Reminiscing! - Part 2
On April 1, 1887, I began working as Baggage Master on the New York Lake Eire and Western Railroad, at Friendship, NY, under George W. Fries, Station Agent. I had improved in Telegraphy but not enough to hold down a job on the old Erie.
August 1, 1887, I resigned this position to accept one of Telegraph Operator and Assistant Agent on the Lackawanna and Pittsburgh Railroad, at Friendship, under Charles H. Hammond, Station Agent. The station had burned down and we were located in the wing of a family residence. One small room was ticket office, telegraph office, freight office and general waiting room-- using a box car for baggage and freight storage. I still have the original copy of the first train order that I ever received as a real telegraph operator, and it is a very unusual one at that. It reads, “Look out for freight car on main track at Higgins.” Higgins was a small settlement about three miles East of Friendship that had no switch. This railroad was accommodating by attaching a car of lumber to the rear of the caboose and leaving it on the main track while the train went on the Angelica. and picking up the empty car on their return trip several hours later. This being the only train on the road, there was little danger. The passenger train laid over at Friendship and left a little after 5 a.m. and I had to be on the job before this to sell tickets, get the train, telegraph orders, etc.
In the adjoining room to our temporary quarters lived a couple of Italian trackmen that became an interesting study for me. They were as different as two people of the same nationality could be. One was a decided blond coming from a part of Italy that sends out very few immigrants. The other was a very dark and well educated man, Frank Marino, who had not been in this country long and was working hard to learn English. No matter how early I came to work, he was at his Italian-English book and as after the early train had gone I had plenty of time to spare, I became interested in him, and sometimes he would get stuck in his translations and I would help him with what I could. He gave me his history and showed me papers that showed that he would have been of some importance had he stayed in Italy. Instead of coming here broke, as most newcomers did, his father gave him five hundred dollars and if he did not like America to come back home. He very soon showed his ability to grasp opportunity. This narrow gauge railroad was in financial difficulty and each pay day became farther apart. As most of the trackmen became short, Frank would advance them the amount of their wages (less a good discount) and when pay days did come around, he would collect about all of the checks. I left the L. & P. on July 31, 1888, when they went bankrupt and closed down. They soon reorganized and the new company paid off the oldest unpaid payroll and the current one at the same time. Under this system I drew my back salary for either six or seven months, one at a time.
December 15, 1888, I went to Bolivar, NY, as Relief Agent for Barney Dun, who was the Station Agent on the Bradford, Eldred, & Cuba Railroad, as he went back east to spend Christmas with his folks. Fred Reid, one of my telegraph students, who became a first class telegraph operator, took me over there with their family horse and sleigh.
If anyone ever had a busy first day on a new job it was I. I arrived there in the p.m., only a short time before Mr. Dun's train came, so that I did not get very complete instructions-- being in a strange village, knowing none, a railroad that I had never even been on, knowing none of the telegraph calls, the forms used, or the required procedure. The express company had an old fashioned large safe that required a special form key to be inserted before the combination could be worked and Mr. Dun had lost the key, so there was no safe to use. On this same train a money shipment of three thousand dollars arrived for the bank and, it being after banking hours, surely put me in a spot. To my great relief the cashier of the bank stepped up and introduced himself saying they had expected the money and he had kept their bank safe unlocked to take care of it.
I locked the depot and climbed on a truck and went directly to the bank, got the proper receipt and believe me, it was a great relief.
However, the fun was not over yet; the depot had burned down and they were using a temporary building. In a fairly good sized room, they had put up a thin board partition separating it into a waiting room and the all around office.
Against this partition set the ticket case, sitting on a narrow shelf, but not fastened at all. The waiting room was used for baggage as well, and, as this train was the last one for the day, I put the uncalled for trunks in there, and in some way I rolled a heavy sample trunk against this partition hard enough to knock the ticket case off the shelf, which landed on its face spilling the tickets all over the floor. In those days they used printed tickets to every station on the road, as well as for many other points. Each of those tickets had a serial number arranged in the case to draw the lowest number from the bottom of its particular slot. You can imagine the job I had in getting all those tickets back in the proper place.
I stayed there until January 1, 1889, when Mr. Dun returned and he later sent me a very nice letter thanking me for the way I had done the work, especially for doing some of his office records that he had been a little behind on. I still have that letter.
Soon after this, I received a letter from Brother Frank who was still Station Agent at Verndale, Minn., on the Northern Pacific RR, that if I wanted a job as night car checker at Winnipeg Junction, Minn., to come at once. I immediately left for the job, stopping off in Verndale long enough to say hello to Frank, then on to Winnipeg Junction, arriving one afternoon when in the morning it was 40 degrees below zero. And was I surprised at dinner times; they served ice cream for dessert. Winnipeg Junction was just what its name suggests. It is 25 miles east of Fargo, ND, a point from which a branch Northern Pacific RR runs to Winnipeg, Canada. This place consisted of a General Store, a Liquor Store, a Depot, a RR Round House, and a rather large Hotel owned and operated by the Railroad. I expected to go to work that night, so early in the p.m. I thought that I would go to bed for a few hours and be in better shape to make the all-night shift. Before I got to sleep there was a crash outside that ended my contemplated sleep. This branch line goes directly north and there was quite a grade at the beginning and it was common for Winnipeg trains to back down on the main line to make a run up the grade. In doing so this time, someone failed to lock the switch and it flew open, ditching some cars and scattering various goods all over the place. Instead of checking cars my first day I checked mixed up merchandise. Here again was an experience of extreme cold weather-- the old habit of sticking a lead pencil on the tongue to make it write better did not work that way here. The moisture placed on the lead simply froze and the pencil would not even make a mark until cut off or warmed up. After we got this job done, the man working the day trick opposite me informed me that he would do the night shift and that I could go on in the morning, saying that he was soon to move to California and would rather have the day time to do his personal work. This made it so that I did no night work while I was there.
We did a lot of car checking for the N.P.-- built another long branch up in Canada, and all the material for it went through Winnipeg Junction. All the switches were full of cars, steel rails, and ties, coming in faster than the branch could handle them and the company required that the cars on hand the longest must go out first. So it made a lot of work to make up the correct switch list. Winnipeg Junction was a great station for new agents. When I first went there a young man named George Plank, who put in too much time in the saloon, was replaced by Mr. Comstolk. He was shortly promoted to a better station and Charley Horbeck, a former train dispatcher who had the misfortune of running two trains together on the branch, took his place. One of the new Telegraph Operators, Frank Fox, who had quit the Burlington RR because of a strike, was there only a short rime when he was made Station Agent at East Grand Forks, Minn.-- just across the Red River of the North from Grand Forks, ND. The Minnesota side of the river was very wet and most of the business places were saloons, while the other side of the River was dry, so the traffic over the several bridges was rather heavy. Frank Fox wired me that if I wanted a better paying job to come up there and go to work for the North Dakota Elevator Co. The supt. was a fine man, etc. As I was glad to get out of Winnipeg Junction, I went to East Grand Forks and started in a much different line of business.
The company had about twenty-five grain elevators covering a wide territory. The wheat came to the elevators mostly in tank trucks direct from the threshing machines. We first put the truck on the scales, dumped the wheat into a large hopper Š every so often taking out an official measured sample, weighing the empty truck, and yelled to the blind horse to go ahead, elevating the wheat to its proper bin. All the elevators had blind horses working on the “sweeps” as they will work without any attendants, whereas a horse that can see will go around a few times and stop. This place was in a great wheat producing section and from the elevator one day I counted the smoke from 24 threshing machines.
One of the waiting rooms in the Depot was not used and the night telegraph operator and I had just fixed it up for a bedroom, when I received a telegram from John Costigan, from Friendship, saying that Will Hasley was quitting at such a date and asking if I would come back and take the job. Being so greatly interested in the future Mrs. Latta, I was not long in answering, and was soon on my way back East. I again stopped at Verndale for a final visit with Frank. I do not recall the exact date, but it was the latter part of 1889.
The old Erie Station had been greatly changed since my first job there. They had taken one corner of the large combined freight and baggage room for an office for the track supervisor, made two small waiting rooms into one, done away with the Station Agent's living quarters making the living room the freight office, and tearing down the whole east end which gave the waiting room windows on the end as well as on the sides. The biggest change, however, was that John J. Costigan had replaced George W. Fries as Station Agent. I was baggage and freight agent, helping with the express business and carried the US Mail to and from the Post Office to the Mail trains. Frank Pettibone and Fred Reid worked the opposite trick as ticket agent and telegraph operators and the four of us, all about the same age, made a very friendly working crew, and we stayed the best of friends to the end. Sad to relate, I am the only one left to tell the story.
I stayed on this job until Nov. 1891-- during the time on May 20, 1890 I was married to Helen Mar Graham, one of the best and finest woman ever to be found, and we lived very happily for the long period of 53 years. On Sept. 22, 1943, she took the long trip ahead of me and one of these days I hope to catch up with her and renew the long loving companionship. We were married in Mother Graham's residence by the Rev. Palmiter, the Universalist minister at Friendship, with Miss Jennie Lambert and Miss Vina Collins as signers of our wedding certificate. This ceremony took place at nine a.m., and after the wedding breakfast we had intended to take train #3 for Buffalo, but we got word from the station that the train was nearly an hour late. Brother George was then a locomotive fireman on the Cuba Pusher engine and had driven his much-thought-of horse to attend the ceremony. So instead of taking the train, where a bunch of our friends were laying for us as usual, I drove George's outfit to Cuba and we took the train there. Meanwhile all of those attending the wedding went over to the depot as if they expected us, completely fooling the gang laying for us.
We went to Jamestown for dinner and into Buffalo for the night, taking in the sights the next day. We took a steamship for Cleveland, Ohio, where we took in the dedication of the James A. Garfield Monument in which President Harrison, Secretary of War Sherman, and other big wigs took part. From Cleveland, we went to Youngstown, Ohio, where we visited Helen's old school mate and friend, May Thompson, then Mrs. Warren Williamson.
This brings to mind another old incident. During the time that I was working at the Scott Drug Store, May Thompson was visiting Helen in Friendship, and I thought that she was pretty nice, so I got Helen's brother Frank, who was then a clerk in this same store, to make a date for a buggy ride one Sunday afternoon. At this time Father had some cattle pasturing over in what they called the Honeyoye, and on this day he had me go over there and bring back a large bull. I rode there with Fred McKee, whose wife's folks lived there, and I walked back leading the bull. It was a very hot day and too much for Mr. Bull who laid down in the middle of the road. It was hours before I could get him on his feet, so when the time came for my much desired ride to start, I was many miles away with a tuckered-out bull on my hands. It was nearly midnight when I got home and that was one sad story to relate. The Erie Railroad had just completed a cut-off running from Cuba to Hunts, on the Buffalo Division, which avoided the two heavy summits known as “Tip Top” Summit and Cuba Summit. This new line joined the Allegany Division about a mile west of the Cuba Station and they moved the telegraph office to that point and handled all the train orders and the general railroad work from there. This still left the town with a secondary telegraph office. The regular operator, Chet Marvin, of course, went to the new office and the Cuba station agent wanted a clerk as well as someone to handle the telegraph part of the station. I, being able to handle all the clerical work and now well on the way to handle telegraph work as well, was transferred by the company from Friendship station to Cuba, NY. On November 1, 1891, I began working in the Cuba station of the Erie RR under Mr. A. L. Coffin. Shortly after this date we moved from Friendship to an apartment over a millinery store run by a Mrs. Rice, a widow with three daughters. The day that our household goods arrived, I came near leaving them in the freight house until the next day, but fortunately I secured a drayman and hauled them to the apartment. I had a banjo that I had paid $40 for (which was a lot of money in those days) which I left in the ticket office. Then when we were eating supper the fire alarm sounded and the old Erie Station was a thing of the past. I hated to lose that banjo, but was very grateful that we did not lose all of our household goods.
About this time the Allegany Division (formerly Western Division) put in a block system its entire length from Hornelsville (now Hornell) to Salamanca. Their block stations were located about the same distance apart, two stories high, with all windows on three sides. At Friendship there was a very long passing-siding running East from the Station, and here the blocks were closer together than usual. They put one just west of depot at west end of siding at Friendship Tower and another one at the other end of the switch, about one mile east of the depot.
I had become capable to handle a telegraph job. The freight agent paid $37.50 a month, and an operator paid $40 and one had to work only twelve hours a day, seven days a week. Half of that time was at night. All the block stations operated on split tricks, one operator working from noon to midnight, the other from midnight to noon. The morning trick was considered the best as it allowed one to take in any show or other attractions that always take place in the evening. The operator that has been the longest on the job had his choice. In this case, I being the youngest, went to work at noon until midnight. The operator who has been the one opposite me, a Richard Enright, many nights would stick me by not showing up on time-- sometimes several hours late. I finally had to report him, which caused me more trouble as he tried to make it as hard for me as he could. He turned out to be an unusual character. At this time my wife's mother was operating a boarding house, and he was one of the boarders. One morning one of the girls working there discovered that her pocket book was missing, and strangely enough when Enright went off duty the next noon, he had prepared a notice of the loss already made to post in the Post Office. The question was how did he know of the loss while he was away from midnight to noon? It was no question for me, for among the ashes from the stove in the tower, I discovered the metal frame of the lost purse. He was transferred to Olean, NY, and while there delivered a political speech before a Democratic meeting that got a lot of praise, but instead of his own production, he had committed to memory one of Dave Hill's speeches. (a leading New York politician) Later he secured a position as telegrapher in the New York City Police Department and in some way got into the good graces of Mayor Hylan, who appointed him Police Commissioner of the city. He became one of the big Taminy Hall Politicians.
I began as telegraph operator at S. P. Tower, one mile east of the Friendship depot on November 1, 1892. The only thing out of the ordinary that happened during my stay at this point was one night about 9 p.m. passenger train #1 going west, was about due and I had given them a clear block, when I heard a big smash and realized that something serious had happened. I immediately dropped the semaphore and grabbed the red lantern and stopped the train just in time to save a lot of trouble. As I stated before, this passing siding was very long and a freight train going east took this switch at its west end, but in coming down the grade from Cuba Summit, the train had broken in two, without the train crew knowing it. The front end came to the end of the switch and made the proper stop, but when the rear end of the train struck, the force was so great that it smashed several cars, throwing them into the main track. One of these was a large gasoline tank car, spilling gasoline over the track only a short distance from the passenger engine. It also ran down the bank and nearly surrounded a residence. There was a lot of hustling to prevent a fire getting started. At this exciting accident I made a simple mistake that any telegraph operator would enjoy. The train master was there in charge of clearing up the wreck, and his office sent him a message (which I will always remember) “Look for Post on 84.” I took this over to him and he said “what the !!!! and went back to my office to find out what it was. The message should have been Look out for HOSE instead of POST. 84 was an east bound freight train that threw off a length of hose to use in handling the spilled gasoline. In the Morse Code the letter H has four dots, letter P has five dots. The letter T is a short dash, the letter E a short dot. The other letters being the same it is easy to see how this happened.
On this division the two mentioned Tip Top and Cuba Summits, with their heavy grades, compelled the running of two sets of Engine pushers. This made an unusual number of train orders to be issued, making a lot more telegraph work along the territory of these summits.
In the days of my first station work as baggage master, they used only brass checks on leather straps for all local services. Each station having its own name. Each station as soon as receiving so many checks, sent them into Division headquarters, and they were distributed to the other stations. Thus each station being supplied.
Early in 1893, I got leave of absence to attend the Chicago World's Fair. Mrs. Latta, her mother Mrs. Graham, Mr. and Mrs. John L. Robinson, and I made a jolly trip, taking large lunch baskets, as traffic was very heavy. Sleepers and dining cars were out of the question unless you had reservations. While in Chicago, we stopped at Mrs. Graham's brother's widow, Mrs. Lucian Scott. I think that we were there about ten days.
When we got back to Friendship they had made a big change in the block towers. They moved the S. P. Tower up just east of the depot and had done away entirely with the F. R. Tower. I was in hopes of getting one of the F. R. tricks, but both Ed Handy and Elmer Wilkins were older in the service than I. They gave me White House Tower located between Cuba and Hinsdale, about half way. This was certainly a secluded spot-- woods close on the back side, highway crossing about a quarter of a mile west, the front facing way below the old abandoned Genesee Valley Canal, just part of one farm house visible from the tower. The only person I saw was the track walker once in a while. The operator working opposite me lived in Cuba and I and my wife boarded in Hinsdale with Dr. and Mrs. Henry Vincent, Mrs. Vincent being my wife's cousin. I worked the day trick, which because of its location they could not work the usual half and half. The Cuba man would come to work on train #1, due about 9:30 p.m., which slacked up enough for him to get off and for me to get on for Hinsdale. In the morning we would reverse the act-- I going from Hinsdale on train #6 at 8:30 a.m. They would slack off enough for me to get off and the other operator to get on for Cuba. We never saw each other only to say hello as we always met in the rush of the change.
While here, I had a good chance for nature study. Right back of the tower at the edge of the woods was an open space that was the general meeting place of crows. Several times I witnessed them go through the same performance that has always been a mystery to me. They would form a large, almost perfect, circle, and one crow would hop around in the center cawing, and them some of the others would make a reply, or even several at a time. It seemed as if they were playing a game, or holding a meeting. I have often wondered what they were really doing, but it is beyond me. Another interesting act to me was one day I heard the baying of foxhounds in the distance, heading toward me. Right in front of the tower, only a short distance away, coming out of the woods into the open, was a big fine looking fox who, coming up to a crooked rail fence, jumped up on the fence and ran back along it for some distance. Pretty soon he jumped off the fence and ran back in the same direction that the dogs were coming. Did that fox know enough to fool the dogs?
I was not at White House Tower many months when a Mr. Salisbury, and old time operator on the Erie working at H. R. Tower, 1-1/2 miles east of Olean Station, died and I was now old enough in the service to get this vacancy. We immediately moved our goods to Olean and again began housekeeping. We rented a good house in Boardmanville, just across the small river from Olean (and now a part of Olean proper). This location being nearer to the tower yet still over a mile away. Louie Johnson, the other operator, lived in East Olean, still much farther away. This made it so difficult to make the usual half day and night change, that we worked days and nights. I was lucky enough to get the day shift. H. R. Tower was nearly a mile and a half east of the Olean station at the west end of a long siding and was much larger than the other towers. The company had intended to put in an interlocking system making this the main railroad yard, but because the New York and Pennsylvania crossed the Erie just west of the station Š making it necessary for all trains to stop there Š they abandoned this plan. We had to go quite a ways to get water from a farm house, so I personally drove a water well close to the tower. I had a hard time in doing this, as I had to go through a bed of quicksand, but I finally got a good well.
For the information of those not familiar with some of the Tower workings, I will explain some of it. At each east and west side is a signal bell with a push button, never placed together or where it could be reached from the desk. As a train approaches from either direction, the operator from that direction rings a signal asking for a clear block. If we give him a clear block, we immediately drop the semaphore headed from the opposite direction, which protects the oncoming train. As soon as the train enters the clear block, the operator signals me that he has done so, and before it reaches me I get a clear from the operator in the next tower. I then pull down the semaphore which gives the train the go-ahead signal, ringing the train in the next block and ringing the back operator that the train has passed that block. I then report by telegraph to the train dispatcher the number of the train and the time it passed. So one has to go to each end of the tower twice for every one that passes. Because of all the trains having to stop at the RR crossing, they did not stop at H. R. Tower, so that we did not get many train orders or other usual business. This was the easiest job on the division.
During the time that Johnson and I were at H. R. we both tried a Civil Service examination for Railway Mail Clerk and Local Mail Carrier. I passed the highest mark ever passed in that office, 99 plus, which was only good for one year at the end of which I again headed the list, but during this entire time there was not a single vacancy or any increase in the force. The point counting the most in these examinations was the reading of fifty cards with names and addresses, which were given us bottom side up. Time and accuracy were what counted. To prepare for this we went to the Olean House (the leading hotel in the city) where in the basement we found a big stack of old hotel registers. We were allowed to take them to the tower for study, and for variety of signatures and addresses they could not be equaled anywhere. This study enabled us both to make remarkable showings in this test.
Johnson secured a temporary position weighing the mail on the Erie between New York City and Salamanca, NY, and some time later became a regular mail clerk on this same run. By the way, that system was a big fraud on the government. For thirty days all mails are weighed both on and off the mail trains. Upon the results of this weight, a five year contract was made for carrying the mail. All along the route they had big sacks of newspapers, magazines, etc., that were never taken to the Post Office but piled upon the baggage trunks and again put on a train and reweighed over and over again, thus securing contracts for many times more than they should have.
A couple of years or so after moving to Olean, one of our good family friends and neighbor, the Elsworths, moved away from Olean and we rented their house in which we lived until leaving that city. At one time while in H. R. Mother Graham, at Friendship, was sick for some time and Helen went there to help take care of her. I went there for meals and lodging, part of the time going to Olean on #1 at 9 p.m. working at H. R. twenty-four hours, then back to Friendship on #12.
The one and only great event happening during my long sojourn at H. R. Tower was that on October 22, 1897, we had born to us a charming and beautiful daughter, Romayne Dorothy Latta, who has been all these years a most wonderful and appreciative daughter that could not be surpassed.
On February 1, 1898, I resigned from the old reliable Erie RR, after ten years of service without receiving a reprimand of any kind or form. I did this to accept a position as bookkeeper in the J. L. Brown Banking Company of Wilcox, Elk County, PA. Years before this time Mr. Brown had been a prominent business man and there was no bank there or nearby, he kept a bank account in New York City. So many residents and business men came to him that he was really forced into the banking business. He finally opened a small office under the name of “Banking House of Brown” and placed one of his daughters in it as cashier. This being strictly a private bank, it was not subject to any supervision or checking. Late in 1897, Mr. Brown died and his only son, Frank R. Brown, his two sons-in-law, Daniel K. Condon and Emmit G. Latta (my oldest brother) organized as the J. L. Brown Banking Company as of January 1, with F. R. Brown, President; E. G. Latta, Vice President; and D. K. Condon, Cashier; with Fred Aldrich as assistant cashier in charge.
On my arrival on February 1 to take over the bookkeeping end of the business, I readily saw that neither Miss Brown or Mr. Aldrich had ever had any banking experience other than this one and the bookkeeping was far from being up to modern bank practice. With my little experience in actual bank work and the complete instructions at the Buffalo Business College, I worked out a system that made several changes and we had to wait several weeks for new books and stationery. I had to put in the new system as of January 1, as that was when the new firm started. We had to continue the old system until I could get caught up by doing two days of rewriting the actual business every day. This I in time did and we had a very satisfactory working system.
Wilcox is located in a valley between several big hills on the Philadelphia and Erie Railroad (a branch on the Pennsylvania RR) six miles west of Johnsonburg, Pennsylvania, with a heavy grade all the way, especially between Wilcox and Kane. There was a little settlement “Tambine” half way between Johnsonburg and Wilcox with a chemical works the only industry. Also half way between Wilcox and Kane was “Sargeant,” another small settlement also with a chemical works. At this place, when we first went to Wilcox, there still were standing several Indian teepee shaped structures which they formerly filled with the finest hard woods and burned just for the charcoal, losing all the other content of the timber. After developing modern methods, charcoal became of the least value of any of the many by-products obtainable from hard wood.
A couple of miles north of Wilcox was located the Wilcox Mfg. Co., a large chemical works in which the bank was heavily interested, of which F. R. Brown was President and Superintendent. This company also owned a six-mile railway which ran up to their timber territory. It was originally built by Henry Bayard and Co.-- a large Philadelphia lumber concern. The number of crops of natural resources is indeed surprising. This land was originally a timber country. First the tanning companies cut all of the hemlock trees only for the bark for tanning, then the lumber companies using only the best of the trees, the paper companies then picked up all the poplar wood, cucumber, bass wood, etc. After this the chemical companies took all the hardwoods left, using everything up to two inches in diameter only having to remove all the bark as that cannot be used. Later they developed a system whereby hardwood could be used in manufacturing paper, making it worth more for paper than for chemical products. As proof of this, a paper company paid the Wilcox Mfg. Co. forty thousand dollars for their property and then dismantled the chemical works and shipped the wood to their paper mills.
Up near the end of this railroad, there is a small settlement called “Burning Well” where the first gas well in the U. S. was discovered. They did not know that gas could be used for fuel and they ran a pipe up in the air and it burned that way for several years. They ran excursion trains form Philadelphia, New York, and other parts, to see the world's wonder, and the last that I knew this well was still producing gas. It is easy to see from this locality and works of nature, how this town and post office got its name.
Beside the main highway running from Johnsonburg to Kane, there is a highway running north four miles to Rasselas, and beyond there is a station on the Bradford branch of the Erie Railroad. This Wilcox end of the road is known as the “Pike” and most of the farmers there are Pennsylvania Dutch. All had very large families, were gentlemen, and very industrious. Our bank was paying 4% interest on savings, payable January 1 and July 1, and on those days it looked as if there was a run on the bank. Most of them just wanted to know the exact amount of interest, never drawing the interest, but would deposit enough more to make it up to even money. Some of these fellows would come into the bank wearing overalls, looking as if they did not have one dollar to rub against another, yet they might have had as high as six or seven thousand dollars on deposit.
The tannery employees were mostly Swedish. In many cases the men would work in the tannery and the whole family would work on a small farm which they owned. As a class they were all very industrious. Many of them had savings accounts and if they knew of any of their friends who wanted to borrow a little money, they would come to us to make out a note and would let them have it at 6%, thus getting 2% more than we were paying them.
When we first went to Wilcox there was still standing a large brick chimney, all that remained of a large saw mill that was formerly there. There were a number of stacks of hemlock lumber, nicely piled with cross strips at every layer. Nobody would buy it, and it sat there so long that dry rot had hit where the cross boards were. So finally they burned it up and tore down the old chimney. The Wilcox House was a rather large hotel for a small town, but in its early days it was a popular place and always had some city people there to spend the summer. The only industry was a large tannery owned by the U. S. Leather Company. At one time it was the largest tannery in the country. In its early days it worked exclusively on buffalo hides, and for years has handled damaged South American hides which requires the greatest skill for proper handling. Wilcox was a very poor banking town, as there were too many deposits and no demand for loans. Mr. Condon, manager of the Rolfe Pennsylvania Saw Mill of Henry Bayard and partner of Condon & Johnson General Store, did not have time to devote to banking, so he resigned as Cashier and Fred W. Aldrich became Cashier. I then became Assistant Cashier of the J. L. Brown Banking Company. Mr. Condon was a rather particular person, very formal in every way, and faultless in his dress. Every weekday he drove from Wilcox to his office in Rolfe. One of his employees was a Mr. Johnson (who also lived in Wilcox and drove this same route, but never together) who would, each morning, hitch up Condon's horse standing in the barn ready for Condon to go on to Rolfe. In the evening it would be reversed. Mr. Condon would drive into the barn, hitch the horse by snapping on an already tied strap, and leave the unhitching for Mr. Johnson. In all my time there I donÕt believe Mr. Condon once hitched up or unhitched his own rig.
A few years before, Mr. Brown had built a large duplex house for his son Frank and daughter, Mrs. Condon. It originally had a flat roof, but the heavy snows were causing a lot of trouble, so they removed that flat roof and put on a gable roof, which really added another story, making it a very large house. After Mr. Brown's death, the daughter, Mrs. Condon, and family moved over to the old home place with her mother and we became the new tenants of this fine large house, and the best part of it was that we had no rent to pay.
In Wilcox gas was so plentiful that they had no meters, making flat rates. In this large duplex we had a big furnace in the basement, water tank, kitchen range, and any number of lights, with even a wide open burning torch as street light. We paid $1.25 per month each side. Later Frank Brown built a new house downtown, and rented his side to Mr. George, one of the owners of the new glass factory locating in Wilcox. We also built a new house and Mr. Ben George, son and part owner of the glass factory, rented the side that we had occupied.
The bank building was a good two-story frame building standing on one of the main corners of the town. Across the back end about two thirds from the front, there was a partition making a large office which at one time was the office of Henry Bayard and Company. About two thirds the distance from the east side another partition ran, making a fairly good sized office used by Mr. Brown as an insurance and surveying office, and everything in general. This left a fairly wide hall running back to the back office. We remodeled this building by tearing out this front partition, moving the hall over to the side of the building, thus nearly doubling the bank's space. We put up new basket weave oxidized metal for the sides and new counters in front, up-to-date new vault doors, a fine new bank safe, and a new long standing desk for bookkeeping parallel with the side of the hall. This made the back room the insurance and general office for various interests. During this time we increased our partnership by taking Mr. T. H. Burt, F. W. Aldrich, and S. G. Latta as partners of the J. L. Brown Banking Company. The entrance to the bank was on the corner and the entire second floor was occupied by the Masonic Lodge.
One day in checking some records, Aldrich discovered that there was no gas reservation on 640 acres of land owned by T. H. Burt, and they proceeded to organize the Manufacturing Gas Company, and developed this territory getting some good gas wells. With this supply of gas they induced the George Window Glass Company to move their factory from Ithaca to Wilcox. This put new life into the old town. A Mr. Ralph, once the owner of the tannery and general store in Wilcox, sold the tannery to the United States Leather Company, but retained the store, which Mr. C. W. Spettigue managed. Not long after we went to Wilcox, Ralph sold the store to Smith Brothers-- Perry L. Smith of Ridgeway and Charles H. Smith of Sheffield. Mr. Hincle, their brother-in-law, became their manager, and a good many improvements and much rebuilding took place. Soon afterwards Mr. Spettigue started another store. Mr. Japhus George, a glass blower, and Mr. Ben F. George's Don, a glass cutter, built and operated a new glass factory, a forty thousand dollar plant. (Incidentally, I acted as paymaster during its construction.) This factory contained 12 pots, 6 on each side, with the necessary cutting room, flattening, and storage building. The Gas Company furnished them gas for 4¢ per thousand feet. Another natural resource which I failed to mention was the great quantities of natural rock, both on top and underground, which was over 90% pure silica, the main article in glass manufacturing. The farmers brought this rock in mostly during the off season, and received from 80 to 90 cents per ton for it. This was over fifty years ago, and for the benefit of some of you younger ones, I might describe some of the workings of the window glass industry.
There were four distinct divisions of window glass workers-- blowers, gatherers, and cutters, and another small bunch of so-called snappers, who could not join any union and had no standing. For illustration, these unions had then been in operation for over thirty years and the strongest ever known up to that time. One of their rules was that unless a man was a son or brother of a union member he could not become a member. Mr. Ben George, a union cutter and half owner of the factory, had a brother-in-law living with him, but could not get him a job in his own factory above that of a roustabout snapper. Had the young man been Ben's real brother, he would have been able to join. The result of this ruling, having been in operation so long, that everybody in the glass business was related. When I was a kid, they used to tell us that glass blowers were short lived, but if any of them did die young, it was on account of heavy drinking, not glass blowing. You never saw a group of men with more beautiful skins than those blowers and gatherers. At work they wore loose slippers, thin overalls, a thin shirt outside their pants, and each gang had a large wash tub full of ice water with a generous supply of oatmeal in it. Each blower and gatherer work in teams and all of their work is handled by the same cutter and flattener, so that each team gets credit for their output. Each blower is a specialist. One will be the big ring blower, who makes the large size of glass. Some blow small long tubes for long narrow sized glass. Some single and some double strength blowers-- but no blower produces both single and double strength. In the pot furnaces, the pots have to be refilled every day if the melt is not perfect so that it cannot be worked out, it has to be dipped out by hand and a new mix put in. The day's work was six hours and forty minutes, taking the rest of the day to refill and melt, ready for the next day. Even at 4 cents per thousand feet for gas, this company used an average of $1500 per month.
Some time after this factory got into production, we got the Van Clive Glass Company of Cleveland to build a glass factory just above the George plant. Their gas contract called for ten cents per thousand feet, which made their bill over $2500. This plant was much larger than the George plant and on an entirely different system. Instead of the fire clay pots, requiring daily filling, this factory had a large tank furnace into one end of which were fed the raw materials, which melted and ran down to the other end where the gathering openings were located. There were ten gatherers on each side. I do not recall the number of years these plants ran, but because of trouble with the unions, they did not run for a while. In the meantime the Standard Oil Company, who owned all of the other rights around our company's 640 acres, began drilling wells on three sides of this tract, installing compressors and trying hard to put the local gas company out of business. They finally did this, but gave the Mfg. Gas Co. a check for eighty thousand dollars to turn it over to them.
On February 1, 1898, when we moved to Wilcox, the Pennsylvania Telephone Company, a subsidiary of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, had a single grounded line running from their Johnsonburg Exchange to Wilcox-- a distance of six miles-- equipped with the old Blake Transmitters and large exposed finding posts on the receiver lines-- all in bad shape. They charged seventy-five dollars per year rental and took their time in making repairs when the line went out-- sometimes taking several days before getting attention. They had four subscribers and two pay stations in Wilcox.
Mr. Brown had run a telephone line from the bank to his house. Frank Brown extended it to his house. Then they ran it up to the chemical works, to the Philadelphia & Erie RR, to the tannery, to the tannery SuperintendentÕs house and several other places, about ten or twelve in all. These were all Manhattan cheaply constructed telephones with old wet battery magneto style. All on the same circuit with a single grounded line in series, so that if one telephone was out of commission, they all were, and it was some job to find out where the trouble was. As it always left the line open, the guilty telephone had to be called on, and it fell to my duties to look after the system. Of course there was no exchange, so every telephone call called every phone on the line. About this time the Stoweger Automatic Telephone was invented, but was not yet on the market. I immediately investigated this with the view of installing it in Wilcox and do away with that constant ringing of all the phones. Right here in looking up my interest in telephones, I met Mr. Earl Caldwell, then Superintendent of the Union Telephone and Telegraph Company of Erie, Pennsylvania, with headquarters in Erie. His company covered northwestern Pennsylvania and into New York at some points, Olean being their principal plant. He advised me not to put in the automatic system as his company was coming right down our way with toll lines. In fact they had already established an exchange in Kane, PA, only nine miles from me. At this time the Elk Telephone and Telegraph Company had a flourishing exchange in St. Marys and were building a new system in Ridgeway, the county seat, an exchange in Kersey and one in Portland Mills, and also wanted to cover Johnsonburg. Because of the Ridgeway Order of Elks not granting Johnsonburg the privilege of organizing an Elks Lodge, they saw a chance to get even. However, I got in touch with Mr. Caldwell and we arranged a meeting with the Johnsonburg City Council and, offered a good dinner, the Union Company secured a franchise and subsequently turned it over to the Elk Company. I proceeded to put in my system in Wilcox. I went up on the Pike and paid Dick Crow fifty dollars for all the scrub pine trees on a small tract of land. I used some sixty of the choicest ones in building Wilcox and sold to the Elk Company for their Johnsonburg installation for which I received three hundred fifty dollars. I built this Wilcox plant under the name of Wilcox Telephone Company, but was the sole owner, and personally installed most of the telephones outside of banking hours. We had some 40 telephones in operation, every one a private phone, all new equipment. As I did all the repair and upkeep work it only cost me $10.00 per month I paid a young lady that ran an ice cream parlor to operate the exchange.
I received $1.00 per month for residences and $1.50 for business places. A little later I built a line from Wilcox up through Rasselas Instanter and Straight, and on this line I installed a Baird System, which enabled the use of up to 19 telephones on the one line, every call having to be made by a switchboard operator, who made the calls similar to the up-to-date dial now in general use. This worked fine in handling pay stations, several small towns being on the same line. When the operator makes the call it locks out every other phone on the line. There was an emergency button only allowed to be used in case of an accident or fire. We later put this system in on a farmers line from St. Mary to Kearsey and had to replace it as they would not stand for a line that they could not listen in on. This makes me think of a little incident there. I sold a couple of old telephones that were in use by the old outfit to Messrs. Lindquist and Anderson who ran a livery with two barns, one at the Wilcox House and one at Burmeither House. After getting them installed I asked Lindquist to try it out. He called up the other barn and as Anderson answered him in Swedish, Lindquist looked greatly surprised and said, “God, that thing will talk Swede, won't it.”
At this time there was a great rivalry between the Bell System and independent companies springing up all over the U. S., especially in the East and Midwest. There were some forty subsidized Bell Companies, each with a certain territory, all controlled by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, which owned a controlling interest in all of these companies and owned outright the Western Electric Company and forced all of these companies to buy all their equipment from them. AT&T had a contract with the various companies whereby they paid AT&T $12.00 per year for the rental of all Blake transmitters which were then used on all Bell telephones. AT&T owned all the toll lines in the U. S. and only allowed these smaller companies 10% on all toll charges, not to exceed ten cents on any one message.
The Bell Company did everything possible to head off the independent companies, but these little companies were owned by local people and could secure franchises, rights of way, and everything to a great advantage. I had my system in good working shape but no outside connection with the Elk Tel. and Tel. Co. now built in to Johnsonburg, only six miles east of me, and the Union Tel. and Tel. Co. with their long distance toll lines and exchange at Kane, Penn., only nine miles west of me. You can imagine how I worked to get these companies to build their lines into Wilcox and put me in contact with the outside world.
Right now I will digress a little from the telephone business and recount another affair that sure helped me put in my spare time. The Wilcox Postmaster, who was a telegrapher, ran the Western Union Telegraph office, located in the Post Office. Along about this time the Post Office burned down, leaving the only telegraph office up in the Railroad Tower about a mile and a half from the depot, and that being a good half mile from the center of town. With the glass factory getting under way, the Western Union Telegraph Co. wanted an office right in town.
When the Western Union Telegraph Co. found that I was a former telegraph operator, the Railroad's Chief operator and the Station Agent came up to our house one night just as we were going to bed. Their pole line running from their old office to the depot was just ready to fall down and would have to be rebuilt. It ran along one of the main streets and through a fine line of maple shade trees. My new pole line came up an alley midway between two streets with a good clear way the whole length. The fine appearing pine poles that I had used in telephone installation were disappointing as they did not hold the long ten-pin cross arms properly by the lag screws I had used. I finally told them that if they would replace the lag screws with bolts running clear through the poles, and run a loop from the bank to my house, so that I would not have to keep the Western Union office open after banking hours, that I would take the job. I had one of my telephones, I think, in every business place and a good many residences, so that I was able to make nearly all telegrams by telephone, for which the telephone company received two cents.
The Western Union office was strictly a commission office, I receiving 50% of the cash receipts. If a message came in paid, I got only the two cents for its delivery, but if it came in collect, I got half of the charges plus the two cents. The same applied on outgoing. A message going out paid, I got half of the charges, but if sent collect, I got nothing. The glass companies were both good users of Western Union and it was easy to arrange so that all company business would go out paid and the incoming come in collect. I submitted monthly bills and everything worked out fine.
As I got more and more into the telephone business, I had to be out of town now and then to attend a meeting or some other business. While I was away from the Western Union office, I had an arrangement with the young lady telegraph operator to answer my calls from her Johnsonburg office and deliver by telephone.
I also installed a time clock service in Wilcox by leasing a master clock and several other clocks. I personally installed them, running the lines on my poles. The Master Clock I placed in the bank, and by throwing a switch every noon, it was connected directly to the Washington Observatory Clock, synchronizing it perfectly. The Master Clock synchronized all the others every hour. For this service I received one dollar per month for each clock.
I handled this Western Union business several years, until the Western Union Telegraph Co. and the Postal Telegraph Co. got into a fight over the lines running over the Philadelphia and Erie R.R. The railroad owned the pole line, and Western Union had a lease to run their wires on those poles. In some way the Postal Co. got possession of this lease (or a new one) and immediately put a gang of linemen at work cleaning every pole and cutting every Western Union wire, letting the pieces fall on the ground. A railroad engine with a gondola car followed with a crew picking up the twisted scrap of wire.
That ended my service with the Western Union Telegraph Co. My last information was that the Postal Co. never established an office up town, but only from the R.R. tower. Now, just a few years ago the Postal Telegraph Co. was taken over by Western Union Co., and the Postal is no more. The wrecking of these lines of course ended the Western Union Clock Service. As I owned the clock circuits, I replaced the Western Union clocks by purchasing outright Prentiss Improvement Clocks. The two systems were very similar, the only difference being the Western Union Master Clock would set all the others should they be fast or slow, whereas the Prentiss Clock had to be adjusted to run a little faster or slower.
This destructive act put me out of telegraphy for some time, but as I was getting more and more into telephones, I could make good use of the time saved. Before leaving this old pole line, I will relate a little experience that I had at the start of my work as a lineman. I had never had any experience at this work, but had purchased the proper tools-- among these a set of new Klein climbers, used by all linemen. These brand new spurs were very long and sharp and my poles being pine were soft, so that the spurs sank pretty deep. I went up a forty foot pole and did my work OK, but in doing this, changing one foot to the other, I drove the spurs so deep that I lacked the strength to pull them out of the pole. Instead of putting my knees far away from the pole, I hugged the pole with them, which made the spurs all the tighter. There I was with no one around to holler at, up a forty foot pole, and unable to get loose. Finally I got them loose and I shinnied down the pole. I was never so glad to get my feet on the ground.
The Elk Tel. and Tel. Co. built their lines from Johnsonburg to Wilcox, which fixed me to the East, but the Union Tel. and Tel. Co. told us that they had covered so much territory and installed larger plants than expected. They would have to reorganize with larger capital before they could build to meet us. They said that if we would build this stretch between Wilcox and Kane, they would make a more advantageous toll arrangement. The Elk Co. decided to build this section and found that the Elk Co.Õs franchise only covered Elk and Jefferson counties, and the State was very particular in these matters. Elk county line joined McKean county three miles east of Kane. It took a long time to get this settled so that they could go ahead with the line.
Here is where I really begin to get into the telephone business. The Elk Co. having decided to build the line from Wilcox to Kane, they came to me and said that they were giving county service to all their subscribers, and as they had to go through Wilcox with the new line, they wanted a Wilcox plant. After due consideration, and taking into account that Wilcox was not an incorporated village, they could duplicate my outfit, and without any outside connections, I would be strictly up against it. I came back with an offer of a set price, taking part cash and part stock in Elk Tel. and Tel. Co. They accepted my offer, and the only legal proceedings required was for me to issue a bill of sale, and the Wilcox Telephone Co. was a thing of the past.
I was elected a Director of the Elk Co. and immediately became familiar with all the inside workings of the Co. They were paying Dr. Wilson, a St. Marys doctor, a small salary as Treasurer. Having lost a good little income from my company, I put myself forward as the Treasurer at the first annual meeting, but at that time they did not want anything to leave St. Marys. It fell to me to look after Wilcox and Johnsonburg Exchanges. It took only a short time to discover that the accounts were not properly kept. I took this matter up with Mr. M. S. Kline of Ridgway, PA, who was the Cashier of the Elk County National Bank and also President of the Elk Telephone and Telegraph Co.
He fell in with my suggestions and I had an interview with Mr. R. V. Page, Jr., Auditor of the United Tel. & Tel. Co., with headquarters in Philadelphia.We worked out a complete system of telephone accounting.
Then I placed Miss Willard, the Chief Switchboard Operator in Ridgway Exchange, in charge of a new set of books, requiring all the exchanges to send the money collected to the Treasurer, with lists showing who it was collected from sent directly to the Auditor.
This made it so that the Treasurer did not know where the funds came from, and, of course, he did not like it. He turned in several hundred dollars more than the blanks call for, sold his stock in the company, and resigned as Treasurer.
In opening this new set of books, the very first entry, Capital Stock, I found that the Elk Tel. & Tel. Co. had organized with a capital stock of twenty five thousand dollars, but they had only issued twenty thousand of it. They did not know what to do with this unissued stock, as there was no way of knowing what it was worth. The company had never paid a dividend, probably never would as long as they were digging up every dollar possible to buy more telephones and try to keep up with the big demand for our service. They finally voted to let all the stockholders have allotments in accordance with their present holdings, and if any of them did not want it at par, the others could increase their bids. Right here I made a big mistake, I put in a bid for my share and all that were unsold. I think one woman put in a bid for 15 shares, but I got all the rest. Some of the biggest stockholders got together and figured that I being a banker and just having gone through the books so thoroughly, that if I wanted it, it must be good, and that accounted for the increase in the value of the Elk Tel. & Tel. Co. I became Treasurer of the company and the next year Vice-President.
If you will look at a map of Pennsylvania, you will better understand the telephone bug that bit me. There was the United Tel. & Tel. Co. covering all the western part of the state, with lines as far west as Lock Haven, the Union Tel. & Tel. Co. of Erie, covering the northwest part of the state, their lines as far as Kane, PA and Olean, NY. The Huntington and Clearfield Tel. & Tel. Co. headed our way as far as Clearfield. The Summerville Telephone Co. covering a large section, Reynoldsville, Punxatawney, and up our way as far as DuBois, with the Inter-OceanÕs big toll lines into Coudersport, and our little company running from St. Marys, Ridgway, Johnsonburg, and Wilcox. You may visualize how that undeveloped territory appealed to me.
I took my wild idea to Philadelphia and interviewed Mr. W. D. Barnard, President of United Tel. & Tel. Co., who had also just secured control of the Union of Erie. My plan very nicely fit in with his and he, Judge Ellis L. Orvis of Bellefonte, PA, President of the Huntington Tel. & Tel. Co., and I met and planned out so that a little later we met in Ridgway and organized the Commercial Union Telephone and Telegraph Co., with a capital of $250,000.00, and an authorized bond issue of 500,000 shares. Our charter covered 14 counties in PA, with W. D. Barnard as President and S. G. Latta as Secretary Treasurer. The night that we met in Ridgway to organize, Mr. Barnard was taken sick. We put him in a Pullman for Phildelphia, and he never recovered. This was a bad blow for independent telephony. He had a wonderful head for business, plenty of financial backing, and the ability to make things work smoothly.
In forming Commercial Union I had agreed to turn over a controlling interest of the Elk Tel. & Tel. Co. I picked up some of the stock by trading the blocks of bonds that I had secured, allowing them a fair price for the stock, showing them that it would be a long time before they would ever receive a dividend, whereas the bonds were tax free and paying 6% interest. I tried to buy the stock of the most undesirable stockholders so as to keep the best ones interested in the new company.
The day before I was to have a majority of the stock, I made a deal with John Cashman of St. Marys, a railway engineer, and the heaviest stockholder in the company. I was to give him $2,000.00 in bonds for his $1,500.00 of stock. I went to St. Marys to make the exchange, where I found that several of the stockholders had got together and figured that I was after control and got him to back out. I was five shares short and time was also short. I took the next train back to Ridgway and called on Judge Harry Hide. I told him of my predicament and that I would like to buy five shares that would fix me OK. He said that he only had ten shares, and that if I would take them all, well and good. This I did and the next day when I voted a majority of the stock, there was some surprise.
Two years after this Mr. Cushman came up to see me and said he guessed he was the only old stockholder left and wanted to know how much I would give him now. I told him that I did not want them, but I would be fair with him and give him the same $2,000.00 bonds for his stock. He said, “But I will lose the two years interest,” and I replied, “I know it. I am ahead that interest received from the bonds.” I informed him that there was as much in knowing when to sell stocks and bonds as when to buy them.
During this time, on June 8, 1906, the second great event of our lives occurred. We had born to us a fine boy,
Sheridan Graham Latta, who I am now proud to say is one of the finest and most pleasant business men to be found anywhere, a high grade architect of distinction.
We sold our Wilcox house to Fred Beckstrom, and Frank Brown took over my J. L. Brown Banking Co. stock and we moved to Ridgway, PA, as Secretary-Treasurer of the Commercial Union Telephone Co. on November 1, 1906. Ridgway, the county seat of Elk County, PA, is located on the Pennsylvania and Erie R.R., running east and west on one edge of the city and the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburg R.R. running north and south on the opposite side of the city. The County Court House and jail occupied an entire large block in the center of the city.
For a small place Ridgway had an unusual number of wealthy people, but I will say I never saw a nicer lot of people, and that wealth made no difference with them. If one behaved properly and attended strictly to business, you were treated as one of them, even if you did not have a cent. Ridgway was the headquarters of the United States Leather Co., with a large number of tanneries located over a wide territory. The Niles and Bannent Tool Co. had a fine manufacturing plant. The Russell Snow Plow Works had the only rotary snow plow works in the U. S.
We were very lucky in getting a fine large square 8-room house, located on the corner of a fine residential section of the city. This home for years had been the home of John Whitmore's father, who had quite recently passed away. The noted lawyer's son had the house refinished, putting in a cement floor in the entire basement. A friend who was a wall paper dealer asked Mr. Whitmore to let him paper the whole house as a sample of what he could do. This he did, and I wish that you could see the effect, of which we obtained the whole benefit. This house was on a very large corner lot, and I told Mr. Whitmore that the only thing I did not like was the amount of snow to be removed from so much walk and the great size of the lawn to be kept mowed. He said his gardener would attend to both, so I was sitting pretty.
Before coming to Ridgway I had had my eye on the Home Telephone Co. of Port Allegany, PA, which had some 350 subscribers with no outside connections. This village lies about midway between Smethport on the west and Coudersport on the east, two county seats that had toll lines and a direct highway between them. The Coudersport & Port Allegany R.R. runs from Port Allegany to Coudersport, over which I later obtained a right of way to build a telephone line in connection with the Railroad and Tide Water Associated Oil Co.
To personally see the lay of the land between Southport and Port Allegany, one day I took advantage of an Odd Fellows Convention in Smethport, to which the Railroad ran an excursion from the Wilcox vicinity. I did not take in the Smethport festivities, but hired a liveryman to drive me to Port Allegany, where I had an interview with A. V. Hunt, John Grey, Carl and Nat Bard, sole owners of the plant, looked over the property and got a good idea of the possibilities of the whole situation. More later on this plant.
While Secretary-Treasurer of the Commercial Union Tel. & Tel. Co., I did considerable outside work, selling bonds, securing franchises, rights-of-way, etc. This position did not last long, for Feb. 1, 1907, the American Union Telephone Co. was organized, consolidating some sixty independent companies with a capital stock of twenty-five million dollars. This let me out of the financial part of the business.
I was appointed Division Manager of the new company, and to the old Elk Tel. & Tel. Co. exchanges at Ridgway, St. Marys, Johnsonburg, Wilcox, Portland Mills, Kersey, and Port Allegany, they added Kane, Mt. Jewett, Smethport, Bradford, and Olean, NY, giving me twelve exchanges to look after. While still in Wilcox and Vice President and General Manager of the old Elk Tel. & Tel. Co., I attended a meeting of the Pennsylvania State Independent Telephone Association at Allentown, PA on September 27, 1904, and was later appointed Alternate Delegate to the National Interstate Telephone Association at Chicago, Illinois on June 20 & 21, 1905. These meetings gave me quite an insight into the workings of large corporations and I came in contact with some big figures that were in the business.
While picking up a controlling interest of the Elk Tel. & Tel. Co., we had a saloon keeper in Kersey that all the other stockholders were glad to get rid of. I made a bargain with him to pay him one thousand dollars for his stock, and was going to Kersey to make the exchange. He advised me that he would take no checks, but must have cash. To accommodate him, I went to a St. Marys bank and secured one thousand silver dollars in a canvas bag and took attorney D. J. Driscoll, a stockholder and company attorney, along with me, and drove from St. Marys to Kersey. When we gave him the heavy bag of silver to count, he went wild and begged us to take it back to St. Marys and deposit it for him, as he had no place to keep it.
Then again while for the Commercial Union Tel. & Tel. Co., Judge Ellis L. Orvis of Bellefonte, PA and I went to Clarion, the county seat of Clarion County, where three men owned all the stock of the Clarion County Telephone Co. We had a very satisfactory session and came to an agreement which would have been a winner had not the big financial bust killed our whole plans.
Another interesting meeting was at a stockholders meeting of the Red Bank Telephone Co., held in the Brookville County Court House. They had so many stockholders that they could not all get into the Court House, and the largest stockholder only held $20.00 of stock.
This was strictly a farmers' line, each member building the line across his property, buying his own telephone and keeping up the batteries, etc. They had only a single grounded line that reached into three different counties, and they charged each subscriber ten cents per month for switching charges. They had so many telephones on one line, that they could not work a ringing code, but would give a ring and everyone would answer to find out who was wanted.
The only telephone in use then was the old Magento Crank ringer with wet battery. Most of them had a jackknife switch installed in the telephone, so they could cut out the battery while they were listening, and most of them thought so much of their telephone that they had cotton flannel bags to keep them covered up when not in use. You can imagine the service with a single line running into three counties of free service, and with hundreds of subscribers.
Judge Orvis and I also had a meeting with the Director of the Summerville Telephone Co. at DuBois, at which we proposed a consolidation of the various companies. Instead of making a counter proposal or any reply, they came out in the next morning's paper with a statement that the Big Trust was trying to buy them out, but they would never sell out.
At that meeting one of the Directors, Dr. Knox of Knoxville, PA, sat next to me. He leaned over and said that we had made a very fair offer, “but now, in my case, I am getting two free telephones, and every time we have a Directors meeting, we get five dollars and expenses. Every time there is a circus, county fair, or any special event we always call a special meeting. Besides I have only $20.00 of stock, so I cannot afford to sell out.”
While we were living in Ridgway, my wife and two children went to Friendship, NY to visit her mother and friends. They returned just as there was a very serious outbreak of typhoid fever, and I loaded them on the next train out to go back until the epidemic was better.
This developed into a very bad situation-- hundreds of cases, many fatal ones. Ridgway had a fine, good-sized hospital that was full. The YMCA building, Elks club, every church parlor, public hall, and every place to be found was filled to overflowing. There were over 150 out-of-town nurses, and all the doctors that could be found came to help out.
Ridgway's water, obtained from drilled wells, had a rather sulphurous taste and a slight odor, so everybody thought that that was the cause of the fever. To make matters still worse, there was a fine county spring up the hill a short distance, the water from which was piped to the County Court House and Jail. Everybody thought that that water was absolutely pure until some of the people from out of town attending court, who had only drunk this spring water, came down with the disease. Upon analysis, it was found that all the trouble came from the spring, from which hundreds of citizens carried water from the Court House fountain.
It was very severe. One might be talking to someone and one of them drop to the ground, and quite a number did not recover. At one time both railroads would not stop their trains at Ridgway.
I can't help thinking of one of my old neighbors, living almost directly across the street in a fine large brownstone house. He was a wealthy retired lumberman, President of the Elk County National Bank, and so industrious that every morning about four o'clock he would take his lantern and go out to his barn to milk his cow. He was a rough-talking man, using plenty of profanity, and not very good language in general. Talking to me one day he said, “Lattie, by God, I have learned how to make money, but by God, I don't know how to spend it. When in the city I'll go into one of those cafes and order what I think will be a hell of a feed, but by God before they get it to the table I think what a damn fool I am to spend so much money, and by God I don't want it.”
After getting the Commercial Union Telephone Co. properly organized with an authorized capital of $250,000 and a bond issue of half a million dollars, with a charter covering 14 counties, and several extensions of our lines partly arranged with Ridgway in the center of the territory, with five larger companies all heading our way, it looked as if we would have to have larger quarters, and I started to do this.
The Lepsch Brothers had just completed a fine three-story brick building on Broad Street in which they had just opened an up-to-date jewelry store with an apartment and office rooms on the second floor, and the third floor was one large unoccupied room. Mr. J. K. Gardiner had also built an exact building adjoining it and they worked together so that they built a large stairway and elevator space in the center, both utilizing the one hall. Gardiner had rented his third floor for a Lodge Hall and Joe Lepsch, myself, and two other men rented the ground floor, each putting up $200 and started a nickelodeon, a five-cent moving picture theatre, one of the first in the country, when there was only one place where films could be had, viz: S. Lubin in Philadelphia. Then two reels were the longest to be had, and there was no such thing as a film exchange. They would ship the show from one theatre to another until worn out, and we were never sure what the show would be until its arrival. Sometimes we would get the same one that we had already shown.
We gave the two reel “Feature” and a short reel of so-called “Comic” and an illustrated song with the accompanying slides, always with the film for a nickel.
There was a young married man there who had been a brakeman on the railroad, who had lost a leg. We gave this fellow the job of Manager and his wife the job as Ticket Seller. Although we had lots of competition we were doing fairly well when our receipts began falling off. I could not account for this as there seemed to be as many attending as ever. I had one of our switchboard operators take a peg counter (used in checking up numbers of calls on any certain section of the board) to the theatre. She found that the Manager was taking the tickets taken in at the door and passing them through the curtain and giving them to his wife who was selling them over, instead of selling from the rolls of new tickets properly numbered. Just at this time the fever epidemic broke and we closed the theatre and never reopened it. This fellow had the fever and we never did anything about his shortage.
We junked the theatre and for my $200 I got a pipe wrench and a phonograph which I sold for $25, for which I took a note that later went to protest that cost me a two dollar fee, so the pipe wrench (which I still have) really cost me $202.
I had made a deal for the Port Allegany plant, but lacked the necessary funds to complete the deal. I also had arranged with Joe Lepsch to buy his building by paying a certain amount of cash and a block of Commercial Union Telephone bonds. J. K. Gardiner held a five thousand dollar mortgage on LepschÕs building. This had to be cleared up and I wanted funds to make the deal on the Port Allegany plant. I called on Mr. Henry Schimmeleng, a retired lumberman, who ran a large sawmill at Instanter, Penn., and did his business with us in the Wilcox Bank. I made a full explanation of my intentions and he called his attorney. Going thoroughly over the matter he granted a twelve thousand dollar mortgage on what was now to be known as the Telephone Building. This enabled me to pay off the Gardner mortgage, pay Lepsch two thousand dollars cash on his building, and give me the five thousand cash to complete the Port Allegany plant.
Mr. Gardiner did not want his mortgage paid off as he had no good place to use it, so I sold him five thousand dollars of Commercial Union bonds, which cleared up the whole situation.
We had run a line on the branch railroad Pole Line from Johnsonburg to Glen Hazel, Penn., and constructed our lines from Portland Mills to DuBois to connect with the Summerville Telephone Co., and established an exchange in Brockwayville, where we met with Bell Telephone's strong opposition Š they installing free telephones to all that would take them. Twelve exchanges were too much for one man to handle and the Company changed their division lines. As of March 1, 1908, I was transferred to Olean, NY as Division Manager of Division #25 in charge of Olean, NY, Bradford, Smethport, and Port Allegany, Penn.
After an absence of ten years and one month, I was glad to get back to Olean where my daughter Romayne had been born and had spent many happy days.
Our exchange and division office was located on the second floor of the Masonic Temple, which adjoins the Olean House, the principal hotel in the city. The City Hall and Fire Station were on the other corner across the street. From my desk I could look across the park onto the residence of then New York Governor Frank W. Higgins. A little later we moved both the exchange and office across the hall into much larger quarters and farther away from the street noises, which was much better. Before we made this move a thrilling event had happened there. Adjoining my office was a dentistÕs office in which one night my night switchboard operator heard someone prowling. She called the Police Department which was just across the street and it so happened that Chief Bassett was on duty. He immediately came over, not waiting to put on his coat, and started upstairs. He met the burglar coming down who opened fire. The Chief returned his fire but was killed. The burglar calmly walked around the block into the Olean House where he had been registered and went to bed, but he was so badly wounded that he died the next day.
This new position was not an easy one, our new company lacked the necessary funds to properly keep the equipment up to standard, and the Bell Telephone Co. operating this territory were rebuilding their properties. It was hard sledding to properly hold our own.
The Inter-Ocean Telephone and Telegraph Co. had a fine toll line running through here but our Bradford business had to go through Olean and our lines between Olean and Bradford were always in trouble. The Union Telephone Co. in originally building this line, instead of running a direct independent pole line, made a deal with the Olean and Bradford Trolly Line whereby they put a ten-pin cross arm up on top of the trolley poles. As this territory is very mountainous the trolley had to make many twists and turns to make it. This required more poles and they had to run “booster” circuits for the cars, which made it bad for telephone service and we had lots of trouble. I made a survey and staked out a proposed toll line direct from Bradford to State Line where we could connect with the Inter-Ocean Toll Lines, but for lack of funds this line was never constructed.
One of the first affairs that I had to settle when I first had the Bradford Exchange put into my territory was the fact that the city of Bradford had voted to tax the telephone company one dollar per year for each pole that they had in the streets of Bradford. The Superintendent of the Union Telephone and Telegraph Company of Erie, Mr. W. H. Wilson, had refused to pay this charge. He made the plea that this company was not responsible, that the Union Telephone and Telegraph Company had been reorganized (which had been done to enable them to increase their capital). The City came back that if that was the case the present company had no franchise to operate in the city of Bradford and gave the company 30 days to remove their poles from all city streets. That was the situation at the time I made about my first appearance in Bradford.
I first called on the Bradford City Attorney, Mr. T. H. Schommaker, and during our conversation we found that his wife and my older brother's wife were cousins and that we knew some of the same people. We got along fine and I had several meetings with the City Council and finally got the pole removal order cancelled. Better still we got a new franchise which enabled us to raise our rates. In the general financial condition of the country our company failed to keep the system in proper working condition and so gradually lost business until forced out of business entirely. Trying to keep expenses down in May 1910 the company combined some of the divisions and the four exchanges that I had charge of were placed in another division and I retired from American Union Telephone Company.
I then thought of buying out some small telephone exchange, and looked over one in Perry, N.Y., and one in Warsaw, N.Y. Then I got in correspondence with Jones & Winters of Chicago who were then constructing telephone plants in various sections of the U. S., and had one in Abilene, Texas that they wanted a Superintendent for and asked me to call on them in Chicago. Right at that time I received a letter from brother Frank, who had for a number of years been Asst. Cashier of the Merchants National Bank of Wadena, Minn., saying that they were going to establish another bank in Crosby, Crow Wing County, Minn., a new iron mining town, and that if I wanted the position as Cashier to come to Wadena, and meet the bunch and look over the new town as soon as I could conveniently.
Reminiscing! Part 1
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