IT is not impossible that some useful information may be conveyed by this book. Should these pages prove of such service, their cost in labor is most cheerfully donated.
This volume is composed of a series of articles which appeared in a Trade Journal, covering a period of two years from 1887 to 1889. It must be accepted as but a brief history of an industry long identified with Baltimore.
Thanks are due the Librarian of the Maryland Historical Society and Mr. B. R. Sheriff for favors in lending rare and valuable old City directories; also to the many citizens who kindly aided and assisted in the search for needed information.
Baltimore, 1890.
No. 1
PAST AND PRESENT have each their independent significance. The past gives freely to us the experiences of others, the present a suitable opportunity to improve upon what has already occurred. With our observation and acceptance of these privileges so easily obtained, we reap the benefit of their advantages and unconsciously find ourselves the gainers both in capacity and intelligence. A history of the past, giving the record of events and circumstances existing before our own day, bringing to our knowledge the accomplishments, business enterprises and undertakings of our predecessors, is a profitable study, and the reader gratifies his curiosity in observing how differently things were conducted and managed a century ago as compared with the processes of the present day, exciting a sense of wonder at the rapid progress that has been made in a comparatively short period of time. Think of it! quite within the lifetime of many of us have been the most wonderful of inventions – the steam engine, steam vessels, the telegraph and other wonders and triumphs of electricity. The wildest fancy may not be styled visionary in anticipating the appearance of things still more surprising.
Continued familiarity with the present system of making hats has the tendency in a great degree to prevent a recognition, until brought to our notice by comparison of the wide difference existing between the old and new methods, and this common every-day experience assists in making us unappreciative of the remarkable improvements that have been made in this branch of business.
Only a half a century ago the time required to make a single fur hat from the prepared material was fully a week, and the average production was two hats per day per man. With the bowing of the fur, the forming and shrinking of the bodies, and the handwork of finishing and trimming, all of which by the aid of modern science and invention is to-day done by machinery more perfectly and completely at the rate in production of twenty times that of fifty years ago, while the sewing of a straw hat, which could hardly be done in an hour by the plodding work of the hand, stitch by stitch, is, by the rapid sewing-machine, made in a minute. When we think of the largest number of stitches our mothers and sisters could take in their needlework by hand and contrast it with the result of the sewing-machine that spins its twenty-two hundred stitches a minute, we are able to gain some adequate idea of the saving of labor, and while we complacently accept these marvellous accomplishments, the question whether it be to the poor and needy a loss or gain is still an undecided problem. With all the advantages now at our command, it appears to us a matter of surprise how our forefathers, with their apparently indifferent methods, could profitably succeed in their labors. With steam engines, sewing-machines and electricity, the quick accomplishments of the present compared with the slow movements of the past tend to make one think we are living in an age of wonders amounting almost to miracles.
What would be the exclamation of the ghosts of our great-grandfathers who, with the rapid trot of an ox-team, drove to church miles away through the storms of winter to exemplify their devotion to the truth of their faith, if suddenly they could rise and observe the luxury of the present modes of transportation in convenient palace cars and palatial steamships, our comfortable and gaudy churches, and our easy ways of communicating instantly with those thousands of miles away from us? Aladdin's wonderful experiences, or the magical change by Cinderella's fairy god-mother, would appear tame to their intense surprise.
In a series of articles it is proposed to give an account of the growth of the hat manufacturing business, one of the most interesting of Baltimore's industries; how at an early period it was raised into conspicuous prominence in common with other enterprises undertaken in the active spirit which has always characterized Baltimore merchants as among the foremost of their time. They will also treat of its gradual growth and development, followed by a temporary decline of progress caused by the Civil War and its consequences, and finally of its triumphant stride to place itself again in line with other leading industries of this enterprising metropolis, for without doubt it holds to-day an enviable position among the different trades, a position acquired by the thoroughness, determination and perseverance of those engaged in its development.
