The salt deposits supplied the basis for the manufacture of soda-ash, and at the village of Solvay, adjoining Syracuse on the west, is one of the largest factories for this purpose in the world. Besides soda-ash it produces bicarbonate of soda, caustic soda and crystals, the total output being about 1,000 tons daily. Syracuse ranks among the leading cities of the state in the number and variety of its manufactures. There are 760 establishments employing 25,000 workers, with an annual output of the value of about $75,000,000. The manufacture of typewriters is an important industry (annual production $10,000,000). Other products include automobiles and accessories, tool steel, candles, farm implements, clothing, chinaware, cement, chemicals and mining machinery.
348 M. PALMYRA, Pop. 2,480. (Train 51 passes 3:38p; No. 3, 4:57p; No. 41, 9:30p; No. 25, 9:56p; No. 19, 1:42a. Eastbound No. 6 passes 1:25a; No. 26, 2:17a; No. 16, 6:46a; No. 22, 9:14a.)
The town of Palmyra is intimately connected with the early history of the Mormons or "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints." Joseph Smith (1805-1844), the founder, lived a few miles south of Palmyra at the village of Manchester near which, in the "hill of Cumorah," he said he found the plates of gold upon which was inscribed the book of Mormon. Smith had the book printed in 1830 in Palmyra.
Joseph Smith (1805-1877) early began to gather his proselytes about him, and even succeeded in interesting a few bewildered Indians, but the new sect had great difficulties, aggravated, it is said, by the licentiousness of the founder. Persecuted in N.Y. State, Smith sought to found his New Jerusalem in Ohio, where, however, the natives objected with such definiteness to his way of salvation that he and one of his followers were tarred and feathered in Hiram, O. Missouri was chosen as the next place of refuge, but here, too, Smith's profligacy aroused the hostility of the Missourians, which was increased by propaganda among the Mormons for a "war of extermination against the Gentiles." In Illinois, whither many of the "Saints" now removed, Smith had a revelation approving polygamy, which pleased him very much, but which roused opposition among his followers as well as his persecutors. In 1844 he and his brother Hyrum were arrested on a charge of treason in the town of Nauvoo which they had founded and imprisoned at Carthage. On the night of June 27, a mob, with the collusion of the militia guard, broke into the jail and shot the two men dead. In the meantime there had arisen a leader of considerable genius, Brigham Young (1801-1877), who probably saved the sect from dissolution, and led them to Salt Lake City in 1844.]