Gloversville

Gloversville, a city of Fulton county, New York, U.S.A., at the foot-hills of the Adirondacks, about 55 m. N.W. of Albany. Pop. (1890) 13,864; (1900) 18,349, of whom 2542 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 20,642. It is served by the Fonda, Johnstown & Gloversville railway (connecting at Fonda, about 9 m. distant, with the New York Central), and by electric lines connecting with Johnstown, Amsterdam and Schenectady. The city has a public library (26,000 volumes in 1908), the Nathan Littauer memorial hospital, a state armoury and a fine government building. Gloversville is the principal glove-manufacturing centre in the United States. In 1900 Fulton county produced more than 57%, and Gloversville 38.8%, of all the leather gloves and mittens made in the United States; in 1905 Gloversville produced 29.9% of the leather gloves and mittens made in the United States, its products being valued at $5,302,196. Gloversville has more than a score of tanneries and leather-finishing factories, and manufactures fur goods. In 1905 the city’s total factory product was valued at $9,340,763. The extraordinary localization of the glove-making industry in Gloversville, Johnstown and other parts of Fulton county, is an incident of much interest in the economic history of the United States. The industry seems to have had its origin among a colony of Perthshire families, including many glove-makers, who were settled in this region by Sir William Johnson about 1760. For many years the entire product seems to have been disposed of in the neighbourhood, but about 1809 the goods began to find more distant markets, and by 1825 the industry was firmly established on a prosperous basis, the trade being handed down from father to son. An interesting phase of the development is that, in addition to the factory work, a large amount of the industry is in the hands of “home workers” both in the town and country districts. Gloversville, settled originally about 1770, was known for some time as Stump City, its present name being adopted in 1832. It was incorporated as a village in 1851 and was chartered as a city in 1890.

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