Akron Declines Industrially

AKRON & SUMMIT COUNTY

Karl H. Grismer,

Summit County Historical Society,

Akron, Ohio c. 1950 Chapter 5 p 157-159

The 1850s started off badly for Akron with the exodus of four hundred of its best citizens to the gold fields of California.

That hurt, but by no means as much as the fact that Akron manu­facturing enterprises were geared to a water power method of operation in a day when steam power was gaining the ascendancy. Its flour mills, its woolen mills, its blast furnaces, were all becoming antiquated. Newer, more efficient plants in other towns were giving crippling competition.

That was not all. During the 1840s Akron manufacturers had a slight advantage over rivals elsewhere because the town was located at a junction of two canals. But with the coming of the 1850s, railroads began penetrating into many sections of the state, giving scores of other towns better transportation facilities than Akron had. The branch rail­road to Hudson helped some, but not enough. It was a sorry substitute for a main line railroad.

Akron's economic plight was perhaps most plainly indicated by a plethora of disastrous fires which destroyed large parts of the business district and also many of the town's leading industrial plants.

Some of these fires undoubtedly were started by incendiarists who wanted to collect insurance—four firebugs were convicted and sent to the penitentiary. Other fires got beyond control and caused great dam­age because many property owners lacked the money to employ watch­men and the city lacked the money to buy adequate fire fighting equipment.

Business section fires which wiped out literally scores of buildings occurred on February 17, 1851, on April 20, 1855, and on December 29, 1856. Losses were estimated at $90,000. Most of the buildings which burned were frame structures built when Akron was just getting started. From a long range viewpoint, their destruction helped the town. They were eventually replaced by much better buildings.

Industrial plants which went up in smoke during the decade in­cluded three stove factories and foundries, the town's largest blast furnace, two flour mills, the largest planing mill and a modern barrel factory.

Disgruntled coopers were suspected of starting the barrel factory conflagration which occurred on October 7, 1858. The plant, owned by the Akron Barrel Company, was located on the Upper Basin. The concern had just installed machinery and company officials said that coopers who had been angered by the introduction of labor-saving devices set the works afire. Coopers retorted that the company officials had probably burned down the plant to get insurance. The loss was estimated at $12,000. No arrests were made.

A few of the plants destroyed by fire during the 1850s were rebuilt as soon as the insurance money was received. Others were never replaced. Consequently, many persons were thrown out of work.

To add to the calamity, the Perkins Woolen Mills on Canal Street had been forced to close its doors in 1856 because of ruinous competition from New England mills. Two smaller woolen factories suspended operations at the same time. The Perkins Mill, which had employed 35 hands, was converted later by Jacob and Jesse Allen and Alexander H. Commins into a flour mill. But that helped Akron little during the terrible 1850s.

The sad truth was that by the time the decade ended Akron had fewer industrial concerns than it had had twenty years before. The only large ones which remained were four flour mills—the Old Stone Mill, the City Mill, the Cascade Mill and the Center Mill. And these plants were no larger, and had no more employees, than in the early 1840s.

Proof of Akron's decline industrially was furnished by the 1860 U. S. census which showed that the town's population was only 3,520, a gain of only 266 persons during the entire preceding decade. That was a much smaller increase than should have been shown by a normal birth rate.