Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 21, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 December 1899 — A HUMAN HIVE. [ARTICLE]

A HUMAN HIVE.

A Place Where Most of Our Jewelry Is Made. Providence, R. 1., has the largest silverware factory in the world, the largest screw factory, the largest manufactory for small tools and the largest file works. Perhaps it is especially unique in producing more jewelry than any other city in the United States, says the Nashville American, and nearly as much as all the rest of the country combined. There is no city which possesses so many separate and distinct shops for the manufacture of a single commodity as Providence does for the manufacture of jewelry. There are.at least 250 separate factories devoted to the making of gold, silver, rolled-plated, electroplated and brass

jewelry and novelties. In addition, the auxiliary industries for furnishing supplies of special labor to the jewelry factories number more than seventy-five. Many of the jewelry shops are small, employing only ten or a dozen hands, while Some employ as high as 300, and in one case 1,400. By the State census of 1895 the capital invested in this industry in Providence is $12,000,000; average number of hands employed, 7,000; annual wages paid, $3,500,000; value of material used, $5,500,000; value of annual products, $14,000,000. Had these figures been taken in 1898 •they would have been at least 33 per cent. more. In almost every case the shops have been started by poor men with small capital, and as a result of success there has arisen a large class of well-to-do people, neither rich nor poor, but prosperous and contented.