Bill Veeck. The Man Who Conquered Cleveland and Changed Baseball Forever

Bill Veeck. The Man Who Conquered Cleveland and Changed Baseball Forever.

By Bill Lubinger

The morning of Oct. 12, 1948, was chilly and battleship gray.

But the city of Cleveland may have never felt so glorious; its residents never so proud.

Estimates vary. Some say more than 300,000 fans jammed the sidewalks of Euclid Avenue, from Public Square to University Circle. Others put the number closer to 500,000.

They lined the city’s main artery, squeezing parts of the two-lane thoroughfare down to one, all to celebrate their championship baseball team.

The Indians had finally won a World Series championship – their first since 1920 and, as the cruel baseball Gods would have it more than six decades later, their last.

Convertibles carrying the Indians’ players and their wives and city leaders paraded the 107 blocks past a cheering throng.

“I remember getting off a train and riding in an open car down Euclid Avenue at 8 o’clock in the morning,” recalls Al Rosen, one of only three players from that team still living. “The town lined up on either side of the street. It was remarkable. The people turned out en masse.”

Teammate Eddie Robinson, now 91 and retired in Fort Worth, Texas, still remembers how the sidewalk crowds were elbow to elbow. Some revelers perched themselves on parked cars and buses.

“It was wonderful,” he says. “It was a wonderful year.”

A year largely orchestrated by a chain-smoking man in the lead car with reddish hair, a wooden leg from a World War II injury and a huge smile that matched his gregarious personality.

No, not Indians’ 31-year-old shortstop/manager and World Series hero Lou Boudreau. Not Cleveland Mayor Tom Burke. But team owner Bill Veeck, who left an indelible mark on Cleveland and Major League Baseball.

“Maverick” is the term biographers and others still use to describe him, because he had the strength and conviction to follow his own path despite insults and criticism from traditionalists.

While other team owners scoffed and ridiculed him for what they considered low-brow publicity stunts, Veeck introduced many of the fan-friendly promotions that still make heading to the ballpark an experience that transcends the playing field.

In keeping with his own social conscience, he signed the American League’s first African-American player and continued as a pioneer in civil rights activism throughout his career.

And, of course, it was under his stewardship that Cleveland Indians’ fans last reveled in a world title.

“I think winning the World Series put Cleveland on the map,” Robinson says. “I think Bill Veeck and the stuff that he did during the year, all the promotions he had, I think Cleveland became super big-league in a hurry.”

Cleveland celebrated a baseball champion that fall day, but it also celebrated itself.

The city was a much different place back then. Vibrant. Nationally respected. And much, much bigger.

Cleveland, named an All-America City for the first time in 1949, was also a burgeoning industrial force at the time, built on shipping, automotive and iron and steel before the decline began in the 1960s. With more than half of the North American population within 500 miles of Public Square, Cleveland was considered prime real estate.

But if the baseball championship was what truly defined the city as “big league,” then William Louis Veeck Jr. was the creative mind that wrote and directed the script.

*****

Veeck wound up in Cleveland by way of Chicago, where he was born and grew up in a baseball-happy family. (William Veeck Sr. was a former sports writer who built the Chicago Cubs into pennant winners in the early 1930s.)

Veeck desperately wanted to own a major-league team and apparently came within 24 hours of landing the Pittsburgh Pirates.

According to Paul Dickson’s biography, “Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick,” the Pirates’ $2 million asking price was too high. So Veeck set his sights on Cleveland, which was considered a better business location because it wasn’t as dependent on one industry – in Pittsburgh’s case, steel.

Weeks before buying the Indians, Veeck did his homework, taking cabs and streetcars around the city, talking to people in restaurants, bars and social clubs for feedback on the team and their ballpark experiences.

Veeck discovered, Dickson writes, that Clevelanders loved their team but not the group that had owned it since 1928. He was stunned to learn that balls hit into the stands had to be thrown back, that games weren’t broadcast on the radio and that most cab drivers and bartenders had no idea when the Indians were playing in town.

With that as the backdrop, Veeck, on June 22, 1946, got an investor group comprised mainly of Chicago bankers – but also included comedian Bob Hope – to buy the Indians for $1.54 million.

For some perspective, Forbes magazine recently estimated the Indians’ franchise value at more than $400 million. And that $1.5 million for the Tribe in the post-war era? That might buy a team a very low-level free agent today.

The Indians were a fifth-place team the season before. Between that weak finish and the team’s obvious marketing void, Veeck had much work to do. He got right to it.

Veeck talked to fans and, more importantly, he listened to his customers. To draw more fans to the ballpark, no detail was too small.

He added mirrors to the ladies’ rooms when he found out there weren’t any. He often sat in the bleachers with the common fans. When he discovered the ballpark announcer couldn’t be heard clearly way out there, he had the sound system fixed.

Within weeks of buying the team, games began being broadcast on radio. He added special ladies’ days, enticing them with free hard-to-get nylons or orchids imported from Hawaii. He had National League scores posted in the ballpark, added clerks to make it easier to order tickets by phone, spiffed up the stadium ushers in uniforms and polished shoes, ran game-day buses to and from rural areas and paid special attention to the stadium food, especially the hot dogs, peanuts and mustard.

In-game entertainment and post-game fireworks became staples of the Veeck-led version of Major League Baseball, just as they are today.

Veeck also made himself available to any group that needed a luncheon or dinner speaker – and not just in Cleveland, but regionally, from Erie to Buffalo to Cincinnati.

He schmoozed the media and was even more gracious with fans, listing his home number in the phone book and often standing outside the ballpark gates to thank them as they left. He was a player-friendly owner who even threw batting practice at times.

As his plaque in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., reads, Veeck was “a champion of the little guy.”

All along, Veeck fielded criticism from fellow major-league owners who took shots at him. Baseball was serious business, the national pasttime, not a circus sideshow. (As owner of the St. Louis Browns, he once sent a midget to the plate to draw a walk.)

But fans loved it.

Once the Indians moved all their home games to massive Municipal Stadium (where Cleveland Browns Stadium now stands), the turnstiles spun. Previously, the team had played at 22,500-seat League Park on the city’s East Side and in the 78,000-seat Municipal Stadium only on weekends, holidays and when larger crowds were expected.

In 1946, the club finished sixth but drew more than a million fans for the first time in team history.

Veeck and his team also made history in 1947 by signing Larry Doby from the Negro Leagues’ Newark Eagles, making him the first African-American in the American League. It was just 11 weeks after Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers became baseball’s first black player.

Many major-league owners railed against teams hiring black players because they had their own self-interest to protect. Negro League teams rented their ballparks. As black stars moved from the Negro Leagues to the big leagues, the Negro League games drew fewer fans, generating less rental income for the ballpark owners.

Former teammate Eddie Robinson believes Doby, who wrestled with the same racism and for-whites-only segregation, didn’t get the recognition he deserved because Jackie Robinson was the first.

“Doby handled himself well,” says Eddie Robinson, who lived in a Rocky River apartment when he played for the Indians. “He took the jabs and all from the visiting players and the fans, and went right along and did his work just like (Jackie) Robinson did.”

(“It wasn’t very pleasant being a Jew at the same time, either,” says Al Rosen.)

By the time he retired from baseball, Doby, who died in 2003, was a seven-time All-Star outfielder who spent 10 of his 13 major-league seasons in Cleveland.

Larry Doby Jr. was born after his father was through playing, so his impressions are based on stories his dad told him.

While some teammates refused to shake his hand when he was introduced, there were others, such as Bob Lemon, Jim Hegan and Joe Gordon, “who didn’t care where he came from or what color his skin was,” says Doby Jr.

“It was tough, but there were a lot of good guys who reached out to him and made the tough times not so tough.”

Eddie Robinson also remembers Doby being generally well-accepted by the team.

“Well, there was some southern boys, of course, if you were from the South and they were bringing up a black guy on to the team,” he says, “it was something different.”

Eddie Robinson, as his thick drawl reveals, was one of those southern boys. He admits to having to adjust to a black man in the clubhouse.

“Well, it bothered me just like it bothered everybody else,” he says. “It was something that was going to happen, so you sucked it up and went along with it and it turned out to be very good.”

What troubled Robinson more was that Boudreau replaced him with Doby in the lineup just two days after the manager reassured him he was the team’s first baseman.

“That’s how it bothered me most,” he says.

Doby lived with a family in Shaker Heights for part of his time in Cleveland. Although the city was – and largely remains – racially-divided, Doby was welcomed by Northeast Ohio, according to his son.

“I’m going to tell you what he told me,” says Doby Jr. “My father was the kind of guy who didn’t talk about the past much, but here’s what he told me about Cleveland. He said he never got booed there, ever. So that, to me, sums up what he felt about that city and what that city felt about him.”

When the 1947 season ended, the Indians had improved to fourth place and drew 1.5 million fans – second most in the league. Veeck continued to put the pieces together both on and off the field.

“Bill was a great showman,” Rosen says. “Probably the best that baseball’s ever known.”

And the great showman’s biggest show was about to arrive.

The 1948 Indians featured five future Hall of Famers: pitchers Bob Feller, and Lemon, Doby in the outfield, Joe Gordon, a second baseman the Indians obtained from the New York Yankees in a trade, and Boudreau, the shortstop/manager. The team also acquired Gene Bearden, an unheralded knuckleballer who would become the team’s World Series hero.

About midway through the season, Veeck, in another controversial move, would add a sixth future Hall of Famer.

The Indians needed an effective reliever. Veeck’s solution was 42-year-old Satchell Paige, a star of the Negro Leagues who was signed by the Indians on his birthday.

Again, Veeck was criticized. Just another cheap publicity stunt to sell tickets, other owners claimed.

But Veeck’s commitment to civil rights was genuine and deep-rooted. He had joined the NAACP after arriving in Cleveland, according to Dickson’s memoir, and appeared in an NAACP recruiting poster with Doby and Paige.

By the time he sold the Indians after the 1949 season for $2.2 million, Veeck had integrated every level of ballpark operations, from security to ushers to vendors and the front office. In fact, he had hired Olympic gold medal-winner Harrison Dillard in the team’s public relations office.

Fans filled the ballpark, but not because Paige was an over-the-hill freak show with the crazy windup, high leg kick and something he called a “hesitation pitch.” Paige went 6-1 down the season’s stretch run, including a 1-0 three-hitter over Chicago in front of a record night-game crowd of 78,382.

The Indians wound up tied for first with the Boston Red Sox, resulting in a one-game playoff at Fenway Park. The Tribe took that one, 8-3, to advance to the World Series against the National League’s Boston Braves.

Veeck’s Indians beat the Braves in six games. Doby became the first black man to homer in a World Series. And Game Five, in Cleveland, drew a record 86,288 fans.

The Indians drew 2.6 million fans that season, a major-league record that stood for 14 years.

“The team began to play well and (the players) believed in themselves,” says Rosen, who got called up from the minors late that season and played behind third baseman Ken Keltner. “It was all very magical, and when someone reminds of it I get chills.”

Major League Baseball has expanded to more cities. Players, who once took part-time jobs in the offseason to help pay the bills, are now extremely well paid, to the point where securing other work isn’t necessary.

Although some of the rules have changed, the game is relatively the same. But fans experienced their Tribe much differently from their family rooms.

Now, all but a few Indians’ games are broadcast on television. Fans can watch every inning of an entire season in their living room if they so choose. No so in 1948. The first telecast by Ohio’s first TV station (WEWS) didn’t occur until 1947. So televised Indians’ games were rare.

“It was all radio,” remembers Carl Parise of Mayfield Heights, describing what it was like to hear announcers Jack Graney and Jimmy Dudley call the games.

“You’d be listening to them on the radio, they’d have you up out of your seat. They were just great,” says Parise, who was 8 years old when the Tribe last won a World Series. “You’ve got to remember, if you were sports fans back then, you were spoiled. The Browns and Indians were winners.”

As was Cleveland – largely because of a fun-loving, risk-taking, marketing genius named Veeck.

Ohio presidential election results since 1960: Statistical Snapshot (Plain Dealer 9/3/12)

Cleveland’s struggling Mount Pleasant Neighborhood Eager For Rebirth as Arts District

From the Plain Dealer 8/26/12

The link is here

cleveland.com

Cleveland’s struggling Mount Pleasant neighborhood eager for rebirth as arts district (photo gallery)

Published: Saturday, August 25, 2012, 6:00 PM Updated: Saturday, August 25, 2012, 6:58 PM

By Leila Atassi, The Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Cleveland City Councilman Zack Reed says his Mount Pleasant neighborhood is ready for its Renaissance.

And with a $75,000 grant from the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency to study traffic patterns and retail development potential near the intersection of Kinsman Road and Union Avenue, Reed said the stage is set.

That is, if investors are willing to take a chance.

Driving through the embattled East Side community on a sunny, August morning, Reed looked past the scars of the foreclosure crisis and decades of disinvestment and extolled the neighborhood’s virtues.

Key areas along Kinsman are ripe for redevelopment, he pointed out.

Demolition is clearing the way for potential parks and, he hopes, a new library. And vacant storefronts are practically inviting entrepreneurs to set up shop, he said.

“There is no reason why someone can’t put a coffee shop right there,” Reed said, pointing to a small abandoned storefront on Kinsman Road, just west of East 130th Street. “Investors need to realize that folks in this neighborhood drink coffee, too. We’re just not going to pay $5 a cup.”

Reed said he’s tired of fighting the perception that Mount Pleasant is a crime-ridden urban wasteland. It is, rather, a neighborhood rich in African-American history. Once a mecca for middle-class blacks, it was home to a litany of Cleveland celebrities, including Jim Brown, Arsenio Hall and legendary politicians Carl and Louis Stokes.

Reed envisions an arts and entertainment district in Mount Pleasant that capitalizes on that folklore and could serve as a destination for visitors seeking Cleveland’s “African-American experience.”

Galleries could feature African American art, he says. A cultural museum and murals on buildings along the corridor could tell the story of Mount Pleasant. Restaurants, coffee shops and live entertainment venues would round out the neighborhood’s offerings.

Revisiting a decade-old revitalization plan

As bold as it is, Reed’s vision is nothing new.

At one time the area was taking baby steps toward a comeback, said Thomas Stone director of the community development corporation Mt. Pleasant NOW, which will administer the NOACA grant.

About a decade ago, the agency commissioned a similar retail market study that revealed that the neighborhood could draw as much as $60 million a year in business if it found a way to capitalize on its 150,000-square feet of available commercial space. The CDC developed an ambitious revitalization strategy that broke a longer stretch of Kinsman into five districts, each with its own theme and flavor — maximizing its existing assets.

One end of the expanse would offer intergenerational housing and opportunities for youth and seniors to interact, just west of the intersection of Kinsman and Union Avenue, an area that would serve as the town square and the central hub of activity.

A retail district and an educational campus anchored by the relatively new Andrew J. Rickoff Elementary School would unfold farther East on Kinsman, followed by a commercial-residential zone serving as a gateway between Mt. Pleasant and neighboring Shaker Heights.

Stone said the CDC began investing in commercial space for renovation and in 2007 had persuaded Key Bank to relocate its local branch to a planned commercial strip. But with the recession, the CDC had trouble enticing retailers to fill the other storefronts, and the deal derailed.

Today, the agency owns about 30,000 square-feet of commercial space, nearly half of which Stone said is move-in ready, including a 5,000-square foot former auto parts store that the CDC renovated into “the perfect location for a nice sit-down restaurant.”

But so far, there are no takers.

What it takes to save a neighborhood

Terry Schwarz, director of the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative, which designed the original Kinsman plan 10 years ago and is on the team revisiting it now, said the success of any urban revitalization effort hinges on several factors — some of which might be out of the neighborhood’s control.

Successful neighborhoods have a critical mass of population to support businesses, strong political leaders willing to champion projects and fight for investments in streets and other infrastructure, she said. Just as important, is a neighborhood’s location and existing assets.

For example, University Circle boasts a variety of museums, Severance Hall and proximity to the hospitals. The West Side neighborhoods of Ohio City and Tremont encircle the popular Westside Market. And historic theaters anchor the Gordon Square district in the Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood.

Mount Pleasant, on the other hand, is an out-of-the-way enclave, its population hit hard by the foreclosure crisis and middle-class flight to the suburbs.

A map prepared in April by the Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development at Case Western Reserve University shows the area surrounding that key stretch of Kinsman, bleeding with red, indicating properties in active foreclosure. Dozens of parcels are marked with stars, noting vacant structures, a handful set for demolition.

With a weakened private market, Schwarz said, struggling neighborhoods would be wise to seek investment from non-profits, such as Neighborhood Progress Inc., which supports community development and serves as a funnel for grant money from philanthropic foundations and area banks.

Schwarz said NPI’s involvement in any revitalization plan also serves as a seal of approval that could encourage private investors to take a chance.

But resources are limited for the philanthropic community, too, and must be strategically disbursed. Often the process of determining which neighborhoods get funding looks a lot like triage, she said.

Last year, NPI announced it would divide $1.8 million from the Mandel, Cleveland and George Gund foundations, Enterprise Community Partners and local banks among nine Cleveland community development corporations that have proven histories of improving their neighborhoods and stirring potential growth.

Mt. Pleasant NOW was not among them.

But NPI President Joel Ratner said in an interview Friday that his organization is committed to helping Mt. Pleasant NOW identify resources and develop a unified vision. And he encourages planners and leaders of the movement to “think big.”

“I applaud the ambition,” Ratner said. “Look at Detroit-Shoreway. If years ago you had said, ‘We can raise $25 million dollars for an arts and entertainment district in that neighborhood,’ everyone would have laughed in your face. The vision will never be too ambitious, as long as it’s a shared vision.”

Mt. Pleasant NOW and its team of planners will invite residents to offer input at a public meeting held at the agency’s Kinsman Road office Sept. 22, during a neighborhood arts festival.

In the meantime, Stone said, his organization will continue working toward stabilizing the neighborhood, one block at a time.

The CDC chose a residential area consisting of six streets north of Kinsman and developed a plan for each parcel, whether it be demolition, community gardens on vacant lots, renovation for sale or rebates to homeowners who give their properties a facelift.

The agency also has secured grant money to develop plans for the Mt. Pleasant Loop — a network of green spaces encircling the neighborhood that could be traveled by foot or bicycle. The agency is in the process of taking inventory of properties it needs to acquire and structures that must be razed.

Stone said he hopes those efforts to breathe life into Mount Pleasant will embolden investors poised to take a chance on the neighborhood.

“All neighborhoods can be saved,” Stone said. “Perhaps not all parts of the neighborhood. But if we can just gather momentum, one business owner might see another embrace Mount Pleasant. And we can thrive on those success stories.”

News Aggregator Archive 4 (7/1/12 – 8/21/12)

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Ohio 2nd Most Toxic State, Study Says (Dayton Daily News)

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Betty Sutton and Jim Renacci Fight Confusion and Each Other in Ohio Congressional Race (Plain Dealer)

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Ohio Election’s Chief Says Voting Should Be Easy (Akron Beacon Journal)

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Three Ohio Universities Establish Statewide Research Collaboration (Crain’s Cleveland Business)

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University Circle Film Still Short of Funding (Plain Dealer)

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Ohio’s Potential $1B Surplus: What to Do With It? (Marietta Times)

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted Calls For Uniform Early Voting Hours (Plain Dealer)

Presidential Campaigns Spar Over Ohio Election Law (Washington Post)

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Ohio 13th-Worst in Obesity, But All is Not Lost (Columbus Dispatch)

Ohio Lawmakers Have Eyes on Prize in Fall Campaigns (Toledo Blade)

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Ohio Campaign to Overhaul Redistricting Process Will Be Hard Fought (Plain Dealer)

Ohio Allows Voter Changes Online (Toledo Blade)

Ohio Economy Improving, But Residents Can’t Feel It (Washington Post)

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Rockefeller and His Oil Empire (Inside Business)

The Truth About Bridge Tolls (Cincinnati Enquirer)

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Will Ohio Count Your Vote? (Cincinnati Enquirer)

Term Limits Do Little to Oust Ohio Lawmakers (Toledo Blade)

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Randy Lerner Close to Selling Controlling Interest in Cleveland Browns to Jimmy Haslam III (Plain Dealer)

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Ohio Board of Regents Considers Policy Against All Tobacco on Campuses (Akron Beacon Journal)

Ohio Carpet-Bombed With Campaign Ads (Politico)

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Area Drought Likely to Rank Among Worst (Toledo Blade)

Fewer American Teens Getting Their Driver’s Licenses, University of Michigan Study Finds (Detroit Fr Press)

Unemployment in Ohio Drops to Lowest Rate Since 2008 (Columbus Dispatch)

Northeast Ohio, Statewide Home Sales Continue to Climb, and Prices Show Some Growth (Plain Dealer)

By the Numbers: Why Ohio Matters (CNN)

Cuyahoga County Office Search, Building Sales Could Reshape Parts of Downtown Cleveland (Plain Dealer)

Redistricting Petition is More Than 130,000 Signatures Short (Columbus Dispatch)

William A. Silverman Was a Leading Publicist; Promoter of Cleveland NOW (Plain Dealer)

Beachwood Set to Sign Cuyahoga County Anti-Poaching Agreement (Sun News)

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Ohio Medicaid Expansion Uncertainty Raises Questions For MetroHealth, Cleveland Clinic, Others (Plain Dealer)

Thanks to Hospitals’ Heavy Presence, Obamacare Here to Stay – Tom Suddes (Columbus Dispatch)

Governors Face Hard Choices Over Medicaid Expansion (New York Times)

BP CEO Say the Energy Giant is Returning to Northeast Ohio, Lured by Shale Gas (Plain Dealer)

Low Safety Ratings Worry Toledo Area Hospitals (Toledo Blade)

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In Ohio, Presidential Election Won’t be Swayed by Wedge Issues (Los Angeles Times)

Ohio Takes Tough Health Care Law Stance (Toledo Blade)

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Politicians Rarely Go Their Own Way Once Elected (Dayton Daily News)

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Waterway to Growth by Mike Roberts

From the May/June 2012 Issue of Inside Business

The link is here

Waterway to Growth

By Michael D. Roberts

The Ohio & Erie Canal was pivotal in the development of Cleveland and its port.

Long before there was any effort to settle Cleveland, visionaries from afar marked its location as a future center of trade and business. The juncture of Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga River invited the kind of development that even today sparks entrepreneurial consideration.

By the turn of the 19th century, when Ohio became a state, the location of the newly founded City of Cleveland indeed offered prospects of enormous commercial potential. Early arrivals, however, were struck by economic hardships in a region thick with forests and narrow Indian trails, inimical to any real trade and commerce.

Before any commerce could flourish, a transportation system to the east and south had to be established. Few roads existed, and those that did were poor and rutted, unfit for extensive travel. It could take up to three months to reach Cleveland from the East Coast. Establishing any regular form of trade was nearly impossible.

Meanwhile, the Industrial Revolution in England was transforming that nation into a modern society. The world was watching as canal after canal snaked across the English landscape, bringing cheap transportation to the most remote areas. The success of that system, begun in the 18th century, had not gone unnoticed by America’s leaders.

As early as 1749, East Coast map makers routinely emphasized the commercial potential of Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga River. Interestingly, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson not only recognized the promise of a port at the river’s mouth, but also the need for a canal that would link the future city with the Ohio River as part of a national system. Such a waterway would open the heart of the wilderness for migration and mercantilism.

But before the future could be contemplated, there would be anguish, toil and travail for those hardy souls who sought their fortune in the untamed Western Reserve, where hardship was as regular as the day was long.

While settlers seeking their fortune moved to the Western Reserve in increasing numbers, the ability to import the goods needed to build the community proved difficult. Even simple necessities such as shoes were hard to come by, much less the heavy building equipment needed to raise a city.

The main product of the area was grain, which was difficult to transport to the east and not very profitable. Consequently, the first real industry to develop in the area was liquor production. Whiskey was easier to ship than grain and was a more valuable commodity. The only items produced in quantity that had a real market value in the east were large quarried stones used for grinding grain and sharpening tools, and these were cumbersome to transport.

Ohio’s first U.S. Senator, Thomas Worthington, recognized that if Ohio were to progress, it needed to be able to move goods and settlers from the east quickly and more efficiently. Worthington authored a congressional resolution that called for a federally funded canal that would reach from the Hudson River to Lake Erie.

The U.S. Congress established the Erie Canal Commission to study the project and picked DeWitt Clinton, a well-known New York politician, to head the effort. His main task was to raise the funds, but his lobbying of President James Madison proved fruitless. Later, when Clinton approached President Thomas Jefferson, well known as tightfisted with federal money, he was told to come back in 100 years because the cost of the canal would bankrupt the nation.

The Ohio Legislature was quick to support Clinton’s proposal, but the War of 1812 intervened and the project was sidetracked.

The idea was revived in 1816 when Clinton, by then the governor of New York, contacted the Ohio Legislature and announced that his state was prepared to build the Erie Canal without the aid of Washington. He asked if Ohio was willing to construct a part of the canal that would link Lake Erie with the Ohio River. The Ohio government readily agreed, but the legislation funding the canal took three years to pass.

Finally, in 1822 the legislature created a canal commission and hired an engineer. Some $6,000 was budgeted for the survey and design of the waterway. A state legislator from Cleveland, Alfred Kelly, was appointed to the commission.

No man in the history of Cleveland business is owed more and known less than Alfred Kelly, an attorney and leader of the first order. He was among the first lawyers here, the first chief executive elected by the village, and the first representative sent to the legislature.

In one of those moments in which destiny imposes itself, Alfred Kelly found himself in a position to lay the foundation for the kind of commerce that would carry Cleveland to greatness.

Once the idea of a canal was adopted, the question of where it would be built became paramount. Two locations, Painesville to the east and a settlement to the west on the Black River, were vying to become the northern entrance to the canal.

In 1820, Painesville had a population of 1,257 while Cleveland proper had only 606. Cincinnati had 9,642 people and to the west Detroit had 1,422. Cleveland was in trouble in more ways than one.

To grasp the significance of the proposed canal, one has to understand the sadly deficient economic conditions that prevailed in the Western Reserve. A depression, abetted by the War of 1812, lingered. Farming was the most common occupation, but there was no market for excess production. Only taverns enjoyed marginal prosperity. There was plenty of whiskey about but little real money, and trading was common. Leather also was a key commodity. But other than the grindstones, there was little to export to the east.

As the depression settled over the area, real estate prices fell and alarm began to spread among land holders as their property values dropped. For example, a series of transactions involving a tavern on the present site of the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel on Public Square saw its price drop from $4,500 to $810 in a short time.

No money flowed east since there was little to spend, and the solid currency that settlers brought west found its way back east through the purchase of necessities needed for survival on the frontier.

Hard money was scarce. Silver dollars were cut into 10 wedges to make dimes. Paper money issued by banks was said to drop in value by a penny a mile as it ventured farther from its origin.

The city by the lake was desperate for the creation of businesses that would provide an economic means for the community to survive. Ironically, the city advertised in eastern newspapers that iron ore was available in the area. But in truth, there was only a small amount in what is now Westlake.

But ships to transport any iron ore had difficulty navigating Cleveland’s harbor which, in places, was only three feet deep. It was not dredged and deepened until later. Even so, the first lighthouse to beckon ships to the city’s shores was constructed in 1818.

Amid these dire days, it was Alfred Kelly’s foresight, tenacity and persuasiveness that convinced the legislature that the entrance to the canal from Lake Erie should be at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River. With this single masterstroke, Kelly assured Cleveland of generations of entrepreneurs and businessmen who would seek their fortunes and generate unimagined wealth in a city that had yet to be defined from the wilderness.

The digging and construction of the Erie Canal had been heralded as one of the great engineering feats of its time. The Ohio Canal, which would stretch some 363 miles and contain 146 lift locks, was no mean effort either.

Ohio had a population of 580,000 at the time. Most of the state’s population lived along a path from Cleveland to Cincinnati. Thanks to Kelly, the canal was cut in this direction. Ground was broken on July 4, 1825, near Newark, Ohio, at a place called Licking Summit, in the center of the state.

The Ohio Canal was designed to be 40 feet wide and four feet deep, but these dimensions were not always followed. The construction, at first, was chaotic. Because paid work was scarce, the state received dozens of bids for the various tasks involved in building the canal. Workers were paid 30 cents and a jigger of whiskey a day. With work so much in demand, contractors underbid jobs, and upon realizing that they could not pay their workers, abandoned the work site.

Soon word spread that many workers were left unpaid by the vagabond contractors, driving the price of labor up to $15 a month. Eventually, the selection of contractors was done more carefully and the process became more regimented, which improved the work and the morale of the workers.

The canal had a fascination and romantic draw for workers, many of whom were farmers who enjoyed the change from the tedium of their fields. Most who labored over the waterway could not have foreseen what their work was about to open.

Construction began on the Cleveland portion of the canal in 1825, and two years later, the section of the waterway linking Cleveland to Akron was completed. The first boat through 41 locks along those 37 miles arrived in Cleveland on July 4, 1827.

In 1832, the canal was completed to Portsmouth, linking it to the Ohio River. The total length of the canal was 308 miles. The financial records are ambiguous, but the total cost for the canal seems to have been somewhere between $4 million and $7 million.

The average speed of a canal boat was only three miles an hour, but it could carry ten tons of cargo, far exceeding the capability of wagons hobbling over poor roads in dense forests.

The realization that Cleveland was no longer an isolated wilderness settlement but a global port would come in a frightening fashion from a far distance.

A French ship sailing from China in 1831 disembarked some of its crew in Bordeaux, where they became ill. Soon a deadly plague spread across the countryside, killing many as it raged through the famous wine country.

Another ship, sailing for Quebec City, boarded passengers anxious to avoid the disease from Bordeaux. But it was too late. Some of the passengers had brought the plague with them, and when the ship reached its destination it discharged its sickly travelers into the city, spreading the disease that killed hundreds.Asiatic cholera was unknown in North America in 1832 and it spread at will.

Shipping traffic was heavy that year and the cholera quickly made its way to Montreal. A contemporary account noted that the same ship that brought the warning of the disease to Buffalo delivered the plague as well.

Officials in Cleveland, upon learning of the deadly infestation, took action at once and quarantined arriving vessels and passengers. A cholera hospital was set up on Whiskey Island, but despite the best efforts the sickness spread to the city.

People began to evacuate the town and return east. In a few weeks 50 were dead as the disease trailed off. Then it recurred and 14 men died in three days. Eventually, the plague subsided, but for the city it was a deadly initiation as a world port.

Still, the economic impact of the canal on Cleveland was staggering. In 1838 alone, some 2,400 ships had stopped in Cleveland’s harbor, handling $20 million worth of goods. Four years later the first shipment of iron ore arrived, setting the stage for the city to become a steel manufacturing hub.

With the canal completed and Cleveland linked to the east coast, the city’s population swelled to 6,000 in 1840 and continued to grow. The canal and the port slowly made Cleveland one of the most important cities in America.

By 1850, Cleveland’s population had grown to 17,034, largely because of the canal and the development of the port. The next year — just before the railroads began to take business from the canal — some 2.5 million bushels of wheat, 600,000 barrels of flour, a million bushels of corn and three million bushels of coal came through Cleveland via the canal. Some 11 million pounds of various merchandise was exported south from the city.

The canal’s most prosperous period was between 1852 and 1855, before the railroads began to eclipse it. The canal began a long decline following the Civil War as the rails began to expand the country westward. It finally ceased commercial operation in 1913 when disastrous flooding destroyed much of it.

At the height of operation, the waterway made Ohio the third most prosperous state in the union and ensured the future of Cleveland.

The canal was the economic engine that prepared the city for the industrial boom created by the Civil War and spurred Cleveland’s ascendency as a manufacturing center. This in turn poised business and entrepreneurial efforts for the golden age of industrialization that would create the wealth that would make Cleveland a center of commerce and culture.

Today some of the remains of the canal have been declared a National Historic Landmark. One of the more prominent sites is in Valley View, where a four-mile section containing three locks still exists and is managed by Cleveland Metroparks.

At the canal, one can pause and reflect that had it not been for the foresight and vigorous dedication of Alfred Kelly, Cleveland would have remained a sleepy township on the banks of Lake Erie instead of the mighty industrial center it became.

Rockefeller and his Oil Empire by Mike Roberts

From the July/August 2012 issue of Inside Business

The link is here

Rockefeller and his Oil Empire

By Michael D. Roberts

A young entrepreneur who became the world’s most famous tycoon started a big-time business brawl in Cleveland that had repercussions he never could have predicted. The city was the eventual loser.

In the annals of Cleveland business, no man was smarter, more controversial and made more money than John D. Rockefeller, whose vision and management style set the stage for a corporate America that became the envy of the world. Along the way, he became the wealthiest man in that world.

An enigmatic fellow – religious, charitable, visionary, but in his own time portrayed as a greedy capitalist whose satanic reach reduced others to paupers – Rockefeller loved Cleveland until it betrayed him. He himself would say no other city ever abused him more than Cleveland.

The son of a flim-flam man who sold cancer cures, Rockefeller and his family moved to a farm in Strongsville from New York State in 1853. He attended high school in Cleveland and, after a stint at a business college, went to work as an assistant bookkeeper in a commission house that sold produce. That was in 1855, and he received $25 a month. He was 16.

Cleveland was burgeoning. The Ohio Canal had opened farm country, and grain and produce were being shipped up to the lake port. The railroad reached here in 1851 and the town was beginning to prosper and grow after a shaky start. By 1860, there were more than 40,000 people here, nearly half of them foreign-born, attracted by the prospect of a bright future.

Above all, Rockefeller was a quick study. Meticulous, fastidious and parsimonious, he had an extraordinary capacity to learn because of his curiosity, thoughtful temperament and a keen power of observation. So it was not surprising that in the spring of 1859, he opened his own produce commission business, Clark & Rockefeller. He was 19.

That same year oil was struck in Titusville, Pennsylvania, creating a boom not unlike the gold rush in California a few years before. Newspapers covered it and suddenly there was a surge in the creation of oil refineries. In Cleveland, there were 30 by the time the Civil War ended.

Even during the war, oil was the topic that consumed the business world. In those pre-automobile days, kerosene was the most useful product refined from crude oil. There was money to be made in kerosene, but it was a risky proposition. The business was full of turmoil and speculation with no discipline on either the production side or in the marketplace. The price of oil fluctuated wildly and there was so much overproduction that fortunes were made and lost over-night. In 1866 alone, the cost of a barrel of oil fluctuated between ten cents and $10.

Plus, there was suffocating competition. For as little as a $1,000 and a few workers, anyone could be in the refinery business. The key to success was in the refining technology and the transportation of the product. It was the transportation of oil where Rockefeller would apply his cunning and genius, and where he would ultimately be demonized.

Rockefeller and his partners in Clark & Rockefeller had cautious conversations about venturing into the oil business. Then one day they were approached by Samuel Andrews, a British-born, self-taught chemist and an expert in “illuminants.” He was looking for investors to open a refinery to produce high-quality kerosene for home and industrial lighting.

While maintaining his produce commission business, Rockefeller invested in a new company, Andrews & Clark, which would build an oil refinery. In 1863 he purchased three acres on the south bank of Kingsbury Run in the Flats. The refinery had a capacity of 30 barrels and employed 37 men with monthly wages that ranged up to $58. This site was to be ground zero of what later would be known as the Standard Oil Company.

Rockefeller was convinced that kerosene would take the place of other household lighting materials like tallow, whale oil and other petroleum products. Andrews’ ability to refine the crude into kerosene that would burn safely in the home was paramount.

Aggressive in his philosophy, Rockefeller wanted to build a company that would dominate and stabilize the oil industry. He was annoyed that some of his partners were satisfied with the status quo. When their differences became obvious, they met and discussed the future of the company. Not one to tarry, Rockefeller published a notice in the next morning’s paper dissolving the partnership. He bought out his astonished partners for $72,000.

Once fully engaged in the oil business, Rockefeller would daily stroll around the Kingsbury Run refinery with Sam Andrews, observing and asking questions, his boots covered with oil. He took an interest in every aspect of the business, from experimenting with new products, to barrel-making, to transportation. When leakage from the barrels became a problem, he bought the barrel company and with it a forest, thus solving the leakage problem and saving money in the process. Later, when the Standard Oil Company went into the retail business, he engaged in marketing.

Not only did Rockefeller develop an avid interest in oil, Cleveland did as well. New refineries were built almost daily by those who sought the fortunes that beckoned. By 1866, most of the kerosene made in Cleveland was being shipped to Europe, the world’s most lucrative market for the stuff.

Newspaper articles attempted to explain the arcane nature of oil refinement. They noted the different products refinement could produce, stressing that the least desirable was something called gasoline, which was dangerous and had little value. It was siphoned off into the Cuyahoga River where it sometimes caught fire.

Rockefeller formed The Standard Oil Company on January 10, 1870. At that time it controlled 10 percent of American oil production and was constantly acquiring more capability, buying out the competition. Rockefeller had a basic offer of either cash or stock in Standard Oil. In most instances Rockefeller would gently advise the seller to accept the stock. Later, many would rue that day they took cash, for those early stockholders became millionaires. Some of those who took the cash and later recognized their folly turned against Rockefeller and became part of the anger that welled up around him when his true method for eliminating the competition was revealed in the press.

The allegations were that Rockefeller put competitors in a position where they were forced to sell because he undercut them in price. Standard Oil was able to do this because it shipped most of its oil on the Atlantic & Great Western Railroad (later the Erie Railroad), which ran east through the Pennsylvania oil fields. Because Standard Oil was a preferred customer, it was able to secretly negotiate a transportation discount.

At one point, the going rail rates were listed as $2.40 a barrel but Standard Oil paid only $1.65, giving it a margin that leveraged a favorable price in the marketplace.

1872 was the year of Rockefeller’s all-out assault on his Cleveland competitors. It was known as the Cleveland Massacre. One can imagine Rockefeller’s soft voice advising his prey to take the stock rather than the cash, the seller knowing he was out of business one way or the other. All this took place at a time when most business was unregulated and that which was went uncontrolled.

The oil wars had an effect on Cleveland society. Many of those who Rockefeller forced out of business were notable figures in town who maintained magnificent houses on fashionable Euclid Avenue. Some were driven into bankruptcy by their exposure in the oil trade and had to sell their mansions. By age 33 Rockefeller had become the world’s largest oil refiner, taking his place among the richest men in America.

Five years after the Cleveland Massacre, the Standard Oil Company had become a global enterprise, which required Rockefeller and his family to move to New York where he would be closer to the international markets. Before he was 40 years old, Rockefeller had created the first international conglomerate – a company of loyal, productive employees who functioned in committees and carefully examined every challenge the company faced. His administrative skills were remarkable. He encouraged his employees to buy Standard Oil stock and he made money available for them to do so.

When he began to withdraw from the business in the 1890s he was making $10 million a year while the average American was making less that ten dollars a week. In 1902, he had an untaxed income of $58 million.

But as his wealth increased – almost unavoidably when the automobile came along and gasoline, for so long discarded, became a valuable commodity – he found himself increasingly criticized for unethical business practices and avarice. Muckraking reporter Ida Tarbell laid bare Rockefeller’s business practices in her incendiary 1904 book, The History of the Standard Oil Company, to this day considered a classic of investigative journalism. It was not until later in life that Rockefeller learned it might have benefited him to be more open with the press. But his silence had made him an easy target, and the damage had been done. The federal government had taken notice.

In 1907, a government investigation found that Standard Oil produced 87 percent of all kerosene in the U.S., handled 87 percent of exported kerosene and controlled 89 percent of the domestic kerosene market. The Justice Department filed an antitrust suit against the company.

When word came of the federal government’s verdict in the case later that year, Rockefeller was playing golf with a Plain Dealer reporter. He looked at the telegram, proclaimed to the reporter that he had a scoop and handed him the message that announced that the company had been fined $29,240,000. Rockefeller quietly resumed play.

Even though Rockefeller made his official residence in New York, he still returned to Cleveland regularly to spend summers at his spacious estate, Forest Hill, in East Cleveland. Yet, history clearly reveals that there was something that did not quite fit between Rockefeller and the city. For all his wealth and charity, Rockefeller was not part of the establishment, whose hierarchy had existed since Cleveland’s founding.

It was not that he was disliked in those circles; he just was not part of them. When he was under attack from the national press for his monopoly practices, Cleveland’s most prominent personages visited him at Forest Hill in a show of support. He was at one time the most hated man in America as well as its wealthiest.

But he was not without humor. Speaking one Sunday at the Euclid Baptist Church during his ordeal with the media, he excused himself saying, “I must stop, I’m monopolizing your time.”

And in the end, the trust busting had no impact on Rockefeller’s wealth. He owned about a quarter of the shares in Standard Oil and all its subsidiaries, which, under government mandate, were broken into individual companies. He maintained his stock position in the new companies, making him the richest man in the world with a net worth of $900 million. The federal budget that year, 1912, was only $716 million.

In retrospect, some believe that Standard Oil’s large economy of scale enhanced the oil industry’s development rather than hindered it. The company created an island of stability that saw the unit cost of oil cut in half because of the efficiencies introduced by Rockefeller’s methods.

Moreover, his impact on Cleveland was great. The wealth that Standard Oil generated in the city was immeasurable and the number of millionaires were too many to count. Other businesses sprung up here in support of the company. He donated millions to church, medical and educational institutions in town and made countless other gifts.

Then, in one of Cleveland’s classic blunders, county tax collectors, looking out for their political fortunes, cost the city an untold fortune.

In fall of 1913 Rockefeller’s wife, Cettie, took ill and the couple remained at Forest Hill past February 1, which was the tax deadline. Learning of his stay, county officials promptly billed Rockefeller $1,500,000. He refused to pay and the case went through legal proceedings until it was finally thrown out by the U.S. District Court. In the meantime, Cettie had died and Rockefeller was unable to bury her in Lakeview Cemetery for fear of being arrested at the funeral.

“Cleveland ought to be ashamed to look herself in the face when she thinks of how she treated us,” he said later. He was angry that while Cleveland institutions begged him for money, the “low politicians” were unfairly abusing him. Rockefeller felt that Cleveland was ungrateful for the wealth that Standard Oil brought to the city.

He left Forest Hill never to return. From time to time he would be solicited by some Cleveland organization, but he never felt the same about the city – although he insisted on being buried here, at Lakeview Cemetery, when he died in 1937. The animosity toward the city remained among his ancestors.

During his lifetime he contributed $3 million to the Euclid Avenue Baptist church, Alta House, Western Reserve University, Case Institute of Technology and the Cleveland Orchestra, as well as the land for Rockefeller Park and Forest Hill Park. These were modest gifts compared to what the city would have received had Rockefeller been more favorably disposed to his hometown.

In the end, he transferred his allegiance and charity to New York. One of his biographers noted: “How many New York hospitals, museums, and churches would be enriched by Cleveland’s blunder!”

A final irony: In 1991, after British Petroleum took over Cleveland-based Standard Oil of Ohio, the company briefly tarried in its Public Square office tower, then moved to Chicago.