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HALCYON SKINNER.
Yonkers resembles other cities in that some of its citizens, by reason of
political influence,
or wealth, or fluency of speech, have attained
prominence
for a brief time, and then
have been forgotten. Among those whose
distinction
is deserved, and not short-lived, is Halcyon Skinner. He came to
Yonkers in
1865, an unassuming stranger, neither wealthy
nor college-bred,
in dress plain, in manners quiet, in disposition retiring, a man of more
thought than words;
and those who met the unpretentious stranger did not
know that his labors
here would prove such an important factor
as they have
become in promoting the
growth and prosperity of the town,
and making it
famous at home and
abroad as a center of one of the largest
carpet industries
in the
world; nor did they know that his great ability
as an inventor would
materially increase the wealth of the country. Mr. Alexander Smith, his
friend and employer, appreciated his talent, and on more
than one occasion,
notably when
Messrs. A. T. Stewart & Company endeavored to secure his
services, he
made such arrangements with him that Mr. Skinner
remained_
with him.
The annals of
Yonkers would be incomplete without
a record of Mr.
Skinner's contributions of original thought to its development. His father,
Joseph Skinner, of New
England, was an inventor and natural mechanic,
whose tastes turned him away from farming, to which he had been bred, and
influenced him
to engage in mechanical pursuits.
Halcyon Skinner's early
education was obtained in
a log-cabin district school in Ohio,
and subsequently,
when the
family moved to Massachusetts, he attended school at
Stockbridge during several winters, working in summer for the neighboring
farmers, or for his father in the
shop. His father's success in devising and
constructing
machines for rapidly and efflciently
forming the various parts of
violins,
led him to the construction of
a large machine for cutting veneers,
and one of his father's large machines for
veneer-cutting was in use for some
years
in Mr. Copcutt's mill, at West Farms, New York. In
1838 the family
moved to West Farms, where the
father became foreman for Mr. Copcutt,
and the son worked with him in the
mill. When the mill was destroyed by
fire, in 1845, Halcyon Skinner found
work as a carpenter. He was then
twenty-one years
old. In 1849, when Mr. Skinner was about twenty-five
years of
age, Alexander Smith, who was owner of a small
carpet factory at
West Farms,
and who knew something about his mechanical skill, had a
conversation with him about a new method of dyeing
yarns, in which he and
an assistant were interested. The carpet
factory was not then in operation,
but Mr. Smith
and Mr. John G. McNair were engaged in
devising and
constructing some apparatus for parti-coloring
yarns for ingrain carpets. Mr.
Smith desired
Mr. Skinner to aid them. The object was to so
dye different
parts of
a skein of yarn that when woven into the
fabric each color would
appear in its
proper place in the design. If this could
be accomplished the
striped appearance, which was a great objection in
ingrain carpets, would be
avoided. The process
required reels of a particular form and a special
reeling
machine, also an apparatus for immersing parts of the skein in the dye
liquor accurately to a measured depth. Mr. Skinner overcame the difficulty
with which
the experimenters had met, and devised a reeling machine and
dipping apparatus which proved to be efficient. A factory
was built for manufacturing
the new style of
carpet on a large scale, and Mr. Skinner became
the general mechanic of the factory. When his connection
with the Alexander
Smith &
Sons Carpet Company terminated, in
November, 1889, he
had rendered Mr. Smith and his business successors a
service of forty years.
Only those
familiar with the history of carpet manufacture in the United
States and
abroad can begin to realize what Mr. Skinner accomplished.
The carpet
industry as he left it widely differed from what it was when he
became connected with it.
In
1855, when Mr. Smith spoke to him about the
possibility of constructing
a loom
for weaving Axminster carpet, that fabric was woven by a slow
and costly
process of hand weaving. It seems that no
attempt had ever been
made to
weave it in any other way. Mr. Skinner at that time knew little or
nothing about power looms of any
kind, and had not even seen a power loom
in operation
for many years. His tools were few, as were
the conveniences
with which
he had to work. The invention of the Axminster
loom was the
beginning of
a new period in the art of carpet-weaving, because it first made
possible the production
of this high-grade fabric by automatic machinery.
One operative
with the new loom could easily produce as many yards per day
as
seven or eight could produce by
the best previously known method. The
weaving of tapestry ingrain by power was also considered to be impossible,
until Mr. Skinner devised
machinery by which the work was efficiently done.
When looms for weaving
tapestry Brussels were brought to Yonkers
from
England and proved defective, Mr.
Skinner designed a loom so superior that
eventually the number of
yards of carpet produced by it was double the
number
manufactured by the imported loom in the same time. The English
looms were sold
for half what they cost to make room
for the improved ones.
"When the English yarn-printing machines
accompanying the looms were
found unsatisfactory, Mr. Skinner designed a new machine
as much superior
to the old one as
the new loom was to the imported loom. The printing
machines from
England were broken up.
In 1874
he received from A. T. Stewart & Company an offer of a much
larger salary than he was receiving
from the Smith Company, to enter their
service and take supervision of the
mechanical department of the various factories
which they controlled.
After careful consideration he decided
to remain
in Yonkers, and made an engagement with Mr. Smith for a term of
years.
Immediately after the engagement Mr. Smith broached to him the subject
of
getting up a power loom for weaving moquette carpets. Mr.
Skinner gave
his attention
to the matter and made some experiments, but as much of his
time was taken
up with planning buildings and other matters, it was
several
years before much progress
was made. In 1877 a patent was obtained
and half
a dozen looms were built. Two of these were sent
to England and
France, where several concerns were licensed to build and operate looms
under the patents which had been obtained in those
countries, and he spent
a number of months
there attending to the construction and
starting of them.
In 1879 forty looms
were built and put in operation by the Smith
Company.
From that time the manufacture of moquette carpets increased
as experience
and skill
were acquired in operating the looms,
and various improvements in
details were made, until one operator attending
two looms can weave from
twenty-five to thirty times as much in a given time as could be woven by one
working by the best methods known previous to the
invention of the moquette
power-loom. These and other very important
inventions did not engross all
Mr.
Skinner's attention. Much of his
time was occupied in oversight of the
general mechanical work of the
large factory, and in planning and superintending
the construction of the new buildings
which the expanding business
required. Having reserved the right to use
in looms for weaving body-Brussels
carpets the
improvements which he had made in tapestry
looms, Mr. Skinner,
in 1881, designed
for the Bigelow Carpet Company, of
Clinton, Massachusetts,
a loom
for weaving that class of goods. He prepared working drawings, and
a loom was built
at the works of the company, which proved so successful
that all
the looms put in operation after that time
were constructed after his
plans in preference
to those previously designed by
Mr. E. B. Bigelow, the
original inventor of the power looms for weaving
body-Brussels carpets. Mr.
Skinner's
rights in the subjoined list of patents were
assigned to Mr. Alexander
Smith, or to the
Alexander Smith & Sons Carpet Company:
I. Axminster
loom; 2, Improvements on Axminster loom; 3, Improvements
on ingrain loom;
4, Improved tapestry loom; 5, moquette loom; 6,
Improvements on moquette loom; 7, moquette fabric
(4 shot); 8, moquette
fabric (3
shot and 2 shot); 9, improved chenille carpet loom; 10, chenille (or
" fur
") loom.
When Mr. Skinner began working for Mr. Alexander Smith, in 1849,
the establishment
consisted of one small wooden building, containing nineteen
hand-looms
for weaving ingrain carpet. The looms were not then in
operation, but when in full work would turn
out about one hundred and seventy-
five
yards per day, making about a wagon load to
be sent to New York
each week. The
looms were all in use in the spring of 1850, when the new
method
of dyeing had proved a success. When Mr. Skinner left, in 1889,
after a
service of forty years, there was a series
of large brick buildings, with
floor room to
the extent of about three acres, all of which
had been planned
by Mr. Skinner and erected under his supervision. These buildings contained
at that date nearly eight hundred power-looms, the
more important and valuable
of which Mr.
Skinner had invented and designed, and the remainder
of which
he had so greatly improved that the production of each one of them
equaled
that of two of those used previous to his improvements. About
thirty-five
hundred operatives were employed in the various departments, and
the actual production of all kinds reached 9,217,000
yards per year. In
1892, three years
later, the production had increased
to 40,000 yards per
day, of which 15,000
yards were moquette, amounting to 4,500,000
yards
per year of that kind of carpet. In
1895 the number of looms of all kinds
had reached
930.
To show more fully the importance and value
of the invention of the
moquette loom, it may be said that the production above mentioned (15,000
yards per day) would
yield to the owners of the patents a royalty of
twenty
cents per yard, amounting to
nine hundred thousand dollars for the
year,
besides a still larger
amount in profits to the manufacturer. In addition to
this, the Hartford Carpet Company,
in this country, and several companies
in England
and France, were paying large amounts in royalties. The most
important result of the inventions of the moquette loom and auxiliary
machinery for preparing the materials is
the reduction in the price of this
very desirable
style of carpet from three or three and
a half dollars per yard
to considerably less than one dollar, thus bringing it within the reach of all
who care to have a carpet of any
kind. This difference in price, taking
the
quality produced by the Smith Company alone (say 15,000 yards per day),
represents a saving to the consumer of
nearly twelve million dollars a year.
The
quantity produced by other companies would greatly increase this amount.
Notwithstanding the small cost of manufacturing
this fabric, which was never
produced in this country before the invention of
the loom, the daily wages of
the
operatives are more than double those of the
workers under former
methods. These
statements help one to realize what Mr. Skinner has done
for Yonkers and for the country. Since
leaving the Smith Carpet Company^
he has been engaged
a considerable part of his time in designing and
constructing a new moquette loom,
which has shown a capacity for greatly increased production and
greater economy of material.
Having no
interest in the royalties or profits derived from his
former patents, he is at the present
time, at the
age of seventy-two years, with
the co-operation of a few
friends, making
preparations for manufacturing carpets in
the mill near Nepperhan avenue,
and at the
east end of the Glen.
Mr. Halcyon Skinner's two sons are both inventors.
In 1879 Charles
E. Skinner,
who had worked with his father in constructing
and putting in
operation the Axminster loom, and afterward on the moquette loom,
studied
out some devices by which he thought moquette goods could be woven
in a
way different from that in which the original
loom operated. Not being a
practical weaver,
he associated with himself Mr. Eugene Tymeson, who had
started many
of the moquette looms at the Smith works, and
was an expert
at that work. An
experimental loom was built which gave good results, and
a patent
was obtained. Arrangements were made by
which the patent, with
several others
afterward obtained, were transferred to the Smith Moquette
Loom Company, for the consideration of
one hundred thousand dollars in
stock.
Unfortunately for him the company did not prove a success and the
stock
proved to be of no value, the property being
transferred to the Alexander
Smith & Sons
Carpet Company. His improvements were not put in
operation as a whole, but some of them were
applied to the original moquette
loom,
with the result of a considerable increase in
production.
About 1881 Mr. Halcyon Skinner's second son, Albert L. Skinner, who
had been working for several years
in the machine shop connected with
the
Smith Works, a considerable part of
the time on looms, thought he could
do
something in the way of inventing a moquette loom. His ideas were
quite novel
and gave promise of good results if properly carried out. He
made drawings of some devices embodying his ideas, and obtained a patent
for
the same. He made arrangements with the Bigelow
Carpet Company,
of Clinton, Massachusetts, and
built a loom, which was put in operation at
their works. It proved very successful, and a large number of the looms
were built
and have been profitably operated by the
company ever since.
