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230 HISTORY OF ERIE COUNTY
running to their capacity, while some are overcrowded with orders. There
Avere few complaints of dull business, and these came only from concerns
Avhose products are out of season at this time of the year.
The newer industries and plants located largely through the efforts
of the Business Men's Association, without exception, report growing
business, and the prospects are bright for steadily increasing business, and
already plans are being put into operation to run these concerns to their
full capacity in anticipation of increased demands for their products.
Our older and Avell established plants report business steadily increasing
and the outlook good.
One healthy indication in the local industrial field is the effort to
bring here concerns for whose product there is a demand the year around,
and older concerns, formerly, making products for Avhich the demand
varied with the seasons, are taking on HCAV lines to insure a steady business
all the year, so that men may be assured of regular employment.
This tendency is noticeable in all lines of manufacture and its influence
has already been felt among our Avage Avorkers.
There is room in Sandusky, however, for more factories. Sites,
suitable for either large or small concerns, are to be had for the asking,
provided the concern is of good standing, and our transportation facilities
are not excelled by any city in Ohio. There is room, especially,
for such industries as can utilize the products of existing concerns which
are developing the natural resources of this territory. Any concern that
can manufacture a marketable product using cement, stone, lime, sand
or gypsum Avill find it especially advantageous to locate here. It is believed
in some quarters that a factory that could utilize the immense
fruit crop of this territory would do Avell.
Other natural resources are capable of development and there are
hundreds of good opportunities for enterprising men AVIIO have the
ability, with moderate capital, to grasp them. While labor is IIOAV well
employed, Sandusky has ahvays been remarkably free from labor troubles
and strikes. Employers and employes keep on good terms, one w*ith
another, and there is every reason to believe this Avholesome state of
affairs Avill continue indefinitely.
In compiling the statistics AA'hich form a part of this article, no
account has been taken of the Avine, stone, fish, cement, sand and ice industries,
for the reason that each of these, based upon some natural
resource, forms the subject of separate articles which appear in other
parts of this issue. The figures do, however, cover as accurately as
possible all industries making products of iron and steel, textiles, Avood
and paper, together Avith the glass industry as IIOAV constituted, but not
including the neAV factories which are soon to be in operation.
In these industries, forty-seven in number, there is employed $4,449.-
500 of capital. They give employment to an aA'erage of 2,488 people and
there is annually paid out for labor—not including office and executive
payrolls—$1,261,900.
The number of people employed and the aggregate pay includes both
male and female and those classed as skilled and unskilled. It Avas