INTRO

Detroit [in the late-19th century] experienced continuous population growth. Between 1870 and 1900 its population increased 259%. Detroit's decade was the 1880s when its population shot up 77%. This was the second highest growth rate in the Midwest after Chicago. Even during the economically troubled 1890s, Detroit's population grew 39%, although this was nearly the lowest rate among large Midwestern cities.

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The industrial foundations of Detroit go back to the 1830s with the starting of machine shops and foundries. Industry continued to expand after the Civil War in an economic and political climate that favored rapid new business formation and consolidation. ... In contrast with the later motor city, Detroit's industrial base was quite diversified. In 1900, most firms (1,475 out of 1,588) were small (that is, employed less than 100 workers). ... Furthermore, the mass of small employers claimed only 39% of the city's factory workers, while 61% were employed by just 113 middle or large-size firms. Indeed, a mere twenty large companies (employing 500 or more workers) engaged nearly one-third of the city's manufacturing workforce. Twelve of these firms were situated in Southwest Detroit.

(The area considered Southwest Detroit in this study was acquired by the City of Detroit in stages. In 1827, the western border of Detroit lay along Fourth Street; in 1849, Brooklyn; 1857, Twenty-fifth Street; 1885, Artillery Ave.; 1906, the Rouge River. Between 1849 and 1916, portions of Springwells Township were annexed to Detroit on six different occasions. In 1906, Detroit acquired the villages of Delray and Woodmere.)

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BRICKYARDS

The Lonyo family in 1889 together with workers and their families at the Lonyo brick yard at Lonyo Street and Michigan Ave.

In the 1890s there were two dozen brickyards within or near Detroit. They employed some 750 workers and made nearly 100 millions bricks per year. Eight of these are indicated on the map (#57-64). Going back to the early 19th century, brick making centered in Springwells Township, in the vicinity of Michigan Ave. and Lonyo, due to the exceptional quality of its "blue clay." Sanborn maps for 1897 reveal that a typical brickyard consisted of a pond of water, several brick-making machines, a kiln, and a large covered drying area.

According to an 1883 study by the State of Michigan of brickyards in Springwells, those operating on a piece-rate wage basis ran a nine-hour workday, starting at 4 a.m and going until 9:30 a.m., then resuming from 12 noon until 4 p.m. The workers, mainly German and Polish immigrant males, earned $40 to $50 a month, "but the work is very laborious." Those employed at day wages were under less pressure, but they worked 11 or 12 hours a day. The industry, however, ran only about six months a year, from April to about the middle of October. During the colder months workers had to seek employment elsewhere. "Some go to the [railway] car shops, some on the railroad, but they are mostly re-employed by the brick-bosses at a reduced rate of pay, and an increased number of hours." The fortunate ones obtained work in the stables as teamsters. The majority, though, went into the woods to chop the next year's supply of firewood, "their average earnings ranging from 50 to 70 cents a day, exclusive of the large amounts of time necessarily lost by cold, wet, sickness, etc."

The "appalling poverty" of brickyard workers was made apparent "by reason of the filthy, dilapidated little hovels into which the laborer is crowded."

These usually consist of one room and a shed, and are built of ten-foot boards, standing on end, with the floor raised about two feet, making a room eight feet high, by about ten feet square. As their families will average about six persons, this gives 100 square feet to the family....Generally they are plastered inside, but dimly lighted, with broken glass and sash, approachable only through mud during a great part of the year, often tilted up at various angles by frost, never painted, and perfect sieves for the chilling blasts of winter. Standing on mud banks, along the edges of stagnant pools, with door opening directly into the room, their extreme wretchedness, as human habitations, may well be imagined.

The State of Michigan's analysis concluded: "The inmates of our houses of correction and our prisons are better fed, more comfortably clad and housed than these people are."

MICHIGAN CAR COMPANY

Putting the final touches on a new rail car at the Michigan Car Company.

Southwest Detroit was also home to one of the city's largest railway car factories. The Michigan Car Company was organized in 1864 by James McMillan and John S. Newberry to produce rolling stock for the Union war effort. In 1873 it moved to a large site at the junction of the Grand Truck and Michigan Central railroads (#8-9 on map) — at the time some distance beyond the western boundaries of the city. The company and its east-side counterpart, the Peninsular Car Co. (founded in 1879 by Frank Hecker, Charles Freer, and Russel Alger) produced wooden freight cars, primarily box cars, coal and coke cars, and logging cars. In terms of value of annual output and number of employees, the industry was the most important one in late-19th century Detroit. By the early 1890s, it generated $14.7 million in cars, car wheels, roofs, and repair work, and it employed some 6,000 workers who turned out an average of 76 railway cars per day.

The factory yards in 1884 for the Michigan Car Company at Clark Street and Michigan Ave.

Although railway cars were made of wood, they also required numerous metal objects, most notably the 570-pound, 33" diameter, cast-iron car wheels. The development of quantity production of standardized parts and components had an impact on relations between workers and managers. Iron molders, for instance, who labored in the car wheel and components foundries did not possess the same kind of bargaining leverage with respect to management that molders in stove factories enjoyed. Hence, they were unable to prevent the employment of an army of "helpers" who performed much of the routine and back-breaking labor involved in molding. "This is usually performed by Poles or Italians," remarked a local journalist in 1889. "They will work for a pittance, three or four of them often getting less than one skilled molder." Indeed, these immigrants often found themselves working for the relatively few skilled molders who were typically native-born or of old immigrant (German and Irish) stock.

A molder looking for work in the late 1890s at the Michigan Car Co. presents us with a rare view of its internal operations. He observed in one of its foundries an exceptionally large number of Slavic immigrants. Work rules that had customarily governed the molding trade were not practiced, and a frantic pace was everywhere in evidence. He was struck particularly by the brutal methods by which one of the foremen drove workers:

It still wanted an hour or more of noon, and yet on every side men were pouring off and shaking out whole acres of work, while others were pounding sand for dear life. A man passed us with a club in his hand yelling and swearing at a couple of Pollacks who had struck a snag with a buggy ladle and spilled a lot of iron in the gangway. Jerry informed us that this was the foreman and he carried the club to prod the Pollacks up and help carry out the orders of Jim Foley, the superintendent. The foreman's name was Moore, and he knew nothing about the foundry at all, but having successfully handled a gang of laborers in the scrap yard he had been appointed to the foremanship of the foundry about a year before. Foley was the 'main guy,' though....Moore was only employed to walk up and down the gangway with the club in his hand to scare the Pollacks into putting up a 'fair day's work'

Although in need of a job, the visitor resolved that he would "rather work in a ditch for a dollar a day than in a sweat-box like this for double the wages they're paying."

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CONCLUSION

The automobile industry transformed work and business in Detroit. Oldsmobile opened the first automobile factory in Detroit in 1899 near the Belle Isle bridge. Ford, Packard, and Cadillac started in the 1902-1904 period. By 1905, automobile manufacturing was already highly concentrated in Detroit. ... American Car & Foundry sold the property of the old Michigan Car Company to the General Motors Corporation. Beginning in 1921 an army of workers at the new Clark Street plant of the Cadillac Motor Car produced luxury automobiles on a site where an army of laborers turned out railway cars in year's past.