The Ropewalk
Fitler's Cordage
“He couldn't turn around, because then he couldn't see the thing he was making.”
About the Book
A ship wanted its cable in one piece: a hundred and twenty fathoms, seven hundred and twenty feet, no splice. Work that number backwards through two twistings and you get a shed on the Delaware at Bridesburg twenty-five feet wide, twelve feet high, and a quarter of a mile long. Nobody designed it. The rope did.
Down the middle of it, all day, a man walked backwards. Hemp tied round his waist. Eyes on the twist running up the yarn toward his hands. He couldn’t turn around, because then he couldn’t see the thing he was making. He was paid by the hundredweight. His day was reckoned in miles.
The man who owned the walk, Edwin H. Fitler, left the law for his brother-in-law’s cordage house, ran about a thousand hands, and was elected mayor of Philadelphia in 1887. The story the city tells about him is wrong in six places. Every one of them adds distance to the climb.
Along the way: why a heckler, why tow-headed, why the bitter end. Why binder twine mattered more than ships. How a rope trust went into receivership on 4 May 1893 and took the national economy down with it. Rope, of all things.
Every Fitler in the record comes with a pair of dates. The men who walked backwards down that shed come with none. Not one name.
I looked.
Other Books in A Field Guide to Vanished Trades
- Book XXXIII Dobson Mills
- Book XXXVII The Stetson Hat Company