The Smelter Fires Up Again, and a Town Exhales
A second furnace roars to life at Northport's smelter on Thanksgiving week, the payroll swells — and a manager's quiet trip to the Orient mines hints that more stacks may follow.
Early Wednesday morning another blast furnace was blown in at the Northport Smelting and Refining Co.'s plant here, and the force of workmen increased accordingly. The news of the starting of this furnace came as a surprise to many of our citizens, who were unaware of the move to add to the capacity of the plant at this time, and the surprise was agreeable, coming as it did on the eve of Thanksgiving. Although it has not been authoritatively given out from headquarters yet, it is believed that the management has succeeded in arranging for the output of mines other than the Le Roi, and if this is correct more furnaces may be expected to be placed on the active list within a short time. Only recently Manager Kiddie returned from a brief business trip to Orient, where, it is presumed, arrangements were entered into with the First Thought and other producing mines of that district for the treatment of its ores. — Northport Republican.
“The news of the starting of this furnace came as a surprise to many of our citizens, who were unaware of the move to add to the capacity of the plant at this time, and the surprise was agreeable, coming as it did on the eve of Thanksgiving.”
A single furnace restart was front-page news because one plant's decision could make or break a whole town's winter — the extra shifts meant groceries, rent and school shoes for dozens of families. Northport's smelter is gone now, but the pattern it set has not: a community holding its breath for an announcement made in a boardroom somewhere else.
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