The engraving shows the outside magnitude of McLear
& Kendall's factory, the largest in the city, but cannot show the
curious effect of the great show-room, filled with rockaways, buggies
of all kinds, and park phaetons. The building, which was put up in
1865, is on Ninth, King and French streets, and is two hundred and
eighteen feet in length. These makers produce annually fifteen hundred
vehicles, which are shipped to all parts of the United States. An
engine of forty horse-power assists the workmen, of whom a hundred and
seventy-five are kept in employment, earning the high wages commanded
by skilled labor, or, on an average throughout the factory, twenty
dollars per week.
[Illustration: BRANDYWINE SPRINGS, ON REDCLAY CREEK.]
After the ponderous establishments near the mouth of the Christine,
and the neater sorts of industries which can be carried on within the
city, we come to notice some of the mills and factories up stream.
Many of these are of great antiquity.
Walton, Whann & Co. boast that fully one-half the arrivals and
departures of shipping at Wilmington are in connection with their
business. What is that business? Why, it is the revival of the
fertility of the South, exhausted by the land-murdering agriculture
of slavery. The demand from the cotton regions since the war has been
enormous for the best artificial fertilizers, and the appreciation
of the particular kind made by Walton, Whann & Co.
Pages:
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35