weaving mill, established by Willem Stroink from Enschede, sprang up on the trade road. Here, cotton was processed and calico and watertwist were woven. Later mills were founded in 1864 by Jan van Delden and in 1851 by Josef Povel and Hermann Kistemaker. Textile manufacturing came to set the pace for the languishing economy. Progress came with gradual industrialization. The groundwork for the town's growth into one of Germany's biggest textile-producing towns had been laid. The town's mayor between 1843 and 1872 was the apothecary and chemical manufacturer Ernst Firnhaber, whose house on the main street stood in the middle of what then was the town's business life. With its classicist building elements it is the last architectural example of a stately townsman's house from the 18th century. After the apothecary came Germany's first quinine plant. In 1843, 32,403 Pfund – roughly 16 metric tons – of cinchona was processed and exported. The manufacturers Ludwig Povel, Bernhard Rawe, Bernhard Niehues and Friedrich Dütting founded further textile businesses in the years from 1872 to 1897, some of which are still supplying domestic and international markets in the early 21st century. In the 1890s, Nordhorn was incorporated into a network of man-made waterways. Through the river Ems, the Dortmund-Ems Canal and the Ems-Vechte Canal, coal was transported from the Ruhr area to the up-and-coming textile centre. The Nordhorn-Almelo Canal saw to it that the town was also connected to Dutch inland waterways, and the North-South Canal spurred the peat trade. Even if today all these canals have no further use for shipping, they can still be prized for their worth as sources of leisure. The Bentheim Railway brought a rail connection to the international network in 1896. Roughly 1,500 people were working in the various textile companies in these years. The Great Depression in the 1920s led many jobseekers from all over Germany to Nordhorn. By 1939, the population had reached 23,457, and it is worth noting that just under a third of those people had actually been born in town. This unusual economic upswing earned Nordhorn the nickname Klein Amerika – "Little America". Even the Third Reich left its mark on Nordhorn. The small Jewish community was annihilated. The synagogue was utterly destroyed, an event recalled by a memorial plaque on the street still called Synagogenstraße. The old Flemish Trade Road was used by German troops, who on 10 May 1940