Industry in Cleveland White Chewing Gum Company - American Chicle, Cleveland Ohio
Cleveland's role in American business and industrial development often is misunderstood and under-appreciated. In the period from the Civil War to the Depression, the city went through a complex and dynamic evolution from a small lakeside commercial city to the fifth-largest industrial center in the United States. In this period, Cleveland grew from 43,000 citizens to nearly a million.
In the period immediately after the Civil War, Cleveland had an ideal location astride the water routes on the Great Lakes and the growing network of rail routes between east and west. Related to this was its geographic location at a point where raw materials, particularly those of the iron and steel industry, could be transported efficiently and inexpensively to mills and processing plants. In addition, Cleveland attracted, or was the birthplace of, talented and entrepreneurial businessmen and industrialists and had a working-class population recognized for its high level of skills and productivity.
From this "melting pot" of ingredients grew some of the nation's most powerful and best-known industrial firms, as well as some lesser-known ones that were nonetheless nationally important for their inventiveness and innovation. Perhaps best known, and one with national and international impact still felt today, was John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company of Ohio and his later Standard Oil Trust. Under Rockefeller's hand, Cleveland long was the nation's primary oil-refining center, and his new methods of vertical integration shaped the modern oil industry. Not as well known but of similar importance was the Hanna family, particularly Marcus A. Hanna and his brothers. As early as the mid-1860s, the Hannas began mining and processing iron ore from the Lake Superior region, eventually organizing as the M.A. Hanna Company. Within 30 years the Lake Superior region had become the world's leading producer of iron ore, and it remains a major producer today. The Hanna firm played a major role in proving the feasibility of using Lake Superior ores by its development of an integrated organization owning ore properties, lake steamers, coal properties, coke works, blast furnaces, and steel processing plants. The Hannas formed the National Steel Corporation in 1929.
Part of Cleveland's industrial success was due to interconnections between industries. The paint and varnish industry, for example, relied in part on petroleum products for raw materials. Clevelanders Henry Sherwin and Edward Williams in 1870 formed a paint manufacturing company which in 1880 introduced an immediately-successful ready-mixed paint which supplanted the traditional and laborious mixing of vehicles and pigments that painters had to do on-site. In 1875 Francis H. Glidden established a varnish and enamel company. Today both Sherwin-Williams and Glidden remain widely-known names in the coatings industry, and The Sherwin-Williams Company is still headquartered in downtown Cleveland.
Toward the end of the 19th century, Cleveland made major contributions to the new field of commercial production of electricity and electrical products. Clevelander Charles Brush developed an effective dynamo capable of producing large amounts of electricity, and in 1878 became world-famous for his development of the arc light. Demonstration of the arc light on Public Square in 1879 proved the effectiveness of this type of outdoor lighting, and within three years the new light had changed the character of cities all over the world.
Though supplanted by Detroit after 1913, when Henry Ford began mass production of his Model T, Cleveland was a major center of automobile manufacturing. Indeed, during the first two decades of the 20th century, Cleveland and Detroit were considered of nearly equal importance in the industry. Over 80 makes of automobiles were produced in Cleveland plants up to 1931, including the Peerless, one of the best-known. (The city today remains a major supplier of auto parts.)
Innovators in the automobile industry included Alexander Winton, Walter Baker, and Thomas White. They were the "Big 3" of the industry in Cleveland. Winton was the pioneer and was producing cars by early 1897. Early in 1898, his firm was the first company to sell an American-made gasoline-powered automobile. After ceasing auto production in the 1920s, Winton concentrated on the development of diesel power, and his diesel engines were used in the first commercially successful diesel railroad locomotives in the mid-1930s. Within 25 years this new form of power had completely replaced the steam engine on the nation's vast rail network.
