[Newspaper]
Publication: The Muncie Daily Times
Muncie, IN, United States
vol. 11, no. 160, p. 4, col. 2-4
MUNCIE’S PROSPERITY.
DELAWARE COUNTY’S WEALTH
HAS INCREASED $7,000,000 in
FIVE YEARS.
And the Population of Muncie, Its
Capital Town, Has Grown from
6,000 Ten Years Ago to More
Than 22,000 in 1892.
Natural Gas Has Brought to That
Town Almost $6,000,000 of
Outside Capital,
Which Furnishes Employment for to 8,000
Workmen and disburses in Wages
Nearly $350,000 per Month –
A Marvelous Record.
Staff Correspondence of Indianapolis Journal
MUNCIE, IND, Dec. 20. – Just previous to the discovery of natural gas here the assessment value of all taxable property in Delaware county was $11,000,000. In 1891 the value of property returned by the assessor for taxation amounted in round numbers, to $18,000,000, showing an increase of $7,000,000, or an advance of more than 50 percent, upon real estate and chattela throughout the county. In 1880 the population of Muncie was 6,000; in 1890 it had increased to about double that number. The cit directory, now approaching completion, will approximately fix the number of inhabitants at 23,000. This increase of population and property values is the county’s inheritance from the gas belt. To this Muncie owes that Metropolitan air which distinguishes her from other cities of the district, and in point of size and commercial importance has enabled her to rank among the leading cities of the State. The energy which has successful located so many millions here in manufacturing enterprises is not notably a new element in Muncie’s history. She has always had many public-spirited citizens, and even before the discovery of gas was foremost in the encouragement of commercial and industrial concerns. By her liberal subsidies to railway corporations she had already provided herself wit an extensive system of transportation, which became immediately valuable when the development of her gas wells began, drawing manufacturing plants to this vicinity. She has carefully husbanded her enormous output of the fluid, and on this account is enabled now to offer enormous supplies of free fuel to all industries that may avail themselves of its advantages. There are at present in Delaware county nearly two hundred flowing wells. Of these Muncie is using fifty for all private and manufacturing purposes within the city. They supply 150,000,000 cubic feel daily. The old Eaton well, the pioneer of the group, has been in daily, though underrate, use for six years, and shows no decrease of pressure.
In view of the wisdom of its methods, it is proper here to briefly notice the existence of a business organization to which the city is largely indebted for that prosperity which is do evident on every band. This is the Citizen’s Enterprise Co., composed substantially of every citizen of the town. The company was organized for the purpose of encouraging the location of commercial or manufacturing industries, and within the brief space of sixty days there was subscribed and paid into the fund $200,000. This has been used in the most judicious manner, and, as there are no salaried officers to be supported from it, every dollar that has been thus far used has been applied to the legitimate end for which it was subscribed. With this fund the company guarantees to duplicate any subscription of private capital needed for the encouragement of any desired industries, which practically raises the amount to the power of nearly half million dollars. Many of the largest manufactories now in operation here have been beneficiaries of this fund, and, as yet, less than 25 per cent, of it has been exhausted. Without bonding the county for a dollar, this well-directed effort of the citizens has accomplished more than could have been expected from the formal levying of a municipal tax.
It is difficult to present and quite impossible to comprehend the incessant activity of money in this city. Where $100 is hoarded in bank vaults $100,000 is employed in the avenues of trade. If timid prognosticators without the belt have foretold the failure of gas, they are without honor as prophets here in the heart of the region. Money moves continually, and is in legitimate, not in speculative channels. The establishment of manufactories, the building of houses, the improvement or construction of public buildings and the opening of mercantile enterprises constitute some of the avenues through which flow many millions of this restless wealth.
MUNCIE’S FACTORIES
Before reviewing the figures, which better than anything else will enable the reader to comprehend the magnitude of Muncie’s growth, it should be observed that previous to October, 1891, the town contained but eleven thousand inhabitants and its manufacturing interests, though considerable, where wholly in the hands of local capitalists. These concerns, if incorporated at all, were not heavily capitalized, and afforded employment to but a limited number of men. It was only after natural gas had been discovered, revolutionizing the question of fuel, that foreign manufacturers began locating industrial enterprises here. How rapidly this added to the city’s active wealth will appear from a survey of the following list of incorporated concerns which have established themselves in the county within the past two years:
Capital Stock.
Indiana Iron Company.............................$250,000
Rochester and Muncie Land Co..................80,000
Ames Bending Company..............................5,000
Nelson Glass Company……………….….25,000
Architectural Iron Company.......................35,000
Midland Steel Company...........................250,000
Indiana Cracker Company..........................30,000
R. E. Hill M’f’g. Company.......................100,000
Crozier Washing machine Company..........30,000
Albany Furniture Company........................10,000
Common Sense Engine Company............100,000
Sterling Grocery Company.........................15,000
Roderick Gas Company................................5,000
Silver Ash Institute.....................................10,000
Gas, Land and Improvement Co................10,000
Muncie Casket Company...........................50,000
Shoe and Leather Company.......................60,000
Gates and Blountsville Nat. Gas Co..........15,000
Farmers’ Natural Gas Company..................5,000
Indiana Natural Gas Company.............2,000,000
Muncie Brass Plating Works.....................80,000
Manufacturers’ Gas Company...................25,000
Port Glass Works.......................................20,000
Rochester White Lead Company.............125,000
Western Improvement Company.............100,000
Economy Gas Company............................15,000
White River Cattle Company....................10,000
Combination Manufacturing Co...............25,000
Muncie Nail Co.......................................200,000
Muncie Glass Company............................25,000
Delaware County Land Company...........250,000
Novelty and Brass Works........................100,000
Clyde Windows and Glass Works Co........25,000
Light, Heat and Power Company...............50,000
Ball Brothers’ Glass Works......................250,000
Muncie Forging and Iron Company...........60,000
Indiana Bridge Company.........................300,000
White River Iron and Steel Co..................75,000
Hemingray Glass Company.......................50,000
Muncie Foundry and Machine Wks..........50,000
Tappen Shoe Company..............................50,000
Muncie Skewer Company.........................25,000
Johnson Hardwood Company...................40,000
James Boyce & Co., shovel handles.......160,000
Handy Washer Company...........................20,000
Maring, Hart & co. (glass)......................100,000
Patterson Glass Company.......................250,000
Albany Paper Company........................ ..........
Muncie Roofing Company.......................10,000
___________
Total....................................................$5,490,000
This total is composed of incorporated concerns only, many substantial industries not of record have been omitted. The Whitely Harvesting Machine Company, which has already put into active circulation over half a million dollars, is not included in this list.
The establishment here of all these industries has necessarily brought with it an active demand for labor. The factories now in operation, employing labor and disbursing heavy monthly pay-rolls ma be easily and readily comprehended by a glance at the following tabulated statement showing the number of men employed, together with their aggregate monthly earnings, so far as the latter has been obtainable.
No. Men Monthly
employed. pay-roll.
Joseph Bell Stove Company.........250 $10,000
Muncie Steel Company................150 8,000
Akron Forging Company.............200 8,000
Whitely Harvesting Machine
Company...................................2,000 80,000
Boyer & Kandel Carriage Co.........50 2,000
Burdette Organ & Piano Co.........150 6,000
Gill Bros. & Co...glass slabs..........60 3,500
John McVoy Corrugated Iron
Company.....................................150 6,000
Muncie Rivet and Tack Co..............25 1,000
Muncie Wheel Company.................80 3,200
Hill Manufacturing Company.......150 4,500
Wysor & Haines Boiler Co.............45 1,800
Common Sense Engine Co...........200 6,000
Indiana Iron Company..................700 21,000
Midland Steel Company...............500 15,000
Tappan Shoe Company.................150 4,000
White River Steel Company.........400 12,000
Architectural Iron Works................55 1,650
Artificial Ice Company...................15 350
Brick companies (four)..................75 3,000
James Boyce & Co........................10 1,200
Carriage Company.........................50 2,000
Ball Brothers Glass Company......600 40,000
Flour mills (four)...........................30 2,400
Hemingray Glass Company..........150 10,000
Indiana Bridge Company.............175 10,000
Hub and spoke companies (2).......50 1,400
McKendry Heading Company.......45 1,800
C.H. Over Window glass Co........125 10,000
Maring, Hart & Co.’s
glassworks..................................250 20,000
Planing mills (five)........................60 2,500
Westlake Mantel Company............20 1,000
Muncie Glass Company...............200 6,000
Muncie Casket Company...............50 2,500
Washing machine company...........90 4,000
Muncie Hominy works..................15 600
Hard-Wood Milling Company.......70 3,000
Muncie Wood-pulp Company......100 4,000
Port glass works............................60 5,000
Muncie Skewer Company.............40 1.600
Roofing and cornice
companies (3).............................40 1,800
Smith Bent wood Company........255 7,000
_______ _________
Totals........................................7,985 $343,600
These figures include clerks, type-writers and every department of female labor, as well as the skilled and common employments of men.
REAL ESTATE AND BUILDINGS.
The William N. Whitely Company of Springfield, O., manufacturers of all kinds of harvesting machinery, has located a plant just half a mile west of Muncie, which, for size, durability and capacity, probably eclipses any other single institution in the belt. It has already expended $500,000 in the construction of buildings and improvement of its grounds. The works consist of fourteen buildings situated in parallel lines at intervals of forty feet. Each of these buildings is 500 feet long and forty feet wide, connected by a ball running at right angles through the centers. This gives a flooring space of about 300,000 square feet, and the buildings, if placed in one continuous line, would approximate one and 1/2 mile in length. The factory will produce all kinds of harvesting machinery and when running at its fall capacity will employ 1000 men.
The land about these works is among the finest of Muncie’s building locations, and when it was first offered for sale it was disposed of with a rapidity seldom been equaled. There were thirteen hundred lots platted about the vicinity of the works, and in August, 1892, they were first placed upon the market. In two days the sales had amounted to $130,000, and by the 1st day of day of December twelve hundred lots had been sold. Between the 23d of August and 1st day of December of this year 150 houses had been completed, the owners established therein. Other suburbs about the city are building up rapidly, and the number of massive brick blocks and store fronts to be seen in the business centers is growing greater daily.
Since Muncie’s prosperous era set in the volume of freights handled by the three railways entering the city has increased enormously. The total freight forwarded from here in one month is 35,000,000 pounds, and the amount received in the same period of time in 46,736,000 pounds making the stupendous total of 81,736,000 pounds of freight handled monthly. To this, it is said, the Whitely machine-works, when running at full capacity, will add 1,000 tons per month.
It is almost superfluous to add that with the incoming of industrial enterprises every class of business has been accelerated. New mercantile houses are being established almost as rapidly as buildings can be constructed for the purpose and, aside from the army of workmen employed about the factories, there is a great number of carpenters, plasterers, masons, painters, designers, decorators, architects and laborers who find constant employment in their various lines of work.
Muncie has reserved her entire gas product for her own use. There has never been but one attempt to establish a pipe-line to carry gas to other cities. This was the effort of the Queen City Natural Gas Company, of Cincinnati. Failing to secure franchises upon land in Delaware county, the company long since withdrew from the field, and only last week filed in the courts of Cincinnati a formal application for the dissolution of the company.
It is a fact interesting to be noted that certain products now being manufactured in Muncie and other towns of the gas belt have never been produced in the State previous to the natural gas era. In 1887 there was one glass factory in Indiana, and that manufactured window glass exclusively. To day it would be safe to estimate the number of these factories at one hundred within the limits of the gas belt, and there is no known article of the ware, from the most expensive cut-glass down to the commonest window light, that is not manufactured here and placed in successful competition with the products of the world.
If the stupendous figures indicating Muncie’s amazing prosperity create surprise, let it be remembered that Muncie is only one point in a vast and wonderful region. Her history is a history, in some degree, of every town and section of the belt. The same industrial revolution is in progress wherever the development of gas has been successful, and when it is remembered that the gas belt of Indiana is from five to ten times more extensive than the combined gas fields of the world, Muncie’s progress may be taken as a faint indication of the future prospects of the entire belt.
E.P.A
