Page:History of the Municipalities of Hudson County (1924), Vol. 1.djvu/460

360 years ago. In lower Kearny the English and Scotch are in a majority and most of them are employed in the cotton and linen thread mills or in the great plant of the Nairn Linoleum Works. The Harrison descendants of the Irish immigration of sixty years ago have given character and expression to that municipality's growth and development. In recent years, the lower wards of Harrison have been greatly increased in population by an influx of people from the Slavish countries of Europe. The World War made vast changes in all three of the West Hudson towns. In Harrison the great plants of the Westinghouse Pump Works, the Crucible Steel Company, the Driver-Harris Wire Works, the Hyatt Roller Bearing Mills of the General Motors Corporation, worked day and night almost from the start of the war. Plant additions sprang into being almost over night, and when this country entered the war, the production of these plants nearly doubled the records made when they were turning out these products for the allies. In Kearny, also, all its great industries grew amazingly, and plants covering hundreds of acres were erected on the vacant meadow lands. On the banks of the Passaic river, near Point-no-Point, the point of land formed by the confluence of the Passaic and Hackensack rivers, where they empty into Newark bay, the first shipyard to build wooden ships to replace the vessel tonnage that was being sunk by the German U-boats, was hastily erected. On the Hackensack river, directly east of this yard, the Federal shipyard, a quickly organized subsidiary of the U. S. Steel Corporation, constructed in the most permanent manner, a model shipping plant with a capacity of one 8,000-ton vessel a week. From this great shipyard, one of the best equipped on the Atlantic Coast, although not so large as many of the other war-time shipbuilding plants, some of the finest steamships made during the war were constructed. All of the Kearny built steamships have been kept in constant commission since the war, and the Federal shipyard plant is one of the few in the country which continues to-day to send new bottoms into the water. North of this shipyard Henry Ford's eastern assemblying and distribution plant, with a capacity for 500 cars a day, was hastily erected, but the armistice being signed while construction was still going on, it was not until 1920 that the Ford plant started in regular operation. Early in 1922 the plant reached capacity production. Still further north a large area bordering the Passaic river and running eastward for about ons mile, was taken over by the Government and converted into a naval supply station and storage base, and from this place thousands of steam locomotives, hundreds of shiploads of rails, motor trucks, automobiles, freight cars, and all other kinds of war materials were loaded aboard camouflaged ships and taken across. After the armistice, this base was sold gradually to private interests, and along the concrete roadways built by the Government, the motor vehicles of the new owners are now constantly carrying the varied products there manufactured. The material advantage of these war-time activities have been permanent to Kearny for the reason that the unusual facilities which induced the selection of this territory in the war emergency, has been shown by experience to permit of greater economy in manufacture by the saving of shipping and handling costs. With the exception of the yard where the first wooden ships were built, and the naval supply base, all the war-time erected plants