Gas at Muncie, causes rapid population increase; Hemingray states flint glass trade demoralized

GAS AT MUNCIE.

It Causes a Rapid Increase of Population and

Manufacturing Capital.

Delaware county is the land of the boomer. I have been more and more impressed, daily, with this fact in going over the county, and especially so during my stay in the beautiful little city of Muncie, the county-seat. "The diamond fields of Aus­tralia" says one local chronicler, writing up the visit of the last delegation of New Yorkers that came out to inspect this sec­tion, "the gold mines of California and the petroleum wells of Pennsylvania are no comparison to the natural-gas field of Indiana." "Come," says another enthusiast, "where the fairy farm in fairness, the cult­ure of choice people centered together, the music of mighty manufactories and the buzz of bustling business, shall make a city in this center of America whose fame shall flow forever onward. Ye who have watched upon the shore of life, wishing the wind and waves would lay wealth at your feet, but like a lily with stem severed it drifted ever in a circle, n ever approaching your long grasp — come to magnificent Muncie, and share the sun­shine of its splendors. It is no chrysalis whose wings must wait to be grown by the sunlight of prosperity which shall penetrate the shade of its obscurity, but a full-grown butterfly that can fly upward and meet the sun’s full rays." There is considerable mixing of metaphors in the litera­ture of the real estate agent, and more rhapsodizing than the seeker for investments cares to encounter in his search for a location, but a good deal can be pardoned to people who saw their town grow in a few brief months from an ordinary county-seat of six or seven thousand inhabitants, with a few stores and minor manufactories, in a hustling city with twice the number of its former residents, and manufactories that rival some of the largest of their kind in the oldest and largest manufacturing centers.

Natural gas was struck at Muncie Nov. 11, 1886. At that time the manufactures consisted of a bagging factory, with eight­een weaving-rooms and less than one hun­dred operatives; an bent wood-works, em­ploying about the same number of people; a few smaller wood-working establishments; two iron-working concerns of small capac­ity, and the usual shops and trades for local supply. It is doubtful if the entire capital employed here then in manufacturing enterprises exceeded $250,000, or furnished occupation for more than 800 operatives. The list of manufactories now located here has increased by twenty-six additions, and the records indicate an invested capital of over $1,000,000 and the employent [sic] employment of more than 2,000 operatives in various manufacturing enterprises. Other portions of the county have not been correspondingly fortunate. Eaton, Yorktown, Albany and Daleville have each two excellent gas wells, and Selma one, but none of these places has made any notable progress in a manu­facturing way as a result of the new fuel. It has served the purpose of a domestic fuel and illuminant throughout the county, however, almost as fully and freely as the water wells and streams have furnished drink. There are few farmers who have not secured it. A natural-gas well goes down in this county with as much certainty that the finding of gas will reward the borer as there is that water will be secured in a driven well, and the farmers of a par­ticular neighborhood can join together, sink a well, and pipe the product to their farms, using surface-pipe mainly, and leaving a flambeau here and there to light up a lonely lane or narrow crossing on the way. It is found in many barns, where it is used for both heating and illuminating purposes, and the winter food for some of the stock is cooked by it, and at the same time they are kept warm. Co-operative companies are numerous in many localities, in which a $50 share entitles the holder to free gas for domestic use during the time of its continuance, making the entire cost of gas for both heating and illuminating purposes the in­terest on $50, or less than $4 a year to a family.

Coming back to Muncie the impression it makes upon a visitor who inspects it for the first time since its fuel revolution, is the marked improvement the find has made in the exterior appearance of the city. It is as neat as the Dutch village described by Washington Irving, where the house­wives holystone the pavements daily, and the guest is provided with pattens the moment he enters the front yard. The Council has enforced the sidewalk ordi­nance until property owners have made the paths in front of their holdings straight and smooth, and this is true not only of the central but of the outlying portions of the city as well. An electric lighting system. including both arc and incandescents, supplements the natural and artificial gas illumination. A street-railroad plant that leaves out the electric problem and patient mule, traverses the principal streets, and the motor is a dummy locomotive that makes all the noise it pleases, and apparently with no bad effects on either man or beast. Some of the new buildings will astonish absent Muncieites who have been away since the gas boom started, as much when they return as the new village of Falling Waters as­tonished Rip Van Winkle when be came back from his twenty years' nap in the Catskills. The Anthony building, where the improvement companies are quartered, is as handsome of an office building as there is in the State, and the Boyce Block is a creditable specimen of the business houses recently erected. There in apparently a much better supply of business property than residences, and new-comers find it difficult to secure a habitation, although the additions on all sides of the city have been rapidly built up. "There is not a dwelling-house for rent here at this time," said Sec­retary Goshorn of the City Improvement Company, "and a good many employes of the new factories which have located here are oblig'd to double up, two families liv­ing in one house, until further accommoda­tions can be secured." Land values in all parts of the city have more than doubled, and acre property on the outskirts is held at ten times the value placed upon it before the gas discovery was made. Four hundred dollars a foot is asked for business sites opposite the Anthony building. Apart from residence sites in the new additions, which are still offered at reasonable figures, the only cheap properties to be had in Muncie are factory sites, which are still freely of­fered, although the days of bonuses and extra inducements beyond free land and free gas, seem to be over.

We have sunk forty-three gas wells here, and have now twenty-six factories and other industries of considerable im­portance, said James Boyce, who has per­haps done more than any other man to build up Muncie’s interests. "They are the Muncie nail-works, the Rubber Com­pany, the Skewer Company, the bending-works, the Johnson Hard-wood Lumber Company, Coleman’s heading factory, Ball's washing-machine-works, the Muncie Casket Company, the Indiana Bridge Com­pany, the Pulp Company, the Muncie Glass Company, the Bagging Manufactur­ing Company, the handle-works, the Shoe and Leather Company, Maring, Hart & Co.’s window-glass factory, the Heming­way [sic] Hemingray Glass Company, C. H. Over's window-glass-works, the Ball bottle-works, the Muncie Natural-gas Company, the Brooks creamery, the Adams plow-works, the Chamberlain pump factory, Ball Brothers stamping-works, Bennett & Moore’s and Mock's brickworks and the Tyler plaining-mill. Some few of these we had before the gas was found, but they have been so much improved and enlarged since that time that they are prac­tically new concerns. They foot up in capital invested $1,933,000, and their united pay-rolls shows total of 2,183 employes, for which we are indebted to our natural-gas advantages. What other increase the lat­ter has brought to us can only be approxi­mated. The work in the new factories is largely skilled and high-priced labor, and the money paid out for it weekly cuts an important figure in our exchanges. With the additions to our factory labor there has been a corresponding increase in other classes of population. While there are no exact means of determining the number of the present population. I am sure, from number of new houses built and occupied, and the partial enumerations made, that we have more than doubled our population in the last three years, and I think that a fair census to-day would give us 15,000 resi­dents of the city. A fair estimate of the saving in fuel, based on that number of gas consumers, would be $250,000, and I do not believe that there are a hundred families here without it. Competition and co-op­erative companies have reduced the price to a minimum, and I am furnishing it to my tenants at $1 a month, beside looking after their stoves and their piping and keeping connections in order. The saving effected by its use to manufacturers here will cer­tainly amount to another quarter million, and 1 think it would be safe to say that we are being benefited in our financial saving alone to the extent of $500,000 annually, saying nothing about the increase in our comfort and convenience. Of the factories we have secured some few received cash bonuses, others only free land and free gas, and some bought their sites and had gas thrown in. In no case have we regretted our out­lay, and we would cheerfully make the same expenditure over again to secure the same results."

1 spent two afternoons looking round among the more important factories and heard much the same story. President Darnall, of the Muncie nail-works, who moved that establishment here from Greencastle, took me through his new mill, now running double turn, and with not a pound of coal on the premises, except the little slack used in the blacksmith-shops. "I can get my raw material as low as Indian­apolis," he said, "and our shipping and receiving arrangements here are such that we have no hauling. As for the saving in fuel there has been an excel­lent opportunity for comparison in our case, and I am satisfied we shall save $40,000 a year on that item alone. We have $200,000 invested here, and the saving over coal fuel would constitute a good return yearly on that amount."

C. H. Over, of the window-glass-works, figured out a saving on his fuel that gave him a satisfactory margin. "There is one thing," he said, "that ought not to be omit­ted in this calculation, and that is the large earnings of a considerable proportion of the operatives here. Most of mine will average $35 a week, and I have known some of the blowers to make as much as $90 a week. The hours are comparatively short, and while the workmen in oth­er branches of the glass business will not average as much in wages or have as much time to spend their earnings they are, as a rule, good livers."

At the Hemingway [sic] Hemingray glass-works the situa­tion was less encouraging, but not without hope. "The flint-glass trade." said a member of the firm, "is badly demoralized at present. If we were not as favorably located as we are we should be doing nothing. When the balance of the people in our line who are located in the gas belt learn enough to avoid the giving away of all the advantages of their location we shall do better."

D. L. H.