WISCONSIN BLUE BOOK 1989-1990


over $3 million with paper and pulp production accounting for one-third.
Flour milled from locally-grown wheat, formerly the leading industry, now
placed second, accounting for somewhat less than one-third. Metal industries
were well represented. Appleton industry included businesses which
processed a variety of farm products other than wheat and those which made
many of the goods consumed by the farming community. Also businesses
manufacturing machinery and other needs of Appleton's milling industries
had emerged. These are patterns still apparent in Appleton industry in the
1980s.
   Historian Reuben Gold Thwaites' observations about Appleton in 1887
are worth noting:
      It is a beautiful city - the gem of the Lower Fox. The banks are nearly
one
      hundred feet high above the river level. They are deeply cut with ravines.
Hillside
      torrents, quickly formed by heavy rains, as quickly empty into the
stream, drain-
      ing the plateau of its superfluous surface water, and in the operation
carving these
      great gulches through the soft clay. And so there are many steep inclines
in the
      Appleton highways, and the ravines are frequently bridged by dizzy
trestle-works;
      but the greater part of the city is on a high, level plain, the wealthy
dwellers court-
      ing the summits of the riverbanks, where the valley view is panoramic.
The little
      Methodist college, with its high-sounding title of Lawrence University,
is an excel-
      lent institution, and said to be growing; it gives a certain scholastic
tinge to Apple-
      ton society, which might otherwise be given up to the worship of Mammon,
for
      there is much wealth among the manufacturers who rule the city, and
prosperity
      attends their reign.35
   Before landing his canoe at Appleton at dusk on June 10, Thwaites had
slipped past "the piercing rays from the windows of the electric works".
While he did not comment about the importance of these piercing rays, they
deserve more than passing note, for Appleton pioneered in hydroelectric
power generation. Appleton's station was the first in the world. The plant
originated in the summer of 1882 when Henry J. Rogers, Appleton financier
and industrialist, and H.E. Jacobs, a sales agent for the Edison Electric
Light
Company, went black bass fishing and Rogers came home sold on the idea of
installing an Edison plant. He bought the Edison rights for the Fox River
Valley, as Forrest McDonald, historian of the electric utility industry in
Wis-
consin, has noted in his 1957 work, Let There Be Light: The Electric Utility
Industry in Wisconsin 1881-1955. Less than 3 months after the fishing trip,
Rogers had an Edison generator installed in one of his pulp mills, and he
had
his new home wired for electricity. The lights went on in late September,
and
3 months thereafter, the world's first hydroelectric central station went
into
operation at Appleton, marking as well the beginning of more than a century
of electrical generation from Fox River waterpower. Electric power stimu-
lated the growth of Appleton industry, and enabled the city to claim another
electrical first when in 1886 "the first commercially successful"
electric street
railway went into operation. Appleton entrepreneurs provided the capital
and leadership for both of these developments and weathered the ups and
downs of the early period. In large measure, paper mill earnings financed
the
early ventures into electrical power.
  The Institute of Paper Chemistry, founded at Appleton in 1929, set the
city
apart as a community with claims to unique resources. The Institute is a
direct outgrowth of the paper industry, founded by its leaders as a graduate


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