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THE PALMER FOUNTAIN IN THE CAMPUS MARTIUS

THE NEW DETROIT

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BY

HUGO ERICHSEN
Photographs by Charles C. Breeve.

N days gone by, Detroit had the reputation of being "slow" and was frequently referred to as "an old French town, that was damned by its ultra conservatism. Even when the French régime, which was responsible for this verdict of popular opinion, had long since passed away, the reputation clung to the city and was hard to live down.

But of late the City of the Straits has made such rapid strides in the race of progress and has advanced so greatly in everything that stands for the highest civilization, that even its rivals have been compelled to acknowledge that it has substantiated its claim to the title of a great metropolis and industrial center. People no longer look wise and say: "O yes, Detroit is a fine town to live in, but a mighty poor place for business."

With the recent annexation of the adjoining villages of Delray, Springwells

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and Woodmere, Detroit enters upon a new epoch of its history and now is as large as San Francisco was in 1900. Thirteenth on the list of American cities, it rivals Milwaukee in size. Its area has been suddenly expanded from 18,560 to 23,000 acres and its population increased from 350,000 to 400,000. Delray, with its nine large factories, capitalized at $10,000,000, has been a thriving manufacturing center for many years. One of the greatest of these industries is devoted to the conversion of an immense body of salt, that underlies the whole village, into soda-ash and other articles of commerce. But what renders the transfer of this suburb to the City of the Straits of especial moment is the fact that its manufacturing district is located on the banks of the Rouge River and that it therefore enables the manufacturing industries of Detroit to expand in the direction of good shipping facilities.

Founded by the Sieur de la Motte Cadillac, about two hundred years ago, it was the first French colony established

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In the foreground is the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument, in memory of the 9,213 men Detroit sent to the front in the Civil War

Detroit, in its leading lines of activity, for the year ending September 30, 1905, that was made by Mr. Thomas Neal, the chairman of the Detroit Board of Commerce Committee on manufactures, and a conservative business man, gave the following figures:

any other city in the world and boasts of having the largest pharmaceutical laboratory on earth. It also claims preeminence in other directions and is said to lead in the manufacture of milk-cans, slotmachines, manure-spreaders, gelatine capsules, parlor and library tables, gasoline and gas motors, and in the distribution of seeds. It has also long been known as the center for the manufacture of freight cars and is an important factor in the varnish and paint trade. It also contains $39,700,000 9,300,000 immense shipyards, extensive carbon and 10,000,000 fertilizer works and several large brass 5,500,000 and copper foundries.

Car building and repairing...... .$23,000,000
Automobile construction and assem-
bling

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Foundry and machine-shop products

11,500,000
5,200,000

9,600,000

9,000,000

There are several factors in the present 10,000,000 rapid growth of Detroit industries that 5,500,000 insure its continuance. Not the least in 3,000,000 importance of these is the improved facili4,500,000 ties for transportation by rail. Through the Michigan Central and its feeders De9,000,000 3,500,000 troit reaches nearly every city and village 2,500,000 in the southern and central portions of 5,000,000 Michigan, besides reaching out along the eastern border as far as the Straits of Mackinaw. A line across Canada makes

3,000,000

Detroit manufactures more stoves than

this a part of one of the most direct trunk lines between Chicago, New York and Boston. The few towns of importance that are not reached by the Flint & Pere Marquette or Michigan Central are accessible from Detroit by means of the Grand Trunk or Lake Shore. There is hardly any city of the Northwest that is in such close touch with the whole of its own state.

Recently Detroit has made some important additions to its railroad facilities. Improved connections of the Wabash Railroad eastward, the extension into the coalfields of Ohio and West Virginia of the system to which the Detroit Southern is attached, and the consolidation of the Pere Marquette and the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton, have all been of service to the manufacturers of Detroit.

Detroit's Belt Line system has also been a great aid to the shippers of the city. Teaming is expensive, and the manufacturer who can unload his raw material from a car standing at his back-door, and load the same car with the product of his factory possesses a great advantage.

the Michigan Central between Chicago and New York.

Her majestic river must ever remain the chief natural glory of Detroit from a scenic standpoint. Detroit's shipping industries have won her first place among all the ports on the Great Lakes. Her

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THE CADILLAC CHAIR

Erected to commemorate the two-hundredth anniversary of the founding of Detroit

Heretofore the City of the Straits has labored under the disadvantage of ice-blockades during severe winters. Lake Huron and Lake St. Clair and Detroit River ice have cozabined, at times, to make it extremely difficult for the transfer barges to get their loads across the Detroit River; but when the tunnel under the Detroit River, now happily under way, is completed, there will be no more congestion of traffic. The tunnel will cost in the neighborhood of $7,000,000 and will be completed in about two years. It will be brilliantly lighted by electricity and provided with automatic block signals. Electrical engines of the latest type of construction will be used to haul the trains through the tunnel. When the work is When the work is completed there will be no break in the continuity of the double track service of

prominence in this respect may be judged from the fact that in 1903, according to official government reports, Detroit steamers carried seven million passengers, more than three times the combined total of passengers carried by Chicago, Milwaukee, Grand Haven, Port Huron and Marquette steamers. Detroit's vessels, with two or three exceptions, were of local manufacture.

Commerce, to the amount of 39,328,689 tons, passed through the Detroit River during the year ending June 30, in eight months of navigation. months of navigation. This is approximately twice the amount that passes through the Suez Canal during the entire

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twelve months each year. In exports Detroit leads all the ports on the chain of lakes and northern frontier from Maine to Montana. The aggregate is over $22,000,000 per annum, an increase of two hundred and ninety per cent in eleven years.

If we assume that the average selling price per machine is only $500 this will give us a total valuation of the output of $5,000,000. But when we consider that the expensive touring-car has been mostly in demand and that comparatively few runabouts are shipped from Detroit, it is

THE STATUE OF EX-GOVERNOR HAZEN S. PINGREE

plain that these figures are too conservative and that we would probably arrive nearer the truth by doubling them. In addition to the companies engaged in the manufacture of complete automobiles, there are over thirty companies in the Michigan metropolis that manufacture parts of the machines and automobile equipments and supplies. The manufacture of computing machines is of less than two years' growth, but it already represents an investment of $5,000,000, and Detroit has also become the center of that industry.

This record-breaking period in Detroit's industrial life was also marked by the construction of the first cokeovens, initial enterprise in a business which gives promise of taking a foremost place. An open-hearth steel plant is also in process of construction. The manufacture of rubber goods on a large scale is another interesting element of growth, and a company from Chicago is erecting a huge plant on the river front that will give employment to several hundred men.

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Erected by the citizens of Michigan in Grand Circus Park, Detroit

The remarkable industrial growth of the past five years has been more than a mere expansion; it has been a reaching out into new fields. Detroit was almost unheard of as an "automobile city" five years ago. To-day it enjoys the distinction of being the center of the automobile industry of the world. Altogether there are eleven automobile factories in the City of the Straits, with a total capital of about $6,000,000. Two of these are not in "the trust," but the rest are said to be in the association. The total annual output of these establishments may be safely estimated at ten thousand machines, which vary from $375 to $5,000 in market value.

But Detroit was a mercantile city long before it aspired to any manufacturing importance. In days of yore the mercantile business was the most striking evidence of commercial activity that the town afforded. With the building of railroads in more modern times, Detroit has been obliged to share the Michigan trade with other cities, but as an offset to this a much wider territory has become accessible to its enterprising jobbers. In every line of wholesaling Detroit merchants now claim as their territory the whole of Michigan, northern Ohio and Indiana,

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