New Britain was typical in Connecticut history in its parish foundations and its agricultural rise; it was atypical in its factory beginnings since it lacked a large water-power supply and it wasn’t on major transportation routes. Its “middle” factory period (1840s to 1860s) brought it to preeminence because of the rapid growth of numerous small companies; then the capital which was made available through partnerships and family ties made expansion easy. In 1850 New Britain, “The Hardware City,” had three businesses making hardware; by 1860 there were seven. Of the twenty-four small companies in metal production in 1850, twelve used Steam power, one water power, one horse and the rest hand power.
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Their products, such as hooks and eyes, brass saddlery, door bolts, etc., were generally small, labor intensive, and required little metal. By 1860 the companies had connected through partnership and expansions so that there were only fifteen companies, twelve using steam. Each company’s growth was considerable, however, P. & F. Corbin increased its manpower from six to fifty in seven years; Russell and Erwin from 143 to 400 in twenty. This growth intensified during the Civil War. In New Britain, the grand list for 1864 was $2,608,418, a large amount for a community of only five or six thousand people.
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On the state level, Connecticut’s grand list increased by $40 million and its bank deposits jumped by $10 million during the Civil War.
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This change in wealth is further explained by the state’s manufacturing output. In 1880, state figures for the employment and value of output were:
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____
Average number of
____
persons employed
Textiles
|
33,150
|
$ 53,514.768
|
Carriages
|
2,136
|
3,430,202
|
Ammunition
|
871
|
1,706,852
|
Hardware
|
12,458
|
15,892,856
|
Total Metal
Industries
|
9,723
|
$60,587,623
|
Obviously the metal industries were becoming an important part of Connecticut’s manufacturing scene. The number of factories grew from 5,128 in 1870 to over 9,000 in 1900.5
Appendix A shows the size to which some representative New Britain companies had grown as well as their nation-wide marketing techniques and, in some cases, their continuing family control. But we can’t assume that this healthy growth was without struggle any more than ware other portions of New Britain’s life during the period. Let’s take one company as an example:
New Britain Business Directory 1900
STANLEY WORKS. Organized 1852. Capital, $500,000. Butts, hinges, bolts, blind trimmings, etc. William H. Hart, President and Treasurer; L. H. Pease, Secretary; George P. Hart, Assistant Manager. Warehouse 29 Chambers, New York.
When that company was twenty-one years old the 1873, depression staggered the country and lasted for about five years. By the end of 1873, Stanley Works, which had just started to build a new facility on Myrtle Street, was trying to sell property on Lake Street because profits had fallen badly. In order to stay open, they
borrowed at banks till the company’s credit was strained, then got F. T. Stanley the founder to under write their notes . . . Hart the president had to go out and borrow personally. As he related the story in later years: ‘I have probably more than a hundred times started at Mark Moore’s at the top of Dublin Hill, and walked down the length of Main Street stopping at fifteen or twenty stores, borrowing money at three days later, taking the same trip, stopping at stores where I had previously borrowed money and paying the loans with money borrowed on this trip.’
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Disaster was stayed off because a community effort had kept the company open. Rut not all their enterprises ended happily. The Tack Shop, a divergent Stanley interest acquired in 1884 at the price of $25,000 worth of their stock, burned completely June 1st, 1892. So ended the tack business, but the several tons of tacks were “dredged out, separated by tumbling in revolving boxes” and packaged to sell cheap in big lots.
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That was the canny idea of W. H. Hart, the author of many notes on his career. A family memorial volume tells an interesting company history as well. It was Hart who convinced the company to switch from paper wrapping to cardboard with a standardized label. In pushing of Stanley to produce its own cold-rolled steel, “he represented the extreme radical wing of Stanley Works policy. He was bold enough to buy in 1871, a pair of rolls, relics of a Boston fire, that had been used for cold-rolling copper-plate.”
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The small beginnings and “chanciness” of these dealings come as a surprise to people of the 1980s who are used to an established if not aging factory city, and for that matter, an aging factory state.
The life within the factories is not easy to document. Public records and newspapers did not generally cover the worker’s life or working conditions locally. Labor history is only recently being written as the value of oral history collection becomes apparent. Appendices B and C give some idea of the materials available. There is no lack of material about our next topic; New Britain was most self-conscious of its newfound glory as a city.