PITTSBURG.
Pittsburg at Night.--A Pittsburg Fog.--Smoke.--Description of
the City.--The Oil Business.--Ohio River.--Public Buildings,
Educational and Charitable Institutions.--Glass Industry.--
Iron Foundries.--Fort Pitt Works.--Casting a Monster Gun.--
American Iron Works.--Nail Works.--A City of Workers.--
A True Democracy.--Wages.--Character of Workmen.--Value of
Organization.--Knights of Labor.--Opposed to Strikes.--True
Relations of Capital and Labor.--Railroad Strike of 1877.--
Allegheny City.--Population of Pittsburg.--Early History--
Braddock's Defeat.--Old Battle Ground.--Historic Relics.--
The Past and the Present.
By all means make your first approach to Pittsburg in the night time,
and you will behold a spectacle which has not a parallel on this
continent. Darkness gives the city and its surroundings a
picturesqueness which they wholly lack by daylight. It lies low down in
a hollow of encompassing hills, gleaming with a thousand points of
light, which are reflected from the rivers, whose waters glimmer, it may
be, in the faint moonlight, and catch and reflect the shadows as well.
Around the city's edge, and on the sides of the hills which encircle it
like a gloomy amphitheatre, their outlines rising dark against the sky,
through numberless apertures, fiery lights stream forth, looking angrily
and fiercely up toward the heavens, while over all these settles a heavy
pall of smoke. It is as though one had reached the outer edge of the
infernal regions, and saw before him the great furnace of Pandemonium
with all the lids lifted. The scene is so strange and weird that it
will live in the memory forever. One pictures, as he beholds it, the
tortured spirits writhing in agony, their sinewy limbs convulsed, and
the very air oppressive with pain and rage.
But the scene is illusive. This is the domain of Vulcan, not of Pluto.
Here, in this gigantic workshop, in the midst of the materials of his
labor, the god of fire, having left his ancient home on Olympus, and
established himself in this newer world, stretches himself beside his
forge, and sleeps the peaceful sleep which is the reward of honest
industry. Right at his doorway are mountains of coal to keep a perpetual
fire upon his altar; within the reach of his outstretched grasp are
rivers of coal oil; and a little further away great stores of iron for
him to forge and weld, and shape into a thousand forms; and at his feet
is the shining river, an impetuous Mercury, ever ready to do his
bidding. Grecian mythology never conceived of an abode so fitting for
the son of Zeus as that which he has selected for himself on this
western hemisphere. And his ancient tasks were child's play compared
with the mighty ones he has undertaken to-day.
Failing a night approach, the traveler should reach the Iron City on a
dismal day in autumn, when the air is heavy with moisture, and the very
atmosphere looks dark. All romance has disappeared. In this nineteenth
century the gods of mythology find no place in daylight. There is only a
very busy city shrouded in gloom. The buildings, whatever their original
material and color, are smoked to a uniform, dirty drab; the smoke
sinks, and mingling with the moisture in the air, becomes of a
consistency which may almost be felt as well as seen. Under a drab sky a
drab twilight hangs over the town, and the gas-lights, which are left
burning at mid-day, shine out of the murkiness with a dull, reddish
glare. Then is Pittsburg herself. Such days as these are her especial
boast, and in their frequency and dismalness, in all the world she has
no rival.
In truth, Pittsburg is a smoky, dismal city, at her best. At her worst,
nothing darker, dingier or more dispiriting can be imagined. The city is
in the heart of the soft coal region; and the smoke from her dwellings,
stores, factories, foundries and steamboats, uniting, settles in a cloud
over the narrow valley in which she is built, until the very sun looks
coppery through the sooty haze. According to a circular of the Pittsburg
Board of Trade, about twenty per cent., or one-fifth, of all the coal
used in the factories and dwellings of the city escapes into the air in
the form of smoke, being the finer and lighter particles of carbon of
the coal, which, set free by fire, escapes unconsumed with the gases.
The consequences of several thousand bushels of coal in the air at one
and the same time may be imagined. But her inhabitants do not seem to
mind it; and the doctors hold that this smoke, from the carbon, sulphur
and iodine contained in it, is highly favorable to lung and cutaneous
diseases, and is the sure death of malaria and its attendant fevers. And
certainly, whatever the cause may be, Pittsburg is one of the healthiest
cities in the United States. Her inhabitants are all too busy to reflect
upon the inconvenience or uncomeliness of this smoke. Work is the object
of life with them. It occupies them from morning until night, from the
cradle to the grave, only on Sundays, when, for the most part, the
furnaces are idle, and the forges are silent. For Pittsburg, settled by
Irish-Scotch Presbyterians, is a great Sunday-keeping day. Save on this
day her business men do not stop for rest or recreation, nor do they
"retire" from business. They die with the harness on, and die, perhaps,
all the sooner for having worn it so continuously and so long.
Pittsburg is not a beautiful city. That stands to reason, with the heavy
pall of smoke which constantly overhangs her. But she lacks beauty in
other respects. She is substantially and compactly built, and contains
some handsome edifices; but she lacks the architectural magnificence of
some of her sister cities; while her suburbs present all that is
unsightly and forbidding in appearance, the original beauties of nature
having been ruthlessly sacrificed to utility.
Pittsburg is situated in western Pennsylvania, in a narrow valley at the
confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, and at the head of
the Ohio, and is surrounded by hills rising to the height of four or
five hundred feet. These hills once possessed rounded outlines, with
sufficient exceptional abruptness to lend them variety and
picturesqueness. But they have been leveled down, cut into, sliced off,
and ruthlessly marred and mutilated, until not a trace of their original
outlines remain. Great black coal cars crawl up and down their sides,
and plunge into unexpected and mysterious openings, their sudden
disappearance lending, even in daylight, an air of mystery and diablerie
to the region. Railroad tracks gridiron the ground everywhere, debris of
all sorts lies in heaps, and is scattered over the earth, and huts and
hovels are perched here and there, in every available spot. There is no
verdure--nothing but mud and coal, the one yellow the other black. And
on the edge of the city are the unpicturesque outlines of factories and
foundries, their tall chimneys belching forth columns of inky blackness,
which roll and whirl in fantastic shapes, and finally lose themselves in
the general murkiness above.
The tranquil Monongahela comes up from the south, alive with barges and
tug boats; while the swifter current of the Allegheny bears from the oil
regions, at the north, slight-built barges with their freights of crude
petroleum. Oil is not infrequently poured upon the troubled waters, when
one of these barges sinks, and its freight, liberated from the open
tanks, refuses to sink with it, and spreads itself out on the surface of
the stream.
The oil fever was sorely felt in Pittsburg, and it was a form of malaria
against which the smoke-laden atmosphere was no protection. During the
early years of the great oil speculation the city was in a perpetual
state of excitement. Men talked oil upon the streets, in the cars and
counting-houses, and no doubt thought of oil in church. Wells and
barrels of petroleum, and shares of oil stock were the things most often
mentioned. And though that was nearly twenty years ago, and the oil
speculation has settled into a safe and legitimate pursuit, Pittsburg is
still the greatest oil mart in the world. By the means of Oil Creek and
the Allegheny, the oil which is to supply all markets is first shipped
to Pittsburg, passes through the refineries there, and is then exported.
[Illustration: PITTSBURGH AND ITS RIVERS.]
The Ohio River makes its beginning here, and in all but the season of
low water the wharves of the city are lined with boats, barges and tugs,
destined for every mentionable point on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.
The Ohio River is here, as all along its course, an uncertain and
capricious stream. Sometimes, in spring, or early summer, it creeps up
its banks and looks menacingly at the city. At other times it seems to
become weary of bearing the boats, heavily laden with merchandise, to
their destined ports, and so takes a nap, as it were. The last time we
beheld this water-course its bed was lying nearly bare and dry, while a
small, sluggish creek, a few feet, or at most, a few yards wide, crept
along the bottom, small barges being towed down stream by horses, which
waded in the water. The giant was resting.
The public buildings and churches of Pittsburg are, some of them, of
fine appearance, while the Mercantile Library is an institution to be
proud of, being both handsome and spacious, and containing a fine
library and well-supplied reading room. The city boasts of universities,
colleges, hospitals, and asylums, and the Convent of the Sisters of
Mercy is the oldest house of the order in America. There are also two
theatres, an Opera House, an Academy of Music, and several public halls.
But it is not any of these which has made the city what she is, or to
which she will point with the greatest pride. The crowning glory of
Pittsburg is her monster iron and glass works. One-half the glass
produced in all the United States comes from Pittsburg. This important
business was first established here in 1787, by Albert Gallatin, and it
has increased since then to giant proportions. Probably, not less than
one hundred millions of bottles and vials are annually produced here,
besides large quantities of window glass. The best wine bottles in
America are made here, though they are inferior to those of French
manufacture. A great number of flint-glass works turn out the best
flint glass produced in the country.
In addition to these glass works--which, though they employ thousands of
workmen, represent but a fraction of the city's industries--there are
rolling mills, foundries, potteries, oil refineries, and factories of
machinery. All these works are rendered possible by the coal which
abounds in measureless quantities in the immediate neighborhood of the
city. All the hills which rise from the river back of Pittsburg have a
thick stratum of bituminous coal running through them, which can be
mined without shafts, or any of the usual accessories of mining. All
that is to be done is to shovel the coal out of the hill-side, convey it
in cars or by means of an inclined plane to the factory or foundry door,
and dump it, ready for use. In fact, these hills are but immense coal
cellars, ready filled for the convenience of the Pittsburg
manufacturers. True, in shoveling the coal out of the hill-side, the
excavations finally become galleries, running one, two or three miles
directly into the earth. But there is neither ascent nor descent; no
lowering of miners or mules in great buckets down a deep and narrow
shaft, no elevating of coal through the same means. It is all like a
great cellar, divided into rooms, the ceilings supported by arches of
the coal itself. Each miner works a separate room, and when the room is
finished, and that part of the mine exhausted the arches are knocked
away, pillars of large upright logs substituted, the coal removed, and
the hill left to settle gradually down, until the logs are crushed and
flattened.
The "Great Pittsburg Coal Seam" is from four to twelve feet thick, about
three hundred feet above the water's edge, and about one hundred feet
from the average summit of the hills. It is bituminous coal which has
been pressed solid by the great mass of earth above it. The thicker the
mass and the greater the pressure, the better the coal. It has been
estimated as covering eight and a half millions of acres, and that it
would take the entire product of the gold mines of California for one
thousand years to buy this one seam. When we remember the numerous other
coal mines, anthracite as well as bituminous, found within the limits of
the State of Pennsylvania, we are fairly stupefied in trying to
comprehend the mineral wealth of that State.
The coal mined in the rooms in these long galleries is conveyed in a
mule-drawn car to the mouth of the gallery, and if to be used by the
foundries at the foot of the hill, is simply sent to its destination
down an inclined plane. Probably not less than ten thousand men are
employed in these coal mines in and near Pittsburg, adding a population
not far from fifty thousand to that region. Pittsburg herself consumes
one-third of the coal produced, and a large proportion of the rest is
shipped down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, some of it as far as New
Orleans.
The monster iron works of Pittsburg consume large quantities of this
coal, and it is the abundance and convenience of the latter material
which have made the former possible. No other city begins to compare
with Pittsburg in the number and variety of her factories. Down by the
banks of the swift-flowing Allegheny most of the great foundries are to
be discovered. The Fort Pitt Works are on a gigantic scale. Here are
cast those monsters of artillery known as the twenty-inch gun. Not by
any means a gun twenty inches in length, but a gun with a bore twenty
inches in diameter, so accurate that it does not vary one-hundredth
part of an inch from the true line in its whole length. The ball for
this gun weighs one thousand and eighty pounds, and costs a hundred and
sixty-five dollars. The gun itself weighs sixty tons, and costs fifty
thousand dollars, and yet one of these giants is cast every day, and the
operation is performed with the utmost composure and absence of
confusion. The mould is an enormous structure of iron and sand, weighing
forty tons, and to adjust this properly is the most difficult and
delicate work in the foundry. When it is all ready, three streams of
molten iron, from as many furnaces, flow through curved troughs and pour
their fiery cataracts into the mould. These streams run for twenty
minutes, and then, the mould being full, the furnaces from which they
flow are closed with a piece of clay. Left to itself, the gun would be
thirty days in cooling, but this process is expedited to eighteen days,
by means of cold water constantly flowing in and out of the bore. While
it is still hot, the great gun is lifted out of the pit, swung across
the foundry to the turning shop, the end shaven off, the outside turned
smooth, and the inside hollowed out, with an almost miraculous
precision. The weight of the gun is thus reduced twenty tons.
The American Iron Works employ two thousand five hundred hands, and
cover seventeen acres. They have a coal mine at their back door, and an
iron mine on Lake Superior, and they make any and every difficult iron
thing the country requires. Nothing is too ponderous, nothing too
delicate and exact, to be produced. The nail works of the city are well
worth seeing. In them a thousand nails a minute are manufactured, each
nail being headed by a blow on cold iron. The noise arising from this
work can only be described as deafening. In one nail factory two hundred
different kinds of nails, tacks and brads are manufactured. The
productions of these different factories and foundries amount in the
aggregate to an almost incredible number and value, and embrace
everything made of iron which can be used by man.
George F. Thurston, writing of Pittsburg, says, it has "thirty-five
miles of factories in daily operation, twisted up into a compact tangle;
all belching forth smoke; all glowing with fire; all swarming with
workmen; all echoing with the clank of machinery. Actual measurement
shows that there are, in the limits of what is known as Pittsburg,
nearly thirty-five miles of manufactories of iron, of steel, of cotton,
and of brass alone, not mentioning manufactories of other materials. In
a distance of thirty-five and one-half miles of streets, there are four
hundred and seventy-eight manufactories of iron, steel, cotton, brass,
oil, glass, copper and wood, occupying less than four hundred feet each;
for a measurement of the ground shows that these factories are so
contiguous in their positions upon the various streets of the city, that
if placed in a continuous row, they would reach thirty-five miles, and
each factory have less than the average front stated. This is
"manufacturing Pittsburg." In four years the sale and consumption of pig
iron alone was one-fourth the whole immense production of the United
States; and through the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and their
tributaries, its people control the shipment of goods, without breaking
bulk, over twelve thousand miles of water transportation, and are thus
enabled to deliver the products of their thrift in nearly four hundred
counties in the territory of fifteen States. There is no city of its
size in the country which has so large a banking capital as Pittsburg.
The Bank of Pittsburg, it is said, is the only bank in the Union that
never suspended specie payments.
Pittsburg is a city of workers. From the proprietors of these extensive
works, down to the youngest apprentices, all are busy; and perhaps the
higher up in the scale the harder the work and the greater the worry. A
man who carries upon his shoulders the responsibility of an
establishment whose business amounts to millions of dollars in a year;
who must oversee all departments of labor; accurately adjust the buying
of the crude materials and the scale of wages on the one hand, with the
price of the manufactured article on the other, so that the profit shall
be on the right side; and who at the same time shall keep himself posted
as to all which bears any relation to his business, has no time for
leisure or social pleasures, and must even stint his hours of necessary
rest.
Pittsburg illustrates more clearly than any other city in America the
outcome of democratic institutions. There are no classes here except the
industrious classes; and no ranks in society save those which have been
created by industry. The mammoth establishments, some of them perhaps in
the hands of the grandsons of their founders, have grown from small
beginnings, fostered in their growth by industry and thrift. The great
proprietor of to-day, it may have been, was the "boss" of yesterday, and
the journeyman of a few years ago, having ascended the ladder from the
lowest round of apprenticeship. Industry and sobriety are the main aids
to success.
The wages paid are good, for the most part, varying according to the
quality of the employment, some of them being exceedingly liberal. The
character of the workmen is gradually improving, though it has not yet
reached the standard which it should attain. Many are intelligent,
devoting their spare time to self-improvement, and especially to a
comprehension of the relations of capital and labor, which so intimately
concern them, and which they, more than any other class of citizens,
except employers, need to understand, in order that they may not only
maintain their own rights, but may avoid encroaching on the rights of
others.
Too many workmen, however, have no comprehension of the dignity of their
own position. They live only for present enjoyment, spend their money
foolishly, not to say wickedly, and on every holiday give themselves up
to that curse of the workingman--strong drink. While this class is such
a considerable one, the entire ranks of working men must be the
sufferers. And while ignorance as well as vice has been so prevalent
among them, it is not to be wondered at that they have been constantly
undervalued, and almost as constantly oppressed.
The prosperity of the country depends upon the prosperity of the masses.
With all the money in the hands of a few, there are only the personal
wants of a few to be supplied. With wages high, work is more plentiful,
and everybody prospers. The gains of a large manufacturing
establishment, divided, by means of fair profit and just wages, between
employers and employed, instead of being hoarded up by one man, make one
hundred persons to eat where there would otherwise be but one; one
hundred people to buy the productions of the looms and forges of the
country, instead of only one; one hundred people, each having a little
which they spend at home, instead of one man, who hoards his wealth, or
takes it to Europe to dispose of it. It means all the difference between
good and bad times, between a prosperous country, where all are
comfortable and happy, and a country of a few millionaires and many
paupers.
No description of Pittsburg would be complete without a reference to the
Knights of Labor, which has taken the place of the old trades unions and
guilds. While the latter were in existence, that city was often the
scene of violent and disastrous strikes. The great railroad strike of
1877, in which a number of lives were lost, and millions of dollars'
worth of property destroyed, culminated at Pittsburg, and for days the
city was stricken with panic. The cause of this strike was the decision
of the railroad corporation to reduce to one dollar a day the wages of a
certain class of its employees, which were already too low. The cause of
these strikers was just, but their methods were reprehensible. The
institution and spread of the Knights of Labor has rendered such another
strike an impossibility, as that Order, which has a large membership
among the workmen of Pittsburg, aims to settle, as far as possible, the
difficulties between employers and employees by arbitration; and its
spread will, we trust, if it does not pass under the control of
demagogues, eventually result in a better understanding between capital
and labor, and in a recognition of the fact that their real interests
are identical.
Pittsburg has no park or public pleasure ground. Its people are too busy
to think about such things, or to use them if it had them. On Saturday
nights its theatres and variety halls are crowded, to listen to
entertainments which are not always of the best. When its people wish
to visit a public park, they must cross to Allegheny City, on the west
bank of the Allegheny River, where there is a park embracing a hundred
acres, containing a monument to Humboldt, and ornamented with small
lakes. The Soldiers' Monument, erected to the memory of four thousand
men of Allegheny County who lost their lives in the war of the
Rebellion, is also in this latter city, on a lofty hill near the river,
in the eastern part of the city. Many of the handsome residences of
Pittsburg's merchants and manufacturers are to be seen in this city,
which is also famous for its manufacturing interests, and is connected
with Pittsburg by five bridges. Birmingham is a flourishing suburb on
the opposite bank of the Monongahela River, containing important glass
and iron manufactories.
The present population of Pittsburg is 156,381 inhabitants. The first
settlement upon the site of the city was in 1754, when a French trading
post was established and named Fort Duquesne. On July ninth, 1755,
General Braddock, in command of two thousand British troops, accompanied
by Colonel Washington with eight hundred Virginians, marched toward Fort
Duquesne with the intention of capturing it. When within a few miles of
the fort, they were surprised by a large party of French and Indians in
ambush, and Braddock, who angrily disregarded Washington's advice, saw
his troops slaughtered by an invisible enemy. The English and colonists
lost seven hundred and seventy-seven men, killed and wounded, while the
enemy's loss was scarcely fifty. Braddock himself was mortally wounded,
and died upon the battle field, and in order that his remains might not
be disturbed, Washington buried him in the road, and ordered the wagons
in their retreat to drive over his grave. Washington himself escaped
unhurt, though he had two horses shot under him, and had four bullets
sent through his clothes. An Indian who was engaged in this battle
afterwards said that he had seventeen fair fires at Washington during
the engagement, but was unable to wound him.
In 1758, Fort Duquesne was abandoned by the French, and immediately
occupied by the English, who changed its name to Fort Pitt, in honor of
William Pitt. As a town its settlement dates from 1765. In 1804 it was
incorporated as a borough, and in 1816 chartered as a city. Its
population in 1840, was a little more than 20,000. In 1845 a great part
of the city was destroyed by fire, but was quickly rebuilt, its
prosperity remaining unchecked.
A little less than ten miles from Pittsburg is the village called
Braddock's Field, which, in the names of its streets, perpetuates the
old historic associations. The ancient Indian trail which led to the
river is still preserved, and the two shallow ravines in which the
French and Indians lay concealed when they surprised Braddock's troops
are still there, though denuded of the dense growth of hazel bushes
which at that period served the purpose of an ambush. From an old oak in
this neighborhood many bullets have been pried out by persevering relic
hunters; while in the adjacent gardens the annual spring plowing
invariably turns up mementoes of that historic event, in the shape of
bullets, arrow heads, and even bayonets. A sword with a name engraved
upon it has also been found.
The Pennsylvania Railroad now crosses the location of the thickest of
the fight, and at the time of its construction a considerable number of
human bones were dug up and reinterred, the place of the later interment
being surrounded by a rough fence of common rails. Children now play
where once the forces of their nation engaged in deadly warfare. The
hillside, which was then pierced by bullets, is now perforated near its
summit by large openings, through which emerge car-loads of coal. Thus
the present and the past strike hands across the century, and modern
civilization, with its implements of industry and its appliances of
commerce, supersedes and obliterates the traces of savagery, and of the
deadly enmity of man toward man. The sword is turned into the plowshare,
and peace triumphs over bloodshed.