BIO: Martin H. Mackey, Tillard Pen Pictures, 1911, Blair County, PA

Contributed April 2003 for use in the USGenWeb Archives 
by Judy Banja <jbanja@comcast.net>

Copyright 2003.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/blair/
_________________________________________ 

                Pen Pictures of Friends and Reminiscent Sketches
                                by J. N. Tillard

             Altoona, PA: William F. Gable & Co., Mirror Press, 1911 

                         Helped To Make Our City of Homes
                  MARTIN MACKEY is The Sort of a Man Who Makes
            Any Community Richer and Better for Having Lived in It

STNCE man heard the primal curse and declaration, "By the sweat of thy brow 
shalt thou eat bread," the toiling millions of the race have perforce been 
industrious. From the dire necessity of existence, labor has been lifted up 
and glorified as a virtue. Considering the proneness of humanity to do evil, 
the necessity for work is probably a blessing, though there are large numbers 
of people to whom the disguise easily hides the blessing. The moralists and 
philosophers who preach the gospel of industry and ring the changes upon the 
personality of the procurer of employment for idle hands, are not held in 
high esteem by the fellows who are only looking for the results of labor and 
do not much care who does more of it than they do, provided their wants are 
supplied.
  Besides these easy-going souls, who would sooner beg than work, there is 
another class who are not lazy and must find some outlet for their surplus 
energy, but whose energies are misdirected. They have the passion of 
accumulation and find it easier to devise schemes to rob their fellows of the 
results of real labor than to perform useful tasks themselves. They devote 
all their powers to making other men work for them, or else by cunningly 
devised twists of laws made for the government of complex society, known 
usually as high finance, achieve the same ends that their progenitors did 
when by force of arms they made their weaker brethren stand and deliver.
  Here and there are some who, like the great inventor, Thomas A. Edison, go 
on devoting superior powers to the development of forces for lifting the 
curse and turning over the labor of human hands to automatons of steel, 
without much reference to what they personally get out of it. Wealth with 
them is an incident of their work and not the chief purpose. They are 
absorbed in their creative powers and the only notion they have of beating 
the game is not the exploitation of their fellows, but generally making the 
struggle for existence easier and less wearing by conquering and harnessing 
the hostile forces of nature.
  "Every man who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before," is a 
public benefactor, and so likewise is the man who does anything useful for 
his community. Altoona very early in its history became known as a city of 
homes. This was in part due to the thrifty character of the mechanics who 
made up the major portion of its population, but, had it not been for a few 
men in the community who devoted themselves to the business of home-building, 
this would scarcely have been true - at least, to the degree that obtained 
here.
  When the town was a very small place, Martin H. Mackey came here and began 
to do business. The increasing size of the Pennsylvania Railroad Shops was 
adding to the population of the place, and homes for the workmen were needed. 
The big company did not speculate, as some large employers have done, by 
taking advantage of their men in buying up the ground and building blocks of 
houses to sell, but left the matter open for individual initiative.
  It was then that men like Martin Mackey were needed and found their place 
in the community. Lumber was plentiful and comparatively cheap, and he and a 
few others set up shops and filled them with woodworking machinery. The 
mechanics of the city at that time did not have any money to spend for ornate 
architecture, but needed comfortable shelters that they could make into 
homes. Mr. Mackey, his partners and competitors at the time, solved the house 
problem by devising structures within the means of the people that would give 
the greatest possible utility at the least possible cost.
  When he went into the building business, there were very few men in the new 
town who were in possession of sufficient money to pay cash for the most 
modest home, and, besides doing the building, he and his kind became also the 
financiers for their neighbors. By clubbing together in building and loan 
associations, and the farthest possible stretch of credit on the part of the 
contractors and builders, it was possible to go on with building of humble 
homes till the great majority of the workmen in the shops were able to sit 
under their own vine and fig tree, so to speak. It is easy to imagine quite a 
different state of affairs. Had the men who were in the building business 
chose to acquire the ground and erect buildings for renting purposes only, we 
might now have had a few big landlords and an army of renters.
  But to the everlasting credit of Martin Mackey, and other builders like 
him, they did their level best to build up a city of homes and thereby made 
the growing town a good place to live in. A spirit of independence and thrift 
was engendered that made for good citizenship and orderly government. Altoona 
is not a community of a few millionaires and many paupers, but a thrifty town 
of energetic and frugal workers. While there is not much purple and fine 
linen, there is a conspicuous absence of rags and direful want.
  While, in common with all other places on earth, "the poor we have with 
us," there are few places where there is a larger percentage of families who 
feel that they are an integral part of the body politic, occupying the golden 
mean between poverty and wealth.
  Those who had a little the best of their fellows in the beginning, in the 
matters of capital, skill and training, did not meanly take advantage of the 
weaker, but did their utmost to help all to a higher plane of living, and 
Martin Mackey did his part.
  He has had some misfortunes of his own as the years went by. The fire fiend 
several times swept his plant out of existence, but he never sat down and 
succumbed to the calamity. As soon as the burning embers were cool, he set to 
work to restore the destroyed structure, for was he not a builder forsooth 
and an optimist always? It is the constructionist and not the knocker or 
destroyer that makes for human happiness, and as age comes on this good 
citizen he has the satisfaction of feeling that he has been a factor in the 
building up of the community in which he lives.
  In the later years of his business career, he took a departure. After 
building comfortable homes for the living for years, he added to the 
industries of the city by establishing a plant for the manufacture of burial 
caskets and supplying a last resting place for the dead. One of his cronies 
one day remarked "that Mr. Mackey had changed his attitude toward his 
fellows, and from wanting all his friends to live comfortably, he now wanted 
them all to die comfortably, and the sooner the better." This, however, was 
only a piece of persiflage and not to be taken seriously. But one night that 
enterprise fell a victim to the flames and Mr. Mackey felt that he was pretty 
nearly ready to drop the active affairs of life on younger shoulders, so, 
when he rebuilt the place, he turned it over to other hands to be used as a 
market place.
  But, though he had practically quit business for himself, he gave a half-
dozen years to the service of the public, and as county commissioner served 
his fellows faithfully and well. His business instincts and training were of 
great value in the commissioners' office and he stepped down and out after 
two terms with the consciousness that he could give a good account of his 
stewardship. He is still hale and hearty and, though hair and beard are 
silvered by the frosts of time, it is the hope of his many friends that his 
friendly face may be seen where men do congregate for many years to come.

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