Nothing gives better evidence of the growing importance of Buffalo than recent action of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company. This great company has at Philadelphia and along the Delaware River greater terminal facilities than any other railroad company operating on the Atlantic seaboard. In February, 1892, it obtained control of the Lehigh Valley system, thereby securing a direct route from Buffalo to Philadelphia. The new and more active management saw the tremendous importance of obtaining a foothold in Buffalo, which already holds the key to the traffic of the great lakes, and now stands upon the verge of extraordinary manufacturing development by reason of Niagara’s cheap and unlimited power. Within a comparatively few years Buffalo will be the chief manufacturing center of the country; the possibilities of traffic radiating from this point are boundless. It was a master stroke of President McLeod of the Philadelphia & Reading to establish his railroad securely in Buffalo. It is a well-known fact that the Lehigh Valley has the best terminal facilities of all the railroads centering here. Within the past few years millions have been spent in perfecting them.
Following this stroke with the Lehigh Valley, the Philadelphia & Reading made a traffic contract with the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburg for fifty years, giving still further evidence of belief in Buffalo.
The export business of the Philadelphia & Reading is vast, operating as it does in connection with a line of transatlantic steamers, and this opens up a new line of thought. The impetus given by cheap and plentiful power to manufacturing in old and many new directions in Buffalo will of course be very great, and it is certain that thousands of industries depending upon export trade will flourish here, close to the storehouses of the raw material and of the world’s cheapest power. Numerous avenues to the seaboard are therefore an essential part of the grand plan of our industrial prosperity, and the addition of the Philadelphia & Reading is one of very great importance.
Yet this should always be held in mind--would the Philadelphia & Reading have reached out after Buffalo business if it had not been worth while reaching for? The fact is that we attract great transportation enterprises as the magnet does the needle.
THE UNION IRON WORKS.
During the present summer the Union Iron Works, long unused, are being rebuilt in the southern part of the city, the plans calling for one of the finest plants of the kind in the United States. Part of the plant will be used for the manufacture of steel, and at the beginning a force of about 1,200 men will be employed in this part of the works alone, in three shifts of eight hours each, work being constant night and day all the year ’round.
What stimulus is it that brings this industry into life? Why was it not located at any one of a dozen other points that might be named? Why wasn’t it located close to the iron mines? These and all other collateral questions have already been answered in this volume. We have power cheaper than the cheapest anywhere else, joined with transportation facilities that are unexcelled--the two great industrial economies again, cheap power, cheap freights.
THE COPPER INDUSTRY.
One of the largest aggregations of capital in the world is the Calumet & Hecla Smelting Company. It controls the rich copper mines of Lake Superior with all their inexhaustible stores of wealth. Two years ago the company bought a very large tract of land on the banks of the Niagara within the city limits of Buffalo, and began the construction of an extensive smelting works. The ore is brought here direct from the mines, and here it is reduced and the whole output of the mines distributed from this point. Why did the Calumet & Hecla Company locate in Buffalo? Because of its peerless location as a distributing centre for one thing, and cheap electric power for another.
Not long ago, in Buffalo, a live electric wire fell athwart a lamp post, and in the twinkling of an eye the iron was fused by the current. That was smelting by electricity. The brainy men of the Calumet & Hecla Company knew what they were doing when they located beside Buffalo’s electric power house.