RutlandHerald.com - We Are Vermont

Legacies of marble

Colonial land speculators had opened up the hardscrabble valley of Vermont and subsistence farmers rushed in to acquire the last major undeveloped land in the corner of New England. With the development of sheep farming from subsistence to an industry of national significance from the 1810s to the 1850s, the valley and the state achieved a measure of financial success.

But it was marble that transformed the valley and left a unique legacy. Early entrepreneurs such as William F. Barnes showed how marble could return dramatic profits. The middle generation of entrepreneurs expanded the industry.

With the arrival of Redfield Proctor in 1869, the scale grew; learning his management and human resources skills in the Civil War, Redfield Proctor perfected them in Vermont's marble industry. He unified disparate small marble companies, forming cartels and using his positions in government to aid his enterprise.

The marble industry under Redfield Proctor's and the Proctor family management brought about dramatic change to the valley, improvements that still bear their civic imprint today. Redfield Proctor emphasized and promoted a traditional moral code. He expected that in himself and in his workers. He had supported libraries and churches. His son had hired the first industrial nurse and supported a local hospital. The Proctor family founded the first industrial YMCA in the state and possibly in the country. Later, the Proctor family grew concerned that core moral values were more important than the sectarianism that YMCA might promote; the local YMCA became the nondenominational Sutherland Club, open to all male employees of the company. Later the club admitted women and junior and senior high students. It provided a social setting for community meetings.

Many workers, foreign-born and U.S.-born, owed their first real estate investment to Proctor's help, as he allowed them to purchase company-owned land on which to build their homes or already existing company-built houses. He subsidized scholarships for young men to go to college; a fund set up by the Proctor family still continues to provide college scholarships to Proctor High School graduates. The electric generating plant at Proctor, built about 1905 at the instigation of Fletcher Proctor, provided electricity not only for the marble company's quarries and mills, but also for the houses of Proctor residents.

The Vermont Marble Co. radiated an influence throughout the valley. Studies of the marble industry have often focused only on those directly involved in working the white metamorphic rock, overlooking the subsidiary organizations that developed to support it. Vermont Marble, at least initially, owned many of these support organizations. Before marble became mechanized, for example, the company owned farms, operated to supply food for the draft animals — the horses and oxen — that pulled the marble on "stone boats" or wagons from quarry edge to mill and from mill to railroad.

In another example, the company acquired land around Proctor Pond and employed an entirely separate workforce to cut, transport and shape timber to box and ship the marble. The company also used the timber, worked at Vermont Marble sawmills, to build derricks, company structures, and worker housing, fuel, possibly even railroad ties when it constructed its own Clarendon & Pittsford Railroad, making use of its own engineers and crews to lay the track, and its own railroad workers to operate the enterprise. Built to transport marble from the finishing mills to distribution points, the venture also functioned as a "milk run," carrying supplies, food and workers. Many of the engines were named for marble employees, like the F.R. Patch, given the name of the company manager who oversaw construction of the line, still in use today, transporting slurry and other marble products for current owner Omya.

The labor of the citizen-worker added to civic architecture in the valley and across the nation. The legacy of Vermont Marble appears on nearly every vista in central Vermont. In nearly each downtown, marble appears as a component of many buildings' basic structure; as steps, pillars, sills and lintels; and as walkways and curbs. Crushed marble forms the hidden drainage underlayment of parking lots and green space. The company donated land and marble for churches, schools, libraries and community services, like the firehouse and cemeteries in Proctor, and the Italian Aid Society in Center Rutland.

The company had been involved in civic projects. Marble from central Vermont quarries graces personal, state and national civic architecture and monuments, including headstones in the Arlington National Cemetery, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Washington, D.C, the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis, the Washington State Capitol, the U.S. Supreme Court Building, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial and the United Nations building in New York City.

During the 30 years from 1870 to 1900, the marble worker had gained in substantial ways. Workers had company health care, wages had risen; the company store was more a convenience for the workers than, as earlier, an effort to recapture their paychecks.

While many workers were well satisfied with conditions in the company, others were not, and all workers wanted their voice to count. From 1886, when the division of Rutland took place, to the early 20th century, workers challenged and helped to shape the public dialogue.

Their physical labor had contributed literally to carving out the economy of the valley, and labor leaders such as James Hogan, Thomas Browne, and John Carder carved out a vision of a better life for workers of the Marble Valley. The Knights of Labor organized workers to define this vision according to their social and economic agenda.

For example, when workers planned the Labor Day celebration of 1892, groups from all over the state and from northern New York were invited and helped to participate in the event. "Everything points to the largest gathering of workingmen ever seen in Vermont," stated the Rutland Daily Herald of Sept. 1, 1892.

Workers moved increasingly into the public forum, carving out a sense of political place, in an attempt to safeguard their workplace. Politics provided a legal framework of worker compassion and concerns. The citizen-worker continued to rise to civic responsibility of leadership. Jack Carder, for example, was a Welsh marble worker, elected as mayor of Rutland City on the Labor ticket in 1904.

There were still deep divisions in the Republican Party between the Clement and Proctor wing and their allies. The workers sought someone who would more closely represent their voice in the public forum.

Marble Minutes is designed to show the history of the marble industry in Vermont and its importance in shaping the identity of our region. It is part of the Dimensions of Marble program, which through its distinct projects, will bring together the history of the marble quarries and workers, the communities in which they lived, the artistry of sculptors, past and present and the people, who through generations, created a multitude of new projects and brought prosperity to the region. For more information on Dimensions of Marble, visit www.dimensionsonsofmarble.org or e-mail Megan Smith, executive director at info@dimensionsofmarble.org. Mike Austin, Ph.D., is project director of Teaching American History at Castleton State College.

For more information about Teaching American History, check out www.tahvt.org.