WHEN Joseph Cunningham and Rufus Dryer took over the firm as President and Vice-President in the mid-eighties, Rochester had at last acquired its permanent character as a center for quality production. A high proportion of its labor force was skilled. That implied a degree of social stability greater than was to be found in most American cities. Rochester was a town of factories, but it never saw the prolonged, bloody clashes between labor and management that were typical of most industrial areas. Ethnic and religious, immigrants and native Americans, lived in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance. Discord was so minor as to point up the essential harmony. If life was a bit lacking in excitement, it was extraordinarily full of decency and good will.

CALÈCHE, 1890
It was said of the Caleche, "it is not at all suited unless the stable be supplied with numerous carriages. It is intended simply for the most formal calling or for park work. The horses required were of the finest breeding, perfectly matched and with faultless manners."

GAME WAGON OR SHOOTING CART, 1900

Joseph Cunningham and Rufus Dryer were Rochesterians of their time. In some ways they complemented each other. Temperamentally, Joseph Cunningham was a maker and builder, a "production man," as we say nowadays. Rufus Dryer had the financial acumen that was necessary to the survival of the firm in an age when the financier was increasingly coming to overshadow the producer. Joseph Cunningham and his family were drawn to the arts, especially to the German music and painting that attracted serious-minded people in the eighties. Rufus Dryer was a sportsman. He hunted; he shot quail in Georgia; he kept a series of yachts on Lake Ontario; and he looked for the farm he wanted to retire to one day, being in that respect a child of the fifties.

But the two men were alike in fundamentals. They understood each other. They were unmoved by the possible excitements of the era: they were not speculators or promoters; they made carriages. They remained aloof from politics, as most respectable people did in those days. They avoided personal publicity.

They were good friends. Their families lived next to each other on East Avenue and in the summer houses at nearby Charlotte, on Lake Ontario. On summer evenings they would drive themselves out to the lake in buggies with bright red wheels, hitched to fast trotters. They worked long hours and were apt to be late for dinner, but never for the opening of the factory in the morning. Toward the turn of the century they bought an island in Sodus Bay, forty miles to the east of Rochester, where their families passed the summer together and they spent the two weeks' vacation that was all they allowed themselves.

Sunday mornings after church, Rochesterians drove along East Avenue, under the high elm trees. In its outer reaches there were always drivers of carriages looking for an impromptu race. One driver would pull up abreast of another, coach dogs trotting demurely behind, and suddenly they were off . . . Most respectable people chose not to race, but they lingered to watch. Here, as elsewhere, a comfortable proportion of the carriages bore the Cunningham imprint.

ROOF-SEAT BREAK, 1895

It was the era of company picnics. A newspaper account written in July, 1887, conveys something of the atmosphere of one:

"One of the largest picnics of the season was that of the employees of James Cunningham, Son and Company . . . Employees to the number of several hundred assembled at the factory at 7:00 in the morning . . . At eight o'clock they formed into line and marched to North Avenue, headed by the 54th Regiment band. The Messrs. Cunningham and Dryer marched ahead of the procession at the desire of the employees . . . All the employees wore brown linen hats and the body made a fine appearance as it marched up Main Street. At North Avenue station they took cars by the Bay railroad to Sea Breeze, and thence by boats of the Irondequoit Navigation Company went to the Newport House to spend the day."

There were a baseball game, target shooting, races, and other athletic competitions. There were prizes for the successful competitors: young John Fulreader won an umbrella for the longest broad jump. He had joined the firm three years back, in 1884, at the age of fifteen. Eventually he would become its Treasurer and in that capacity stay with the firm into the fifties of the next century . . . The day was topped off with "an elegant dinner for five hundred people."

In the two decades since the Civil War "hands" had become "employees" — but not "personnel" or "labor force." Relations with employees were still on a personal basis. Men identified themselves with the firm and took pride in doing so. They formed the James Cunningham, Son and Company Mutual Aid Association to provide insurance against sickness and accidents. Their wives and daughters could join, and membership did not cease when an employee left the company.

With its fiftieth anniversary in 1888, Cunningham as a coach-making firm had attained maturity. It existence remained placid, like that of most of its upper-class customers, "the carriage trade." Joseph Cunningham continued to appear at the factory with his usual punctuality. Private customers and the proprietors of livery establishments remained loyal to the firm. Rufus Dryer protected its financial interests, unmoved by the struggles and conflicts of the Trusts, hardly troubled by the depression of the nineties. He became a director of banks and industrial corporations as well as vice-president of Cunningham.

By the turn of the century, one of Joseph's sons, Augustine, was already in the business. Another son, Francis, was about to go to Harvard. Rufus' son, James, was graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Predictably the three young men would take over one day from their fathers.

Except in one particular, there were no important developments in carriage-making. The exception was the tally-ho, the coach that Christmas cards have made familiar. A leisure class had grown up in America toward the end of the century. Because no tradition of aristocratic leisure existed in the United States, it borrowed one from England, and part of that tradition was coaching. The sons of industrialists and bankers learned to drive coaches, to ride to hounds and to live in large country houses. Cunningham made tally-hos for them.

The fact is more than an isolated historical item; when Cunningham came to make automobiles in the next century it would find most of its typical customers among the members of this class.

The firm continued to turn out carriages until 1915. Joseph Cunningham and Rufus Dryer retired in 1909, and the company, which had become a partnership, was reincorporated. Augustine Cunningham was now President, James Dryer Vice-President, and Francis Cunningham Secretary and General Manager.

Their main interest lay in producing automobiles. It was clear that the days of the carriage were drawing to an end, and the transition from coach-making to automobile production seemed a natural one.