"The Sociability of Rosendale Cement Was It's Downfall"

Rosendale, New York 

   April 29,   1938

Dear Carl,

Kids along the  D and H Canal,   Delaware and Hudson Canal, used to dance around the barges they floated through the Canal and sing:

"Canaler, canaler,  you'll never  get rich.
Buying at the store and boating in the Delaware Ditch"

The kids knew that canal boat captains  were riffraff and had little respect for them.  They were  ignorant and badly paid and  they were always in debt to the company because the D and H owned the stores along the banks of the canal and they charged most of  their supplies  there and  usually  spent more than they earned

"Canaler,   canaler,  you'll never get rich,
you   son of a bitch,  boating in the   Delaware Ditch."

Mrs. Read told me the first version and Jim Fleming told me the  second  version without my mentioning the Read version to him.

I  spent the afternoon and evening  with Fleming.  I must adroit that I started talking to  Fleming with a hopeless heart. But the story of Rosendale that  has reeled his imagination for so many years despite the fact that he was close to it all  and   worked in the  cement kilns is vigorous  and picturesque.  Somehow,   it sums up  the  commercial aspect of the Hudson,   the  West Bank story of  city  building  Industries, carpets,  bricks,   cement,  lime,  blue stone,  granite(?), and other things.  Coal  was shipped through from Honesdale,   Penn. to the Hudson. Blue stone also.  But the  cement business  started in 1827 just abut parallels  the  story  of the canal and the story of the  great commercial activity  of the   West bank of the  Hudson.
Fleming gave me so much stuff and it dovetails with so much I have yet to write which I got the last couple of days that I think I better get it  off even  if  I don't try to assimilate  it all.
An Irishman commenting to Fleming on the good old Rosendale cement days said: "I'll tell you, it  was the sociability of Rosendale cement that was its downfall."  That  is a significant remark because it is the truth. Rosendale cement took several hours to  set. As American grew the demand for speedy building grew. Folks wanted to built bridges and buildings overnight (Says Jake Snyder,  present day Rosendale cement manufacturer). Portland came in and knocked the spots out of Rosendale cement.  There  were  other factors, which we'll go  into. Masons  could talk  a bit while waiting for the cement to get hard enough to go on with another layer of brick or stone.
There are a few versions of how natural cement was discovered. An engineer experimented during the building of the Erie Canal.  Some cement  rock was uncovered and he found out it was cement.  The  same engineer noted the  same rock  when the Delaware was being dug.  That was in 1826. Local legend says that today you  can walk underground from Rosendale to Kingston through the  cement pits.  Probably not true but  it gives a rough idea of the extent of the pits.  I walked in  several today.  They  followed cement veins, which sloped down, into the ground. The veins were about  thirty feet wife and the roofs were held up by rock pillars. They carved their way around the pillars and vaulted the ceilings. A horrible eeriness comes over you walk in them.  They look as though they were built by vicious and giant gnomes. A damp dank, misty and heavy rises form the pits. Water runs through the caverns and drips from overhead icy cold. Ice forms in these cavern - like grottoes and stays there all summer. Folks have been lost exploring them. They are ideal for burying bodies.
        “You knew the weather was changing,” said Fleming who works in them, “When the mist began to rise in the pits. Sometimes horses were kept in the pits for days and nights. They brought their oats into them and spilled some. The manure fertilized the seed and they sprouted in the darkness only they grow along the ground and never seem to stand up when they grew in the pits.”
A cement man was  telling a barge captain what a great thing a woman was.   (I think this  is  one of those).  She can cook and keep house for you on the your boat. You  oughta get one.    The canaler thought he'd try one. So the cement man got him  a woman.  Six months later he saw the canaler and asked him how he liked the   woman. Said he didn't have her any more. “What happened said the  cement guy?” “Why,” said the canaler, “she broke her leg a few weeks ago and I  shot her
The  great thing among the workers  in those days was to  settle down in a  "little rum hole of me own". Plenty did and  especially  in Rosendale.  Practically the whole Main Street was saloons. There were sharp social distinctions between the workers. The  Irish stick together but on the other hand when the hard rock men from the quarries in Vermont, (granite, I guess) they called them Shalligees came to town there were fights. Jack Dillon, a Vermonter built like the butt of a tree,   small but tough,  was backed up on the Rosendale Bridge one night when a  gang of  Irishman passed by.   "Anything on your mind" one of them says, "Nope is there  anything on your mind. Then he  let the ringleader have it and using his left and  right hands on two more at the  same time he took the rest  of then.  There were chain gangs working too but we'll have to check that. Did the state rent out convict labor?
The boys used to visit Abe Simon's applejack place in Rosendale  (later it was  Sam Faley’s). Farmers drove  into town with their green apples sitting high on their seats and shouting at their fine  teams.  Later they'd come back down the hill zigzag, their feet on the seat and barely conscious enough to hold their lines.  San Haley had the miraculous power of pouring you out a drink and being able to tell you (on a bet) how far to a telephone pole you’d get on what he gave you to drink.  One Irishman took the pledge and stayed off the liquor. He vowed that one night he was chased up Sand Hill by an empty whiskey barrel. That cured him of staying off 1iquor. Pistol Hill was one of the toughest places in Rosendale where folks said: "there was a murder a week." Farther up the creek in a little estuary which connected with the canal (probably a feed lock) there was the haunted scow on which a girl was said to have been murdered. The scow was sold and resold but nobody would take her up or down the canal because the ghost of the girl would not let then. Finally, she was placed in the little estuary where she rotted and sank. That was down The Rondout by the Clinton Ford Pavilion.