20 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



Matches 



Mr. James D. Davis began the manufacture of matches in Denver 

 in 1883. He started with a capital of four or five thousand dollars and 

 produced from twenty-five to thirty gross a day. When the factory 

 first started, matches could be sold to the merchants at $2 . 50 a gross, but 

 he had to sell them very soon at $1 . 50 in order to keep his trade, as the 

 rates were reduced on matches brought in from the East. When the 

 factory began operations, the freight rate on matches was $3 . 60 a hun- 

 dred. Very soon after that it was reduced to $2 . 60 a hundred, and still 

 later it became the practice to classify matches as wooden ware, and thus 

 classified the rate was one dollar a hundred. When the factory was 

 started, the profit was thirty-five to fifty cents a gross on the manufacture 

 of matches at the Denver factory, but after the profit had declined to five 

 or ten cents in consequence of the reductions in freight rates, it was not 

 profitable to keep the factory running and it accordingly closed down 

 in 1885. ; 



One of the prominent merchants of the city of Denver testified before 

 the committee that there was a general break in the rate in the year 1884, 

 and that aside from matches, soap and other commodities were affected. 

 That this rate war was purely a railroad contest is hard to prove. It 

 appears from evidence before the same committee that Kirk and Company 

 were trying to starve out the small manufacturers of soap at this time. 

 It is also true that the Diamond Match Company had a monopoly more 

 or less complete of the match manufacture of the United States. 

 $27,000,000 worth of matches was manufactured in 1883, and of this 

 amount $22,000,000 was made by the Diamond Match Company. It 

 is easy to believe that so large a shipper as the Diamond Match Com- 

 pany might have some power in the matter of dictating the rate to be 

 charged by the railroads. After the winter of 1884, the rates on matches 

 and other commodities were again raised. The match factory had then 

 gone out of business. 2 



Soap 



A soap factory was established in Denver in 1876. In the beginning 

 the factory was somewhat handicapped by the railroads as the freight 



1 Evidence, Special Railroad Committee, pp. 22, 23, 133, 139. ■ Ibid., p. 133. 



