We will explore another of these great working-places—this time, a group of mills as large as a modest village, yet devoted to one special product. In 1864, Mr. Henry B. Seidel purchased a rolling-mill which had already been in operation with varied success for eighty years, and established the manufacture of large plates for iron ships and boilers. In a few years, associating with himself his superintendent, Mr. Hastings, he greatly enlarged his operations, and the firm found their edifice too small. An ample new one, one hundred and twenty-five feet long, was put up in 1870, upon the Church street side of their property, and with the introduction of all the new machines became capable of the quickest and completest operations. Seidel & Hastings now run both mills, and turn out, when working night and day, at the rate of between five and six thousand tons of plate iron per annum. They prepare their own "blooms" of charcoal iron at a great forge erected on their premises: this forge has five fires, and is provided with the engines and blowing-cylinders for the manufacture of boiler iron, and the monster steam-hammers necessary in its preparation. Nature's products are here taught manners with a witness: whatever shape they enter in, they leave in the form of pie-crust. The tough old genius of iron, which has been trying since the creation to build itself into mountains or dissipate itself in bogs, is taught by the powerful persuasions of these gentlemen to pack and toughen itself into cards, and is only recognized by the foreman when he takes count of stock as "plate inch and a half" or "plate one-eighth."
But the reader has had enough of iron. We will relieve him—though we cannot promise not to revert to the metals—with a glimpse of some different kinds of employment. Nothing, now, can be softer than kid, nothing more scholarly than a morocco book-binding, nothing is more brilliant in the autumn woods than sumach, nothing is more graceful than the pet goat of Esmeralda. We will pay a visit to one of the morocco-factories, premising that our independent little city of Wilmington has a wide reputation in the trade for her excellence in this special article, and that her product in morocco is actually the largest single item of her trade, the production last year having exceeded two million dollars' worth. We will enter a specimen factory, where the tame African goats playing about the yard, by putting their skins into contact with the powdered sumach lying up stairs in the bags, are to yield us specimens of about the best American morocco known to commerce. The superiority of the Wilmington product is attributed by buyers to something in the quality of the Brandywine water, but probably the high condition and tone of the workmen has more to do with it. In Wilmington, where a workman finds that a given rate of wages represents better living and more happiness than in any large city, the labor obtainable for the pay is naturally of a higher character; and this, in a business where everything depends upon hand manipulation, is a controlling influence. The factory we select is that of Pusey, Scott & Co., at Madison and Third streets, five stories high and a hundred and sixty feet deep. Over this scented labyrinth we go, up stairs and down; now among the slippery vats, where the hides are deprived of their hair; now into a bright room, where half a dozen pretty sewing-machine girls are stitching the wet, slimy skins into bags; now into gloomy cellars, where these bags are filled with sumach-dust and water. The scene in these dark apartments, where many of the workmen are negroes, is especially high-flavored and like a chapter in Vathek. Writers usually talk of "life in the iron-mills" as conducing to the development of herculean strength. But iron-workers are apt to be dry and wiry, their flesh half sweated off and their complexions unnaturally pale. For true muscular development, rather Flemish and beefy in quality, we would instance the workmen in this department of a morocco-factory. The skins when filled with water are very heavy, and the jolly fellows who play at aquatic games with them, now ducking into the tanks, now holding a bag under the hopper whence the sumach descends, and anon stirring, manipulating and inspecting the mass of floating pillows, are true heroes out of Rubens' pictures. The scenes up stairs again, where young Swedes and Irish boys dress the dry skins, painting them over with black, and polishing and graining them by rubbing them with stones (a back-breaking operation, apparently, in the attitude of laundresses bent over an eternal washboard), are all highly entertaining. In the store-rooms we see the handsome sheets of morocco, including the kangaroo skins from Australia, perforated here and there with the hunter's shot, and distinguishable by the enormous flap which has, in the creature's life, encased the tail. Among them all the little orphaned kid skins, clothed in mourning colors and so soft and small, look very innocent and interesting. The distinguishing claim of Wilmington is that of having been the pioneer to introduce machinery into this as into other kinds of business. Several kinds of labor-saving apparatus are explained to us, and the foresight in building the apartments so that the skins travel from stage to stage with the least possible lifting is pointed out. These economies are said to be unmatched in the world. In this manufacture the relations of employers with employed, and amongst each other, would appear to be particularly happy. The morocco-makers of Wilmington seem to believe that worth makes the man, that readiness to do a favor to fellow-manufacturers is what shows the true "grain," and that "the rest is naught but leather and prunello." In dealing with their men, Messrs. Pusey, Scott & Co. have kept up the best relations, and have solved the difficult, the crucial problem in these latitudes, of inducing whites and negroes to labor side by side at the same task in harmony. We believe that this one fact alone, if we were able to develop it eloquently, would be found to stamp the character of the principals with the best traits of benevolence, tact and sense. Mr. Warner, our guide through the premises, concludes the exhibition by showing us a curious set of great books in the counting house, where the foreman of each department records his answer daily to a list of printed questions, stating his figures, his ideas, reports, suggestions and complaints. This diurnal inquisition, which morally gives ventilation to the whole establishment, and relieves difficulties at their start, seems to be another indication of an enviable relationship, keeping up an excellent, old-fashioned sympathy between employers and operatives.
From morocco-dressing to carriages, which are curtained and cushioned with morocco, is not a difficult step. La Bruyère, who wrote a whole book without making any transitions, would have passed without effort from the establishment of Pusey, Scott & Co. to the coach-factory of McLear & Kendall. It should be premised that coach-building is another of the very special successes of Wilmington. She produced last year an amount, in cash value, of carriages greater than her iron ships, greater than her cotton fabrics, being one million four hundred thousand dollars. The engraving shows the outside magnitude of McLear & Kendall's factory, the largest in the city, but cannot show the curious effect of the great show-room, filled with rockaways, buggies of all kinds, and park phaetons. The building, which was put up in 1865, is on Ninth, King and French streets, and is two hundred and eighteen feet in length. These makers produce annually fifteen hundred vehicles, which are shipped to all parts of the United States. An engine of forty horse-power assists the workmen, of whom a hundred and seventy-five are kept in employment, earning the high wages commanded by skilled labor, or, on an average throughout the factory, twenty dollars per week.
After the ponderous establishments near the mouth of the Christine, and the neater sorts of industries which can be carried on within the city, we come to notice some of the mills and factories up stream. Many of these are of great antiquity.
Walton, Whann & Co. boast that fully one-half the arrivals and departures of shipping at Wilmington are in connection with their business. What is that business? Why, it is the revival of the fertility of the South, exhausted by the land-murdering agriculture of slavery. The demand from the cotton regions since the war has been enormous for the best artificial fertilizers, and the appreciation of the particular kind made by Walton, Whann & Co. is very marked. Planters have learned the fact, which science and experience demonstrate, that a reliable compost must be now used for the remunerative culture of cotton, as well as of their corn and other staples; and their preference for the superphosphate prepared by this firm over most other fertilizers is evinced by the fact that their demand has for several years been largely in excess of the supply. We need not wonder, then, at the formidable preparations made for this mighty overdriven business. The cargoes discharging by means of steam-power into the barges proceed from mills covering several acres of ground, and worked by three engines, aggregating one hundred horse-power. Think of it! the strength of one hundred horses overtasked day by day to provide this magic powder, through which the tired real horse is to drag the plough in so many thousands of distant acres! The machinery for grinding the organic materials is of the most approved excellence, and is tested by the turning out, with the power stated, of full fifteen hundred tons of the phosphate per month. A visit to the store-house of this factory is a strange sight, reminding the tourist of the open-air cemetery of the Capuchins at Rome. It is a realm of bones. Bones from the South American pampas, bones from the pork-packing houses of Cincinnati, bones from the grazing plains of Texas, come here to mingle. The skeletons of half a continent meet in these whirling mills for a prodigious Dance of Death, being most emphatically denied what is the last wish of all sentient creatures—rest for their bones.
This factory is on the Christine River, just outside the limit of the city. On Redclay Creek—a tributary to the Christine, running into it parallel with the Brandywine—a number of mills have seated themselves, attracted by its swift torrent, amid scenery of steeps and rapids comparable to that on the Lehigh about Mauch Chunk. Of these the most interesting traditions attach to the Faulkland Mills. Their name may remind the reader of the first novel of the late Lord Lytton—Falkland, written in 1828—but it was given to the spot long before in designation of a primitive settlement, Faulk's Land. The association with this site is that of Oliver Evans, the true inventor of the locomotive, who here worked and dreamed in a mill enriched with his contrivances.