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On a Sunday afternoon in the late fall of 1869, a young priest known for his flair for oratory stood before a small crowd gathered in Newark. In a big, passionate voice, he proclaimed: “Newark has done wonders in the past . . . and here today in this hallowed spot there is laid the foundation of the Cathedral not to be surpassed in beauty by any in the land. . . .” 1 Then he urged, “Don’t be afraid my friends of doing too much. . . . Let Newark not be behind the other cities of the land and let her Cathedral spire, rising high over a magnificent stone edifice, rear its lofty peak as high if not higher than those of New York, Philadelphia, Albany, and Bu¤alo.” Those listening to Father Pierce McCarthy had gathered to witness the blessing of the cornerstone of a little church that Newark’s Catholic leaders called a “cathedral chapel,” a diminutive forerunner of the great cathedral they imagined. Although the cathedral chapel was temporary, and even though the site for the future cathedral that it foretold would ultimately change, McCarthy’s high hopes for Newark never died. Father McCarthy in many respects embodied the change that had occurred in New Jersey in the nineteenth century. He was the son of immigrants employed in a succession of iron mines scattered around the western part of the state. His father, originally from Ireland, did back-breaking toil in damp, filthy mines, and the family’s home was in one after another of camps and settlements inhabited mostly by other immigrants. From hardscrabble beginnings, the vocational path of the Church carried the talented priest to the center of diocesan a¤airs. 1 Destination: Newark 7 McCarthy made his appeals in behalf of the diocese and the City of Newark itself. His rhetorical bravura echoed the chest-thumping vogue of the period. But there was also a strain of pride in his words, pride in his Catholic faith and pride in Newark. These themes would recur, undisguised and unembarrassed, as plans for the new cathedral went forward. The civic aspect of McCarthy’s boasts were similar to those heard often from Newark’s leaders, and they pointed to an underlying feeling that their city had something to prove, especially by trying to be David to Manhattan’s Goliath. It galled many locals, for instance, when business operators demanded that “Made in New York” be stamped, etched, or sewn into goods produced in Newark, merging its identity with that of the better-known city. In their chauvinism, locals ignored the fact that Newark was one-tenth the size of New York City and half the size of Brooklyn. Yet they had bragging rights. Although Newark’s population ranked it in the lower range of nation’s top-twenty cities, its industrial output catapulted it to third place after the Civil War, qualifying it indisputably as an emerging powerhouse. Spread out on a flat expanse and gentle hills mostly west and south of a sharp bend in the Passaic River, this old Puritan settlement and colonial center was transformed by the transportation revolution. Newark was connected to Manhattan by toll roads and rail lines over the marshland known as the Hackensack Meadows and a ferry or boat trip across the Hudson River. The Passaic’s waters carried sail and steam ships eastward, out four miles to Newark Bay, and through the Kill van Kull narrows to New York Bay and the Atlantic. To the west, the rising and falling locks of the Morris Canal, conquering geography across New Jersey, linked Newark, and hence New York, to the Delaware River and then Pennsylvania, as well as to the mining resources along the way. Train routes soon vied with, then eclipsed and extinguished, the canal and opened access to the west and south. Newark’s bigger businesses made clothing and carriages and brewed beer. Yet by far the largest enterprises were in the leather trades: tanning and making shoes, boots, saddles, and harnesses. But by no means was Newark a one-company, or a one-industry, town. Newarkers produced fertilizer , India rubber, zinc oxide for paint, varnish, carriages, furniture, and dozens of other items. Along with the big firms in these businesses, hundreds of smaller ones formed a broad economic base. The steam engine transformed many operations, creating factories with an irreducible need for abundant, cheap labor. Immigrants, in successive waves, provided it. Water routes brought these immigrants to Newark; jobs kept them there...

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