Why the Midwest?

[nateaff]

It seems a large percentage of the historical (and contemporary) brass instrument manufacturers are in the Midwest, particularly the upper midwest. Holton, Conn, Beuscher, York, Martin, Getzen, eventually Bach, etc - all in the great lakes area.

And even today, we find the big brands and boutiques clustered in the same area. Getzen/Edwards, M&W, Allied Supply in Wisconsin, the Elkhart based Conn- Selmer brands, Shilke/Greenhoe in Chicago and even newcomers like O'Malley in Chicago too.

What is it about the Midwest that made it then and now the mecca of trombone building? Easy shipment of raw material? Tradition? I've always been curious about this, as the handful of Los Angeles brands are dead and in the US there doesn't seem to be anyone outside of Shires building horns outside the Midwest.

[JohntheTheologian]

Most of the early instrument craftsmen seemed to have been German immigrants and the Midwest had the strongest concentration of German settlers in the late 19th century.

I think this played a big role in why the Midwest became the center of brass manufacturers.

There were some who were started by Germans--Blessings, Martin, Bach-- or who hired the German craftsmen.

King and Reynolds were also Midwestern instrument manufacturers, based out of the Cleveland area in Ohio.

[AtomicClock]

I'm just guessing here. But Chicago was (is?) the central hub for rail shipments in the US. So if you want to sell your wares nationwide, it's a good place to be.

[ghmerrill]

I'm just guessing here. But Chicago was (is?) the central hub for rail shipments in the US. So if you want to sell your wares nationwide, it's a good place to be.

Yes. Chicago has been an air, rail, truck, and water shipping hub for a very very long time. Similarly Detroit. Also, almost equi-distant from each coast. And a long history of manufacturing, with a labor pool.

[LeTromboniste]

Well the area was part of the, "Factory Belt", which was called that for a reason. Instrument manufacturing settled there when the region was a manufacturing powerhouse in general, across many industries. So in a way, the question is not so much wwhy is there so much instrument manufacturing there, and more why did it stay so strong there despite the steep decline in manufacturing overall in the region since the 60's

[MStarke]

Interesting topic.

Similarly, still a large part of musical instrument making in Germany is still traditionally centered around a relatively small.

I guess one factor to keep it in such areas is requiring skilled workers that are also being trained there. The other might be that customers in this field have a high sense for tradition and preferring an instrument made in this or that location.

[CalgaryTbone]

If you look at old horns online, you do often see some examples of horns made in other parts of N. America. I've seen stuff on eBay, etc. from Philadelphia and Boston and even a couple from Toronto. Bach was NY based before being bought out by Selmer. I think the midwest won out because of sheer numbers of companies based there.

I would agree that once there were a few successful companies that were based in the midwest, it meant that there were some skilled workers who might be recruited to move to another company to move up in the business.

I went to Elkhorn, WI a few years back ro visit the Edwards/Getzen factory for some work on my horns. It was cool to see some streets named for the Holton and Getzen families. It is a nice small town, with some great older homes that were well maintained. It's a couple of hours to Chicago from there.

Jim Scott

[slidesix]

Well the area was part of the, "Factory Belt", which was called that for a reason. Instrument manufacturing settled there when the region was a manufacturing powerhouse in general, across many industries.

Indeed. Intuitively look at a map. On one end you have iron mines in Minnesota--I give you the Mesabi Range.



On the other end you have coal mines in West Virgina--I give you the Dunkard Group.



Then consider this:



Zoom out. Consider Minnesota and West Virginia. Draw a line between the two and add some railroads or other transportation plus immigration and workers. What do you have? 1. You have iron. 2. You have fuel (coal). Those are the basic ingredients for steel. Put them close enough. What is in between?

You get roughly Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Youngstown, plus areas Indiana and Wisconsin.

In a close area you can have the building blocks of manufacturing powerhouse.

There is a lot lot of handwaving there plus this ignores some of what LeTromboniste brings up about the present. But I think it explains the historical reasons why this area.

[slidesix]

I do agree that brass (trombones) is not steel. But I think this could explain why manufacturing and why manufacturing craftsmen were in this area (Midwest).

Earlier in the US country's history I think you did tend to find manufacturing along the Connecticut river, particularly from Springfield, Mass to New York. As it would have then been easier connect raw materials with workers to transportation waterways.

Notice how at some point automotive manufacturing in the US moved from Springfield to Detroit. I think you tend to find an area that has the right mix of all the needed ingredients for that particular time.

If anything I think things are or have started to move away from midwest (or cleveland) to places that are more non-union which provide labor needed for today's more global needs.

My 2 cents.

[JohnL]

Once one company gets established in a region, you tend to see former employees starting their own competing companies in the same area. As far as I know, the watershed company in Elkhart was Conn.

A lot of the early brass instrument manufacturers (companies like Graves, Distin, Wright, Fiske, Dodworth, etc..) were located Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York; basically the industrial centers of the day. The companies in the midwest all seem to date from the 1870's or later.

[JTeagarden]

Industries tend to cluster in places where raw materials, components, supply of skilled labor, or transportation of goods is cheap.

US Furniture traditionally clusters around ready access to hardwoods (Michigan, North Carolina): It's expensive to ship logs long distances.

Elkhart, Indiana was a center for wind instruments because Conn was started there and became pre-dominant, resulting in a trained workforce that then attracted other instrument makers to Elkhart, and so on.

My ancestors grew corn in Western PA, and because shipping over land was prohibitively expensive, they turned it into whiskey, white oak for barrels was plentiful, so they floated their "crop" in barrels to New Orleans down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers... the ability to convert a low-value crop into a high-value product that justified such a long trip led to the whiskey business then spreading down river into Kentucky, etc.

We are nothing if not rational creatures.

[timothy42b]

Another factor that may have had an impact is the migration pattern in the 19th century.

Northern European immigrants, with all their musical heritage, had tended to settle in the US north east with a somewhat similar (if a bit milder) climate, agriculture, landscape, etc.

Then Tambora erupted in April of 1815. And, surprise, there was no summer in 1816, and no crops to sell. Families lost their land, pulled up stakes, and headed to the midwest. Northern Wisconsin where I grew up had a mix of predominantly Scandinavian and German family names due largely to this event.

At least, that was the story when I was in school. Possibly there's a bit of urban legend accompanying, I dunno.

[JohntheTheologian]

We also have to factor in the musical tastes of the immigrants of various areas.

The south attracted few immigrants proportionately. The eastern cities attracted Irish and later eastern European immigrants, although northern Europeans also went to the cites, such as some of my Dutch ancestors who settled in Chicago.

The south never became a center of brass instrument manufacturing because the instruments of the south were primarily strings.

Northern immigration at its height was in the last half of the 19th century and included significant numbers of immigrants from areas with brass instruments in their backgrounds-- think of Moravian trombone choirs. They also arrived during the period when Romantic instrumentation had greatly augmented the brass sections of orchestras.

Certainly Scandinavian immigrants had their '"string bands," but the Civil War had highlighted brass bands, brass bands were developing in Britain and German and other northern European immigrants with backgrounds in brass instrument manufacturing were arriving in large numbers in the late 19th century in the Midwest and it was the kind of skilled labor that appealed to them. Northern Europeans were more sort after for those skilled labor jobs. I've done some reading about the furniture industry in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the furniture capital of the US in the late 19th century and there was a definite "pecking order" in the jobs in that industry, with Dutch and Swedish immigrant getting the "better jobs"-- Grand Rapids was the most "Dutch' city in the US with about 40% of its residents being of Dutch extraction around 1900. Polish immigrants did more labor intensive and less skilled work in the furniture factories. I have a strong suspicion that the same thing applied to brass manufacturing with the skilled German immigrants.