Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 132, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 December 1909 — GREATEST MANUFACTURING DISTRICT IN THE WORLD [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

GREATEST MANUFACTURING DISTRICT IN THE WORLD

Take a map of North America, (I i® place the ’ needle of'your compasses half-way across Lake Michigan nearly due east of the Wisconsin-Illinois line, and describe a half circle to the left from Milwaukee to South Bend. It looks like a small bit of territory, but that strip of land as it curves around the end of Lake Michigan, some 25 miles wide and 200 miles long, is destined to become the manufacturing center of the world. This assertion is not imaginative, but is based on solid facts and figures, and its truthfulness is rapidly forcing itself on the minds of the country’s leaders in industry and finance. Conditions there to-day more than foreshadow the future. Look again at the map and note the cities that are included in your semi-circle. Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha, Elgin, Aurora, Chicago, South Chicago, Pullman, Kensington, Chicago Heights, Sheffield, Whiting, Hammond, East Chicago, Gary, La Porte, Michigan City, South Bend and a score of lesser note. In every one great manufacturing establishments

are roaring day and night, all the year round, turning out products for the world. The smoke from the myriad chimneys lies like a pall over the land by day, and by night the glare of their furnaces lights up the sky like a chain of conflagrations. Hundreds of thousands of railway trains and of vessels pour into these cities an ehdless stream of raw material—iron, steel, lumber, grain, coal—and depart again laden with manufactures that are sold in nearly every land on the globe. So it is to-day. What will it be tomorrow, when the deep waterway from the Great Lakes to the Gulf is opened up, as it must be, and the Panama canal is,completed? The accomplishment of those mighty enterprises means that the entire South American continent will be reached from this manufacturing district at the foot of Lake Michigan more directly and economically than from any other in the world. And the manufacturers there are alive to the opportunity and prepared to accept it. The wonderful farming lands of western Canada are only beginning to be known, but already thousands of alert progressive American farmers are there, and they are calling for American-made farm machinery. Mexico is demanding our manufactures more and more insistently each year. American threshers, harvesters, plows, buggies, wagons, windmills and mining machinery are used in every civilized country on earth. And our own broad land, rich and prosperous, steadily demands almost as much as the manufacturers have been able to supply. That is the market of the present and near future. The laws of trade are that it must be supplied by a district so located that the raw material can be brought in and the finished product sent l out most expeditiously and most cheaply; a district with ample transportation facilities by land and water; a district with a plentiful supply of skilled labor and a climate in which the laborer can work to best advantage; a district with capitalists of brains and energy, who are not afraid to spend money in order to accomplish results. In a word, such a district as is found around the southern and southwestern shore of Lake Michigan—and found nowhere else on earth. Wise Americans of affairs are well aware of this fact, as is shown by the action of the United States Steel Corpora tlon in building Gary, Ind. The steel trust did not locate its giant plant there by chance or for any fanciful reason. Recognizing the present and

future status of the district as the great manufacturing and distributing center, in three it created a city of 30,000 people centered about its mighty mills. The Olivers, the Studebakers, the Deeres, the McCormicks, the Deerings and all the other manufacturers are alive to the opportunities of the future. They rejoice in the approaching completion of the Panama canal and are determined that false- economy and political scheming Shall not delay the building of the Lakes-to-Gulf deep waterway, even if they have to pay for it themselves. The commanding position of this industrial district is well indicated byt the trademark of the M. Rumely Company of La Porte, , Ind., reproduced herewith. This company, in its spirit and achievement, is typical of the manufacturers of the district Within the last three years it has doubled the size of its plant, and still it is unable to supply the demand for its goods. Nevertheless it does not rest satisfied, but is already planning

more new buildings and, as its trademark indicates, is reaching out for yet broader markets. Five hundred workmen are employed in making the threshers, plowing engines, and other agricultural implements which it turns out and 13 branch offices and a hundred traveling salesmen distribute them. The wideawake officers of the company have had their eyes on the Canadian market for some time, but only recently felt justified in entering It. Their first salesman sent there met with extraordinary success. Now the Rumelys are turning toward South America with the certain knowledge that, given equal transportation facilities, their goods will soon replace those of European manufacture. During the financial ’depression’ of last year the Rumely Company stood in a class almost by Itself. While other manufacturers were closing down their plants, discharging their salesmen and in -every way checking expenditures, the Rumely Company kept right 6h turning out machinery and selling it. The demand for its goods last year was greater than ever before. The reason why the Rumely goods sell so well is not far to seek. Meinrad Rumely, who established the business in 1853, also established the policy of making every machine he turned out a little better than it had to be. His sons and grandsons have never deviated from that policy for a moment. The success of the products of their immense plant lies in correct design, highest quality of materials and thorough workmanship, The machines they turn out are always the best that can be built.

The Rutnelys have attacked a new problem that has become actual during the last two years. Their achievement in the manufacture of successful steam plowing "engines and of mechanical tractors, will mark an era, as did the plows of John Deere and Oliver, and the binder of McCormick. To-day, for the first time in the history of the world, is it possible to produce power by mechanical tractors more economically than by the use of the animal body. Out of every hundred pounds of fuel or food more pull can be obtained from an engine than a horse or a mule. Twenty-eight million horses are engaged on the farms of the Unltdd States alone for plowing purposes. The motors perfected by the Rumely Inventors Are supplanting the horses wherever they are put into use. They have reduced the cost of plowing from $1.50 to 60 cents per acre. .Although operated almost continuously, the factory cannot produce engines enough.