Ohio History Journal

G. WALLACE CHESSMAN

 

Town Promotion in the Progressive

Era: The Case of Newark, Ohio

 

 

On July 8, 1910, an angry mob stormed the county jail at Newark,

Ohio, seized a young, white "dry detective" being held there, carried

him off to the courthouse square and lynched him.¹ That violent act

stunned local leaders who had long promoted their booming industrial

town in Licking County as "the best place in Ohio to live and work."

At the same time it dramatized the inter-city struggle that had long

engaged business interests in most American cities of that era, as each

sought to outdo its closest rivals in the competition for growth.

Town promotion has a history going back to the "urban frontier"

of the late eighteenth century. Few American communities did not have

boosters seeking to attract new migrants, new means of transport,

new institutions public and private. By the 1850s civic leaders in Cin-

cinnati, Cleveland, and Columbus had formed local associations to pro-

mote trade in a regular, systematic fashion. With the rise of manufac-

turing in the post-Civil War period, the focus of inter-city rivalry east

of the Mississippi shifted to the acquisition of new industry. It was into

this latter competition that Newark and other towns of similar size soon

entered.2

Characteristically, Newark promoters approached their work in a pa-

rochial fashion. They did not place their efforts within a historical con-

 

G. Wallace Chessman is Professor of History at Denison University, Granville,

Ohio.

 

1. A "dry detective" was a private individual hired by prohibitionists to enforce local

liquor laws.

2. On earlier efforts at town promotion, see especially Richard W. Wade, The Urban

Frontier: The Rise of Western Cities, 1790-1830 (Cambridge, 1959), Chapters 1-2, 6, 10;

Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans: The National Experience (New York, 1965), Part

Three; Harry N. Scheiber, "Urban Rivalry and Internal Improvements in the Old North-

west, 1820-1860," Ohio History, LXXI (October 1962), 227-39, 290-92; Charles N.

Glaab, Kansas City and the Railroads (Madison, 1962); Blake McKelvey, The Urbaniza-

tion of America 1860-1915 (New Brunswick, 1963), Chapter 2; Kenneth Sturges,

American Chambers of Commerce (New York, 1915). See also Henry L. Hunker, Indus-

trial Evolution of Columbus, Ohio (Columbus, 1958). Milwaukee's Chamber of Com-

merce was one of the first to raise a fund to "promote the city's industrial growth," in

1869; see Bayrd Still, Milwaukee: The History of a City (Madison, 1948; rev. ed., 1965),

348-53.

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254                                                    OHIO HISTORY

 

text, nor did they generalize broadly about American developments;

theirs did seem in the 1880s an "island community" such as Robert

Wiebe has described. From examples close at hand they nevertheless

derived some notion of wider influences, whether in schemes for at-

tracting industry or later in programs for civic improvement. Through

three and a half decades after 1880 their town would become ever more

involved in the new urban-industrial system that was destroying auton-

omous communities across the land. Theirs would indeed be an evolu-

tion typical of small-town America during the Progressive Era.³

To contest with other cities at all required certain "natural advan-

tages" that Newark boosters appreciated. Situated in a farming area

that in the 1880s led all Ohio counties in wool production, their town

was a logical market center. To the south were abundant coal fields,

while the Licking River valley assured a copious supply of water; and

in 1887 drillers brought in the first of many wells from the natural gas

and oil beneath Licking and Knox counties. "Columbus is green with

envy over Newark's success in the natural gas line, and her press

sneers at 'these fools from Newark who blow their money in the gas-

hole'," the Newark Advocate soon reported. "Regards to Columbus.

These fools from Newark will come over and buy your village presently,

and make a base ball park out of it."⁴

To these natural advantages were added those of transport. By the

1880s Newark citizens no longer prized their access by the Ohio Canal

to Cleveland, or to Portsmouth on the Ohio River, but the Baltimore

and Ohio and the Pennsylvania's Panhandle line gave them first-class

rail facilities in all directions. The National Road between Zanesville

and Columbus passed six miles to the south, and the Toledo and Ohio

Central Railroad from Pomeroy to Toledo passed three miles to the

west, but neither of these tricks of fate seemed crucial to business.

Newark soon connected with T.&O.C. at the college town of Granville

over the electric interurban completed in 1890.

Beyond natural advantages and transport, men valued the social and

cultural character of a community. Newark's population of 9,900 in

1880, which was almost to triple by 1910, was for the most part law-

abiding and moral, interested in good schools and attractive churches

and decent entertainment. A substantial minority of first- and second-

generation immigrants supported a German-language weekly, the New-

 

3. Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order 1877-1920 (New York, 1967).

4. Newark Advocate, June 23, 1887. The Licking-Knox discoveries were less spectac-

ular than the great Karg well at Findlay, Ohio, but had much the same impact described

for the Indiana field by the Lynds; see William D. Humphrey, Findlay: The Story of a

Community (Findlay, 1961), and Robert S. and Helen M. Lynd, Middletown: A Study in

American Culture (New York, 1929).

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Town Promotion in Newark                                               255

 

ark Express, while most Republicans subscribed to the American,

and most Democrats to the Advocate. College-bound youth looked

first to Granville's two female seminaries and to its men's college,

Denison University. Along Gingerbread Row and near the B.&O. sta-

tion were many bars and sporting houses, as in any railroad town, but

around the public square were a Music Hall and several excellent res-

taurants.

In fact Newark had so many advantages, argued Common Pleas

Judge Samuel M. Hunter in 1882, that its prosperity was only being

retarded "by the careless and disparaging talk of its own citizens, and

by the ill-will of its neighbors. It has natural advantages that are equal

to any inland city in the State; its population, in intelligence, and all

that goes to make up a good community, is surpassed by none of its neigh-

bors; its public schools are the peer of any in Ohio; its health is un-

equalled; and it is the county seat of one of the very best counties in

the great State of Ohio."⁵

Hunter and other boosters agreed with Advocate editor J. H. Newton

that what Newark needed was "more manufactories." In 1880 the city

had a carriage works, several foundries, a glass plant, some machine

shops, flour and planing mills, but all were small-scale operations;

by far the largest employer was the B.&O., with some two hundred

men in its yards and shops. Newton did not hold out much hope for

acquiring "rolling mills, blast furnaces, nail works, potteries and the

like"; rather he wanted "some works . . . to meet the requirements of

the farmer and local commerce," such as a factory producing agricul-

tural implements, or furniture, or a score of other products "so largely

used in this community, which are now brought from a distance." To

establish new industries that would fill chiefly rural needs, and to in-

duce Licking County residents to do more buying "at home"-that

was Newton's formula for growth.⁶

The great obstacle to this plan was the paucity of private local capi-

tal to establish or attract new industry. To fill the gap the city issued

municipal bonds. In 1881, under an Ohio law which Canton, Spring-

 

5. Advocate, February 24, 1882. Newspapers are the central and essential sources for

this study, and the Newark Advocate is especially useful because its proprietors followed

Board of Trade doings so carefully and fully; the weekly or semi-weekly editions (which

are usually used in this article prior to 1916) carry all the major stories from the daily,

usually identified by the day itself. The most recent study of Newark and Licking County

is Gordon R. Kingery, A Beginning (Newark, 1967); older works, of most use for the

earlier years, are N. N. Hill, Jr., comp., History of Licking County, 0., Its Past and Pres-

ent (Newark, 1881), and E. M. P. Brister, Centennial History of the City of Newark and

Licking County, Ohio (2 vols., Columbus, 1909).

6. Advocate, August 20, 27, September 3, 10, 1880. An engaging reminiscence of

family life in Newark then is Robbins Hunter, The Judge Rode a Sorrel Horse (New

York, 1950).

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256                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

field and Delaware had each employed previously, the voters of Newark

approved issuance of "Machine Shop Bonds" to assist industries that

would locate there. The city council authorized $50,000 in six-percent

bonds, from which $37,500 was to be devoted to relocating the Hagers-

town (Md.) Agricultural Works. Renamed the Newark Machine Com-

pany, the new factory functioned successfully for two years, whereupon

a fire and a drawn-out insurance dispute necessitated transfer of oper-

ations to rented facilities in Columbus. Not until over a decade later,

and then only after a financial concession by the city and a $5,000 sub-

scription drive by the Board of Trade, was Newark Machine to return

to its West End site.⁷

In 1887 city business interests formed a Board of Trade. Hitherto

it had been up to individuals or ad hoc groups, in the informal, unor-

ganized way of the small town, to advance some manufacturing project

or to agitate for an improvement in municipal services. The weakness

of such disjointed efforts had become apparent in ill-directed campaigns

to secure a rail connection with the T.&O.C. and to construct a munici-

pal water plant. And from their "island community" Newark boosters

had to look no further than Columbus to see that the Board of Trade

there was so well established that it was about to construct its own

building. Even Zanesville had had a trade association since 1868; in-

deed, in forming such a body Newark would only be doing what city

after city had been doing since the Civil War. By 1886 the Newark

American was calling for a "Board of Commerce" to do something

about relocating a Columbus shoe firm in the city. In February 1887 the

Advocate simply announced that the "Board of Trade" had obtained a

new industry, the Newark Wire Cloth Manufacturing Company.⁸

The first president of the Newark Board was a dry goods merchant;

the secretary, a prominent grain dealer. At annual elections subse-

quently the body also elected a vice-president, a treasurer, and a board

of directors. Local railroad officials, bankers, lumber dealers, real estate

brokers, builders, lawyers, editors, small-business proprietors, man-

agers in various enterprises-such men made up the membership. Labor

unions were not represented, nor did clergymen, doctors, or city officers

 

7. Advocate, April 8, May 20, 1881; July 10, 1884; November 8, 1894.

8. Newark American, December 2, 1886; Advocate, February 24, 1887. McKelvey,

Urbanization, 42-45. The Columbus Board of Trade was first formed in 1858; it had to

be re-formed in 1866, 1872, and 1884, and in December 1886 resolved to construct its own

building, finally completed in 1889. Osman C. Hooper, History of the City of Columbus,

Ohio (Columbus, 1920). 263-64. On the Cleveland Board of Trade, first formed in 1848

and reorganized as the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce in 1893, see William G. Rose,

Cleveland: The Making of a City (Cleveland, 1950). Cincinnati boasted the state's old-

est commercial body; see Philip D. Jordan, Ohio Comes of Age, 1873-1900, vol. V of

Carl Wittke, ed., The History of the State of Ohio (Columbus, 1943), 243.

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Town Promotion in Newark                                      257

 

usually participate, but the community's business interests, both mer-

cantile and industrial, were well represented.

Initally Board leaders did not visualize a financial role for the organi-

zation. Acquisition of the wire cloth firm had involved no bonus, nor

were members assessed for a fund to attract industry. Instead, influ-

enced quite obviously by the Columbus Board of Trade, Newark direc-

tors in 1889 helped to organize "an Industrial association-an associa-

tion of the people-to co-operate with the board of trade of this city in

securing new manufacturing enterprises and in developing the city's re-

sources in a manner commensurate with her many natural advantages."

In a public letter a former vice-president of the Board urged "every citi-

zen to become a member of the Industrial Aid Society," which was de-

signed "for and within the reach of every citizen, and if the people give

it the aid it deserves, Newark will soon be placed to the fore front as

one of the best cities of the state."⁹

Few citizens gave their dollars to the new society, yet the Board soon

learned how useful such a fund might be. In November 1889 a New

York promoter who had organized the city's first horse-car railway

company offered to build a rail connection with the T.&O.C. if citizens

would "donate the comparatively small sum of six thousand dollars

toward the project." Hurriedly a subscription paper was circulated;

within a week the sum was pledged. Though the scheme eventually

fell through, the lesson was clear: the Board needed capital if it was to

exploit opportunities.10

"Newark is just now at that point in her history when she must take

aggressive steps to insure her progress or she will retrograde to the point

where the property now owned will depreciate in value to an alarming

extent," the American pointed out in March 1890. "Not a week passes

that members of the Board of Trade do not receive proposals from

manufacturing institutions working from fifty to five hundred hands

who want to locate in our city if we can give them a little help." If we

can give them a little help-that was the crucial element. "At present the

Board of Trade and the city council are without a cent to aid in this di-

rection," editor W. C. Lyon quickly noted, "and as a result other cities

are securing these institutions, and are gaining upon us in point of popu-

lation and commercial standing, . . ."11

On March 6, 1890, this Republican paper enthusiastically endorsed

the Board of Trade's request that the city council call a special munici-

pal election asking the legislature to pass an enabling act giving a cer-

 

 

9. W. H. S. (William H. Smith) to the editor, Advocate, October 31, 1889.

10. Ibid., November 7, 1889; see also June 30, 1887, and American, July 19, 1888.

11. Ibid., March 6, 1890.

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258                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

tain sum of money to be used in getting manufacturing plants located

in the city. Within a month Newark leaders had obtained a state law

permitting city council to authorize $60,000 in bonds and to levy taxes

in order to assist manufacturers. In June 1890 the citizens gave their

approval by a majority of 158 in a total vote of 1,334.12

The first applicant to the Board of Trade and city council for a portion

of these new funds was young E. H. Everett, who in 1880 had taken

over the Newark Star Glass works and now was anxious to convert

from pots to the more efficient continuous-tank system of manufacture.

Everett's request for $50,000 for his plant (maker of "the best self-seal-

ing lightning fruit jar in the world . . . the best and most extensively

used rubber stopper bottle") struck some councilmen as much too large;

negotiations stalled until a committee of the Board of Trade concluded

from extensive investigation that "continuous tank furnaces are the

coming system for the manufacture of glass" and that an efficient in-

stallation would require a $52,900 investment. By making the building

only partly fireproof the cost could be reduced to $35,000, which sum

the Board and then the council finally voted on condition that 350 hands

be worked ten months a year for ten years.13

The Board's work was far from over, however, because Judge

Charles Follett and engine manufacturer Julius J. D. McNamar filed

suit to stop the whole bond issue. For weeks Board representatives

interceded with these men to withdraw their action. If only they would

do so, Judge Hunter assured a packed house at the Music Hall in

April 1891, "there was not another man in the city who would exercise

his legal right to bring injunction proceedings as to the constitutional-

ity of the enabling act." American editor Lyon also joined the effort,

arguing that "we should have the constitutional right as a city to tax

ourselves as we see fit." But neither Lyon, nor Hunter, nor anyone

else could shake the stubborn McNamar. The municipal-aid scheme

simply collapsed before the challenge.14

At this critical juncture some Board members tried to resurrect the

Industrial Aid Society, but Everett thought so little of that possibility

that he went ahead privately with his reconstruction. Others turned to

what proved to be a successful project, location of the state encamp-

ment for the National Guard in West Newark. By the spring of 1894,

 

 

12. Ibid., March 6, April 24, June 12, 1890.

13. Brister, Centennial History, I, 524; Advocate, February 12, March 12, 1891.

14. Ibid., March 19, April 23, 1891. In his account of the Board's history (see Advo-

cate, January 2, 1913), Charles C. Metz states that "an attempt made by a few manu-

factories already located here to take advantage of this appropriation to secure for them-

selves this financial aid . . . arrayed an opposition to the whole scheme"; personal

hostility toward Everett may have been involved here.

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Town Promotion in Newark                                      259

 

using the familiar subscription method, the Board of Trade had raised

$2,700 of the $5,000 needed to bring Newark Machine back from

Columbus.15

No local leader came up with a promising plan for attracting new in-

dustry before W. H. Parrish, once a Pennsylvania agent at Newark, ap-

proached his former colleagues on the Board of Trade in September

1894. A tin plate company would build "a Four Mill Tin Plate plant

with Bar Mill, the same to employ not less than 250 people," on condi-

tion that Newark citizens "buy from them 400 town lots, at an average

price of $250 per lot," from the 100-acre farm north of the Panhandle

tracks in East Newark, upon which Parrish had just taken an option.

Payments could be made in installments of "²⁰ per cent down and 10

per cent per month until the lot is paid for," Parrish indicated. A trus-

tee would make scheduled allotments to the company as building

progressed, the final 20 percent coming "after works have been in op-

eration 30 days."¹⁶

The public greeted the plan with favor. Investigation of the tin-plate

company directors, moreover, produced a commercial report that they

were "A-l." Within a month signatures were secured for 340 lots, and

the remainder probably would have presented no obstacle if the com-

pany could have handled the further cost of what reportedly would

have been a $150,000 plant. But as Lyon later explained, "the tin plate

project . . . failed because the parties at the head of it were financial-

ly unable" to carry through their part of the bargain.¹⁷

No one regretted this more than the Pennsylvania's division officers,

who "decided that Newark should not lose by the failure of the tin

plate, and . . . put forth every effort to secure a factory that would be

equal in every respect . . . and have an unquestioned financial stand-

ing." Anxious to build up their freight business, they wanted some

reliable firm to build upon the ten acres allotted beside their tracks.

At the suggestion of Parrish's immediate superior, J. J. Turner, a

Pennsylvania vice president, Major Augustus H. Heisey of Pittsburgh

soon became interested in locating a glass factory in Newark.¹⁸

The Board of Trade received excellent references from Pittsburgh

banks and business organizations on Heisey. And though the chairman

of the Board's investigating committee at first felt "that the demands

of these people for an equal number of lots with the tin plate company

 

 

15. On the encampment grounds, see Advocate, August 13, 1891; February 4, March

3, 10, 1892; on Everett, see Ibid., November 17, 1892.

16. W. H. Parrish to Charles C. Metz, president, Board of Trade, September 21,

1894, printed in Advocate, October 11, 1894.

17. Ibid., September 27, October 11, 18, 1894; April 11, 1895.

18. Kingery, Beginning, 78; Advocate, April 11, 1895.

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260                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

were exorbitant," he changed his mind after visiting the plant at Wash-

ington, Pennsylvania, operated by Heisey's brothers-in-law, "an exact

duplicate" of the one proposed for Newark. "After looking through

this factory and consulting those who were intimate with the working,"

reported merchant H. H. Griggs, the Board's chief emissary, "I made

up my mind that the money I had agreed to invest in the tin plate con-

cern could be better spent in the securing of a magnificent concern

like this."¹⁹

A. H. Heisey applied his own pressure when he warned in April

1895 that "the people must take hold or I will drop the matter"; he

was in a position to lease a factory in Uniontown, he asserted, "and I

must give answer this week, so, unless the Newark deal looks like a

success, I will take hold of the latter." Spurred on also by the Board

of Trade and the local press, enough citizens switched their subscrip-

tions over to the Heisey Land Syndicate to obtain the factory. Newark

boosters had reason to rejoice. As production started up the next year,

210 workers were employed in the plant. The land seemed to have

solved their perennial problem.²⁰

Though the Heisey Land Syndicate never published a profit-and-loss

statement, the beauty of a land-financing scheme was readily apparent.

The railroad stood to gain not only from Heisey traffic, but from any

other industry attracted by the promise of a free site in the seventeen

acres set aside for that purpose in the 100-acre tract. Heisey acquired

ten acres for location, plus buildings and equipment from profit on

land sales. A purchaser of one of the 450 lots, at an average price of

$175, obtained a saleable property on which a workingman's house

could be erected. Workers attracted to Newark by employment oppor-

tunities could find convenient housing at reasonable prices. And every

businessman in town anticipated an expanded trade.

An astute entrepreneur like E. H. Everett immediately recognized

these advantages. As co-owner of a 100-acre farm just north of the glass

works, Everett indicated that he was agreeable to the industrial ex-

pansion that "a good many people of Newark" seemed to desire. "If

the people are willing to buy at an average price of $350, three hundred

lots into which the Hoskinson farm might be divided," he told an Ad-

vocate reporter, "I would agree to establish a window glass factory on

 

19. Brister, Centennial History, II, 103; Advocate, April 18, 1895.

20. A. H. Heisey to W. H. Parrish, April 15, 1895, printed in Advocate, April 18, 1895;

Ibid., August 8, 1895; American, June 16, 1896; Advocate, January 3, 1900. Heisey's

contract with W. H. Parrish and J. J. Turner provided that after he was reimbursed for

the $25,000 he paid for the Penney property and also received $30,000 as a bonus for

putting up the plant, the residue would be divided among the three parties; the lots

failed to sell well enough to pay the $30,000, so there was subsequent legal controversy

over how the remaining lots should be divided; see Advocate, June 5, 1900.

• 8
 

Town Promotion in Newark                                 261

one corner of that strip of land that would employ at the start not less than 200 men."21 With the Heisey syndicate absorbing so much local capital, however, and with Newark showing the effects of the nationwide depression in spring of 1895, there was not the demand for another land-financed project. In fact the syndicate itself had no luck the following December with a more modest proposal, to bring in a "large manufacturing in- dustry" employing not less than fifty men "if the citizens of Newark will take twenty lots, at an average price of $175." Traffic and employ- ment were down sharply for the B.&O., which finally went into re- ceivership in August 1896. That same year the Newark street railway defaulted also, and columns of the local papers were filled with sher- iff's sales. Indeed, for three years the Board of Trade did not even meet. Hard times had really come.22   21. Ibid., April 18, 1895. 22. Ibid., November 29, 1895; American, April 10, June 5, August 6, 1896.

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262                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

The situation began to improve slowly. By 1899 the B.&O. shops

were employing six hundred men six days a week, tripling the 1893-

1896 payroll. The booster spirit revived as well. "All about us are

cities working for their own advancement," the Republican American

Tribune observed in July 1899; "Zanesville and Coshocton on the east

and Columbus on the west are offering sites, buildings, and bonuses

while Newark sits still and sucks its thumb in quiet complacency."

The old Board of Trade was "defunct," declared the editor. "Let us be

up and doing."²³

Within a month the Board was meeting to consider a report by the

Pennsylvania's W. H. Parrish on the Jewett Car Company, manufac-

turer of the Newark electric railway's new cars, which was contempla-

ting a move from the small town of Jewett in eastern Ohio. By Septem-

ber this firm was ready to come to Newark if it could obtain a free site,

a 50- x 250-foot building, and the cost of transferring its shop. Total

cost to the Board of Trade would be $8,000. On its part Jewett agreed

to employ an average of not less than one hundred men a day for ten

months a year for five years. In surprisingly short order, the deal was

made and the Board of Trade had raised the $8,000 needed.²⁴

That such a sum could be subscribed in little more than a month's

time revealed the fresh confidence the return of prosperity brought the

city's prospects. Following a reorganization meeting in December 1899,

the Board enthusiastically reelected lumber dealer W. H. Smith pres-

ident and set a five dollar fee for membership. In April 1900 it under-

took to raise $2,500 to bring in another firm, the E. T. Rugg Company,

maker of rope and halters in the small town of Alexandria, ten miles

to the west.²⁵

With five employees, E. T. Rugg had started his factory ten years

before and had built it into a firm employing sixty-five (mostly women

at $1-$2.50 per day) turning out 8,000 halters daily. Like Jewett, Ohio,

the village of Alexandria had a limited labor pool and inferior trans-

port facilities, so Rugg sought a better place in which to expand. He

found an unused foundry alongside the B.&O. tracks, the Board of Trade

 

23. Newark American Tribune, September 7, 14, 21, October 28, November 30, De-

cember 7, 1899. On the Coshocton Board of Trade, organized in 1899, see William J.

Bahmer, Centennial History of Coshocton County, O., I (Chicago, 1909), 216-17. On the

Zanesville Board, first organized in 1868 to promote "the city of natural advantages," see

Norris F. Schneider, Y Bridge City: The Story of Zanesville and Muskingum County,

Ohio (Cleveland, 1950), 232ff., and Thomas W. Lewis, Zanesville and Muskingum Co.,

Ohio (3 vols., Chicago, 1927).

24. American Tribune, September 7, 14, 21, October 28, November 30, December 7,

1899. The Board of Trade obtained some portion of the $8,000 from lot sales on the

thirty-two acres adjoining the five-acre site set aside for Jewett Car; see American Tri-

bune, October 28, 1899.

25. Advocate, January 2, 1913; American, January 10, 1900.

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Town Promotion in Newark                                         263

 

put together the $2,500 needed, and by July 1900 there were twenty-

five workers on three looms producing over 7,000 feet of webbing a day

at the new plant.²⁶

"The Board of Trade does not propose to stop with the excellent

work that has been done, neither does it want to impose any hardships

on the men who have generously helped in capturing the two industries

just mentioned," the Advocate announced in printing the list of con-

tributors to the Rugg subscription, "but it feels that there is just one

more thing to do this spring and that is by the sale of a few very de-

sirable lots put fully 400 more people to work in this city." It was a

propitious time indeed for the land-financing method, for the influx

of workers at Jewett and Rugg and the boom in production at Moser,

Wehrle and Everett Glass were already straining the housing market.

If the lots were carved out of Everett's land north of his plant, more-

over, as the Board agreed should be done, then they would help to pay

for the addition of a ten-ring tank to the five continuous tanks in-

stalled there since 1890. Once again the land would serve several pur-

poses.27 More than half the 250 lots in Everett's "Riverside Addition"

were purchased for $250 each by August 1900; in turn E. H. Everett

began the expansion that eventually made it the largest glass-bottle

plant in the nation.²⁸

Of course, land-financing was not unique to Newark. In neighbor-

ing Zanesville, for example, the Board of Trade used all the methods of

fund-raising of the Newark organization. In 1891 J. B. Owens had

transferred his tile factory from Roseville with the encouragement of a

free site and $2,500 in moving expenses. In 1892 American Encaustic

Tiling Company built a larger plant there with the aid of a $40,000

bond issue. In 1894 Kearns Gorsuch and Company received $30,000

from the Zanesville Board to reorganize its glass operations. And after

an unsuccessful attempt at a lot sale in 1899, the Citizens' League in

November 1900 resolved to try that method again, to raise a bonus of

$30,000 for a Dresden (Ohio) firm to construct a steel mill in the Y

Bridge City.²⁹

A manufactory such as Newark's Moser-Wehrle, on the other hand,

was reluctant to resort to Board-assisted financing of any sort. The

guiding genius of this firm's expansion from a small East End foundry

to the nation's largest stove manufacturer was William W. Wehrle,

 

26. Ibid., April 21, 1900; Advocate, May 6, May 24, July 5, 1900.

27. Ibid., May 24, 1900; American, February 3, 1900.

28. Brister, Centennial History, I, 524; Advocate, August 23, 1900; C. H. Spencer,

"Industrial Newark," The Ohio Magazine, III (July 1907), 47-48.

29. Schneider, Y Bridge City, 260-62; Advocate, November 29, 1900. Coschocton also

used lot sales; see Bahmer, Centennial History, 216-17; Advocate, December 13, 1901.

• 11
 

264                                                 OHIO HISTORY

 

who with his brother August had assumed active direction after their

father's death in 1890. A truly rugged individualist who kept his own

counsel, Will Wehrle relocated in West Newark, eased out former

partner John Moser, and in December 1900 launched a building pro-

gram that lifted employment from 225 to over 600 workmen. By June

1901 the Wehrle factory was fourth in size among American stove and

range manufacturers, equipped to turn out 75,000 units annually.³⁰

Still demand increased, especially as the rapidly developing Sears,

Roebuck and Company of Chicago began to take more and more of the

Wehrle products, so that by 1902-1903 Will Wehrle saw need to en-

large further. This time he did turn to the Board of Trade, forty members

of which pledged "to give at least one day" to selling "²⁰⁰ lots at an

average price of $250 each" in West Newark for the benefit of Wehrle

and the much smaller James E. Thomas foundry. By January 1903

these volunteers had sold over 250 parcels in the "Wehrle Addition,"

at 20 percent down and 10 percent a month, and though some pay-

ments lagged, the companies proceeded with construction. By 1905

the Wehrle monthly payroll of $75,000 reportedly ranked second in

Newark only to the B.&O.'s $120,000.31

The Wehrle project was nevertheless the Board of Trade's last ven-

ture in land-financing. Some Board members questioned privately

whether the Wehrle promotion had been worth their time and effort,

since he would have had to expand anyway. Moreover, officials were

beginning to be more cautious about accepting such additions to the

city; before council finally passed it over his veto, the mayor twice

turned down the ordinance on the Wehrle addition, on the grounds

that the grading and streets were not in proper condition. Then, too,

the land available for workingmen's homes close by the factories was

no longer so plentiful, whereas real estate men sought other sites to

develop for their own profit.³²

Local boosters were too busy exulting at Newark's growth to mind

these changes. At annual meetings of the Board of Trade in 1903 and

1904, speakers loosed a flood of panegyric over expansion of Wehrle

and Everett Glass, discovery of new gas fields in the county, connec-

tion by interurban with Zanesville as well as Columbus, lack of "loaf-

ers and idle men," prevalence of good schools and good health.

"Newark, therefore, is a good place to live in," concluded the Rev-

erend J. C. Schindel, and "it has a great future-before us stands the

 

 

30. Brister, Centennial History, I, 524; Spencer, "Industrial Newark," 45-47; Ameri-

can Tribune, April 6, 1899; Advocate, December 27, 1900, June 7, 1901, June 6, 1905.

31. Advocate, January 20, 1903, March 24, 1905.

32. Ibid., February 6, October 23, November 20, December 25, 1903.

• 12
 

Town Promotion in Newark                                         265

 

possibility and you have it in your hands to make it what we all hope

to see."³³

Amid the chorus of congratulation came notes of warning, however.

The interurban brought shoppers to Newark, but it took them to Co-

lumbus as well. And the merchants of Ohio's burgeoning capital city

were advertising their wares more aggressively. "When you have a

dollar or two to spend, spend it in Newark," asserted the Advocate in

an otherwise optimistic article in July 1903; "the stores here are equal

to those in surrounding cities and the values are as good, if not better."

"If you spend a dollar here you may get a piece of it back sometime,"

the Advocate added, in what would become a recurrent refrain, "but

if it goes to another city you may as well say good bye forever." Came

the clincher: "We need the money, so keep it in town as far as pos-

sible."³⁴

A more ominous note sounded in the wake of the $100,000 fire that

destroyed the Wehrle steel shop in 1904, throwing 1,000 men out of

work. The company rebuilt upon a larger scale and even diversified

operations by buying out Atlas Safe at Fostoria and moving the equip-

ment to Newark, yet Will Wehrle complained about the inadequate

fire protection in the West End. "I don't intend to do anything more

for the city of Newark," he told a reporter in April 1905. "Any new

building I have to put up, other than those necessary to handle the out-

put of our present industry, will be erected outside of Newark,"

Wehrle asserted. "We are way out here from the city and have prac-

tically no fire protection."³⁵

Newark's water situation was just then so confused by the transfer

from private to municipal ownership that the Board of Trade finally

got up a special subscription of $3,600 to supply a new fire main out to

the Wehrle plant. That emergency action must have impressed the

Wehrle brothers favorably, for within two years they were adding two

cupolas to the four in operation, lifting capacity to 900 stoves a day

and employment to almost 2,000 workers. Though they did open up a

subsidiary at Coshocton, forty miles to the northeast, the bulk of pro-

duction remained at the Newark plant, which with twenty acres under

roof was popularly billed as "the largest stove foundry in the world."³⁶

The expansion of Everett Glass also seemed to counter any pessimism

 

33. Ibid., February 6, 1903; February 23, 1904.

34. Ibid., July 31, 1903. Columbus had grown even faster than Newark, from 51,647

in 1880 to 125,560 in 1900; after 1900 Newark papers carried more advertising by

Columbus firms, particularly in the Christmas season.

35. Advocate, April 18, 1905.

36. Ibid., August 1, 4, 8, 1905; April 7, June 7, July 30, August 2, 1907; see artist's

sketch of the Wehrle Company in the sixty-four-page pamphlet issued by the Newark

Board of Trade in 1911, at Licking County Historical Society, Newark, Ohio.

• 13
 

266                                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

among boosters. In 1904 Everett incorporated his factory into a new

$4,000,000 concern, the Ohio Bottle Company (of Newark), which also

absorbed glass-making facilities at Massillon and Wooster. The next

year Ohio Bottle sold some of its land in the North End to Everett's

newly incorporated Newark Machine Bottle, which would install the

revolutionary Owens machine, capable of turning out "¹⁴ perfectly

formed bottles a minute." And in August 1905 Ohio Bottle and Ne-

wark Machine Bottle merged into another corporate creation, the

American Bottle Company, capitalized at $10,000,000, to include "all

the plants heretofore the property of the Adolphus Busch Manufac-

turing Company of St. Louis, Mo." at Streator and Belleville, Illinois.

By May 1907, employing fifteen machines and 1,600 workmen, Amer-

ican Bottle at Newark shipped a record 412 car loads of glassware

a month; with six more tanks scheduled to start up the next fall, it too

would be one of the greatest plants of its kind in the world. With

stove and now bottle production tied into a national market, the New-

ark economy was more integrated into the emerging urban-industrial

system.³⁷

While American Bottle and Wehrle Stove were capitalizing upon

national marketing and advanced technology, however, the Board of

Trade was having troubles elsewhere. For one thing, the Newark

Fuel and Gas Company was raising prices. That did not bother Ever-

ett or Wehrle or Heisey, for they piped in their own gas from their

own wells out in the county. It did bother the Board leaders, for in

1906 they "had a glass factory on the string, but nine cent gas was

too high, and another iron industry seeking a location was discour-

aged by the same fact." When Heisey indicated the next year that

"any industry locating outside the city limits could get gas from his

mains at seven cents per thousand feet," the Board president was un-

derstandably pleased. "Cheap fuel is better than a bonus, lot sales and

money contributions to offer factories that are seeking a location,"

President F. M. Black asserted. "It is something substantial, and we

have lots of it to offer."³⁸

 

37. Advocate, August 5, 12, 1904; May 9, August 25, 1905; May 17, 1907. The

Board's brochure of 1911 has a similar sketch of American Bottle. In 1905 Heisey Glass

also doubled its capacity; Spencer, "Industrial Newark," 50. Michael J. Owens developed

his machine at Newark in 1899; see John M. Weed, "Business as Usual," in Harlow

Lindley, comp., Ohio in the Twentieth Century, 1900-1938, vol. VI of Wittke, History of

Ohio, 178.

38. Advocate, April 5, 1907; see also Black's article, "Natural Gas in Licking

County," The Ohio Magazine, III (July 1907), 56-60. Zanesville industry was having

similar problems with Ohio Fuel Supply Company; Advocate, August 24, 1906. At the

same time Zanesville was increasingly worried over why it had not grown since 1900; see

the Zanesville Signal, cited in the Advocate, March 28, 1905, as well as Schneider, Y

Bridge City, 293.

• 14
 

Town Promotion in Newark                                          267

 

At the same time Black admitted that traditional fund-raising meth-

ods were not working well. Newark businessmen "were either getting

tired of contributing to the Board of Trade and lot sales," he stated

at the Board's annual banquet in 1907, "or were tired of being called

upon by the same old members of the board." He recommended that

Newark follow the Columbus Board's example and hire a secretary

who would "do all the correspondence work and seek the new indus-

tries which are solicited to locate in the city." One member objected

that a professional secretary would be too expensive, but the general

sentiment was that without some such officer, the directors "would di-

vide their time and attention between their own respective interests

and those of the board and as a result, neither would receive the proper

attention."³⁹

Discouragement over Board efforts had arisen out of its year-long

struggle to reactivate the West End plant which Weldless Tube and

then Newark Iron and Steel had operated without much success since

1896. The Board directors had finally found a Pittsburgh company

willing to turn it into a mill to re-roll steel rails; they had also dunned

members for their part of the required payment of $8,000. But active

businessmen were more reluctant than they once had been to devote

many hours to such a project. Since Boards of Trade not only in

Columbus but in Detroit and other cities were successfully using spe-

cialists, it seemed wise to hire as secretary J. M. Maylone, one of

Newark's longtime boosters. The Board opened an office on the top

floor of Newark Trust's new ten-story "skyscraper," and started a

drive for five hundred members to pay the added costs.⁴⁰

No sooner had Maylone begun the membership canvass than the

economy slumped following the Panic of 1907. He stayed on for two

years before taking a cashier's job at Coshocton, but did not attract

any new industries. The one major accomplishment of this depressed

period was to bring the 1909 G.A.R. summer encampment to Newark's

"Permanent Encampment" site.41 Through the influence of Maylone's

successor, I. M. Phillips, and the offer of a free site and bonus pay-

ment, the Board did induce a Columbus shoe company to expand its

small local shop into a three-story factory in the West End. Yet New-

 

39. Advocate, April 5, 1907. Columbus had had a secretary since 1884; see Hooper,

History of Columbus, 264.

40. Actually only $5,000 was raised for the rolling mill, and as late as 1912 only $3,090

of that was paid in; see Newark Board of Trade, "Confidential Bulletin," I (April 6,

1912), in "Old Board of Trade" file, Newark Chamber of Commerce. See also Advocate,

December 11, 1906; February 12, August 30, 1907.

41. Ibid., February 6, March 6, June 4, 25, 1908; May 13, October 21, 1909. This site

had just been deeded back to the Board of Trade since the National Guard no longer

needed it.

• 15
 

268                                            OHIO HISTORY

ark  merchants were so distressed at the general inactivity of the Board that they formed another body, the Business Men's Association, to hold regular monthly dinner meetings through the winter of 1909- 1910. The Board of Trade's directors provoked further dispute by pro- posing in April 1910 to lease the encampment grounds for $650 a year to a private group for a country club; dissent only subsided upon agreement that the contract might be terminated at any time upon a year's notice.42 It was at this crucial point in the Board's trials that the prohibition struggle violently intervened. Some kind of confrontation had been building ever since the county dry forces defeated Newark's wet ma- jority in the 1908 election under Ohio's county-option law. As saloons   42. A few records of the Business Men's Association, including a letter from W. H. Mazey to Frank L. Beggs, March 28, 1910, illustrating the hard feelings of the time, are in "Old Board of Trade" file, Newark Chamber of Commerce. See also Advocate, May 27, July 22, December 9, 1909; February 17, April 14, 1910.

• 16
 

Town Promotion in Newark                                                 269

 

closed and license revenues declined, the ranks of the anti-prohibition-

ists grew stronger. At the same time continued violations and weak

enforcement exasperated the anti-saloon leaders, who began to employ

"dry detectives" armed with special warrants to uncover illegal opera-

tions. On July 8, 1910, one of these out-of-town investigators fatally

wounded a saloonkeeper following a Newark raid. In retribution an

unruly crowd broke into the jail, took off with the accused, and strung

him up on the public square.⁴³

Aghast, alarmed, ashamed, Board of Trade members rallied behind

their president, Advocate officer C. H. Spencer, whose paper proclaimed

"NEWARK MUST CLEAN HOUSE." "Today this city stands in dis-

grace and has made proud Ohio hang its head in abject shame," the

Advocate declared. "It now remains for Newark to show the world the

real stuff of which she is made by making amends so far as is possible

for the heinous tragedy which has been enacted."44

While public authorities removed delinquent officials and began to

prosecute those charged with the crime, the Board of Trade launched

a determined drive to overcome its latest handicap. It mended the

breach with the Business Men's Association and signed up over six

hundred members, far more than had ever joined before. It sponsored

the city's first Clean Up Day and Arbor Day, raised subscriptions for

the library fund and the Court House Park Improvement, promoted

the hospital, the Y.W.C.A. and the Good Roads Movement. It care-

fully investigated the "Direct Drive" patented by F. M. Blair of Cin-

cinnati and then secured backers to finance constructions of a two-ton

four-cylinder auto truck equipped with this novel transmission. All

this the Board accomplished within a year of the tragedy.⁴⁵

 

 

43. Ray Stannard Baker gives colorful background in "This Crust of Civilization: A

Study of the Liquor Traffic in Newark, Ohio," American Magazine, LXXI (April 1911),

691-704, as does Sloane Gordon in "Booze, Boodle and Bloodshed in the Middle West,"

Cosmopolitan Magazine, XLIX (November 1910), 761-775; see also Advocate, January

7, 21, March 4, 11, 18, May 20, 27, July 8, August 12, 1909; March 24, June 9, 1910.

44. James Lee Burke, "The Public Career of Judson Harmon" (Ph.D. dissertation,

The Ohio State University, 1969), 216-21; Advocate, July 14, 1910. Governor Harmon

suspended Newark's mayor and Licking County's sheriff, who then resigned. Augustus

Raymond Hatton argued that "the Newark affair" was unusual, "an exceptional case

in which many elements combined to lead to disastrous results"; see "The Liquor

Situation in Ohio," Proceedings . . . of the National Municipal League (n.p., 1910),

395-422.

45. Edward Kibler to the Board of Governors of the "Newark Club," January 11, 1910,

in "Old Board of Trade" file, Newark Chamber of Commerce, shows earlier concern

about reuniting the Board and the Business Men's Association; the Advocate, January

19, February 23, March 30, April 13, 27, May 18, 1911, followed the Board's activities

closely. Chalmers L. Pancoast made the "Solid Foundation Work" of the Newark Board

of Trade his theme for "Record in a 6 Months Campaign," Town Development, IV

(June 1911).

• 17
 

270                                                         OHIO HISTORY

 

By 1912 the Board leaders were advancing so many schemes for

civic improvement that at least one member objected, arguing that

"a half dozen or more of the suggestions accomplished would be

better than fewer half done." Yet another member was disappointed

that among thirty areas for action the program committee included

construction of a workhouse and a convention hall but ignored the

disgraceful condition of the city hall, where there was "a difference of

nearly 12 inches in the floor from one side of the room to the other."

In its zeal for municipal improvement the Board did not entirely

forsake acquisition of new factories, yet the search for such oppor-

tunities was less active, the concern for beautification and boosting

more apparent.⁴⁶

Civic improvement on the "City Beautiful" model was a common

urban aspiration of the Progressive era, but communities such as New-

ark lacked the financial resources to accomplish much. Boosting

through Board of Trade signs and stickers proclaiming "A Busy Factory

Town Welcomes You" and "Boost Newark" was easier and less ex-

pensive. "The boosting spirit which has developed in Newark is the

kind of a spirit which will make a successful city," declared urban

publicist Chalmers L. Pancoast, an ex-Newarkite whom the Board paid

to do some advertising for its membership campaign. "It is the 'do

something' spirit which reinfuses red bood in the deadest town in

existence," he added, "the spirit which will attract the attention of the

outside world and make investors and promoters investigate a

town's possibilities."⁴⁷

To attract new industry remained the ultimate goal of Board of

Trade members. As memory of the lynching faded, moreover, there

was less concern generally about the city's image. Fourteen of the

twenty-six men indicted for complicity in the tragedy had been con-

victed; prohibition had been repealed in Newark under local option;

the laws were being more strictly enforced in what had been "one of

the most pronouncedly 'wide-open' of the smaller cities of the state."

 

 

46. C. H. Spencer, president, "A Personal Letter to 614 Members, Newark Board of

Trade," February 10, 1911, in "Old Board of Trade" file, Newark Chamber of Com-

merce; Advocate, March 7, 1912. Article after article in American City demonstrated

that it was the popular thing to broaden Board of Trade activities in these years; see

e.g., Richard B. Watrous, "The Responsibilities of Commercial Organizations in Fur-

thering the Adoption of City Plans" (May 1910) and Logan McKee, "Civic Work of the

Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce" (July 1911). "Clean up days" were becoming "the

vogue" in the "Central West," said American City, III (November 1910), 255.

47. Newark Board of Trade, "Confidential Bulletin," I (April 6, 1912), 3-4; Advocate,

January 18, May 16, 1912; June 12, 1913. For an example of Pancoast's work, see

Advocate, February 16, 1913. On the "City Beautiful" movement, see Mel Scott, Ameri-

can City Planning Since 1890 (Berkeley, 1969), 26-71.

• 18
 

Town Promotion in Newark                                              271

 

It was time to do more to bring in factories, argued a majority of the

directors, and the place to begin was by replacing Phillips' amiable

successor, retired merchant tailor William C. Wells, with a real exec-

utive secretary who would work more aggressively. In October 1913,

over three years after the lynching, W. C. Wakefield took over as the

Board's new "Business Manager."⁴⁸

Fresh from organizing Lancaster, Ohio's, Chamber of Commerce,

Wakefield at once indicated that he would not pursue civic improve-

ments: "The business of a trade body is TRADE, not morals, politics,

legislation, reforms, but pure and unadulterated TRADE." In his brief

time in the city he had found that the Board was "not a popular orga-

nization," that there was "no unity of purpose among its members," he

told the first general meeting in October 1913. What was needed was

an objective to be pursued "relentlessly," and for Wakefield the

"prime object" must be "to encourage industry, this by securing new

industries."⁴⁹

To take such a strong stand in such an indiscreet manner did not

contribute to unity of purpose: it only underlined the divisions within

the organization. Within weeks of his appointment the retail-store

owners revived their renamed Merchants' Association. Within months

the Board's campaign for a new factory fund encountered much oppo-

sition. Within a year Wakefield himself was gone, victim of the "worst

season of criticism" that the Board of Trade "has ever suffered."⁵⁰

Though often tactless, Wakefield's failure resulted mainly from con-

ditions over which neither he nor the Board of Trade had much control.

His fund campaign was well organized, but many spare dollars had

already gone into the recent construction of three large churches and

the Masonic Temple. In the spring of 1914 the local economy was

also in the same slump that was troubling the nation. As late as Febru-

ary 1915 "it was not thought advisable to solicit funds for Belgium

relief work in a direct way" because of "the present financial condition

of Newark."⁵1

The financial pinch also affected Board efforts to assist Blair Truck.

That company had used the $36,000 from its initial stock subscription

 

48. Outlook, C (January 6, 1912), 7-8; Newark Board of Trade, "Confidential Bulle-

tin," I (April 6, 1912), 1-2; Columbus Dispatch, January 26, 1913; Advocate, October 30,

1913. On Wells, see Brister, Centennial History, II, 592-93.

49. Advocate, November 20, 1913.

50. In addition to the factory fund, Wakefield had suggested new election procedures,

stricter rules on attendance, and a weekly publication called "Ginger Snap" to keep

members "alive to 'what's doing' "-"An entirely new order of things" was coming, said

the Advocate. See November 6, 1913; January 24, March 12, April 2, December 17,

1914.

51. Ibid., April 16, 1914; February 17, 1915.

• 19
 

272                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

to take over part of the Newark Machine property and start up produc-

tion. The increase in orders attendant upon the outbreak of war in

Europe created a crisis: would Newark citizens invest at least $64,000

more to convert the whole plant into a larger, more efficient operation,

or would it be necessary to bring in outside capital which might re-

move the plant to another city? Encouraged by the Newark Lumber of-

ficial who disposed of his business interests to put $20,000 into Blair

and become its new sales manager, a mass meeting of "former mem-

bers of the Newark Board of Trade" agreed in December 1914 to "Try

to Keep Plant in Newark." But hard times conspired with the Board's

enfeebled state to inhibit stock sales. Finally an investment firm in

Hamilton, Ohio, contracted in February 1915 to finance the expansion:

for a while Blair Truck was saved for Newark.⁵²

The "reunion" meetings of the old Board encouraged local boosters

to look beyond their difficult season with Wakefield. Indeed, the need to

promote the "greater Newark" first projected in 1907 seemed more

urgent than ever. Competition among cities was becoming keener, and

some Ohio communities were rapidly expanding, but Newark appeared

to be standing still, if not actually declining. Soon one leading lawyer

was admitting that "Newark six years ago was as far advanced indus-

trially as it is now." Another pointed to lower school enrollments and

more vacant houses to show "beyond a doubt that the population of

Newark is falling off." After three decades of better than average

growth, the town was falling behind.⁵³

Factors more basic than the lynching or any failing of the Board of

Trade accounted for this decline. Shortage of natural gas had already

forced so many residents to switch to coal that Newark was becoming

a "two-collar-a-day town." Prohibition laws cut production at Ameri-

can Bottle; autos and buses reduced demand for Rugg halters and

Jewett interurban cars. E. H. Everett and other capable entrepreneurs

left for busier centers and grander projects; the Wehrles interested them-

selves in Catholic causes in Columbus rather than in Newark institu-

tions. Competition and regulation hurt the railroads, for so long the

city's mainstay, whereas Blair Truck and Pharis Tire and Rubber were

far from strong entries in the race for automotive dominance. As the

whole American economy shifted away from local business and in-

dustry toward regional markets and national corporations, major

centers such as Cleveland or Columbus profitted at Newark's ex-

pense.54

 

52. Ibid., April 27, September 17, 1911; January 18, 1912; September 13, December

17, 1914; February 24, 1915

53. Ibid., April 23, 1907; April 8, 18, 1916.

54. Ibid., January 14, November 19, 1914; January 11, 1915 (natural gas); June 18,

• 20
 

Town Promotion in Newark                                           273

 

The conventional wisdom among boosters, on the other hand, tended

to ignore such handicaps: it relied instead on the "many authorities

who say that the growth of cities is in direct proportion to the efficiency

of   their  commercial    organizations."  As   competitive   pressures

mounted, the more informal and amateurish efforts of the past would

have to go, argued newly-established national periodicals such as

American City and Town Development: if a modern board of trade or

chamber of commerce was to be effective, it would need a trained sec-

retary employing expert methods. In fact, the founding in 1909 of these

specialized journals indicated how widespread were the difficulties that

Newark promoters were experiencing, how general was the demand

for more efficient operations.⁵⁵

Many Newark boosters agreed with the conventional wisdom: the

trouble with their town was that it had been "backward in organizing

its commercial forces for city-building purposes." The old Board of

Trade had been "doing the best they could with nothing to work with";

they had "always been poor and a subject of charity"; "like all insol-

vents" they had been "subject of the kicks and scorn of the business

world." The remedy was obvious. "We want a Chamber of Commerce

that we can all be proud of, with money sufficient to its needs, with an

expert and efficient secretary, a trained man, and then you will see the

old town go along some."⁵⁶

In April 1916, their ears ringing with such sentiments, three hundred

Newark businessmen transformed the old Board of Trade into a new

Chamber of Commerce with which the Merchants' Association would

affiliate. In so doing they did not dwell upon the city's "natural advan-

tages," nor did they publicize the fact that Town Development Inc. of

New York, publisher of Town Development and paid consultant on

promotions of this type, had been hired to manage a "whirlwind cam-

paign" for members of the new Chamber. Many American cities had

successfully revived their trade bodies in this fashion, yet the whole

"Forward Newark Movement" mounted by outside professionals had a

merchandising flavor that suggested a lack of substance. It suggested

 

 

1914 (American Bottle); June 22, 1911 (Everett); August 25, 1910 (Wehrle); October 1,

December 24, 1914 (railroads).

55. Ibid., April 18, 1916. An excellent example of the "conventional wisdom" is Ryer-

son Ritchie, "The Modern Chamber of Commerce," National Municipal Review, I

(April 1912), 2, 161-69; in comparing Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Buffalo, and Cin-

cinnati in their relative growth in population between 1890 and 1910, he contended that

their standing was "in exact line with the relative efficiency of their respective organiza-

tions" and that "Cleveland and Detroit won the race over their rivals because they had

the advantage of united, vigorous, well directed effort." See also Harold M. Weir, "Growth

of Population of Cities," Town Development, III (September 1910).

56. Advocate, April 18, 1916.

• 21
 

274                                                           OHIO HISTORY

 

that the new Chamber, though better financed and more efficiently

managed, would be no more effective than the old Board in sustaining

Newark's growth.⁵⁷

Board reorganization could not dispose of the basic factors, eco-

nomic and social, which since 1907 had increasingly impeded the

town's industrial development. Nor did reorganization improve New-

ark's competitive position for war orders, the bulk of which in Ohio

went to major firms in larger centers such as Cleveland and Dayton.

The 1920 census told the story: from 1910 to 1920 the population of

Newark increased by only 5.2 percent, the smallest gain in any Ohio

city of 25,000 or over, whereas the nation as a whole went up 14.9 per-

cent and its urban territory 25.7 percent. Though Newark's rate of

growth would recover after 1920, it would still not match the national

average, nor would it ever again approach the advances made in the

period 1880-1910, when the old Board of Trade was operative.⁵⁸

In retrospect, no simple calculus can gauge the Board's contribution

to Newark's growth. It is obvious that "natural advantages" and good

transport facilities and a few enterprising manufacturers were essen-

tial ingredients. It is apparent also that the lack of local capital to at-

tract or develop industry represented the main obstacle, though an in-

genious method of land-sale financing temporarily helped to meet that

challenge. For more than a decade Newark promoters moved success-

fully toward the goal that seemed to animate every comparable com-

munity across Ohio and the Midwest in these imperial years-a larger

and therefore "greater" city.

The lynching gave a unique impetus to that effort. It also turned it in

 

 

57. Minutes, Board of Directors, Newark Chamber of Commerce, May 4, 1916; F. L.

Beggs to Secretary, Harrisburg Chamber of Commerce, May 29, 1916; A. H. Heisey to

F. L. Beggs, June 1, 1916; Beggs to Heisey, June 2, 1916; Newark Chamber of Commerce

file, 1916. In August Beggs announced that Town Development Company received 25

percent of the first year's fees collected in the membership drive; the membership fee

was $75 for a three-year subscription, and 555 members had been signed up in a week's

time in April; see Advocate, April 27, August 17, 1916. Town Development, XVII (June

1916), described the Company's Newark campaign in D. H. McFarland, "A Notable

Civic Awakening"; similar drives prior to March 1916 were conducted in fourteen cities

under 25,000, seven from 25,000 to 50,000, seven from 50,000 to 100,000, and ten over

100,000. The American City Bureau in New York City, educational adjunct of the publi-

cation American City, did promotional work of this type also; see "The Upbuilding of

Three Organizations," American City, XI (July 1914), 58-59, and "The Reorganization

of the Syracuse Chamber of Commerce," X (January 1914), 47-48.

58. E. T. Rugg had a war contract for halters, and Wehrle for stoves, kettles, and fi-

nally shells, but most of the eleven plants in Newark engaged in war work had small

jobs received too late in the conflict to boost manufactures substantially; see Advocate,

September 16, 21, October 4, 30, 1918; January 13, 1919. From 1910 to 1920 the pop-

ulation of Licking County only went from 55,590 to 56,426 and of Newark from 25,404

to 26,718.

• 22
 

Town Promotion in Newark                                         275

 

abrupt and sweeping fashion toward "civic improvement" as a major

means to promote the city's interests. But the Newark Board's change

here coincided with a general shift toward more sophisticated methods

after 1910. Before then small-town commercial bodies were still concen-

trating primarily upon industrial acquisition through bonuses or guar-

anty plans or development funds-in short, through some financial

manipulation. But increasingly thereafter, influenced in part by the

burgeoning city-planning movement, attention shifted toward a new

means: the best way to build a city was by making it a better city in

which to live. Streets, yards, schools, playgrounds, parks, a hospital-

the list of civic improvements grew larger and larger. "Community bet-

terment first-factories when possible," concluded an Indiana poll of

seventeen commercial secretaries.⁵⁹

Though more restrained in promoting community betterment after

1913, the Newark Board was typical of many trade organizations

caught up in these years in spirited rivalry for industrial expansion. As

the pages of American City and Town Development amply demon-

strate, its efforts to secure new industry, to develop more effective

leadership  and  a more attractive city, had their counterpart in

community after community across this country. From the frequency

with which comparable bodies elsewhere were seeking help from the

new urban specialists who published these periodicals, it was apparent

that Newark's difficulty at sustaining growth was a common problem.

What should or could be done about it was still unclear: here the con-

ventional wisdom confused the real economic situation. But this Ohio

town well reflected the troubled times ahead for American's smaller

cities.⁶0

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

59. D. H. McFarland, "Comprehensive Commercial Endeavor," Town Development,

XIII (October 1914); on Dayton, Ibid., XIV (March 1915); C. T. Boykin, "Why do

Chambers Lack Sustenance," Ibid., XVI (February 1916); "Give no Bonuses," Ibid.,

XVII (April 1916).

60. The experience of Newark's Board of Trade well illustrated the general conten-

tions of J. O. Hardy, secretary of the Commercial Club of Fargo, North Dakota, in

"Small City and Town Problems," Ibid., XVI (October 1915).

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