What must Battle Creek have really been like in the late 19th century?
We have the images and we have the words but that's all we really have, and those barely tell a story at all. None of us (well, those of us under 115 years old, at least) can grasp the sounds and smells and looks of Battle Creek, or any other industrial city of the late 1800s.
We can see those ghostly, shadowy photos of a city, and a country, looking for its place on the world stage.
Go online to the Willard Library archives and look at those photos of the people who lived here at the time. They all looked older than they really were. Even the children looked hard and weather-beaten.
Life was no bargain in the late 1800s but, amazingly enough, it was a lot better than it had been even 20 years earlier. And they could only imagine how much better it would be 20 years after that.
What a time it must have been.
It was the age of the electric light bulb and the telephone. Photography was getting better every day and the concepts for automobiles and flying machines and moving pictures were just around the corner.
If we could imagine it, we could do it and most Americans thought they could come along for the ride.
This was an America in its late adolescence, a confident young adult scarred by war and confusion but confident in its ability to handle everything and anything that came along.
It was a country that had no idea what would be waiting just down the road — a world war and a depression; the battle for something resembling equal right for women and African-Americans; immigrants pouring in every day and an industrial revolution that was shaking the country to its foundations.
And in the latter stages of the 19th century, Battle Creek was in the middle of everything that was making America the pre-eminent power in the world, even if it didn't know it at the time.
Before I began even the most cursory research about the industry of Battle Creek in the late 1800s for the Enquirer's Progress edition that came out Sunday, I was like most other folks who believed cereal was the first, last and only driving force of the city.
But local historian Mary Butler set me straight.
Battle Creek before Postum and corn flakes and Grape-Nuts was a throbbing, vibrant, dirty, thrilling place.
It was home to three major industries — steam pumps, threshing machines and printing presses. And now try imagining that America expanding without any of those.
But it was also home to other industry that played sometimes vital, often eclectic roles, in the city's, and the country's, growth.
It was home to box manufacturers and toy manufacturers and cookie makers and stove makers. Cigar shops dotted downtown and tents and awnings were made here as were school desks and supplies and violins and state-of-the-art photo albums, some which were purchased by wealthy industrialist Cornelius Vanderbilt, according to Butler.
She also also spoke of the belching smoke stacks that dominated the skyline back then. Today that's an image of environmental recklessness; back then, it was a sign of vitality and prosperity.
And those types of cities could be found anywhere in a fractious, growing America.
Today's Battle Creek has changed dramatically along with the rest of the country. That's no secret.
Sure, there are remnants of industries long gone and, in some cases, long forgotten. In other cases, all that remains of once grand factories is an empty lot known only to those who study such things.
But Battle Creek, in its day, was America in microcosm. It awaited a future it could not predict, bolstered by noise and smell and tumult that must have been something to behold.
Good or bad, that city is gone forever, living only in old photos and in the imagination of those who care to dream of a time when anything really was possible.
Cr : Battle Creek Enquirer
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