Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-09-15
FACTORIES.
An Enterprising Fort WOrthite Writes
From "a City Built From Paper"
How Eastern Mills Are Dependent on Low
Freight Rates to Enable Them to Hold
the Western Territory.
HoIYokE, MASS. , Sept. 9. 1890.

stated regarding Holyoke, the great
center Of the paper making industry
Many people gather q clever and decided
~ practical education by careful obser-
walton of the ways of others and their
methods, by which success has been at
tanned. This rule can be profitably fol-
lowed by cities. When the knowledge of
the ways and means employed In the up
| building OF other centers is generally held
| by people, their efforts thereafter are
| directed by an intelligence certain to
| produce the best results. With this end
In view an occasional letter from Fort
| Worth wanderers may be permissible.
even If the details and figures make
rather dull reading TOR some. Forty
| three years ago the land where Holyoke
now stands was used as farm, and was
! purchased by q syndicate who started to
| build the canals which now furnish their
water power equal to 10000 horse
power. To the reader who has
let his geography get rusty
1t may be explained that Holyoke, Mass. +,
is about eight miles west of Springfield,
near the middle of the state and on the
banks of the rapid running Connecticut
river. This river Is tapped above the
town and the water conveyed in d canal,
40 feet wide. down to Holyoke, the ar
rangement there being in parallel lines,
the first canal is located on the highest
level of course and is about one and one
half miles long. Mentally draw a line
from north to south and call 1t the Con-
necticut river, then three short lines on
the left-hand or west side of aud parallel
to this and call them the three canals,
the line furthest away from the river
being extended northward until it
touches the river, at which point dam
lOl6 feet long piles up head and feeds
1t into the first and highest canal. The
land between the first left-hand line and
the second is wide enough (4O0 feet to
hold lot of factories and mills and their
water power is conveyed by mill races
cut from the upper level across this 400
feet to the next lower canal, the fall be-
ing twenty feet. Now we have
driven all the first row of
mills and got our water into
the second canal. Another 400 foot strip
of ground q mile long and covered with
mills lies between our second and third
line, and the original operation of con-
veying the water across this narrow
strip is performed again, giving power
on its way with fall this time of twelve
feet; and the same water is still to be
used over again between the river and
the next line to it with fall of twenty
eight, a total fall from first to last of
sixty feet.
A similar arrangement of water power
could not well be made at Fort Worth,
but equally good results could be OBJ
tanned within the limits permissible with
Clear Fork three or four miles where
strong dam could be built and ID good
head of water obtained. The canal
should be built along the bluffs on the
south and east side of the stream and
fall of twenty FIVE or thirty feet easily
obtained. Thus, instead of three parallel
strips of ground. each mile long for
mill sites, we would have one strip three
or four miles long with an unusually
good head of water. OF course a great
many mills that have water power use
more or less steam. In fact about &C per
cent. or two-thirds of all the power used
TX the state of Massachusetts is steam
and o1e-third water Coal in Holyoke
is 81. 90 per ton, in which they have not
much the advantage of us.
The mills make principally book,
writing, envelope, linen and bond pa
pers, in other words, the better grades of
paper. One mill keeps a buyer and a
gang of packers in Egypt, and the blue
Egyptian rags are a standard grade of
material.
About 200 tons of paper per day is the
output for Holyoke, being about one
tenth the daily output of the entire
United States. Eastern paper mill own
ers would not advise, or assist in the
establishment Of paper mills in Texas,
preferring to stay with their present
plants. But the keynote for Texas was
sounded by an official of one of the prom
inent railroad lines, when in eonverea-
ton with the writer he stated s'these
New England manufacturers are con-
stantly bounding the railroads to give
them lower rates to enable them
to continue their trade relations with the
great West and South, in competition |
with the manufacturers located i'll those |
sections. 1t is a wrong policy to haul |
goods for cost from the extreme border |
of great country for from one TO 5000 |
miles inland simply to hold up manu- !
facturers who are seeking trade from |
territory outside their natural jurisdic-
ton. This class of rates must be ad- |
yanced, as the roads cannot continue |
tuein mucn longer
1t occurred to me that our people in |
Texas had never looked upon frelghts
from the East as being excessively
low However any advance in this
class is of advantage to the Texas man
ufacturer. If our citizens generally
could see these prosperous cities sup
ported, not by agriculture, not by live
stock, nor by jobbing houses, but almost
solely and wholly by their manufacturing
industries, an increased amount of en-
orgy would be put into our efforts to
build factories and we would
continue to build them until we added
manufacturing population like
OF 80, 900 workers to our hus-
Ting town, aud what city 1t will make
when our heavy wholesale business is
multiplied and we have packing houses,
'tockyards doing a large business in live
stock of all kinds, our flour mills and
elevators caring for the products of the
agricultural tracts, cotton mills to use
)ur cotton, wooden mills to use the wool,
paper mills to work up straw and other
materials, boot and shoe factories for the
hides, and stove works, wagon works
IND multiplicity of other manufacture
ng concerns, an abundance of railroads
o carry on our business and vast and
nagn ifcent tract of rich, healthy coun-
ry, rapidly filing with q first-class peo-