, the aggregate value of Twenty-six which was $3,500,000. Twenty-six years ago Patton S. Bartlett and Ira G. Blake, employés of the American Watch Company, of Waltham, paid a visit to Chicago, and while here conceived the idea of starting a great watch factory in the inviting fields of the growing West. They formed the acquaintance of J. C. Adams, of Elgin, a practical watchmaker, who became enthused with the idea. After some effort, a company was formed August 21, 1864, under the name of “The National Watch Company,” of Chicago, Ill., with a capital stock of $100,000. Through the influence of Mr. Benj. W. Raymond and Geo. B. Adams, the location of the factory was offered to Elgin, on condition that a tract of thirty-one acres of land be deeded to the company, and $25,000 worth of stock be subscribed by the city. After efforts to comply with these conditions had failed, four of Elgin’s citizens stepped to the front and fulfilled the requirements. They were S. Wilcox, W. T. Pease, H. Sherman and B. F. Lawrence. Thirteen of the original thirty-five acres lying east and south of the factory were set apart, and an acre lot was given by the company to each of the original seven Waltham men who came West in 1865, namely, Messrs. Hunter, Moseley, Hoyt, Bartlett, Mason, Hartwell, and Bigelow. The incorporators of “The National Watch Company” were: Benj. W. Raymond, Howard Z, Culver, Thos, S. Dickerson, Geo. M. Wheeler, Philo Carpenter, W. Robbins and Edw. H. Williams. In September, 1864, Mr. Wheeler and Mr. Adams went East to secure competent men to help start the factory on a practical basis. They were fortunate in securing Messrs. George Hunter, the present superintendent, to take charge of the machine department; John K. Bigelow, now in California, to take the formanship of the train department; P. S. Bartlett, now a retail and wholesale jeweler in Elgin, to superintend the plate and screw department; Otis Hoyt, now dead, as issistaut to Mr. Bigelow; Chas. D. Mason, now in California, to have charge of the escapement department; D. R. Hartwell, still in the company’s employ, to supervise the carpenter work, and Chas. S. Moseley, now in Dubuque, as superintendent. Mr. Raymond was the first president, and served until October 10, 1867, when he was succeeded by I. M. Avery, who has served in that capacity since. The organization of the National Watch Co. was completed February 15, 1865. In January, 1865, a wooden structure, three stories high, 30×60 feet, was erected on the Elgin water power, on the site now occupied by DuBois opera house. After countless obstacles had been overcome, the work of watch making was fairly begun in April, 1865. On April 25, 1865, the company surrendered its certificate of license and was reorganized under a special charter and an authorized capital of $500,000. The first board of directors was composed of Messrs. B. W. Raymond, H. Z. Culver, T. S. Dickerson, G. M. Wheeler, Philo Carpenter, Joseph T. Ryerson and Benjamin F. Lawrence. None of these gentlemen are now associated with, or interested in, the factory; Messrs. Raymond, Carpenter, Ryerson and Lawrence being dead.

The present factory, in its original, consisted of a three-story and basement structure 40×40, with a two-story and basement wing 27½x100 feet, and a two-story and basement wing 27½×86 feet extending south, with additional smaller buildings. In one of these was made the first watch ever built in Elgin. It was an 18-size (English) full plate, key-wind, with quick train and straight line escapement, arranged to set the hands at the back, as was common with three-quarter plate, English and key-wind watches of that day. This model is still a cherished treasure, carefully preserved in the archives of the company. This model was not adopted, but was changed to set on the face after the plan of full plate movements of that day, and with that alteration it was adopted, christened the “B. W. Raymond,” in honor of the president of the company, and put upon the market-the pioneer Elgin watch, the modest advance guard of a great industry. This watch emanated from a factory, then considered great, which had a floor area of about 23,000 square feet, and which, during the quarter century of the company’s existence, has increased to upwards of 196,000 square feet exclusive of the detached buildings. This pioneer Elgin watch was a four-hole, extra jeweled, adjusted movement, and was first delivered from the factory April 1, 1867. The next watch was the H. Z. Culver, which was first delivered from the tactory on July 16 of the same year. Following these movements came the Taylor, Wheeler, Laflin and Ryerson, all slow train movements, which were delivered between October, 1867, and January, 1868. This line of watches was extended later by several lower grades named the Ferry, Ogden, Farwell and Fargo. George P. Lord became manager in 1868, and continued as such till 1876, when this office was abolished. On the twentieth of May, 1869, the “Lady Elgin,” the first of the popular ten-size, key-wind, ladies’ movements, was put upon the market, and was followed by the “Francis Rubie” (Aug. 24, ’70), the “Gail Borden” (Sept. 8, ’71), and the “Dexter Street (Dec. 20, ’71). None of this line of movements is now manufactured. On June 28, 1873, the first stem-wind movements made by the Elgin company were delivered, and between this date and May 6, 1875, the Raymond, Culver, Taylor, Wheeler, Laflin and Ogden movements were all transformed into stem-winds.

The name of “Elgin” had become so inseparably linked to the products of the watch factory, they being generally and familiarly known as “Elgin watches” the world over, that on May 12, 1874, at a meeting ot the stock-holders, the name was changed by prefixing the word “Elgin,” and a new charter was then adopted. This charter is the one under which the factory now operates. In 1874-5 the company contemplated the establishment of a watch case factory in connection with the manufacture of movements, but this idea was afterwards abandoned. It was in March, 1875, that the factory first manufactured its own mainsprings. At present every part of the watch is manufactured at the Elgin factory, except the jewels, which are imported. In 1875 the name of the company was adopted for all new movements of every size and grade, the first of the series being issued June 16, 1875. Since that time thirty-three distinct grades of eighteen-size have been added to the line.

After the adoption of the “popular prices” by the Elgin Company in May, 1876, the home demand became so heavy, that the producing facilities of the factory were taxed beyond their capacity, and the entire line of three-quarter plate movements were discontinued, the London office of the company closed, and the goods practically withdrawn from the foreign market. Since the discontinuance of this line no new key-wind goods of any kind have been added to the product. The first nickel movement made by the company was delivered August 15, 1877. The_company has had but two presidents, Mr. Raymond and Mr. Avery. Mr. Lawrence was elected vice-president of the company at the time of its organization, and served as such until his death in December, 1871, when Mr. Culver was elected, and filled the position until June, 1884, when Mr. Scoville was elected. Mr. Wheeler was secretary from August, 1864, to January, 1868, when he was succeeded by Hiram Reynolds, who was followed by George R. Noyes in January, 1877, and at his death in July, 1879, Mr. Whitehead was elected, and served until June, 1004, when he was succeeded by Mr. Prall. Between September 29, 1875, and December, 29, 1876, the company added to its list of movements seven grades of ten-size, six of twelve-size and five of fourteen size three quarter plate key-winds. These movements were especially designed for the English market. but were sold to some extent in this country. Between March 28 and June 11, 1878, a line of eight-size stem-wind movements were put upon the market. Between November 1, 1878, and January 6, 1879, four grades of sixteen-size, three-quarter plate, stem-wind movements were produced. These embraced an entirely new feature in stem-wind movements, being interchangeable in hunting and open-face cases by placing the winding pinion at 12 or 3 o’clock. In February, 1880, this line was increased by two movements. The trade of the company increased so rapidly that the capital stock was increased in 1884 to $2,000,000. With two exceptions (being the two cheapest grades), the watches made by the Elgin Company have straight-line escapements, making 18,000 beats per hour, and all have fine trains. The company has since its organization made and put upon the market just 100 distinct grades of the various styles and sizes of their watches. Space does not permit us in this article to give a detailed description of the plant as it is to-day, much as we would like to do so. The motive power for the factory machinery is furnished by two 80 horse power automatic engines. The factory is heated throughout by steam and illuminated by electric light from the company’s own plant. An artesian well, 2,026 feet deep, furnishes the entire water supply. The many hundreds of busy hands and countless machines are busy ten hours a day, turning out a daily average of 1,800 watch movements. These watches range in value from $4 to $90. The officers of the company are—T. M. Avery, president; J. W. Scoville, vice-president; William G. Prall, secretary; T. M. Avery, George H. Lallin, O. S. A. Sprague, J. W. Scoville, Charles Fargo, M. C. Town, George N. Culver, directors; J. M. Cutter, general agent, with office at Chicago; E. J. Scofield, New York agent. The factory management is in the hands of the following efficient officers: Superintendent, George Hunter; W. H. Cloudman, first assistant superintendent; George D. Hunter, second assistant superintendent; Carlos H. Smith, cashier; McLaughlin, invoice clerk; C. C. Elliott, material clerk; W. C. Thiers, shipping clerk.

The Elgin Company was the first watch company in America to pay a dividend to the original stockholders. In less than six years from the time of its charter, the watch company had erected its buildings, manufactured its machinery, and placed on the market more than 42,000 watches. By April 1, 1872, five years after the first watch was turned out, the reputation of the “Elgin watches” was thoroughly established, and more than 125,000 had been marketed. The property of the company includes a twenty-two acre tract of land, the factory buildings and the following: A gas house, 52×180 feet; a generating house, 60x1l8 feet; a purifying house, 30×64 feet; a carpenters’ shop, 30×135 feet; the engine house and the pattern vault. In connection with the factory is the National House, a first-class hotel, for the accommodation of employes only. This house was opened in March, 1881, and on February 1, 1883, the new wing was dedicated. The Elgin Company have erected and equipped a magnificent gymnasium, which has recently been formally opened for the use of their employes and the town’s people. The building is built of stone, three stories in height, and some idea of its character may be gained from its cost—$40,000. The interior is handsomely finished. Oak is used in the halls, and Georgia pine in the rooms. The gymnasium room is on the upper floor. It is a perfectly lighted and exceedingly high room, 75 feet long by 45 wide. The outfit is as fine and complete as can be found in the country, and cost $1,500. There are $500 worth of mats on the floors alone. In its equipments, it is a model of completeness. Above this floor is a fine running gallery, thirty laps to the mile. It makes also a great visitors’ gallery. For evening work, the incandescent lamps make the hall as bright as day. The ventilation, too, is excellent. In front of the gymnasium are ladies’ and gentlemen’s dressing rooms and shower baths. The floor below the gymnasium contains an amusement hall for concerts, lectures and dances, of the same size as the gymnasium. There is a movable platform in one end. The floor is perfect, and a door communicates with the National House. In front are two reception rooms and lavatories. Below this is a splendid band room, library, lockers, lavatories and directors’ room. We do not know of another such building in connection with any manufacturing institution in the West. This great industrial institution is a glowing tribute to the ability and energy of its officers and their associates, as it also is to the ingenuity and superior workmanship of their operators.

Thomas M. Avery, president, as well as active business head, of the renowned Elgin National Watch Company, was born at Perryville, Madison county, N. I., in October, 1819, and consequently is nearly 72 years of age at the present time, though hale, hearty and as active as a boy. He was given a common-school education, and, at the age of ten years, he was sent to a polytechnic school at Chittenango, Madison county, N. Y., where he remained two years. He then moved to Cazenovia, N. Y., and remained there until he reached the age of fifteen years. At that time his father died, and, thrown upon his own resources, young Avery entered a general country store to earn his own living. He worked there until the death of his employer, after which he settled up the estate, and at the age of twenty he embarked in the general merchandise business on his own account. Mr. Avery continued this business successfully in Cazenovia, until March, 1851, when he came to Chicago, and entered the lumber business, buying and selling lumber in small lots. He remained in this business until 1875, amassing a comfortable fortune. In 1867 he was elected president of the Elgin National Watch Company, which office he consented to accept only temporarily, after considerable urging, and on condition that he should devote to its duties only such lime as he could spare from his own business. Subsequently he gave up the lumber interests, and devoted himself entirely to the Watch Company’s affairs, as he is now doing. He is one of the largest stockholders of the company, and his management has brought it into the front rank,

Elgin Watch Case Company.—Situated at Elgin, Ill., forty-two miles from Chicago. Take train at Wells St. Depot, Wells and Kinzie sts., North Side.
The factory of the Elgin Watch Case Company is beautifully situated on an eminence at the north end of Dundee ave. The building presents a commanding and picturesque appearance, being a three-story structure of brick, 200 feet long, with a wing seventy-five feet in length. It is nicely finished and fitted throughout with keen adaptability to the business and an eye to the comfort and convenience of all the operatives. It is supplied throughout with all modern conveniences, with ample fire protection on each floor. It is when the interior of this building is reached that some conception of the enterprise can be had. The eye at once catches the orderly and cleanly appearance of every department, notwithstanding the accumulations of so large a factory. On entering the basement of the building the forges and crucibles for melting the gold conveysome idea of the complicated machinery throughout the building. The machinery department, melting and rolling, twining, jointing, electro-plating, springing, polishing, engraving and finishing departments are each operated by experienced and competent workmen, and the shaping of each attachment of a watch case seems to be simply pastime to many engaged there.

Chicago Tribune, December 22, 1892

Judge Horton decided finally yesterday that Mas E. Eppenstein, Sol. C. Eppenstein, and Thomas W. Duncan cannot use the name “The Elgin National Watch Case Company of Eigin, Illinois,” in conducting their business. The “Elgin National Watch Case Company ” secured an injunction restraining the parties from using the name, and in denying a notion to dissolve this instrument the court said:

The fact that defendants are so anxious and so persistent in their determination to adopt this or some similar name may be regarded as an evidence that they think it is valuable and desirable. If valuable and desirable, why?, Is it not reasonable to presume that it is, in part, at least, because the complainant, the Elgin National Watch company, had made it so, when connected with watches or parts thereof? When parties have, by their mode of doing business, built up, under a chosen name, a reputation which is of great value, they should be protected in the use of that name. The protection of the public in preventing any other persons from assuming a like or similar name is at the same time a protection of such parties. A trade name, like a trademark, may be of great value, and that value may have been entirely created by the parties who seek to be protected by its use.

The rule as to trade names applies to corporations the same as it does to individuals That confusion would follow if “The Elgin National Watch Case Company of Elgin, Ill., “should be incorporated and continue to transact business in that name seems to me certain. As to an evidence to my mind that such confusion world follow I may say that I found it necessary to write those several names down and thus impress them clearly upon my mind to prevent confusion in considering this case. That damage to the complainant would result seems to be more than probable.

An appeal was prayed.

The Eppensteins and Duncan control the Illinots Watch Case company, and tried some time ago to change the name of that concern to the Elgin Watch Case company. A mandamus suit was brought in the Supreme Court, and the attempt to adopt the name in question was defeated by that court. The Eppensteins and Duncan then attempted to organize a new corporation under the name “The Elgin Mational Watch Case company of Elgin, Ill.” This was also bitterly resisted by the Elgin National Watch Case company upon the ground that it was merely an attempt to trade upon the reputation of that company and to appropriate its good will. Leading watch dealers in Chicago and in various other cities to the number of over 100 testified that the name under which the Eppensteins were seeking to incorporate would cause great confusion in the watch trade and among purchasers.

Chicago Tribune, January 6, 1892

The following article was in response to a January 2, 1892 Chicago Tribune article suggesting a strike of the workers of the Elgin National Watch Company was inevitable.

MR. AVERY’S SIDE OF THE CASE,
The President of the Elgin Watch Company Interviewed at Length.
Regarding the adjustment of the trouble with the watch-makers of the Elgin National Watch company President Avery said yesterday:

Monday they received the company’s answer which was that they could not favorably consider their petition, and that there would be no change from the order of Dec. 31. The men are all at work as usual, and are able to earn from $3 to over $4 a day, When the men are first put to work on a new movement, as in the naught size, they are paid a little extra till they become expert, because we must have the required amount of product and are willing to stand the extra expense. After they become expert the extra pay is cut off, in order to make the schedule adjust itself evenly all around. This was the cause of the reduction in the present instance. It is true that we discharged two men on conclusive evidence furnished by a retailer that they had violated our rule prohibiting employés from engaging in the sale of our watches and thus becoming competitors of retail dealers.

As President of an institution which represents $5,500,000 invested capital, I have been greatly an-noved by these newspaper reports, which are doing the company not only a great injustice but an injury: and it seems to me they are inspired by malice from some quarter, the origin of which I would hke very much to know. The National Watch company of Elgin is proud of its attitude toward its employés, and claims with justice that it gives them as good treatment as any corporation in the country affords its men. The pay roll amounts to about $150,000 per month, and, take the men, women, boys, and girls, the average wages of each is $2.08 per day. We have a hotel near the factory where the employés are boarded at as near actual cost as possible, the weekly rate being $4 for males and $3 for females. There are electric lights and steam heat in each room and the table is equal to that of the Tremont, Sherman, or any other similar hotel in Chicago. The house also has baths, a barber shop, parlors, and billiard-rooms. Our gymnasium cost the company $40,000. Before the truck law went into effect we brought 6,000 tons of coal to Elgin and furnished it to our employés at exactly cost price. We maintain discipline at the factory as a matter of course. No concern of similar magnitude would dream of doing otherwise, but that discipline does not work a hardship on the employés. I have never heard them complain of harsh treatment.

The steady effort of the Elgin National Watch company is to lower prices of watches so as to put them within the reach of che masses. We have successfully fought our Swiss competitors and have proved we could furnish a better watch at cheaper rates than can possibly be done abroad. The invention of improved machinery from time to time hasin the nature of things tended to reduce the number of skilled laborers in certain departments, and has therefore involved the necessity of a reduction of wages in these departments. Simply as one instance I call to mind one department in which a boy. with the assistance of machinery. now does the work for the entire factory which was formerly done by a large number of skilled men. However. when there is such a change brought about by putting in new and improved machinery, the employés are given a chance to transfer themselves to other departments so that the scale of wages may be kept up. The figures I have given showing the average to be $2.08 per day for each employé demonstrates conclusively that our operatives are as well paid as any class of laboring people in the world. Girls who are in service in the vicinity earn only a few dollars per week and are compelled to put in long hours, often having to work late into the night. In the Elgin watch factory they learn to handle the machines after a few weeks and are put to work earning $1.25 to $1.50 per day and having shorter hours and their evenings to themselves.

Marshall Field & Co. Wholesale Jewelry Catalogue, 1894

The Watch Factories of America, Past and Present, Henry G. Abbott, 1888

John Calvin Adams
As a watch factory organizer Mr.J. C. Adams has probably had more experience than any living man, and his name is familiar to every watchmaker and jeweler in this country. Mr. Adams was born in Preble, N. Y., October 7, 1834. His father was a prosperous farmer. When he was but two years of age his father sold his farm and removed to Syracuse, N. Y. In 1842 he gathered together his chattles and removed to what was then termed the far west, locating in Elgin, Ill. Mr. Adams served a five years’ apprenticeship to John H. Atkins, an old Liverpool watchmaker. After finishing his apprenticeship he was engaged as watchmaker by S. C. Spalding, of Janesville, Wis. After two years employment by Mr. Spalding, he again returned to Elgin and entered into partnership with G. B. Adams, the firm being known as G. B. & J. C. Adams. At the end of two years the partnership was dissolved and Mr. Adams went to Chicago and was employed in the watch department of Messrs. Hoard & Hoes. In 1861 he managed the watch department of W. H. & C. Miller, Chicago, and had an interest in that department. In 1862 he was appointed time keeper for the various railroads centering in Chicago.

In the spring of 1864, Mr. Adams severed his connection with W. H. & C. Miller and together with Messrs. Chas. S. Moseley and P. S. Bartlett, organized the Elgin Watch Company. In 1869, together with Mr. Paul Cornell, he organized the Cornell Watch Company of Grand Crossing, Ill., and served for some time as general agent of that company. One of the movements made by this company was named in his honor.

In 1869, Mr. Adams, together with Springfield capitalists, organized the Illinois Watch Company at Springfield.

In 1874 he organized the Adams & Perry Watch Manufacturing Company, and became Secretary and General Manager of the company. He resigned his position in the fall of 1875.

In 1883 he entered the employ of the Independent Watch Company of Fredonia, N. Y. In 1885 he organized the Peoria Watch Company and continued with that company until April 14, 1888. He is the inventor and patentee of “The Adams System of Time Records” which is employed on nearly every western railroad.

Jewelers Circular—Weekly And Horological Review, July 28, 1897

Railroad Watch Inspection and Adams System of Time Records
Hundreds of watchmakers throughout the United States and Canada are engaged in inspecting watches for the various steam railways, and yet this is a comparatively new business, having been first put into practical operation in 1888. A short history of time inspection and telegraph time service may not, therefore, be devoid of all interest.

Prior to 1863 there was no such thing as a standard system of correct local time in Chicago or the west, and the same state of affairs undoubtedly existed in most of the cities of the United States. At this time the watch department of the firm of W. H. & C. Miller, Chicago (then the largest retail jewelry store west of New York city), was in charge of J. C. Adams, a practical watchmaker of many years’ experience. This house naturally had a very large railroad trade, and Mr. Adams became acquainted with officials, engineers, conductors, train despatchers and railway men in general.

Among the different roads running out of Chicago at that time was the Chicago & Galena Union Railway, now a part of the Galena Division of the Chicago & Northwestern Railway. Superintendent Williams, of this road, like the superintendents of all other roads at that time, was often sorely perplexed and greatly inconvenienced for want of a uniform system of time. Trains arrived ahead of time and behind time, and left in about the same fashion, and yet were just on time according to the conductors’ watches. All this was due to the fact that there was no standard or recognized system. Every watchmaker had his own time and he considered his chronometer correct and all others wrong. At that time there was but one transit instrument in Chicago, and that was owned by Francis Bradley, a real estate dealer and amateur astronomer. Much of the time then used was furnished by Mr. Bradley, and it was not as satisfactory as it might have been.

Superintendent Williams, of the Galena Railway, was very anxious that Mr. Adams should accept the position of official timekeeper for his road, and this Mr. Adams agreed to do, provided he could induce other Chicago railroads to co-operate, as the expenses of securing correct time were then very heavy. After several conferences with Superintendent Williams, Mr. Adams decided to experiment, and he made arrangements with Prof. James C. Watson, of Ann Arbor Observatory, to telegraph the time to him once a week. The Galena, the Alton, and other roads entered into the agreement, and in 1864 the correct time was telegraphed to each station on the Chicago & Galena Union Railway.

Correct time was one thing, and correct timekeepers another. It was no uncommon thing for a conductor to start from Chicago with his watch correct to the second and after making the run to Freeport and return to find that his watch was out six or seven minutes. Up to this time quick train watches were not made in this country and were not used to any extent even abroad. They were made in limited quantities in Switzerland and England, but were not at all popular. Mr. Adams decided that a quick train watch was what was needed for railway use and he accordingly entered into correspondence with James Hoddell, of London, and ordered 25 quick train watches with going barrels, as an experiment. These watches gave perfect satisfaction. W. J. Hunter, of Elgin, still carries one of these original Hoddell watches imported by Mr. Adams Mr. Adams took one of these watches to Waltham and tried to induce the American Waltham Watch Co. to make them. They declined, however, and he returned home and together with Charles S. Moseley, P. S. Bartlett and others organized the Elgin Wateh Company in 1864. The B. W. Raymond movement made by this company was the first watch made in America with a quick train.

Shortly after this the Dearborn Observatory was established in Chicago, and Mr. Adams made arrangements with the management and the Western Electric Co. for a complete series of tickers and wires for furnishing the correct time from the observatory clock. Each road had a branch wire and a ticker which gave seconds beats. On the 55th second of each minute the ticker stopped and the next tick was the 60th or even minute. This gave the correct time in seconds and minutes, and just before the hour on the 49th second of the 59th minute the ticker stopped and the next tick sounded tne hour.

The Adams’ System of Time Records was put into operation in 1888, the first railroad to adopt it being the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe. The Denver & Rio Grande, Union Pacific, Southern Pacific and other roads then took it up. A license or certificate was issued to each watchmaker who was ap. pointed an inspector. He was also furnished with a record book and monthly report cards, similar to the one shown in the illustration. The inspector was furnished with time by a special wire from the depot clock to his own store, by means of which the regular ticker was operated. The rules of the different roads varied in some particulars, but generally speaking they were uniform. Every conductor. and engineer was compeled to bring his watch to the inspector for examination, and the necessary blanks were filled in by the appointed inspector and also recorded in his record book. At the end of each month the report cards were forwarded to the division superintendent and a new series of cards issued to the men.

Mr. Adams has permanently retired from the watch business, his last work in this line being the management of the Swiss horological exhibit at the World’s Columbian Exposition.

Chicago Tribune, November 28, 2000

Bill Briska, of the Elgin Historical Society, examines the 13th watch (right), made in 1867, produced by the Elgin National Watch Co.

By T. Shawn Taylor
Tribune Staff Writer
For years a rare timepiece, one of the first products of the famed Elgin National Watch Co., rested inside a shoebox, in a drawer, in a home in Texas.

And there it might have stayed, if its owner had taken it at face value.

“It looks like an old-time, clunky thing,” said Bill Briska, of the Elgin Historical Society. “The dial face is plain and yellowed with age. That’s not unusual of watches from this era.”

But Carol Adams had a hunch the old watch had more than sentimental value. When she contacted Briska, she discovered not only that her watch was the 13th manufactured by the company, but that its original owner-John Calvin Adams, her husband’s great-great-grandfather-helped organize the Elgin National Watch Co.’s original investors.

Now the porcelain-faced, jeweled pocket watch, produced in 1867, will return to the city that shares the watchmaker’s name, for display among the 70 Elgin watches at the historical society museum.

“Don’t we all have things sitting around the house that we just have because we, or our parents, just always had them?” said Adams. “We realized it would be more appreciated there (in Elgin) than here.”

The watch had been stored with cuff links and war pins left by a deceased relative in the Adams home in Katy, Texas, near Houston. Then, after coming across the watch recently, the family sought to learn more about its origin.

Carol Adams found the historical society’s web site and sent a photograph of the watch to Briska. He said he knew the minute he saw the photo that the watch had historical significance.

Adams said that upon learning about the watch’s history, the family thought it better to return it to its origins, where it would be more appreciated.

“Here … it likely would end up spending a few more decades in drawers or boxes, and maybe one day be lost forever,” she said.

Neither Adams nor the historical society would reveal the price the society paid for the watch, though Briska called it “very favorable.”

The Elgin company made more than 54 million watches from April 1867 until it succumbed to foreign competitors in 1969.

“They gave the first 15 or 20 watches off the line to initial investors and big shots,” Briska said.

That is how John Calvin Adams acquired his watch, Briska said. He is credited with pooling the initial investors to start the company. Among them was Benjamin W. Raymond, Chicago mayor in the 1840s, Briska said. Raymond later became president of the company.

But Adams never held a formal office with the company and, in fact, went on to found four competing watch companies in Chicago, Springfield, Peoria and Lancaster, Pa. Adams lived in Elgin between 1848 and 1851 and worked as an apprentice watchmaker. After his death in 1909, his watch went to his son, Edwin Frank Adams, who passed it to his son, Edwin Jr., who gave it to Thomas Edward, according to the Adams family.

Thomas Edward Adams had told family members that the watch had some connection to a well-known watch company but nothing more.

“Unfortunately, no one ever really got the story of John Calvin until the museum filled me in,” Carol Adams said.

Adams’ watch is without a chain and contains 15 jewels. A jeweled watch refers to the fact that the mechanical movements were set on jewels to hold them in place. Jewels had natural lubricating properties and wore better than metal on metal, Briska said.

“A good movement will last 100 years,” he said.

In the case of Adams’ watch, it’s lasted far longer. And so has the Elgin name. It is now owned by M.Z. Berger & Co. of New York, which uses it to label watches made over-seas.

Houston Chronicle, August 1, 1909

JOHN C. ADAMS DEAD.
He Was Founder of the Elgin National Watch Factory.
Special ta The Chronicle.
Galveston, Texas, July 31.—John C. Adams, father of E. F. Adams, assistant general passenger agent of the Santa Fe, died at noon today after a long illness. The funeral will take place from the residence of his son, 918 Winnie street.

The pallbearers will be: W. S. Keenan. A. C. Torbet, H. K. Rowley, Valery Austin, Dr. George H. Lee, M. Neumann and D. D. McDonald.

The deceased was 76 years of age. He as a native of Syracuse. N.Y., and for many years made his home in Chicago, retiring from active business about 14 years ago, since which time he has made his home off and on with son in Galveston.

Mr. Adams was the founder of the Elgin national watch factory at Elgin, Ill., who was widely known throughout this country and abroad as a watchmaker of international reputation. He was awarded medals and premiums for his work in this and other countries. During the World’s fair at Chicago he was selected by the Swiss government to take charge of the magnificent exhibition of the watch manufacturers. He enjoyed a wide circle of friends and here in Galveston his friends were legion.

Possessed of those many traits which go to make life worth living and endear one to his fellowman, Mr. Adams Was a grand old man, whose demise is greatly mourned.

Surviving are a son and daughter, F. Adams and Miss Nellie Adams of Galveston, and other relatives.

NOTES:

¹This Chicago jeweler was John Calvin Adams. He was involved in the establishment of the following watch companies, National Watch Company (Elgin), Cornell Watch Company, Illinois Springfield Watch Company, Adams and Perry, Fredonia Watch Company and Peoria Watch Company.

Waubansee Stone Myth

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Halpin’s Chicago City Directory for 1864

Arnold Isaac N.

Fuller Henry

John C. W. Bailey’s Chicago City Directory for 1867
Arnold Isaac N. (Arnold, Payson & Gregory,) h. Erie bet Rush and Pine

Chicago Tribune, April 22, 1900

The First Ward in 1900

Waubansee stone

Few citizens of any great city know much about it. They go to Europe to see what they might find within an hour’s ride of their own houses. They grow enthusiastic over the picturesque Ghetto of Amsterdam, but are entirely ignorant of the greater Ghetto in the Seventh Ward of Chicago. Few Americans who have made the “grand tour” have seen as much of foreign life as may be found in Chicago. Within the city limits one may find the atmosphere and see the local customs of Palestine, Greece,. Servia, Croatia, Lithuania, Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, Russia, Italy, Arabia, and a dozen other equally interesting countries. The American abroad lives chiefly in hotels, which are essentially the same the world over. He gets practically no idea of the life of the people, which is the essence of the country and which the Chicagoan may study without leaving home.

Most people are even more ignorant of the fact that Chicago has a history. They look upon the city as a mushroom sprung up over night. On the contrary, it has a history stretching back for more than 200 years. For instance, the Drainage Canal, the last and greatest achievement of Chicago, was first suggested by Joliet, who foresaw what the country is just beginning to realize—that here was the proper location for a waterway connecting the great lakes and the gulf. Within sixty years of the first landing of the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth Rock the present site of Chicago had already been recognized and pointed out as the future gateway to the great West.

Since Chicago became a city and began its growth men have been too busy making history to set up monuments to mark its progress. But the town is full of historic sites and localities. Business-men pass them every day on the streets and are ignorant even of their existence. But every Chicagoan should feel it a duty as well as pleasure to become acquainted with at least a few of the more important. Such an acquaintance will lend a new interest to a walk about town or to a ride on the wheel. It will help him to realize that he is “a citizen of no mean city” from whatever standpoint it may be regarded.

The places of historic and of present interest are scattered all over Chicago. Because they are unmarked they are most often overlooked and neglected. An intelligent man, for instance, might pass up and down Lincoln Park boulevard for a lifetime without having his attention called to the historic Waubansee stone, which was carved by a soldier in Fort Dearborn prior to 1832, and which now stands in plain sight in the private yard at No. 100 between Erie and Huron streets. While this stone was still lying in the plaza of old Fort Dearborn it was used as a platform by Daniel Webster, when, in 1837, he was lifted up to the top of it to deliver a speech in which he phophesied the future greatness of the frontier village.

Because old Fort Dearborn was located in what is now the First Ward, and because it contains the business center of the city, there are more points of the historical and present interest within its limits than in any other ward. The value of the property in the First Ward makes it easily the richest ward in the city and one of the richest in the world. At the same time its resident population is largely made up of the poorer classes. The men who own the property live outside the down-town district, while a large part of the vote which controls the politics of the ward comes from the lodging-houses and dives of South Clark street.

Looking south on State street from Madison street. Starting point of the City Railways (Lake). John Hughes, Plumber, 107 State Street, near Washington st.John Carbutt, No. 75.

Inter Ocean, May 6, 1900

“Old Resident” Points Out Errors in Recent Publication.
Many Dates Wrong.
Tells the Unromantic Story of Famous Waubansee Stone.
Was a Prairie Bowlder, Drilled and Used as a Fountain at a Fair During the Civil War.
To the Editor,-Under the caption of “Chicago at a Glance‘ a page of the Chicago Sunday Tribune of April 22 was devoted to the history of Chicago. There was a map of the city with the places of historic interest numbered, and a “key” explaining the numbers and giving information as to dates, names, and places. The whole represented a great deal of painstaking work, and if it was accurate it would be valuable for reference as well as interesting, but unfortunately it is not. There are so many errors in dates, places, etc., that as an old resident who has spent much time in gathering and compiling facts concerning the early history of our city I feel constrained to ask you to call attention to a few of them in the columns of your paper. which circulates so largely among the “old timers.”

To begin with, the Waubansee stone¹, which stands in a private yard at No. 100 Lincoln park boulevard, has a rather interesting history, but not a romantic one, by any means. It was not carved by a soldier at Fort Dearborn in 1812, nor did Daniel Webster use it for a platform from which to prophesy the future greatness of the Garden City. The facts about the Waubansee stone are these:

During the civil war there was a sanitary fair held at Fort Dearborn park, and a prairie bowlder was dragged there. Workmen chiseled the outlines of a face on one side and a hole was drilled from the top and through the mouth. This was used for a fountain during the fair. It stood in the center of Michigan avenue. After the fair it passed into the hands of Henry Fuller, and to attract attention to it he made up a story about Indian carving or something like that.

Isaac N. Arnold’s home on the NW corner of Pine and Erie streets.

Among those who believed the tale was Isaac N. Arnold. Fuller owed Arnold, who was an attorney, $25 for professional services, and when Arnold asked him to pay the bill Fuller told him he could take the Waubansee stone if he would call it square. The bargain was made and the bowlder was removed to No. 100 Pine street, or Lincoln Park boulevard, where it now lies. This is the true story of the Waubansee stone.

But to come to the more important errors in the Tribune story. I will consider them by the numbers in the key. In paragraph No. 1, relating to Fort Dearborn, which was built in 1803-4, General Hull did not surrender the poet as stated. He did, however, order it evacuated, and the following day surrendered Detroit. Referring to. paragraph No. 2, the first agency was never used as a fort by civilians, nor vas It ever used as a military storehouse. it was taken down in 1857. The fort was used by civilians in time of danger from Indians.—Old Resident, Chicago, May 3, 1900

THE TALE REMAINED WITH THE ROCK.

Chicago Tribune, September 22, 1903

Did you ever hear of the Waubansee stone?

Do you know what the Waubansee stone is?

Do you know where the Waubansee stone is now located?

If you are a native or even a resident of Chicago and find yourself compelled to answer any of the above questions in the negative, you may as well admit at the same time that you are poorly informed about the early history of the city.

The Waubansee stone is certainly the largest as it is ore of the few authentic relics of Fort Dearborn. It is a granite bowlder, something more than six feet tall and three feet square, and bears on one side of its top a rudely carved portrait of the Indian chief Waubansee, who in the earliest days of the frontier fort often showed bimself a good friend of the whita man.

It you want to see the Waubansee stone, go over on the north side, walk up North State street to Huron, turn to the east and go as far as old Pine street, row Lincoln Park boulevard; then turn to the south, and about three doors from the corner, in the yard at the side of the house numbered 101 Lincoln Park boulevard, you will see a fountain built up of big pieces of carved stone, piled in a rough pyramid. In the center of this pyramid and projecting for some distance above it is the Waubansee stone, the same great bowlder which lay inside the stockade when Fort Dearborn was built, and from the top of which Daniel Webster, the “godlike Daniel,” predicted, in 1837, the future greatness of the swampy village which he was then visiting for the first time.

On one side of the great stone is still plainly visible the carved likeness of Waubansee, the chieftain, if indeed it be his portrait, for some historians are inclined to the belief that the stone is much older than that.

In fact, around the ancient and long neglected bowlder has raged an historic controversy which divided local antiquarians into a number of opposing school. As to the authenticity of the stone there has never ben a question. The difference is as to its origin and the uses to which it was originally devoted.

In the top of the Waubansee stone is a deep and rounded hollow. One school of historians holds to the belief that this hollow was originally made by the Indians, and that it was used for years before the white men came to raise a rude log fort as a mortar in which the patient Indian squaws, using another smaller stone as a pestle, ground the maize, or Indian corn, into flour for the baking of cakes.

This same school is also of the opinion that the rough carving of the head of Waubansee was made by one of the early regular soldiers at the fort, with the idea of pleasing the old chief-and there seems to be some reason for taking this view of the situation.

On the other hand, the second school of historians and antiquarians is convinèed that the so-called Waubansee stone dates back hundreds and perhaps even thousands of years before even Father Marquette first visited the site of Chicago in 1673. They see in the tall bowlder, with its deeply hollowed top, a sacrificial altar on which perhaps the mound builders of prehistoric America offered even human sacrifices, and they are ready to believe that the face carved on one side of the stone is a representation of an ancient idol-one of the far off gods to whom that mythical people poured libations and offered the sacrificial blood of animals.

However that may be, there is no question of a doubt that in the early days of Fort Dearborn, and as far back as we have any record, that identical stone, practically the same as it is today, lay inside the stockade of old Fort Dearborn. On its top, doubtless, soldiers of the ancient garrison basked in the sun or sat as they listened to the talk of the visiting Indians-allies or foes. It was, or seems to have been, a sort of a common rostruma common meeting place for the gossips of the little frontier post.

When, in 1812, Fort Dearborn was burned and its garrison practically wiped out by the savages, the Waubansee stone was left untouched. As it weighs something like 4,000 pounds it is easy to see why the Indlans did not disturb it.

Through the years from 1812 to 1837 it seems to have been left to sink deeper and deeper into the soil outside the log fort. Certainly there is no historical happening during that period with which it is conneeted. But in 1837 the Waubansee stone was made to serve a new purpose.

In that year Daniel Webster, already a famous’senator of the United States, had started to make a tour of the then almost unknown west. He came to St. Louis and there he received a magnificent welcome. At Alton, Ill., he was received with the ringing of bells and the blowing of whistles. The little’ village of Chicago evidently felt that it must do its best to impress the great man with its potential importance. So, as the chroniclers of the time relate, a great concourse of people, in wagons, on horse-back, and on foot, went out ten miles to the south to meet the stage in which Webster was journeying.

One may imagine the picture! The motley crowd of hunters, real estate speculators, farmers, small boys, Indians, and settlers of all kinds riding and driving pellmell down the long dirt road. And Daniel the great sticking his “Jove like front” out of the stage window, perhaps, to see what was approaching.

And even then Chicago people were determined to make a good showing. Never should Daniel Webster be allowed to rid into town in a stage coach. No, indeed!

They met him with a barouche, drawn, as the early’writer says, by “four splendid creams,”‘ and so they hauled him into town in mighty state. One may hope that Lake street, then the principal thoroughfare, had been especially made ready for the occasion, for, if one may believe the contemporary chroniclers, the Chicago streets of those days were almost as filthy as they are now.

Daniel Webster, so say the historians, was accompanied on this triumphal journey by his son and daughter. He was taken into town, and, one may take it for granted, prep-erly wined and dined. Then, later in the day, he was escorted to a platform made ready for his feet and lifted up on top of the Waubansee stone, and from that perch he delivered a speech, the eloquence of which still seems to dimly linger in the memories of first settlers, and in which he prophesied the future greatness of the present metropolis.

Again for a number of years the Wauban-see stone seems to have dropped, if not out of sight, at least into obscurity. But always the stern and rugged face carved on one side made it easy of identification, and there is no record that during these years its position was changed.

Finally, about the time of the war, Isaac N. Arnold, then a congressman from Chicago, took possession of the ancient rock and had it moved from its old position to his residence on the north side, where it still remains. It stood in Arnold’s yard when the great fire of 1871 swept the city and Arnold’s house went down in ruins with the rest. But the Waubansee stone safely came through the fire, suffering nothing more serious than & coating of smoke and dust.

After the great fire a collection of fragments of ruined cornices and carved cap stones, themselves now historic relics, was made and they were piled about the Waubansee stone, which stood, as it still does, in the center of the pyramid and projecting some little distance above the top. Also a hole was bored through the old rock and pipes inserted, so that now it serves as the capstone of a rough fountain.

Surely there are few, if any, such authentia and undisputed relles left to bind the Chicago of today to the Fort Dearborn of a century ago. Whether the carving on its face be the work of some long forgotten soldier in the frontier army of the United States, or whether the stone was eut by a mound builder of prehistoric times, does not at all affect its value as a historical relie which should be of interest to Chicago people.

Perhaps, even, it might be thought worth while to give the old stone a more protected resting place, where it would not, as it does now, face yearly the rains, the wind, and the disintegrating force of the frost and cold. And in a centennial parade surely nothing now in existence deserves a float all to itself.—H. M. H.

Chicago Tribune, November 16, 1910

RELIC OF THE EARLY DAYS.
Waubansee Stone, Granite Bowlder, Harks Back to Time Chicago Was in Infancy.
One of the most interesting relics of the days when Chicago consisted only of Fort Dearborn and a few scattered cabins along the river is the Waubansee stone, a granite bowider, some think more than six feet tall and three feet squire, that now reposes in the yard at the side of the Isaac N. Arnoid bouse, 104 Lincoln Park boulevard.

This stone is one of the few authentic relics of the early military post. On one side of its top it bears a rudely carved portrait of the Indian Chief Waubansee, who in the earliest days of the fort proved himself a friend of the white man.

More than a century ago this stone lay inside the Fort Dearborn stockade, and from its top Daniel Webster, In 1837, delivered a speech. About the time of the civil war Mr. Arnold, now deceased, removed the stone to his yard.

Waubansee (Wabansi) Stone surrounded by relics from the Chicago Fire of 1871, Chicago, Illinois, September 3, 1911. This granite boulder features a carved image of a Native American Indian believed to be Chief Waubansee (Wabansi). It lay inside the stockade when Fort Dearborn was built in 1803. Daniel Webster stood on the Waubansee (Wabansi) Stone to make a speech while in Chicago in 1837. In the 1860’s the stone was removed from its original location and put in the yard of the Isaac N. Arnold residence located on the northwest corner of Lincoln Park Boulevard (later Michigan Avenue) and East Huron Street. It came to the Chicago Historical Society in 1914.

HISTORY OF WABANSIA AVENUE (1700 N).
Street not mentioned in D. B. Cooke & Co.’s 1859 City Directory.

Halpin & Bailey’s City Directory for the Year 1863

Wabansia Av.

Wahpanseh St.

Halpin’s Chicago City Directory for 1864
Wabansia Av., from Milwaukee av. east and north-east to the river, W.D.
Wahpanseh St., from Halsted east to Vincennes, S.D.

John C. W. Bailey’s Chicago City Directory for 1867
Wabansia Ave. MapLocation: 2 B
Wah-pan-seh Ave. Map Location: 14 E

Edwards’ Annual Directory in the City of Chicago, for 1870
Wabansia Av., fr. the river to Milwaukee av W.D.
Wahpanseh St., fr. the lake w. to Halsted. S.D.

Edwards’ Annual Directory in the City of Chicago, for 1873
Waubansie Av., n. the river w. crossing Milwaukee av. at 1013 to Western av.

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1876
Wabansia av. (W.D.) fr. the River w. to Milwaukee av. and fr. Western av. w. to Washtenaw av.
The River…1
McHenry…47
Wright…
Elston av…99
Coventry…111
R.R. crossing…
Holt…123
Dickson…149
Ashland…167
Edgar…199
Paulina…225
Commercial…251
Wood…277
Girard…303
Elkgrove…329
Dudley…355
Robey…381
Milwaukee…389

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1904
Wabansia av. E. (N.D.) fr. the river n.e to 527 Clybourn av. Even Nos. n.s. N22
The river…1
Hawthorne…21
Marcy…31
Clybourn av…41

Chicago Tribune, July 14, 1929

WABANSIA AVE. NAMED IN HONOR OF INDIAN CHIEF
Befriended White Men in City’s Infancy.
This is the fifth of a series of articles telling how west side streets and suburbs acquired their names.

Wabansia avenue, 1700 north and running from the Chicago river west into Elmwood Park, was named after the Indian chief, Waubansee, who, in Chicago’s frontier days, showed himself a good friend of the white man.

Today, in the main hall of the Chicago Historical society building Dearborn and Ontario streets, is to be found the historic Waubansee stone, the relic having been transformed into a drinking fountain.

For many years, the granite boulder, weighing more than a ton, graced the side yard of the late Isaac N. Arnold’s residence on the near north side. Mr. Arnold has brought the boulder from the parade ground of Fort Dearborn sometime during the 1860s. On one of the stone’s rugged surfaces, the face of Waubansee is skillfully carved.

Resembles Aztec Art.
The sculptor of the Indian chieftain’s features was reputed, among early settiers, to have been a soldier at the fort, but archaelogists who have examined it say the face has a decided resemblance to the Aztec art. However, a depression at the top of the stone some eight inches in depth and a foot in diameter—which is utilized as the basin of the fountain, has every appearance of having been originally an Indian mortar.

The Waubansee stone is one of the few authentic relics of Fort Dearborn. It lay just inside the stockade when the fort was built. From its top, in 1837, Daniel Webster, paying a visit to the spot, predicted the great future of the swampy village.

The stone seems to have been a sort of common rostrum. It is said that sol diers of the old garrison sat on it and listened to the talk of the visiting Indians-friendly and otherwise. When the fort was burned in 1812, the stone was left unscathed. It weighted too much for the Indians to attempt to disturb it. During the years between 1812 and 1837, it sank deeper into the soil.

Withstands Second Fire.
The Waubansee stone was standing in Isaac Arnold’s yard when fire swept the city in 1871. The Arnold house went down in the ruins. The stone features of Chief Waubansee remained unchanged. They are not handsome features, as will be noted by visitors to the fountain in the Chicago historical society building today, but their owner did his best to aid this city’s first white residents at a troublesome time. The city, in turn, has honored the good Indian by giving his name to one of its streets.

HON. ISAAC NEWTON ARNOLD.

Chicago Tribune, April 24, 1884

The Hon. Isaac N. Arnold is lying at the point of death at his residence on Pine street. Mr. Arnold has been ill about six weeks, but has been confined to his bed only since Sunday morning, when he complained of feeling very bad. Since then he has been attended constantly by Drs. H. H. Johnson and R. N. Isham, but despite the best medical attention he has been gradually sinking. Last night Mr. Arnold was yet alive and retained his consciousness. While he would possibly live through the night, his physicians and family had given up all hopes of his recovery, and he himselt recognized that the sands of his long life were fast running out. His physicians say that he may possibly linger for a day or two longer. Overexertion of the mental faculties is said to be the cause of Mr. Arnold’s illness. At the time he was forced to take his bed he was engaged on a work which he was trying to complete at an early date.

The Story Of His Life.
Isaac Newton Arnold was born in Hartwick, Otsego County, N. Y., Nov. 30, 1815. His parents—Dr. George and Sophia M. Arnold—were natives of Rhode Island, whence they emigrated to New York about 1800. In his earlier years he had such advantages as the district and select schools of the county and the academy of the village afforded, and he improved them to such an extent as to acquire a very fair education for the duties of practical life. Thrown upon his own resources at 15, he found himself face to face with the stern realities of life, and the struggles which his self-dependent circumstances obliged him to undergo served to develop intellectual and moral characteristics which in after-time made him a man of influence and mark in the community. From 17 to 20 he taught school a part of each year, earning enough money to enable him to study and read law the remainder. He first entered the office of Richard Cooper, in Cooperstown, N. Y., and subsequently that of Judge E. B. Morehouse. He soon made his services valuable, and by trying cases occasionally in a Justice court was able to pay his expenses.

Admitted To The Bar.
He was admitted to the bar in 1835, when only 20 years of age. Entering at once into partnership with Judge Morehouse, he practiced there for a year. His first important case was that of a negro named Dacit, who was charged with murdering his brother in a fit of jealousy, the two having been rivals for the affections of the same woman. Mr. Arnold, who was satisfied of the negro’s innocence, volunteered to defend him, and secured his acquittal. This was the beginning of an extensive criminal practice, during which he never lost a capital case. Mr. Arnold came to Chicago in 1836, having only only a few hundred dollars and some law books. He opened an office, and a few months afterwards formed a partnership with the late Mahlon D. Ogden. The next year Chicago having been incorporated Mr. Ogden was elected Mayor and Mr. Arnold City Clerk. His business, however, increased so rapidly that he resigned before his term was out in order to attend to it properly. The State was then thinly settled and little improved, and nothing gave Mr. Arnold more pleasure than the relation of incidents in his early experiences, his long and perilous journeys on foot and on horse-back over the wild prairies, his escapes from wolves and Indians, and his getting lost during storms. It was not until 1842 that he began to take an active part in general politics. In that year the question of finances was the exciting one. The State was deeply in debt, in consequence of having entered extensively upon a system of public works. Some of the people favored repudiation.

His Appearance In Politics.
Mr. Arnold took a bold position against this course, and, as a delegate to the Democratic State Convention in 1842, sought to commit that party to his views. As the recognized champion of anti-repudiation he was elected to the Legislature, and in the session of 1842-‘3, made the “Canal bill” a specialty, embodying in it a scheme which he had made public in an address on “The legal and moral obligations of the State to pay its debts, the resources of Illinois, and the means by which the credit of the State may be restored.” His plan, which had been devised in a conference with Arthur Bronson, William B. Ogden, and others, was adopted, and the canal and its lands were pledged to the holders of the State canal bonds in order to raise the necessary funds, and under it the Illinois & Michigan Canal was finally completed. During that session he vigorously opposed the enactment of laws providing that no property should be sold upon execution or judicial process until it had been appraised, nor unless it should sell for twothirds of its appraised value. After their passage he carried the questions to the Supreme Court of the United States, which sustained his view that the laws were unconstitutional and void. Mr. Arnold was in favor of Van Buren for President in 1844, and, although one of the Electors, he supported Polk and Dallas very reluctantly. In 1848 he entered with great earnestness into the “Buffalo Platform’ Free-Soil movement, being a delegate to the convention and helping to organize the new party.

The Free-Soil Movement.
He, with William B. Ogden, Thomas Hoyne, Daniel Brainard, and George Manierre called a Free-Soil convention at Ottawa, which nominated Van Buren and Adams Electoral ticket and opened the first formal anti-slavery movement in Illinois. Mr. Arnold took the stump, and Cook County was carried for the ticket, Van Buren getting 2,120 votes, Cass 1,622, and Taylor 1,708. This was the starting-point of the revolution in American politics which made Lincoln President in 1860 and finally abolished slavery. From 1848 to 1858, although taking an active part on the anti-slavery side of politics in every campaign, State or National, Mr. Arnold devoted himself closely to his profession, being engaged in many important civil and criminal cases, and rapidly achieving a leading place among the great and successful lawyers of the West. In 1855 he was again sent to the Legislature, and lacked only three or four votes of being elected Speaker. One of his most noteworthy performances during the session was an elaborate and effective argument in reply to those who contended that Gov. Bissell, who had just been inaugurated, was constitutionally ineligible for Governor in consequence of having accepted a challenge from Jefferson Davis while in ConThe Hon. John A. Logan was on the other side. In 1858 Mr. Arnold was an unsuccessful candidate for Congress in the then Second District, John F. Farnsworth beating him by a few votes. Two years later, however, he got the nomination.

The Friend Of Lincoln.
The 26th of September, 1860, he spoke in a wigwam at Springfield for “Lincoln and Liberty.” The next day in parting from Mr. Lincoln. with whom he had for years been personally intimate, Mr. Arnold remarked: Goodby, Mr. Lincoln; next time I see you I shall congratulate you on being President-elect.” And I you,” replied Mr. Lincoln, “on being Congressman-elect,” whereupon Mr. Arnold rejoined: “Well, upon I desire to go to Congress chiefly that I may aid you in the great conflict with slavery that is before you.” “I know what lies before me,” said Mr. Lincoln; “and, if the conflict comes ‘thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just.'” Mr. Arnold was elected, receiving seventy-six more votes than were given the Republican Electors. Among the first for men who arrived in Washington during the latter part of February 1861 was Mr. Arnold, and from that day on until Mr. Lincoln’s assassination Mr. Arnold devoted all his time and energies to the support of the cause time Union and the efforts of the of the to preserve the Republic. He retired from his profession and gave himself up to his public duties. He was a radical Republican, had great confidence in Mr. Lincoln, and believed from the beginning that he would use all the power that he felt himself constitutionally possessed of to destroy slavery; and Mr. Arnold and his colleague, Owen Lovejoy, did much to neutralize the opposition of the more intense radicals.

In Congress.
His obituary of the Hon. Stephen A. Douglas was his first speech in Congress. He was Chairman of the select committee on the defenses of the great rivers and lakes, and in a report discussing the best means of protection strongly recommended the conversion of the Illinois & Michigan Canal into a ship-canal. He introduced a bill with this in view, but it was lost. He was reflected to Congress, and secured the Chairmanship of the Committee on Roads and Canals. He got through a bill appropriating $6,000,000 to aid the State in enlarging the canal, but it failed to pass the Senate. His career in Congress, which ended with his second term, be declining a renomination, was entirely satisfactory to his constituents. He introduced and urged through the act making all foreign-born soldiers who after service in the army should be honorably discharged, citizens of the United States; and what will stand to his credit forever in the record is the fact that he was t the first to offer a resolution for the emancipation of the slaves and the abolition of slavery entirely in all parts of the country.

In Private Life.
On his return to Chicago he was enthusiastically received, and was escorted to Metropolitan Hall, where he was formally welcomed and thanked in the name of the people, Col. C. G. Hammond, who died the other day, being Chairman of the meeting.

In 1863 Gen. Burnside, then commanding this military department, issued an order for the suppression of the Times on account of its disloyal utterances. Mr. Arnold, who was then in Chicago, with other citizens united in a request to President Lincoln to revoke the order, SO that a threatened outbreak might be averted. Mr. Lincoln revoked it. Mr. Arnold was severely censured for his course in the matter, but neither the President nor himself ever regretted it. In a letter to him on the subject the President said: “The small part you took in it is no proper ground to disparage your judgment, much less to impugn your motives.” Mr. Arnold performed good service after Mr. Lincoln’s renomination, making speeches in several States, and no man was happier over Mr. Lincoln’s reflection. During the last year of the President’s life Mr. Arnold began a history of Mr. Lincoln’s career and of the overthrow of slavery. To facilitate his work, which had to be performed in Washington, he was tendered the position of United States District-Attorney for the District of Columbia and also that of Auditor for the PostOffice Department. Before the appointment was made, however, the President was assasinated, and Mr. Johnson gave him the Auditor ship. He, however, afterwards wrote the President a letter, in which he told him he was not following in the footsteps of his “illustrious predecessor,” and resigned bis place: and then he came back to Chicago, where he completed his labors. The book he wrote is the most complete and faithful record of the subjects yet given to the public.

Literary Work.
He resumed again the practice of his profession, but of late years devoted a good deal of time to literary work, his last production being a “Life of Benedict Arnold.” He was engaged on another book, and too constant application brought on the illness. He took a great interest in the Chicago Historical Society, having been its President for several years. No name is more conspicous in the annals of Chicago than that of Isaac Newton Arnold, who achieved distinction as an able lawyer, an upright politician, a patriotio statesman, and faithful historian.

NOTES:

¹The diagram and notes was actually published in the Chicago Tribune, July 8, 1900 issue about the 24th Ward.

2026 S. Prairie

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Occupants: Louis and Christian Wahl, Levi Rosenthal
Location: 2026 S. Prairie (Old 964)
Life Span:
Architect:

Lakeside Directory for the City of Chicago for the Year of 1874

Wahl Christian

Wahl Louis

Lakeside Directory for the City of Chicago for the Year of 1876
Wahl Christian (Wahl Bros.) 49 Franklin, house 964 Prairie av.
Wahl Louis (Wahl Bros.) 49 Franklin, house 964 Prairie av.

Lakeside Directory for the City of Chicago for the Year of 1880
Wahl Christian (Wahl Bros.) 49 Franklin, house 2026 Prairie av.
Wahl Louis (Wahl Bros.) 49 Franklin, house 2026 Prairie av.

Lakeside Directory for the City of Chicago for the Year of 1884
Rosenfeld Levi, 76, 5th av. house 2026 Prairie av.

Lakeside Directory for the City of Chicago for the Year of 1885
Rosenfeld Levi, 76, 5th av. house 2026 Prairie av.

Land Owner, May, 1874

Chicago Tribune, December 27, 1874

Announcements.
There will be a party given at the residence of Mrs. Louis Wahl, No. 964 Prairie avenue, on the evening of the 5th of January. It is an eleemosynary affair, intended for the aid of the Women’s and Children’s Hospital, on the corner of Paulina and Adams streets. The Committee of Management include the names of some of the very best people in Chicago. Mrs. Wahl’s house is very large, and has a dancing-ball or bailroom, so all who are fortunate enough to obtain tickets for this worthy charitable enterprise are to be congratulated upon the pleasant evening they will undoubtedly enjoy.

Chicago Tribune, December 8, 1876

Event of the Season.
The party at Louis Wahl’s residence, 964 Prairie avenue, last evening, was the most notable social event of the kind that has occurred in two, or possibly three, seasons. All the world of fashion was summoned, and if any failed to attend it was through their own fault. The entertainments given by Mr. and Mrs. Wahl are always anticipated with a lively interest, as experience has shown that they know how to arrange affairs on the most liberal scale, as well as in the most agreeable manner. This party was yet larger and more brilliant than any preceding one. The list of invitations numbered close to 1,000. Of course, it was not expected that more than half of the favored ones would be able to respond in person; yet, even leaving out all who were prevented from attending by illness, absence from the city, Brother Moody’s influence, and the other usual array of impediments, there were yet enough left to fill to repletion the magnificent and capacious-brown-stone palace of the host. Never was witnessed a gayer scene than was presented last evening tn the annals of Chicago society.

The arch-enemy of society-goers, bad weather, did not come around. There was neither rain nor snow to fleck the delicate robes of the ladies. It was a clear, cold night; the snow was well-trodden; the ground was hard. It was a beau-ideal cf a night for such an occasion. Yet care had been taken to circumvent any sudden change in the weather-indications. An arched passage, prettily constructed of trellis-work, and surmounted by a substantial roof, had been built from the carriage-block to the door. This was carpeted, and brightly Illuminated by means of a reflector placed across the street, whose gleam threw the whole of the noble mansion into sharp relief, making a picturesque scene from the street.

The arrival of the carriages at about 9 o’clock added an element of life to the generally quiet Prairie avenue. In one continuous line they rolled up to the curbstone, discharging their fair loads and driving rapidly away, each one’s place being filled as soon as it had passed by. There was very little confusion, a man being stationed at the carriage-block to give directions to the drivers and assist the occupants of the vehicles in alighting. Naturally, some impatience was exhibited to get inside the house, as the bright lights, the distant music, and the moving throng of guests were all perceptible to the senses, and appealed to the curiosity with a strength that was more than ordinary. From 9 o’clock until after 11 o’clock the carriages continued to arrive.

Un the broad flight of stone steps the guests passed in twos, and threes, and groups, and processions. A stable attendant opened the massive doors, and ushered the new arrivals into another world,—a world of bewildering gayety, and light, and beauty. Passing up the stairs to the dressing-rooms a glimpse was afforded of the spacious parlors on either hand, glowing with life and color, and resounding with the animated voices of hundreds of people, while over all was heard the soothing strains of the orchestra in a far-off room. At the top of the stairs was stationed another waiter, whose duty it was to pilot the tide of humanity into the different dressing-rooms. The waves of life surged irresistibly up the. staircase, and parted on this rock of a domestic who was planted there irrevocably, the ladies going in one direction and the gentlemen in another. Of the 400 or 500 guests the following were among the most noteworthy: Mr. and Mrs. O. H. Lane, Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Rees, Mr. and Mrs. J. W. Oakley and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. S. D. Kimbark and daughter, Mr. T. Allen French, Mr. and Mrs. Wm. Brown, Mr. A. P. Kellcy and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Enos Ayers, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Hale, Mr. and Mrs. J. P. Nudd, Mr. and Mrs. W. C. Grant, Dr. and Mrs. A. R. Jackson, Mr. and Mrs. C H. Billings, Mr. and Mrs. Bryan. Miss Florence Bryan, Mr. and Mrs. C. H. Bickford, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Coomes, Mr. and Mrs. Hilton, Mr. C. W. Kltngman, Mr. Charles Packer, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Peck, Mr. F. A. Marsh. Mr. and Mrs. C E, Coburn, Mr. and Mrs. J. P. Smith, Miss Belle Smith, Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Thompson, Mr. Jesse Spaulding and two daughters, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Fargo, Miss Irene Fargo, Mr. and Mrs. E. F. Gale, Mr. George Snyder, Mr. and Mrs. Stevens, Mr. and Mrs. C. C. Chcnev, Mr. and Mrs. J. G. Coleman, Mr. Joseph B. Thompson, Mr. and Mrs. P. C. Hanford, Mr. William A. Mitchell, Miss Mollie Mitchell, Mr. and Mrs. R. E. Goodell, Mr. and Mrs. Marshall Field, Mr. and Mrs. William Chisholm, Mr. and Mrs. George W. Young, Mr. and Mrs. James Boland, Miss Alice Hilton, Mr. and Mrs. Ned Jones, Dr. and Mrs. Bevan, Mr. and Mrs. A. J. Galloway, Mr. and Mrs. C. S. Bartlett, Mr. and Mrs. Washington Hesing, Mr. and Mrs. J. T. Torrence, Mr. Ed Palmer, Mr. Ed Kimball, Mr. Fred Gibbs, Mr. and Mrs. Julias Bauer, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Gilbert, Mr. and Mrs. J. M. W. Jones, Miss Ella Goodridge, Mr. and Mrs. George E. Johnson, Mr. and Mrs. A. E. Bournique, Mr. C. C. Adsit, Mrs. Col. Mulligan, Miss Alice Nugent, Mrs. Nugent, Mr. N. Nugent, Mr. and Mrs. Jerome Beecher, Mr. and Mrs. F. Folz, Mr. George H. Bowen, Miss Nellie Beecher, Miss Mamie Beecher, Miss Josie Van Cott, Mr. and Mrs. R. C. Meldrum. Mr. and Mrs. J. O. Bryant. Mr. and Mrs. Sydney Myers, Dr. and Mrs. Henrotin, Mr. and Mrs. Ernst Pressing, Mr. P. A. Wilbur. Mr. James B. Goodman, Mr. Daniel Burnham, Mr. A. G. Sherman, Mr. and Mrs. E. Foreman, Mr. and Mrs. Robert J. Clark, Mrs. David A. Gage. Dr. and Mrs. C. G. Smith, Mr. J. A. Olcott, Mr. and Mrs. Hugh T. Birch, Mr. and Mrs. H. O. Stone, Miss Carrie Boardman, Miss Mary Price, Mr. and Mrs. David Kelley, Mr. and Mrs. F. R. Otis, Mr. and Mrs. Mackey, Mr. and Mrs. McBean, Mr. B. F. Dodson, Miss Nellie Medill, Miss Nellie Wadsworth, Mr. ana airs. A. Booth, Miss M. Booth, Mr. W. V. Booth.

The Reception.
At the door of one of the front rooms stood Mrs. Louis Wahl, attired in a rich combination suit of black silk and velvet, embroidered with jet. She was assisted in the reception by Mrs. Frank Wentworth, Mrs. Goodrich, Misses Alice and Carrie Neyman, and Misses Eva, Drusic, and Lillie Wahl. In the reception room across the hall Hand’s concert orchestra poured forth music through the parlors and corridors the guests streamed, handsome and handsomely-dressed women and attentive gentlemen. Up and down the stairways the throng passed and re-passed on their way to and from the ball-room. and the air sparkled with diamond-dust and was noisy with the rustle of silk.

Passing through the ceremony of reception, the dancers sought the upper floors, while those who met with old friends remained below for conversation. Mrs. Brooke Herford, elegantly dressed in black silk and laces, drew a small knot around her, while her daughter, Miss Helen Herford, in white Paris muslin, puffed and ruffled, and trimmed with black beads, sought the attractions above. The parlors were filled early, and adorning the promenade were Miss Minnie Shaffer, attired in Paris muslin, flounced and puffed from the waist to the hem, with Roman sash under the pannier, and her hair dressed with natural flowers; Miss Kinzie in white Swiss, trimmed with flowers, and her hair in braids; Miss Fannie Lyon, in white gros grain, with fluted flounces and garniture of fruit and autumn-leaves; and Miss Griggs, in heavy black and white silk, with flounces and puffings, the corsage high, and trimmed with natural flowers.

Clustered around Mrs. Wahl during the earlier part of the evening were Miss Kelly, in a gaslight blue silk, with overskirt of black velvet; Miss Josie Van Cott in tulle and puffed, and trimmed with natural flowers and leaves, with corsage of white gros grain, high, with graceful demi-sleeve; and Mrs. William Jenny, in rose silK, the flounces trimmed with faille, edged with dress material, and corsage trimmed with faille and flowers. In the further room Mrs. S. D. Kimbark. wearing an elegant combination an it of black velvet and silk, with trimmings of point, lace. discussed the fashionable topics of the day with a group of ladies. Mrs. Charles D. Partridge joined the group, wearing a cream-colored corded silk, a la Comptesee, the skirt in three deep flounces and trimmed with wide bands of maroon velvet, the corsage trimmed with illusion laces. As the evening wore on, the throng of beautiful women became more and more pronounced. The parlors overflowed into the corridor, and the reception-rooms were filled. Standing in the doorway was Mrs. Billings, in a rich embossed velvet and silk combination, and coral ornaments. Further on were Mrs. Charles Coburn, attired in lemon-colored brocade, and wearing diamonds; Mrs. James P. Smith, in black velvet and point lace, and Mamie Kimbark, in seal brown silk and velvet. Snrveving the scene, that took all the hues of the autumn landscape, stood Mrs. Charles Fargo, in lavender sun, with sleeveless tunic of cream-colored silk, and, near her, her daughter, Miss Irene, in tulle, with corsage of white gros grain.

In the lower part of the second parlor stood Mrs. S. A. Treat, in black gros grain, cut a la Princesse and trimmed with cardinal silk and laces; Mrs. Walter Peck, in chocolate silk, with sleeveless tunic of lemon brocade, trimmed with ball fringe; and Mrs. William H. Thompson, in rose brocade, in two shades, trimmed with autumn leaves and flowers.

Moving Slowly Through the Rooms,
and recognizing friends on every side were Miss May Bevan, in orange silk, flounced and puffed, with corsage trimmed with illusion, and Mrs. James Hervey, in cardinal silk, fronted with three folds, and trimmed with a broad band of velvet of a deeper shade, the corsage trimmed, with laces. Making her way through the promenaders for a tete-a-tete with her mother came Miss Ella Goodrich, in Paris muslin with garniture of autumn leaves, and corsage of white gros grain trimmed with leaves. Standing near the window was Mrs. McClellan, in lemon silk. in two shades, and trimmed with folds, and near by Mrs. Frankenthalt in black gros grain. with trimmings of lace and flowers, and Mrs. J. W. Done, in maroon brocaded velvet, cut a la Comptesse, and trimmed with lace.

Carriages were arriving rapidly, and the jingle of sleigh-bulls came and went. Ladies warm and fresh from the ball-room exchanged greetings with ladies cold and fresh from the wintry night. Thick heavy cloaks mingled on the stairway with rich silks and rustling muslins. Hooded figures went up, to develop into richly-dressed women when the coverings were thrown aside, me dressing-room hallway was preempted for the promenade, and Mrs. Bryant, in lavender silk, with deep tunic of royal purple uncut velvet, trimmed with point lace; Mrs. Col. Loomis, in pearl silk, with trimmings of stone-color; and Miss Sarah Wilder, in black gros grain, trimmed with puffed bands of lemon-silk and laces, led the way from the crowded rooms below.

At 10 o’clock most all the guests had arrived. There were a few who came later, but most all had entered upon the scene at that hour. A few moments for conversation in the parlors. and then

Up to the Ball-Room.
Chatting with Mrs. Wentworth, who wore lavender silk, flounced with puffiDgs and trimmed with tulle, and Mrs. Goodrich, in prune silk and velvet, the tour of the parlors, with a pleasant word to Misses Alice and Claire Neyman, in white Swiss, puffed and ruffled, the people passed around into the hallway to the staircase. Attentive to the comfort of the guests were the young daughters of the host and hostess, Miss Eva, in pale-blue silk, fronted in folas and trimmed with lace; Miss Drucie. in rose silk, in folds and a single flounce; and Miss Lillie, in pink silk and lace trimmings.

There have been a great many large parties in Chicago, but it is doubtful if any of later years have assembled so many handsome women. They came and went an almost end less throng, familiar faces giving way to new, and coming back again. Miss Fannie Lyon, in white gros grain, with fluted flounces and garniture of fruits and autumn leaves; Miss Nellie Medill, in heavy white corded silk, with over-skirt, low corsage and demi-sleeve, and diamond ornaments; Miss Carrie Boardman, in white gros grain, with trimmings of tulle; and Miss Ella Spaulding, in white silk, with ruff of fluted illusion, were succeeded Dy Mrs. Bournique, in lemon silk, with deep flounces, trimmed with flowers, and Mrs. C. H. Hale, in cameo silk, with lace overdress..

It was a success socially, albeit a little crowded in the lower, rooms, until the attractions above had drawn away a larger portion. It ls not within the accomplishment of any paper to afford a complete description of all the ladies, and but few compared with the numbers to select from are given.

Mrs. Dr. Bevan wore royal purple silk, with trimmings and corsage of black velvet.

Mrs. Dr. Gunn lavender silk, with overskirt of black lace; corsage a la Marie Antoinette, with bertha of lace.

Mrs. Wilson, lavender silk, with deep tunic of faille; corsage high; diamond ornaments.

Mrs. James Boland, heavy black silk, trimmed with broad bands of velvet, and ball fringe; corsage ol velvet, a la Marie Antoinette, heavily trimmed with point lace; halr laMaintenon; diamond ornaments. Mrs. H.

O. Stone, rose silk, with corsage of deeper shade. Miss Satterlee, gas-light blue suit, with trimmings of black lace.

Miss Mueller, white Paris muslin, with trimmings of black leaves, and hair neglige.

Mrs. Thompson, rose-colored brocade silk, with garniture of leaves.

Miss Carrie Tucker, ciel blue silk, with lace trimmings.

Mrs. Harry Hall, white gros grain, trimmed with point lace.

Mrs. John Clark, lemon-colored brocaded silk, with trimmings of narrow black velvet.

Mrs. Washington Hesing, gaslight blue with trimmings of point lace.

Miss Mary Price, black velvet.

Miss Stubbs, rose silk, with white tarltan over skirt and trimmings of flowers.

Mrs. Bartlett, elegant black silk and velvet combination.

Mrs. Small, combination suit of brown silk and velvet.

The Ball-Room
is a feature of Mr. Wahl’s residence that every society lady and gentleman knows how to appreciate. Life without dancing would be burdensome indeed to this class of the community. The entire upper floor of the house is given over to dancing purposes. The ball-room is after the mo6t approved models.

It did not take the younger people long to find their way to the ball-room. Hand’s orchestra was stationed at the head of the room, and was soon engaged in rendering some of the most seductive or waltz music. The scene on the floor was exceedingly pretty. The gorgeous gas-jets cast a flood off light upon the brilliant costumes of the ladies, and as they mingled in the dance, gave tho room the appearance of a kaleidoscopic warmth and variety of color. Following was the programme of the dances:

It is, perhaps, needless to say how long the dancing continued. It was certainly not midnight when the last couple left the floor. Meanwhile refreshments were served in the dining-room.

Chicago Tribune, December 10, 1876

The Wahl Reception.
There is no doubt but that the affair Thursday evening at Mr. and Mrs. Wahl’s residence, No. 964 Prairie avenue, was the most brilliant of the season. Everything was conducted on the most lavish scale. The invitations were almost limitless, and covered about all of Chicago high society. In the number of people present, and the display of dress, the reception was of marked importance in the social annals, and as such was chronicled in extense in The Tribune of Friday, to which the readers are referred for particulars.

Chicago Tribune, May 21, 1882

A New Device for Killing Cattle
An adjourned meeting of the Illinois Humane Society was held yesterday afternoon in the club-room of the Grand Pacific Hotel. Mr. John G. Shorthall in the chair. The new constitution adopted at the last meeting of the Board of Directors was formally adopted. It is an elaboration of the old constitution and aims to give the society a wider scope in its humane work. Mr. Christian Wahl produced a device for blinding cattle while being killed. It is made of thick leather to fit the animal’s head, and at the top is an eyelet hole of iron through which a heavy iron bolt passes. The animal is killed with a heavy blow on the head of the bolt. The device appeared to meet with favor, but Armour’s method of shooting the cattle is well thought of by the society. The society then adjourned..

Inter Ocean, January 2, 1887

Mr. Louis Wahl made No. 2026 his home, and often gathered about him the young people, that they might make merry. Upon the upper floor there is a commodious dancing hall. Mr. Levi Rosenfeld, a retired dry goods merchant and capitalist, succeeded Mr. Wahl in the ownership of this beautiful home.

Joseph Leiter Wheat Deal

Chicago Harbor
Chicago Grain Elevators
1908 Grain Elevator Fire
1939 Grain Elevator Fire

Chicago Tribune, August 22, 1897

Board of Trade gossip is not the most reliable news in the world, and men have been wrongfully accused ere this of making fortunes in big bulges when they were not guilty. Hence it follows that apologies are hereby tendered to any gentleman who may feel resentment because of his inclusion or exclusion in or from the above table. That large fortunes have been made in the upward movement of the grain market is beyond argument, but, like the foul ball that goes over the grand stand, the spectators of the game usually are too much interested in its progress to watch for what becomes of the ball after it leaves their ken.

“Smart” people on the curb are sure, however, that so and so has made a “killing” on the market, because they know he “got in early” and “staid with it.” If he “got out” surreptitiously, when he should have known better, it was his own fault, of course, and he is given no sympathy. The “I told you so” fellow is in his element at the foot of La Salle street these days.

The old timer on the board will find something interesting to say about each one of the happy number included in the above list. Most of them are men who have devoted a lifetime to the business and their present good luck is more nearly a matter of realized profits on many years of devotion to the business than outsiders will belikely to understand. There is one name, however, which is a striking exception to the rule. This is Joseph Leiter.

A new star of the first magnitude does not appear in the financial firmament every day, and perhaps none has ever risen more auspiciously than that of young Joseph Leiter. His name was unknown on the board six months ago. Now it is spoken with the same sort of awe and respect that R. P. Hutchinson and Ned Pardridge commanded in years gone by. For Joseph Leiter is credited with being the biggest winner in the world, with one possible exception, on this world wide movement in the upward tendency of the price of wheat. Two others share with him this distinction—Charles A. Pillsbury of Minneapolis and B. S. Barnes of St. Louis. But both of the latter are old hands at the game, and their success excites no wonder.

It is one of those moss covered, bifurcated traditions that sons of preachers always turn out badly, and that the sons of rich men never “amount to much.” But the world is full of examples to the contrary. When it first became noised that Leiter was “in the market” one curbstone gossip said the another:
“I hear Leiter is in heavy on the bull market.”

“O, I guess not. The wheat pit has no attractions for Levi Z. Leiter.”

“I mean Joe Leiter.”

“Who the devil is Joe Leiter?”

The profane curbstone orator knew very well who “Joe” Leiter was, but his amazement found no better expression. He had heard of “Joe” Leiter as the son of the one of the richest men Chicago has produced, and perhaps had “tabbed” and labeled Joseph as one of the “sons”—an appellation not uncommonly used persons who do not claim to be “sons” in designating others who do not claim to be “sons” in designating others who have the misfortune to be born with fathers of some note in the world.

It is nevertheless true that Joseph Leiter has been known to the public heretofore chiefly as a society man, who might possibly have an ambition to “burn” money instead of make it, so far as the curbstone and other divisions of the public knew. And when Joseph Leiter appeared on the horizon of the rising wheat market this summer the amazement was greater than if he had been plain “Joe” Smith or “Joe” Johnston.

Mr. Leiter saw a good thing and knew it when he saw it. The fact that he has made $500,000 or $1,000,000—as the gossips say—does not prove that he saw this good thing earlier or appreciated it more highly than others who have made less than 10 per cent of that figure. But it is believed that Mr. Leiter has made thousands where others have made cents, and henceforward he must submit to finding his name mentioned in the samll type market reports as well as in the society chronicles which are embellished with pictures of pretty girls.

Of course Mr. Leiter himself does not appear in the wheat pit with disheveled raiment, fighting and gesticulating in the manner from which the galleries derive so much bucolic wonderment. It is doubtful whether he has been within the walls of the Board of Trade during the time that this comfortable little fortune was being piled up by his brokers. A quiet, unostentatious gentleman named George French has been ther, however. Yet even Mr. French has not precipitated himself into the hurly burly of the bit. Mr. French has been Mr. Leiter’s agent in his operations, and Mr. French in turn has dealt with the regular commission houses. There are three of these which are supposed to be carrying the Leiter line of bull wheat, the Allen, Greer & Zellar company, C. B. Congdon & Co., and Norton, Worthington & Co. The firm first mentioned has figured conspicuously in the market reports the last few weeks, and before Mr. Leiter’s name was mentioned in this connection frequent referrals were made to “the Allen-Greer crowd.” Doubtkess there are many persons associated with Mr. Leiter, through common interest, in the bull side of the market, and it was not until recently that Mr. Leiter emerged from the obscurity of an anonymous member of “the Allen-Greer crowd.” Mr. French, who has prospered himself, it is said, by the appreciation in the market quotations, and who is credited with being Mr. Leiter’s alter ego in the business, is a New Yorker, and other New York men are said to be affiliated closely with Mr. Leiter.

It was six months ago when Mr. Leiter first essayed the market. He was a bull then and made money. His brief career on the board has not been entirely a summer’s dream, if reports are to be credited. His September line was sold out at 75 cents to 78 cents, and he went short. But a brief reverse was a mere incentive to greater victories, and when the market got around 80 cents he was back on the bull side, and now is said to hold between 3,000,000 and 5,000,000 bushels on the September option, with an ssured profit on that alone of nearly half a million. He also is said to have made a neat sum in corn.

Among the other notable beneficiaries of Dame Fortune is found in the name of David R. Francis, ex-Governor of Missouri and a member of the Cabinet of former President Grover Cleveland. Mr. Francis is an old hand at the business and has made comfortable fortunes in past years the same way. It is one of the most essential facts inn telling the story that St. Louis and the St. Louis clique with which Mr. Francis is intimately associated were the first to “get in on the ground floor.” They were the biggest bulls at low prices and they have stuck it out through months of uncertainty. In fact, it is asserted that St. Louis and the seaboard have grabbed off the bulk of the profits in the Chicago market this spring and summer, a circumstance which Mr. Leiter’s success does much to balance. It is believed by Chicago operators that B. S. Barnes of St. Louis has made not less than a million dollars on wheat in the last six months. Credit is given more to Mr. Haarstick than to any other, although he may not be among the heaviest plungers, for it is said that the “tip” on which St. Louis has pinned its faith came originally from him. He is the owner of a barge line which transports immense quantities of wheat to Europe, and through his correspondents he had early information of the shortage in the supply of the rest of the world. His information was of such an accurate character that there was no reason to doubt it.

Chicago Tribune, June 15, 1898

It Is not a Leiter wheat deal now; It is an Armour deal. By an arrangement made be tween Levi Z. and Joseph Leiter and Philip D. Armour yesterday morning and ratified at a meeting of Chicago bankers in the afternoon the Leiter holdings of cash wheat between the Northwest and Europe have been placed in control of Armour & Co.

In this manner the Armours take between twelve and thirteen million bushels of this cash grain off the hands of the Leiters. The total amount of wheat involved in the crash of Monday was not far from 15,000,000 bushels, but in the harmonious settlement one and possibly two smaller interests were not cared for. The wheat owned F. H. Peavey of Minneapolis was not included. He will have to shift for himself. Just what his line is cannot be learned, but it is known that he has between 2,000,000 and 3,000,000 bushels going to Mr. Leiter, which was bought at $1.40 to $1.45. Cash wheat in the Northwest is now worth about 90 cents. The Pillsbury wheat is included in the transfer to Mr. Armnour and A. D. Thomson, who stood between Mr. Plllsbury and Mr. Leiter, is breatjeing easier today. The external evidence is that Mr. Peavey Is the man who has laid himself open to charges of double dealing.

As to Local Stock.
It is possible that the small local stock will not be included in the deal made yesterday. It may go into control of a local distributor and be sold to mills in a retail way, The wheat involved Is In Duluth, Minneapolis, Buffalo, New York, on the way to the seaboard, and in and on the way to foreign markets.

The details of the plan for its disposal have not been worked out and will naturally from now on be subject to Armour ideas. All the parties in interest confirmed the change of control to Mr. Armour. John J, Mitchell went further and said that it was a sale and that the banks would get their money. The news was confirmed by Mr. Leiter and by a half dozen of the bankers who were at the meeting at the Illinois Trust and Savings Bark in the afternoon.

The two points which were not made the subject of official or semi-official an rouncement were the quantity of wheat transferred and the terms on which the transfer was made. It is knows that the bank interest in the grain represented in the aggregate over $10,000,000. If the bank loaning level has averaged 80 cents it is easy to figure that the total quantity of wheat is above rather than below 14,000,000 bushels. The estimate last night ran from 10,000,000 up to 16,000,000 bushels. The Monday visible supply statement showed about 12,000.000 bushels in the Northwest, including millers stocks. There was bout a million bushels at Buffalo, as much at Chicago, 400,000 bushels on lakes and canals, and 3,600,000 bushels at New York. Last Saturday there was 1,600,000 bushels afloat for orders. In this there is room for figuring a larger total even than 53,000,000 bushels.

As to the Terms.
There is, of course, no statement as to terms. The banks’ interest was said to be about 80 cents a bushel, and they have been satisfied. The statements, on one hand, that it is not possible to figure the Leiter losses, and on the other that the banks get their money just as if a sale were made, furnish the basis for a surmise as to the nature of the deal. Mr. Armour is not going to “hold the bag.” He has probably underwritten the wheat holdings somewhere below the bank price, agreeing to divide actual net profits with Mr. Leiter, who probably stands in the gap to the banks between the Armour underwriting price and the price representing the bank loan interest. In this way Mr. Armour has Mr. Leiter and the Leiter interest in full sympathy with him in his campaign of merchandising the wheat. In the original plan Mr. Geddes was to look after tho wheat going to British markets and Mr. Enghster the wheat going to the continent. When it is marketed the Leiter balance-sheet can be made out.

From the Bankers’ Standpoint.
The settlement relieves the banks of a responsibility they otherwise would have reluctantly been compelled to assume. It is doubtful if the banks could have reached any definite understanding as to the common disposition of the wheat thus left on their hands, for each bank had its own margin price with Mr. Leiter and each therefore would have had to consider its own special chance of profit or loss in carrying the wheat or in letting it go. Moreover, the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank, which had the largest Leiter loan, was so specially protected by the personal guarantee of L Z. Leiter, who is a director in the bank, that it could hold its wheat for possible good profit, while the other banks might have felt it necessary to close out their wheat at once in order to avoid chance of losses.

The lack of systematic plan in taking care of the market, with each bank acting for Itself in trying to get out without loss, might have resulted in some severe common losses. Two of the smaller Chicago banks having loans in the Northwest of about $50,000 each safely liquidated their wheat in the morning without making any previous inquiries as to the policy of other banks.

At the Bankers’ Meeting.
At the meeting of the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank in the afternoon were present the following:

Several others were also present and the whole meeting soon developed into a “hurrah” gathering, at least in so far as the bankers were concerned. There was great rejoicing when it was learned that the bankers were relieved of the trouble of looking after the fickle wheat pit, and as there was to longer need of any especial concerted action the bankers left the meeting one by one in good spirits. As they separated they said that the price which Mr. Armour was to pay for the cash wheat had not been announced to them, but they had been given full assurance that Mr. Leiter was to receive enough. to make it easy for him to pay back every cent on the bank loans.

Financial Backing of DeaL
The financial backing which Chicago gave to the deal is supposed to have been from a $8,000,000 to $9,000,000. New York probably backed it to the extent of $1,000,000 and other financial centers in this country and abroad also lent some aid. Some of the leading banks of Chicago are reported to have loaned as follows to Mr. Leiter—in every case on wide and safe margins which would have guaranteed against loss, even had the loans not been repaid so quickly:

What the Bankers Say.
Regarding the matter of loans and the meeting. John J.Mitchell said: “The deal ends to our satisfaction, for we are rid of the trouble of having to look after the wheat market. But there was no possibility of loss to us, even had this settlement not been made. All the banks were amply protected in this matter by a margin of at least seven cents. The Illinois Trust and Savings Bank was specifically protected by the guaranty of L. Z. Leiter.”

J. B. Forgan of the First National Bank said:
“The banks get their money and are well satisfied with the arrangement made.
There were no out of town banks represented at this meeting, but a majority of local concerns had loans. The First National line was about $1,000,000.”

J. H. Eckels of the Commercial National Bank said: “The banks of the city could
never have lost anything on the Leiter deal, so amply were they protected on; the wide margins Mr. Leiter had given. The arrangement with Mr. Armour makes a satisfactory, close to the deal for all interests concerned.”

W. F. Dummer, Vice President of the Northwestern National Bank, said that his bank had not loaned a cent to Leiter from the day the deal began until it ended. “We have much business,” he said, “with brokers, and Mr. Leiter may, through them as agents, have secured the use of some of our money. The amount, however, cannot be estimated, for the bank has dealt with the brokers as individual customers and has known nothing of the use they put the money to. Not having an interest in the deal, the officers of the bank have no reason for expressing opinions on its outcome.”

John C. Black of the Continental National said: “We had about $300,000 loaned to Leiter, and never at any time felt a bit of worry over it. Mr. Armour’s exceptional facilities for marketing wheat will, however, render him an especially desirable medium in taking care of Chicago’s interest in the matter.”

Chauncey J. Blair said: “The Merchants’ National Bank had no Leiter paper at any time during the deal—not, however, that it was undesirable, for loans on warehouse receipts are always of the best class. I am glad that everything is wound up satisfactorily.”

B. A. Hamill said: “The Corn Exchange Bank had no Leiter paper, but we would have felt no worry if we had, for the credit of the family could not be better. I am glad that all of Mr. Leiter’s creditors have reason to be so full of thanks.”

A. O. Slaughter said: ” Our loans to Mr. Lefter were on options, and not on cash wheat, and we shall get back every cent we loaned, and maybe a penny besides.

Joseph Leiter Talks.
With reference to his settlement with Mr. Armour, Joseph Leiter said last evening:
“My wheat is now in strong hands, and there is no doubt that its new holder will come out well with it. Mr. Armour takes up all my cash wheat in this country, all that is afloat, and all that is still unsold abroad. I do not wish to say anything about those who are reported to have worked to accomplish my ruin, but I am glad to acknowledge the kind offers of financial help from Chicago, and also to be able to announce, through the settlement with Mr. Armour, that not a creditor of mine is to be out a cent. The Chicago banks are saved the trouble of marketing the wheat they held as collateral, though I do not see how they could have been losers anyway. The wheat is now in hands where it may demonstrate its naturally strong position.”

George B. French said that the deal meant higher prices and a feeling of security all around.

L. Z. Leiter refused to discuss the matter or to give any details of the arrangement which had been effected between him and Mr. Armour.

Mr. Armour went home early right afte the deal had been ratified, but had nothing to say about its terms, he was outspoken in his belief that the price had got down where the millers will buy. He is a bull on the market and believes in a reaction and better prices.

Leiter Wheat Attached.
The announcement from New York that O. E. Lohrke had secured an attachment on a lot of Leiter wheat in transit through New York to secure money advanced for freight charges did not cause much of a flurry on the board, It being considered only an incident in comparison with the magnitude of the entire deal. The attachment was for $794,000, but not all this sum, it is alleged, was owing to the shipping agents at the time the attachment was secured. The sum, it is said, was made to cover claims which might arise within a reasonable time in the event the actual claim of $150,000 was not promptly settled.

But the matter was quickly adjusted through the New York banks and immediately following the settlement lhe attachment sued out by Mr. Lohrke was dismissed. Mr. Lohrke has attended to the shipment of about all the Leiter wheat which has gone out of New York in vessels and had a large number of interests to protect besides his own. This is one of the reasons why the sum named in the attachment so greatly exceeded the amount actually owed by Mr. Leiter.

No Excitement in the Pit.
The people who were accustomed in December and May to crowd the Board of Trade gallery to see the “rocket go up,” were on hand early to see “the stick come down.” There were a few splinters In the way of a Liverpool break of 10¼ pence, or a little over 12¼ cents a bushel, the report of the big attachment suit in New York, and the possibility that the pool among interested bankers would miscarry, but nothing worth while. The visitors were disappointed. There was no display of excitement in the pit, and it was soon evident that the “stick,” representing upwards of 15,000,000 bushels of cash wheat in all positions between Duluth and Europe, would be cared for.

The report that Mr. Armour was to take hold of the Northwestern cash wheat was undoubtedly one of the steadying influences of the day. The fluctuations in prices were surprisingly narrow. September and December wheat never sold more than a cent below the close of Monday, and closed with only fractional concessions. July wheat. even with the break of 12 cents in the corresponding delivery in Liverpool, only showed a net decline of 1½ cents. The pit trade, instead of being of the liquidating order, suggesting trouble ahead, was almost exclusively in the hands of scalpers, with no particular views as to development.

There was decided improvement In the cash wheat situation. B. A. Eckhart said he could not find any cash wheat offering for sale in this market. Millers generally were asking for offers, and some No. 2 red wheat went to Indiana at 87 cents, or two cents above the best June price of the day. The Monday export purchases at the seaboard aggregated a million bushels, ana there were further export sales yesterday. Exports were large, and there were important decreases in the available supply of the world and in the English visible supply. Minneapolis closed with a net advance for the day of one cent on cash wheat, and there were no important shrinkages of values in any of the domestic markets.

Viewed from Out of Town.
London. June 14.—The collapse of the Letter wheat deal has caused a panic in the Liverpool market. In London the news of the collapse was received with equanimity. The consensus of opinion of a number of operators on Mark Lane is that the English markets will gain steadiness now that “the plunger operating without regard to market precedence is shaken out.”

It is asserted on Mark Lane that the collapse was due to Messrs. Armour and Pillsbury. The newspapers generally rejoice at the breakdown of the Leiter plans and point to it as a moral. The Star says:

“If the prime mover in this war against mankind is beggared by his greed the retribution is well merited. Nothing can atone for the awful suffering Leiter and his accomplices have caused.”

New York, June 14—(Special.)—A ripple of excitement was caused in all street today by the announcement that Joseph Leiter had been sued by a firm of local grain traders. For a time it was thought that several such suits might follow and that some local embarrassment might result. It turned out, however, that the suit was rather friendly in character and had been brought by Lohrke & Co. of the Produce Exchange, correspondents of the young speculator here, to attach money to the amount of $793,924, held on deposit to the account of Mr. Lefter in the Chase National, Hanover, and Manhattan Banks. Mr. Lohrke’s attorneys said the attachment was to protect Mr. Leiter as well as Mr. Lohrke. The most salutary effect of the Leiter collapse has been the promise of an early reduction in the price of flour. A telegram received in Wall street yesterday from Chtcago stated that flour probably would be reduced there from $8 to $5 a barrel within a week.

The Trilogy of the Epic of the Wheat by Frank Norris:, includes the following novels:

These novels, while forming a series, will be in no way connected with each other save only in their relation to (1) the production, (2) the distribution, (3) the consumption of American Wheat. When complete, they will form the story of a crop of wheat from the time of its sowing as seed in California to the time of Consumption as bread in a village of Western Europe.

The first novel, The Octopus, deals with the war between the wheat grower and the Railroad Trust; the second, The Pit, is a fictitious narrative of a “deal” in the Chicago wheat pit; while the third, The Wolf, will probably have for its pivotal episode the reliving of a famine in an Old World community, Mr. Norris died on Oct. 26, 1902 in San Francisco.

In 1903 The Pit was adopted into a play and into a card game which is still very popular today.