The most casual consideration of New England’s mechanical development brings one squarely against a most interesting and baffling phase of American industrial life, the brass industry of the Naugatuck Valley. Here, in a narrow district scarcely thirty miles long, centering about Waterbury, is produced approximately 80 per cent of the rolled brass and copper and finished brass wares used in the United States, an output amounting to upward of $80,000,000 a year. No concentration on so large a scale exists elsewhere in the country. For example, in 1900, Pennsylvania produced but 54 per cent of the iron and steel, and Massachusetts but 45 per cent of the boots and shoes. Furthermore, there seems to be no serious tendency to dislodge it. While there is more competition from outside, its ascendency is nearly as marked today as it was a generation ago. Why should this small district, a thousand miles or more from its sources of raw material, far from its market, and without cheap coal or adequate water power, gain and hold this leadership?[197]

It was not the first in the field. The Revere Copper Company, in Massachusetts, founded by Paul Revere, began rolling copper in 1801, and the Soho Copper Company, at Belleville, N. J., in 1813. The brass business in Connecticut had its origin with Henry Grilley, of Waterbury, who began making pewter buttons there in 1790. In 1802 Abel and Levi Porter joined him, and they started making brass buttons under the name of Abel Porter & Company. In 1811 all the original partners retired and a new firm was formed, Leavenworth, Hayden & Scovill. In 1827 Leavenworth and Hayden sold out to William H. Scovill, and the firm became J. M. L. & W. H. Scovill. J. M. L. Scovill did the selling and his brother ran the shop and the finances. In 1850 the firm was incorporated as the present Scovill Manufacturing Company.

Meantime, Aaron Benedict established, in 1812, a factory at Waterbury for making bone and ivory buttons, and, in 1823, he too began making brass buttons. About 1820 James Croft, a brass worker from Birmingham, England, came to the Scovills. A year later Benedict secured him, and when Benedict and Israel Coe formed the firm of Benedict & Coe, in 1829, Croft became one of the partners. Croft’s coming marks a vital point in the history of the industry. On his advice, both Scovill and Benedict began to do their own rolling. It was his influence which induced them to import from Birmingham workmen, processes and machinery. He went to England seven times for Benedict, and Israel Holmes went three times for Scovill to bring back English machinery, rollers and finishers. Israel Coe also went to England when the Wolcottville Brass Company was started.[198] From that time, the business may be said to have passed the experimental stage, and its growth from 1830 was rapid. William Lathrop, who has made a study of it, has traced, perhaps better than any other, the coincident growth of the market and the industry. The raw material was at first mainly scrap copper, old ship sheathing, kettles, boilers and stills, collected by the Connecticut peddlers. More and more copper was imported until after 1850 when the mining of western copper began developing. All of the zinc was imported until about 1870.

At first they rolled brass only for their own use, but new demands for it were arising. By 1840 Chauncey Jerome had developed the cheap brass clock. The discovery and refining of petroleum created a lamp industry. The pin machinery, invented by Dr. J. I. Howe, Fowler, and Slocum & Jillson, opened up another great outlet. Daguerreotype plates gave another, and metallic cartridges another, while the invention of the telegraph enormously extended the use of copper wire. The Waterbury men were best able to meet these new demands, as they were the only ones in the country with the facilities and experience needed, and they “got in first.” While the rolling and the drawing processes were imported bodily from England, and have continued almost unchanged, Yankee ingenuity was constantly at work devising new articles made of brass and improving the machinery for making the old ones.

With the increasing demand, firms began to multiply. Israel Holmes, who had been with the Scovills for ten years, started Holmes & Hotchkiss in 1830, and with English workmen and machinery made wire and tubing for the market. After several changes in partnership, the firm became Brown & Elton in 1838. Meantime, Holmes, with Israel Coe, Anson Phelps and John Hungerford, started the Wolcottville Brass Company in 1834, in what is now Torrington. They built up a prosperous business in sheet-brass kettles, but lost heavily when Hiram W. Hayden, then with Scovill, invented the spinning process. Their property was eventually sold to Lyman Coe, and became the Coe Brass Company. The Waterbury Brass Company was started in 1845, with Holmes as president. Associated with him were H. W. Hayden, Elton, and Lyman Coe, son of Israel Coe. In 1853 Holmes founded Holmes, Booth & Haydens,[199] and in 1869 Holmes, Booth & Atwood, which two years later was forced to change its name to Plume & Atwood on account of its resemblance to the older company.

Israel Holmes stands out among the indomitable personalities who built up the brass industry. In addition to his invaluable work for the Scovills, he started five of the strongest firms in the valley, and was the first president of three.

Benedict & Coe became Benedict & Burnham in 1834, and from this firm has come the American Pin Company, the Waterbury Button Company and the Waterbury Clock and Watch companies. Anson Phelps soon withdrew from the Wolcottville Brass Company and started Smith & Phelps at Derby in 1836. Encouraged by its success, Phelps planned to organize a large manufacturing community there, but he was held up by a man who raised the price of some necessary land from $5,000 to $30,000, so he moved two miles up the river and founded what is now the city of Ansonia. In 1854 the firm was incorporated as the Ansonia Brass & Copper Company. Mr. George P. Cowles, who came from Wolcottville in 1848, was its executive head for forty years until his death. From it sprang the Ansonia Clock Company, of Brooklyn, Wallace & Sons, which failed in 1896 and became part of the Coe Brass Company, and a number of other companies. The Chase Rolling Mills Company developed from the Waterbury Manufacturing Company, Benedict & Burnham, and Holmes, Booth & Haydens. Randolph & Clowes came down through Brown & Brothers, and Brown & Elton from the old Holmes & Hotchkiss firm.

The American Brass Company was formed in 1899, and now comprises the Waterbury Brass Company, Holmes, Booth & Haydens, Benedict & Burnham, the Coe Brass Company and the Ansonia Brass & Copper Company. This is the largest brass company in the world.

Such, briefly, is an outline of the history of the larger companies. To an outsider their interrelations are almost inextricable. The chart (Fig. 50) does little more than indicate them. As phases of the business grew, there was a clearly defined policy of setting them off as separate enterprises. The American Pin Company, the Clock, Watch and Button companies, and the Brass Goods Corporation are examples. Only the more important of these manufacturing companies are shown. While there has been at times sharp competition among them, it always stopped short of war, and when facing outside competition the companies pull together.

Many of the heavy stockholders, as Holmes, Elton, Burnham and Chase, were interested in several companies. Nearly all of the leaders were born and grew up in the valley and were full of local spirit. Israel Coe, Holmes, the Scovill brothers and Phelps, of the earlier order, were men of great ability, as also Lyman Coe, Cowles and Charles F. Brooker, of the later generation. The inventions of Hiram W. Hayden vitally affected the history of four companies. They seriously undermined the old Wolcottville company, shut the Brooklyn Brass Company out of important phases of its business, and built up the prosperity of the Waterbury Brass Company, and Holmes, Booth & Haydens. L. J. Atwood, of Holmes, Booth & Haydens, and, later, Plume & Atwood, L. S. White, of Brown & Brothers, and W. N. Weeden, of Benedict & Burnham, were prolific inventors, and their work contributed to the growth of the industry.

Other influential men have built machinery for the large companies. Almon Farrel founded the Farrel Foundry & Machine Company in 1851, and had two establishments, one in Ansonia and one in Waterbury. The Waterbury plant was operated for many years by E. C. Lewis as agent. He bought it in 1880, but as a matter of sentiment retained the old name, prefixing the word Waterbury. The two plants have come to specialize somewhat, the Waterbury one building mainly presses and stamping machines, and the Ansonia one rolling mills and heavy machinery. E. J. Manville, an expert mechanic from the Pratt & Whitney shop in Hartford, with his five sons, founded the E. J. Manville Machine Company, which has built up a wide reputation for its presses and headers. Among the many others are William Wallace of Wallace & Sons, Ansonia, Charles Johnson and A. C. Campbell.

The answer, then, to our question as to origin and success of the Naugatuck brass industry is as follows. It sprang from the local manufacture of buttons. A small group of able, forceful and ingenious men developed the best facilities in the country for rolling and drawing brass, and when new demands came they were the only ones with experience prepared to meet them. They were originally well situated for raw material. Later they bought their copper in Baltimore. By the time copper began coming from the West, the Waterbury companies were firmly established. Copper is expensive, its unit of weight is the pound and not the ton, and freight rates are far less important than with steel, so the industry’s detached location did not outweigh the advantage of its early start. A large force of workmen skilled in handling brass has been developed in these factories and no large enterprise could now be started elsewhere without drawing upon them. Many of these workmen own their homes, and their relations with the employers have generally been so friendly that higher wages elsewhere do not seem to attract them.

Finally, and perhaps most important of all, are the men who have designed and built the tools used. Connecticut leads all other states in the ratio of patents to the population, and Waterbury has led the rest of Connecticut in the proportion of nearly two to one. All the finishing or “cutting up” shops, as they are locally known, contain highly developed machinery—nearly all of it special, much of it designed and built in the shop where it is used.

This includes machinery for making eyelets, hooks and eyes, pins, cartridges, wire forming machinery, thread rolling, and headers and stamping machinery. Some of these machines, as, for instance, the last two mentioned, are more or less standard, but their tool equipment has been wonderfully developed and is bewildering in its variety. Much of this machinery has never been made public, and nearly all of it is too special, too intricate and too varied for description here. It is natural, under these circumstances, that the mechanics who developed these tools should be comparatively little known. They have, however, been a vital element in the Naugatuck brass industry, and should be recognized as successful American tool builders.