© Harold E. Spaulding,
Workshop of the World (Oliver Evans Press,
1990).
Nicetown’s origins may
be traced back to the seventeenth century, when William
Penn transferred 187 acres of fertile, wooded land to
John Neisse, a French Protestant “for services
rendered.” The intersection of Germantown Road and
Nicetown Lane (later renamed Hunting Park Avenue) saw the
earliest development in Nicetown; it included an inn,
probably operated by a member of the Neisse family, a
blacksmith, and several houses. 1
In
its early years, Nicetown was rather isolated because
Germantown Avenue between Philadelphia and Germantown was
often impassable. In 1769, Nicetown residents petitioned
for a road, but their request was not granted until
almost a century later. 2
The
Philadelphia, Germantown, and Norristown Railroad opened
Nicetown up to travel in 1832. Several years later in the
early 1840s, the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad came
through Nicetown, bisecting it in an east-west direction.
Industrial development grew to one side of the tracks,
while residential development grew on the other. The
Reading (as it later became known) connected northeastern
Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal fields with the
wharves at Port Richmond; by the early 1870s, Wayne
Junction, adjacent to Nicetown, became a major freight
yard and coal depot. 3
An
outstanding example of an industry no longer operating in
Nicetown was Midvale Steel, founded in 1867 as the
Butcher Steel Works and named for William Butcher, a
recent immigrant steelmaker from Sheffield, Great
Britain. Butcher enlisted the aide of importer Philip
Justice and banker Edward Clark and shortly thereafter,
began steel production in direct competition with the
Pencoyd Iron Works in Manayunk and Henry Disston’s
crucible steel plant in the Northern Liberties. Butcher
died three years later and the company was subsequently
taken over by William Sellers, a local machine tool
builder. 4
The company's
name was changed to Midvale Steel in 1872 and three years
later, it landed its first contract with the U.S.
Navy. 5
Later contracts
for steel were soon had with Baldwin Locomotive, the
Pennsylvania Railroad, and John Roebling’s Sons
(builders of the Brooklyn Bridge); by 1912 the site
covered over fifty acres and employed over 3,500 workers.
Midvale’s huge success
is attributed, in part, to the fact that it was organized
and managed by a consortium of financial interests as
well as people trained in the making of steel. (Most
other Philadelphia industries were owned and operated
simply by people trained in their specific fields.) In
1915, Midvale merged with the Cambria Steel Company of
Johnstown, Pennsylvania and two other steel companies
near Philadelphia to become the Midvale Steel and
Ordnance Company. This merger, according to Scranton and
Licht, was motivated by the efforts of “a syndicate
of steelmakers trained by Carnegie and Wall Street
bankers;” the timing of the merger enabled the
company to capitalize on enormous war-related contracts
for the Army and the Navy during World War I. By 1919,
Midvale’s payroll swelled to 7,300.
After the war, in the 1920s, the company’s
productivity declined dramatically and Bethlehem Steel
gained control of Cambria and several other portions of
the company. Midvale itself reorganized as the Midvale
Company and set out to diversify its production and
tighten its workforce. By 1928, the number of employees
on the payroll had dropped to 1,800. 6
During that time,
it also became one of the nation’s largest
producers of armor plate steel for ships and tanks. It
also produced large forgings, propellers and shafts for
ships, chemical vessels, and marine engines.
7
Midvale Steel was the home of
one of America’s foremost innovators in labor
efficiency—Frederick Winslow Taylor. Taylor grew up
in Germantown, the child of a wealthy family. He attended
good schools, but instead of pursuing college, he
apprenticed in a Philadelphia machine shop. In 1878, he
came to work at Midvale as a day laborer, rose to clerk,
then to machinist, then to gang boss, and finally to
Chief Engineer prior to his leaving the company in
1890. 8
During his
tenure, Taylor became intensely interested in the
efficient management of work-related time. Using methods
introduced by Charles Brinley, 9
Taylor
systematically developed techniques to raise the
efficiency of production throughout the entire plant to
an exceptionally high level. Taylor believed:
1.
that each workman should be given, as far as possible,
the highest grade of work for which his ability and
physique were fitted,
2.
that each workman should be called upon to turn out the
maximum amount of work that a first-rate man of his class
should do, and thrive, and,
3.
that each workman, when working at the best pace of a
first-class man, should be paid from 30 to 100% beyond
the average of his class, according to the nature of the
work he was doing.
Taylor introduced an
elaborate system of time studies to determine precisely
how much time should be allowed for each operation ,
first into the machine shop and later into other
departments. He then developed a
“differential” piece rate system (in
accordance with Brinley’s methods) under which an
employee’s pay rate was based upon his output and
efficiency. 10
Taylor’s ideas stemmed
from the concept that workers operate at a much lower
level of productivity than their actual capability. If
their capabilities were scientifically determined, and if
workers received proper pay incentives for producing at
their capacity, then productivity, wages, and profits
would all be substantially improved. Taylor’s ideas
were opposite to those of the “welfare work”
movement which was based on the idea that improving a
worker’s welfare (his place, lot, etc.) would
inspire the worker to seek self-betterment, loyalty to
the company and cooperation. Taylor left Midvale in 1890
and soon began establishing similar work studies at the
Manufacturing Investment Company (a paper manufacturer),
and eventually at Bethlehem Steel.
Midvale’s slowdown after World War I led to
experimentation and innovation in new products by the
company. One of the products, a nickel and chrome alloy
steel (originally developed for military uses) found an
effective use in the auto industry. However, in spite of
these developments, the Depression hurt Midvale seriously
and by 1933, only 800 workers were on the site.
The demands of the recovery in the late 1930s, and the
threats of war brought activity back to Midvale, in
staggering proportions. By 1940, the site had grown to 80
acres. 11
Wartime
production caused employment to swell as the company
produced steel for the Army and the Navy. After the War,
Midvale’s production began to drop off, and during
the 1960s, its life slowly started to come to an end. In
1970, the newly reorganized Midvale-Heppenstal
Corporation began the systematic shutdown of the Nicetown
plant; its eulogy was written by Scranton and Licht:
The
last to close of our four nineteenth-century Philadelphia
plants, Midvale is soon to be demolished. For the moment,
its massive forge hammers are still in place, but they
will never again shake the earth with their power. Their
silence leaves a bitter emptiness after a century of
steel and sweat. 12
By
the turn of the twentieth century, industrial development
that surrounded the Wayne Junction rail facilities had
changed the identities of Nicetown and Germantown to the
west. Immediately adjacent to Midvale Steel alongside the
Reading Railroad right-of-way, stood the George W. Blabon
Company Oil Cloth and Linoleum Works. The manufacture of
patented floor cloth (or summer carpet) began in
Philadelphia in 1807. In 1872, linoleum was developed as
a floor covering by the American Linoleum Company and
shortly thereafter, the George W. Blabon Company in
Nicetown expanded its floor cloth line to include
linoleum. In 1887, Blabon perfected and patented the
first successful oil cloth and linoleum printing
machine. 13
In
1895, the following account documented the size and
volume of Blabon's plant:
One
of Philadelphia's giant industries is that of George W.
Blabon Company, largest manufacturer in the U.S. of
linoleum, oil cloths, and pure linseed oil. The industry
was established 42 years ago and in 1892 the vast
interests were reorganized and incorporated as the Geo.
W. Blabon Co., paid up capital of $1,000,000; Geo. W. as
president; his son Geo. C. as V.P.; & John C.S. Davis
as treas.-sec. Factory is located halfway between
Philadelphia and Germantown on 13 acres, next to rail
facilities. There have been erected 31 large buildings,
embodying every facility and all the modern improvements
for the manufacture of linoleum, oil cloth, and linseed
oil... An average force of four hundred hands are
employed and skilful designers are employed originating
new and handsome patterns while the brilliant coloring of
these goods is proverbial... 14
An
1890 Hexamer General Survey Map of Blabon's plant shows
three 6,500 gallon linseed oil tanks (each 35 ft.
diameter) and such linseed oil related structures as an
oil house, oxidizing house, and a boiler house. It also
shows coating and drying houses for lino goods
(linoleum), enameling rooms, and
printing/graining/varnishing rooms for linoleum. Numerous
storage and support buildings also show on the map.
Several factors contributed to the demise of
Blabon’s and other linoleum producers’
empires; these include the rise of the petrochemical
industry in the early twentieth century and the
disappearance of flax as marketable crop. Flax was used
in the production of linen and its seeds were used in the
production of linseed oil. By the early 1920s, the
linoleum and linen products that were a part of most
American homes had been replaced with other products and
Blabon's business shut down.
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
Nicetown's residential area developed in response to the
tremendous industrial growth. Its rowhouses, which were
two-story, single-family units, well-built with indoor
plumbing, provided a comfortable, affordable place for
the workers and their families to live.
15
There was also a
religious community along Roman and St. Paul Streets,
which was destroyed when Roosevelt Boulevard was built in
the 1950s.
1 "Discovering the
Philadelphia Tradition," a booklet produced by the
Philadelphia Area Cultural Consortium with funding from
the National Endowment for the Humanities, December,
1980, hereafter cited as "Discovering..."
2 "Discovering..."
3 "Discovering..."
4 Philip Scranton and
Walter Licht, Work
Sights: Industrial Philadelphia, 1890-1950
, (Philadelphia,
1986), p. 196.
5 Scranton and Licht
state that by 1905, Midvale Steel was to become the
largest defense contractor in the nation (p. 199).
6 Scranton and Licht, p.
201.
7 "Discovering..."
8 "The Midvale Company,"
A Newcomen Society address by Richard Tilghman Nalle
(President of the Midvale Company), pp. 15-16, found in
the Business & Industry Section of the Philadelphia
Free Library, Logan Square.
9 Charles A. Brinley
trained as a chemist at Yale and joined Midvale in July
1872.
10 "The Midvale Company,"
pgs. 12-13.
11 "Discovering..."
12 Scranton and Licht, pg.
213.
13 John J. MacFarlane,
Manufacturing in Philadelphia, 1683-1912, (Philadelphia,
1912).
14 "Philadelphia, Old and
New", illustrated, compiled, and published by the
Consolidated Illustrating Company, Philadelphia, 1895.
15 "Discovering..."
Acknowledgements:
Thanks to John R.
Bowie, who provided research information on Midvale
Steel, as well as assistance in the writeup of the
overview and individual sites. Thanks to David R.
Donovan, SKF Specialty Bearings, Nice Division,
Kulpsville, PA for his help in providing the corporate
history. Thanks to Paul O. Sichert, Jr., Vice President,
Public Affairs, The Budd Company, Troy, MI, for his
assistance in supplying the corporate history.
Resources:
Nicetown
bibliography