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r Chapter 2 “This Embryo City”: Chattanooga’s Postwar Economy and Society On March 26, 1873, the Chattanooga Daily Times published a letter titled “How we are to build a city.” Its author, a northern emigrant named J. S. Wiltse, had recently traveled throughout the country and visited many booming cities. Based on his observations, he now advised Chattanoogans on the proper way to build a modern, prosperous community: “It is not to be done by trade, by commerce , or even agriculture, but by manufacturing for the essential element.” Wiltse emphasized the local importance of the iron and textile industries. “Our ores and our coal must be brought out and used and worked up into every article that is made of iron,” he insisted, and “we must take the lead in making up the great southern staple—cotton.” Although Wiltse stressed the advantages of economic strength, he also was very aware that a successful city had to be politically and socially viable as well: “We must prepare those things that in all other places attract money, enterprise, and people—schools, churches, law and order, good roads, and good public morals.”1 Wiltse’s letter must have found a receptive audience, for industry was clearly the order of the day in Chattanooga. The most promising and most lucrative business at the time was the iron industry. Postwar industrial and railroad expansion created a huge demand for iron products. This was especially true in the South, where virtually the entire rail system had been destroyed during the war. This strong demand drove iron prices to unusually high levels; by 1872, for example, the average price for a long ton of pig iron was at an all-time high of $48.27. This was a full $13.00 over the previous year’s price and even higher than in the last year of the war.2 Local entrepreneurs, fully aware of the mineral resources of the surrounding region, were quick to recognize the lucrative potential of this market, and thus iron manufacturing soon became the town’s chief enterprise. 16 “This Embryo City” The city’s largest iron manufacturer was the Roane Iron Company, operated by Gen. John T. Wilder. Wilder, a trained ironmaster and a native of New York, first became aware of East Tennessee’s mineral deposits while serving in the region as a Union officer in the Civil War. After the war, Wilder teamed up with another Union veteran, Capt. Hiram S. Chamberlain, and established the Roane Iron Company in Rockwood, Tennessee. There, with the help of numerous northern investors, Wilder built the South’s first coke-fired blast furnace and in his first year produced an average of fifteen tons of pig iron daily. Doubtless encouraged by this early success, Wilder soon expanded his operations to include Chattanooga by merging with Abram Hewitt’s Southwestern Iron Company.3 This consolidation gave Wilder control of the city’s lucrative rolling mill and caused the Roane Iron Company to be Chattanooga’s greatest economic asset. It also made Wilder, who moved to Chattanooga with his family in 1872, a powerful local figure.4 Observers of the iron industry recognized the potential of Chattanooga’s industrial growth. According to Iron Age, the industry’s leading publication, the nation was in the midst of an “iron famine, with no immediate prospect of relief.” As a result of this demand, the city’s producers were almost assured of profitability. The paper proclaimed that “a blast furnace in or near this city, making good iron, will in itself be worth a fortune.” The role of northern businessmen in the local enterprises further guaranteed the city’s prosperity. “With such men,” the trade journal declared, “we do not see how it can fail of the most brilliant success.”5 Under Wilder’s direction, the foundering rolling mill operation was soon revived. Using inexpensive and abundant scrap rails, along with newly puddled iron from Rockwood, Wilder was able to manufacture iron rails at prices low enough to compete with much larger northern iron producers.6 The success of the rolling operation soon led to a major expansion of the ironworks, and by 1872 it had added twelve new furnaces and a puddling mill to the Chattanooga facilities.7 Yet despite this initial success, Wilder’s operation still faced formidable obstacles. Early on, for example, local iron was encumbered with charges of uneven quality. “There has been a great deal of looseness in the grading of southern irons...

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