Autobiography And Memorials of Ichabod Washburn. Showing how a great business was developed and large wealth acquired for the uses of benevolence. By Rev. Henry T. Cheever (Boston: D. Lothrop and Company, 1878)

[PP. x-xi - Washburn came to write his autobiography at the request of Professor George Shepherd, D.D. of the Bangor (Maine) Theological Seminary of which Washburn was a large benefactor. Shepherd wished to use the life to illustrate one of his Discourses on the Moral Discipline of Giving, preached at the annual meeting of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, at Detroit, Sept. 7, 1858. Internal evidence suggests Washburn started writing it in 1861, when he was sixty-three and continued working at it over the course of the next five years or so. Cheever interjected editorial commentary and points to morals in the text.]

P. 38: During the winter [of 1819], I engaged in business on my own account for the first time, manufacturing ploughs. To stock myself, I required a small capital or credit.

With a few dollars I had earned I commenced, relying in part on my credit. There was no [P. 39] difficulty in getting such stock as I wanted where I was known, but how to obtain plough-moulds, which were indispensable, I did not know. I was advised to make application to Mr. Waldo in Worcester. I was an entire stranger to him, so that when I asked if he would trust me until I could sell them, his mild, discriminative eye was turned upon me, as if in searching scrutiny. But to my great relief, he at once filled up a blank note for the amount to be paid in gold or silver, which I signed, and in due time paid.
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P. 40: No part of my subsequent business life gave me more pleasure than that winter. Rising with a light heart, generally at my anvil by sunrise, working until nine in the evening, and then retiring fatigued, I realised fully that the sleep of the laboring man is sweet.

CHAPTER V.
P. 41: My first business enterprise closed successfully in the spring of 1819. The early predilection for a higher order of mechanical business still clung to me, which induced my applying for employment at the Armory at Millbury. This for a time was refused, when I proposed to Mr. Waters, the proprietor, to work a month, for any wages he chose to give. The next Monday, I was on my way to the works, with my leather [P. 42] apron under my arm, full of hope for the future.

At first, I was put to work upon the more simple parts, such as welding on the heads to the ramrods. Soon, however, I was advanced to the more difficult parts of the work, and was liberally compensated for my labor. A little after this, application was made to Mr. Waters, by William Hovey, of Worcester, for a smith, who could forge machinery. The acceptance of this application led me to take up my residence in that town and introduced me to my long hoped-for, and favorite pursuit.

Engaging with Mr. Hovey, the next day found me on the way to Worcester, in June or July, 1819. I was to work on trial for one month, and had worked only a few days, when my employer wished me to engage for two years. I preferred an engagement for one year only. During this time, I not only worked at forging, but a great deal also at finishing, so that I soon acquired a practical knowledge of all the different kinds of work on machinery.

[P. 43] Closing my engagement with Mr. Hovey, I went into business with William H. Howard, manufacturing woolen machinery and lead pipe. Our connection was for a short time only. Mr. Howard desiring to leave town, I purchased his half of the business and continued the manufacturing of lead pipe, then in its infancy. I had only enough to employ myself and one man.

At this stage of my life, I saw for the first time, a subscription paper. Timid and hesitating to subscribe myself, Dr. Melvin, a benevolent person standing by said to me, "Put down fifty cents, young man, and you will soon see it come back to you again." Influenced by his advice I contributed the first fifty cents I remember to have ever given, and in a few weeks, I received a very large, lucrative order for lead pipe, under circumstances that induced the good Doctor to say, "I told you so."

He saw, in the rapid increase of my business, the fulfillment of a promise: He that watereth shall be watered also himself. From that time [P. 44] to this, I have never lacked work, or the opportunity of facing a subscription paper, and am a confirmed believer in the scripture truth that "he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully."

I was then prosecuting my business in the School Street machine shop. Soon after this, the demand for woolen machinery so increased, that I was induced to take as partner, Benjamin Goddard, constituting the firm of Washburn and Goddard. Our business increased so much, that very soon, we employed some thirty men, and found it necessary to enlarge our buildings, and increase our facilities. We made the first woollen [sic] Condenser, and long roll spinning Jack ever made in Worcester county, and nearly the first made in the country.
I was engaged in business under the above-named firm at that place, when we sold out to Messrs. March, Goulding, Smith and Hobart. We then purchased a water power [site] at Northville, and put up the necessary works for manufacturing wire and wood screws. This business we pursued there about three years, when we had so far out-grown the water power, that we were obliged to remove to where we could obtain more.

Not willing to abandon that place altogether, Mr. Goddard preferred to remain where he was, giving also as a reason for not removing into the city, that he did not like to expose his boys to the demoralizing influence of Worcester streets.
This led to the suggestion of amicably dissolving our eleven years' co partnership, by dividing the machinery and tools.
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P. 46: In the year 1831, some two years before the dissolution of our co partnership, we commenced the manufacture of iron wire, at a time when but little of this important article had been manufactured in this country. The first coarse wire machine I ever saw, was one of self-acting pinchers, drawing out about a foot, then passing back, and drawing another foot; so crude and ill adapted for the work was this machine that no man could draw more than fifty pounds a day. We improved on this machine, so as to draw out about fifteen feet at each pass, increasing the product at least ten fold.

We soon, however, substituted the Drawing Block, which has never since been improved. With this, a man can conveniently get off twenty-five hundred pounds in a day. Other important improvements have since been made, aside from the drawing block, which I do not claim, both in coarse and fine wire-drawing, as also in the annealing process.

In the autumn of 1834, I continued the business of manufacturing wire on my own account, at what is called the Grove Mill, built by Stephen Salisbury, Esq., under my direction.

In the enlargement of the business from time to time, the machinery has been most drafted by myself, and constructed under my direction. The iron-wire department gradually increased up to 1842, when my brother Charles engaged with me as a co-partner, continuing until 1849.

One year after, in 1850, I took as a partner, my son-in-law, P.L. Moen. In him, I have had a most efficient aid in bringing up the business to its present mammouth size. While he makes no claim to be a practical mechanic, he has by his exactness, promptitude, and aptness for business generally, supplied a deficiency in myself indispensable to success. He has managed with rare ability our finances, a department of the [P. 48] business for which I never had the taste or inclination, always preferring to be among the machinery, doing the work and handling the tools I was used to, though oftentimes at the expense of smutty face and greasy hands.

CHAPTER VI.
P. 49: About the time of which I last spoke, the year 1850, I was urged by Mr. Chickering of Boston, the piano-forte maker, to try my hand at making steel wire for the strings to his instruments. Until then, that business had been entirely in the hands of Webster, of England, for eighty years.

P. 50: This undertaking, through all its attendant difficulties, to its final accomplishment, after years of personal application, many experiments, and much expense, I may say, without egotism, was the greatest success of my mechanical life. Since that time, the introduction of the Sewing machine, and of crinoline, has greatly increased the demand both for needle and crinoline steel.
An experience of ten years in working steel [P. 51] before the introduction of crinoline wire gave us a great advantage, which very soon secured for us a decided preference over other manufacturers, our weekly production for this article alone, crinoline wire for skirts, averaging sixty thousand pounds, and being about one-half (judging from reliable sources) of the entire production in the country.
This estimate shows that the annual consumption of three thousand tons of steel is required to expand and give prominence to the ladies' dresses in this country. [For a contemporary cartoon, click here.]

[Cheever here introduced a long footnote, pp. 50-51, which details Washburn's success in manufacturing galvanized wire used for telegraphs. Washburn obtained an English patent for purifying the wire without weakening it, i.e., without prolonged exposure to acid.
P. 51: "Messrs. Washburn and Moen are the only makers of Patent Galvanized Wire in the United States, and notwithstanding it is established that the system which they have adopted uniformly secures the additional strength of 12 1/2 per cent. in tension, and the same in the section-power, over any other mode of galvanizing yet adopted, they sell it at the same prices charged by others for the ordinary wire."]

P. 52: It may not be out of place here, to record some facts of my own business, showing the great increase in the manufacture of wire during the last thirty years.

At that time, the year 1835, I was employing about twenty-five workmen, occupying seven thousand feet in area for manufacturing. At this time, 1866, we are employing at both our mills, from six hundred and fifty to seven hundred men, occupying one hundred thousand feet in area, where our work is performed, and showing a production during the last thirteen months of nearly two million dollars.
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P. 53: In the summer of 1819, when I first became a [P. 54] a resident of Worcester, the population of the place was about 2,700. According to the [state] census of 1865, it now numbers 32,000. During these . . . years of increase, I have so far aimed to identify my interests with the growth and prosperity of the city as to contribute my share in whatever public improvements have been made.
Besides the business results accomplished, I have shared with others in building two churches.

At my own expense I have erected the Mission Chapel on Summer street, and mainly supported it. I aided, with others, in giving to Worcester one of the best Hotels, "The Bay State House." I originated the idea, and contributed some twenty-five thousand dollars towards the erection, of Mechanics' Hall, now so indispensable in meeting the great wants of the city for lectures, concerts, and various social gatherings, and I may say of the State also, since it affords a convenient, spacious, and commodious place for great political gatherings.