Engines of Change: The American Industrial Revolution, 1790 - 1860

by Brooke Hindle

1986, hardcover edition, Smithsonian, Washington, D.C. 309 pages. More than 200 illustrations / drawings / vintage photos throughout. Here is a "... pictorial history of The American Industrial Revolution by drawing upon surviving artifacts, most of them preserved in the Smithsonian Institution, as well as historical prints, drawings, and photographs." The authors detail the migration of technology from Europe to America and the resultant industrialization which began to find solid ground and flourish. We have side looks at factories, shops, transportation, communities, World's Fairs, and the machines of war. "A delight to read and important."

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1986

About the author

Brooke Hindle was a Philadelphia native who attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before graduating from Brown University in 1940. After service in the United States Navy during World War II, he earned a doctorate in history from the University of Pennsylvania in 1949 and briefly worked for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, before moving to New York University, where over the course of his 24 years there he served as a professor, dean of the College at University Heights and head of the university's History Department. Hindle also served as director of what is now the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History from 1974 to 1978.

Reviews

[Mark Bowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

A. The Industrial Revolution and technological change (Europe)
1. The first step was the transition from wood (which was scarce) to coal. 1729 Abraham Darby in Coalbrookdale
2. Major areas of technical improvement in the IR
a) Iron production: Puddling (to remove impurities), rolling (to turn into iron bars)
b) Steam engine: 1712 Newcomen, 1776 Watt: double-acting, separate condenser (used steam was diverted for condensation)
c) Mechanization of textiles: 1733 John Kay’s flying shuttle, James Hargreaves Spinning Jenny (1770), power looms for weaving, Richard Arkwright’s waterframe incorporated the Jenny into the factory system
d) Precision machine work: Improved capability of machining both metal and wood speeded the development of steam engines and textile mills
3. Economic and business developments in the IR
a) Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, The invisible hand of destiny and capitalism would make individual successful in the marketplace
b) Factory system and wage labor was used instead of cottage work
c) The result was cheap manufactured goods that people could buy (cotton clothes)
B. Why did technology flourish in America?
1. The land of opportunities
a) Reduced constrictions: The political and religious control of Europe did not exist in America
b) Natural resources: Land: abundant and used for agriculture and political power. Woods: materials, ships, homes, tools, fuel. Chemicals: potash (glass and gunpowder). Iron: America was rich in iron ore.
2. The 2-fold promise of technology
a) Technology would speed the process of development and require fewer hands to do it
b) Promise of wealth to inventors and entrepreneurs (most inventors remained anonymous. Exception was David Rittenhouse and his mechanical planetariums)
C. How did technology develop in America?
1. The transfer of technology
a) Transfer of immigrants
(1) They brought the new textile technology with them. Ex. Samuel Slater who built the first US textile mill
(2) While England prohibited the migration of skilled mechanics, people like Slater escaped by posing as a farmer
(3) He developed a carding machine (to make a cotton fiber called roving), spinning frame (twisted roving into yarn)
(4) This is the most dramatic example of transfer through personal immigration
b) Transfer by importing machines: A small factor yet some machines were broken down and sent here (prototype locomotive engine)
c) Delayed transfer: The English iron revolution (Darby’s use of coke rather than charcoal) was delayed in US because so much wood here was conducive to charcoal. US switched to coke in 1815
2. Invention and technological change
a) Patent system: Reflected Americans attitude about invention, “One man one invention”
(1) This system reinforced this by identifying the inventor and providing him with an opportunity for reward
(2) Three patent acts passed (1790, 1793, and 1836). The 1836 act is our present system with a patent office and examiners.
b) Celebrated inventors
(1) Franklin, lightening rod.
(2) The 1st patent went to Samuel Hopkins for an improvement in manufacturing potash
(3) Eli Whitney, Cotton Gin for short staple cotton. This was easily copied and he received little money for it
c) The sewing machine is attributable to many designers. This illustrates a basic fact about invention--only the least complex are attributable to only one person. However, Ellias Howe is usually credited with this device and Isaac Singer is credited for improvements (horizontal cloth and vertical needle)
D. Farm production
1. Elkanah Watson was the man most responsible for finding effective ways to mechanize agricultural production
2. Great improvements came with metal plows. Ex. 1837 John Deere’s steel cutting edge plow, Cyrus McCormick’s mechanical reaper
E. Transportation and the need for invention
1. The US needed internal transportation more than any European nation because of the US vast distance
2. Roads: Stagecoach transportation, turnpike system was created by private investors and paid for by tolls
3. Canals: Erie Canal and others brought communication with the West
4. Steamboats: Robert Fulton established a steamboat on the Hudson
F. The John Bull and the rise of American railroading
1. The locomotive symbolized the IR: progress and technological development
2. In 1829 the US imports 4 of George Stephensons locomotives
3. The Camden and Amboy RR
a) This was to run between NY and Philadelphia
b) Robert Stevens was sent to England to study engineering design
c) He ordered a locomotive from Robert Stevenson, the John Bull, disassembled it and shipped it to America
d) Stevens invented a new ‘T’ track which became standard throughout the world
4. The invention of the American locomotive
a) By 1841 British locomotives contributed only about 1/4 of all RR
b) The US built their track with steeper grades and sharper turns and this required more powerful locomotives
c) The bogie truck (a leading car with swiveling wheels) helped prevent the train from derailing
5. RR impact
a) Business: The requirements for iron and steel made major improvements
b) Economy: The RR helped create a national economy
c) Agriculture: Cheap large scale transportation allowed farmers to specialize
d) Social: More people could travel which ties the country together
G. Machine shops: Machines to make machines (cutting tools and forming tools)
1. Norris Locomotive Works was an example of a large machine shop. Small machine shops were abundant.
2. Important tools for a mid-19th machine shop were the lathes (made wheels, cylinders, and pistons), and planes (made flat frames)
3. The most essential tools however were the machinists own hand tools
4. The machinist spent most of his time filing rough machine parts
H. Textiles and the style of American industrialization
1. Clothmaking was the most important industry of the IR because of the goods produced and people employed.
2. Clothmaking was also important for setting the style of American industrialization (machinery, hand operations, factories, small shops, skilled/unskilled labor)
3. Many textile mills were located in N.E.
4. The Boston Manufacturing Company in Lowell Massachusetts
a) Basement: Where the waterwheels were that powered the machines
b) 1st floor carding machines: The cotton was separated into strands and then turned into twisted fibers called roving
c) 2nd floor spinning machines: Where the roving was turned into yarn. Also the warp boards were made up here.
d) 3rd floor looms: The warping boards were mounted and the yarn was passed through
e) Great number of mill girls
I. The rise of the factory
1. The era of the IR saw work move from the home (cottage industry) to the small shop to the factory (textiles were the classic example)
2. Housework remained in the house and ironically increasing technology (iron stove) increased womens work (allowed for more complicated meals)
J. The American System: interchangeable parts
1. Initially there were only 2 markets big enough for such an approach;
a) Military market: Supported by the government so that guns could be repaired in the field
b) Clocks: With the coming of cities and factories many people needed to know the time
2. The theory behind interchangeable parts: How to ensure accuracy?
a) An exemplary pattern piece was made
b) Jigs and fixtures held each piece as it was being made so that all drilling would be identical on every piece
c) Gauges allowed the inspector to determine if the component would be compatible with all others
K. Communitarian experiments
1. Utopian communities tried to combine social and technical change: nearly all were failures
2. Robert Owens New Harmony (1825) was an industrial community in Indiana
3. Religious communities were more successful (Mormons, Latter-Day Saints, Shakers, Oneida, Amana)
L. The London Crystal Palace Exhibition
1. Essentially this was Americas coming out party
2. Ironically the American exhibits were initially the laughing stock of the fair. The complaint was that our technology was not stylish enough, too utilitarian
3. But when the technology was tested they received high praise
4. America was best represented by agriculture (McCormicks reaper) and Samuel Colt’s revolver
M. (comparisons between America and Japan): Conclusion, a knowledge of this initial phase of innovation in the US yields insights into the loss of technological leadership

[Naya]

Would kill for Steve Lubar

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an abbreviated version of my review. The full version is available on LibraryThing: http://www.librarything.com/work/695844

This is a beautifully illustrated and very optimistic book. As an accompaniment to the Smithsonian exhibit that bears its name, it is extremely well done. Hardly a "coffee table book," it illustrates with a good deal of enthusiasm and subtlety the transformation of American Technology from the Early Republic to the Civil War.

In Chapter I: The Industrial Revolution and Technological Change, they begin with a discussion of the "Early Foundations" for American technology in the Renaissance fascination with "spur gears, lantern candle gears, cams, etc." Shortages of wood forced England early on to use coke to fire blacksmiths' forges. "Major Areas of Technological Revolution" included changes in iron production, the rise of the steam engine, the mechanization of textile production, and precision machine work. "Related Socioeconomic Changes" included the movement from craft labor to wage labor and the concentration of production in "dark satanic mills." Housewives were burdened by new tasks, but the quality of life was rising as a result. "The Role of Great Britain" for the American Industrial Revolution was to provide a ready source of people, machines and know-how to the recently independent colonies. Though they initially tried in a mercantilistic fashion to slow the outflow of people, machines and knowledge, people worked around these constraints.

In Chapter II: The New United States: Land of Opportunities, "Material Improvement" are placed at the center of the European efforts to conquer, colonize and exploit the new world. Far away from old Europe, "Reduced Constrictions" made it easier for people to "strike out on their own," to succeed or fail in the absence of European constraints. One might add that the ideology of classical republicanism placed a premium on virtue, and here technology could be ambivalent. Yet, "Natural Resources," including abundant Land, Wood, and Iron, were certainly a factor in "fueling" the acquisitive drive of "possessive individuals." The authors point especially to the importance of wood in a memorable passage:

The technologies and the economy imported to the colonies from England and the Continent were based mostly on wood. Wood served three functions. It was, first, a material used in structures from houses to ships and for making wagons, tools, scientific instruments, and many household and work devices. Its second use was as fuel for cooking, space heating, and industrial heating, including the smelting of iron. The third use of wood was for the chemicals derived from it; these included potash (an industrial alkali), naval stores such as turpentine, tannin for tanning leather, and maple sugar. Because wood was so nearly a universal necessity, America's vast supply can hardly be overrated. (p. 35)

The abundance of wood had positive and negative effects -- its cheapness favored the shipping industry for instance, but its very cheapness made people wasteful. "Human Resources" were scare in the Early Republic, so ways of work that reduced the need for muscle power were often attractive. In this "Land of Opportunities" they do note that many suffered as a consequence of others' prosperity.

Considering in Chapter III: The Promise of Technology some of the roots of American inventiveness, they point to the experience that Americans had early on with agricultural technologies. Yeoman farmers working to make their farm implements more productive produced numerous "Anonymous Technological Improvements," of which the American ax is just one well known example. Working with "Mills and Gears," American farmers were "Farmer - Artisans" who worked in "Shop Crafts," thereby gaining familiarity and hands-on experience with the technical basics. Without the guild system, craft skills were at a low level in the US, but they were more broadly distributed. Even before the Revolution, this hands-on technical know how enabled the innovations that lead to the Pennsylvania rifle, which was regarded as the "secret weapon" of the Revolution. "The New Technology" produced both "Enthusiasm Versus Resistance," as advocates of American development ranged behind Alexander Hamilton and promoters of the Agrarian Republic took up Jefferson's cause. Yet "The Opportunity" lay in the enthusiasm for technical improvement, an enthusiasm which Jefferson did share.

"Transfer by Immigrants" of technological know how, as we learn in Chapter IV: The Transfer of Technology, was especially common from Britain. Though illegal, men like Samuel Slater came to the US passing themselves off as laborers. They brought with them the knowledge of the latest in English machinery, in Slater's case that was the knowledge of the Arkwright system of factory production. Slater also brought with him the child labor system, which he adopted to New England mores at Pawtucket. "Transfer by Importing Machines" was also a way to get cutting edge equipment into the country, but the prohibition on exports by the British government slowed this considerably until well after 1840 when it was lifted. Under the category of "Transfer Failure," they count the Newcomen Engine. Imported in 1753 by Phillip Shuyler for his deep copper mine in NJ, it failed to meet the business need for pumping water. Since there were few deep mines at that time, the Newcomen Engine was abandoned. Under "Delayed Transfer," they count the "English Iron Revolution." While the commerce with England in American Iron was duty free before the Revolution, after the Revolution the British relied on their own sources and American production fell off. "Reverse Transfer" to Britain did happen but on a limited scale, since the social factors that made labor saving machinery so useful in the US weren't there in Britain.

Chapter V: Invention and Technological Change turns the focus onto innovation, that putting of technology to productive use at which the American technical generalist excelled. In a consideration of "Invention and the Patent System," we are reminded that the very patent system was structured to reward single "inventors," no wonder that we have celebrated inventor heroes as the one's pictured in Christian Schussele's painting Men of Invention of 1836 (p. 76). "Celebrated Inventions" of the Early Republic included Eli Whitney's cotton gin and Robert Fulton's steam boat, but the stories of these "inventions" are more complicated that the way they are often told. Whitney's design of his cotton gin was so easy to copy that he spent years in the courts trying to fight these abuses. Robert Fulton actually succeeded despite the patent system, focusing instead on his partnership with Robert Livingston to obtain a monopoly on traffic on NY waterways for a period of twenty years, mooting the patent protection issue. Samuel Morse's Telegraph, another celebrated invention was hardly his work alone. As Paul Israel has shown, he benefited from participation in a community of mechanics whose work he built on and through whose feedback he was able to refine the machine he was working on. The important thing about the patent system was certainly the requirement that people build models that were kept at the patent office. This allowed people to come in and view the models and learn from them. "Tariffs" on imported manufactures became a divisive issue and "Other Government Support" to commerce remained at a low level, despite efforts of advocates such as Henry Clay. Support for the early manufactures came mostly from "Voluntary Organizations." The American Philosophical Society (APS) was founded before the revolution for the promotion of useful science (what we would today call technology). The Franklin Institute of Philadelphia held held fairs to encourage technological innovations and material improvement. Mechanics institutes were established in most major cities. "The Controversy" over the benefits of technological improvements, much of them around factory technology, continued to divide the country throughout the period of industrialization.

Rather than positing as simplistic opposition between agriculture and industrialization, in Chapter VI: Farming and Raw Materials Processing: Causes and Effects of Mechanization they explain that "farming expansion and prosperity constituted a foundation on which industrialization rested, and that technological change became important in farming development itself. "Farm Production" was overwhelmingly commercial and increasingly mechanized in the American colonies. They note that "by the 1820s mechanical reapers, threshers, grass cutters, and seed drills were numerous. Change was in the air, gut few of these devices worked satisfactorily and they were not much used." (p. 95) Much effort was given over to improving farm methods and machinery, The Berkshire Movement, spread agricultural fairs across New York and the nation to showcase improvements in farming. Though most farmers made their own plows of wood, increasingly metal plows were being developed and patented. "Food Processing," most often taking place on the farm was also widely commercial even in Colonial times. Commercial grist mills served a function throughout the colonies, where a farmer could bring grain to be ground. The mechanization of flour milling developed by Oliver Evans introduced a continuous mechanized process for flour production. By mid-century Gail Borden was producing condensed milk in cans and other foods were also preserved in foods and jars. "Industrialization grew in a symbiotic relationship with agriculture. It helped to produce the cities that put great demands, and restrictions, on farmers. Industrialization depended on increasing farming production to free labor for the factories. Farming depended upon industrialization to provide the transportation, the new and mechanized food processing implements, and the markets for farm production upon which the whole pattern of change rested." (p. 106) "Coal and Iron" production began in earnest in Pittsburg around 1815, where large supplies of bituminous coal were mined to fuel the coke reduction of ore, puddling and rolling using steam engines. The spreading use of cheap coal and the development of anthracite for "hot blast" iron reduction were aided by the growth of the railroads in the 1830s and 1840s. Iron production, railroads, and agricultural mechanization were all connected in varied and complex ways.

The new American nation, recently independent from Britain had evaded the problem of transportation with the hinterland by focusing on trade with Europe and the Caribbean, contributing to the growth of the seaport cities. In Chapter VII: Transportation and the Need for Invention, they consider the growing need to develop internal infrastructure in the Early Republic. "River Transportation" and roads "Roads" provided only the most elemental forms of transport in the Early Republic. The construction of "Canals," especially the Erie Canal completed in 1825 between Albany and Lake Erie, linked the East to the developing interior. Roads and Canals both remained expensive, however. "Steamboats" formed a major technological innovation that allowed Americans to make use of the large rivers like the Hudson, Mississippi and Missouri. By combining the existing technology of the steam engine with a monopoly on NY waterways, Robert Fulton moved the steamboat forward and made it a commercial success. It remained for "Railroads" to connect the vast interior where travel by waterway was impossible. Though experimenting with early railroad designs in the early part of the century, the birth of the American Railroad industry occurred with the import of a British locomotive steam engine called the John Bull by Robert Stevens and his Camden and Amboy Railroad in New Jersey.

The authors make it clear in Chapter VIII: The John Bull and the Rise of American Railroading that the British lead the early development of locomotive technologies. "The Camden and Amboy Railroad" took full advantage of this superior technology in 1831 when it imported the John Bull locomotive engine from the Robert Stevenson Company in England. In the late 1820s, debates raged in the New Jersey legislature over how best to encourage better connections between New York and Philadelphia. Advocates of canals and railroads were only placated when both were granted a state charter. During his trip to England in the late 1820s, Robert Stevens saw the newest locomotive called the Planet at the Robert Stevenson locomotive shops. He insisted, however, on ordering the latest and greatest -- the next generation model called the Samson, which would become the John Bull in America. "The Invention of the American Locomotive" arose out of adaptations made to the John Bull at the Camden and Amboy's locomotive shops. Within a little more than a decade, the American shops that adopted and modified this technology were selling locomotives back to England. "The Rise of the American Railroads" was based on more than the technology. It was, as Alfred Chandler has explained, an organizational and -- more precisely a management -- revolution that attended this transformation. In "Railroads and the American Industrial Revolution," the authors explain how it was that the railroads, more than any other technological invention, were the engines of change driving the American Industrial Revolution. While they extended the reach of transportation networks, they also brought extensive social and cultural changes. Annihilating time and space, they changed perceptions of time and raised fears of horrible accidents. These fears were hardly unfounded, as by the 1850s the train wreck was an all to common occurrence. the impact of the locomotive was ambiguous. "At the same time, however, that it stands as a symbol for greater speed, lower costs, and greater benefits to consumers as well as entrepreneur, it also stands for monopoly, privilege, and corruption, and the rise of a technological and corporate elite." (p. 150)

Hindle and Lubar explain the benefits to "Early American Industry" of low barriers of entry to mechanization and the flexibility of the economy in Chapter IX: The Business of Production. With a flexible banking system in the new country, people fell in and out of bankruptcy. Raising money to start new businesses, people turned often turned to family or suppliers. In order to raise greater sums of capital, businessmen had resort to the corporate form of organization. As businesses grew, drives for increasing administrative efficiency gave rise to conflict between "Factory Management and Labor." "The Development of American Industry" represented great diversity, especially in a regional sense -- with the South depending heavily on the muscle power of slaves. The scarcity of waterpower in the South discouraged manufacture there as there were fewer rivers to provide the waterpower for waterwheels. With fewer mechanized operations, the South had fewer skilled mechanics.

Chapter X: Machine Shops: Machines Make Machines discusses the development of an American machine tool industry. Many machine makers emigrated from England in the 1820s and 30s, infusing the American machine shops with much needed skilled workers. No task was technologically more complex than the manufacture of locomotives in the antebellum era. Assembled of 5,000 separate parts and requiring more than 30,000 man hours the steam locomotive was a gargantuan undertaking. "The Norris Locomotive Works" in Philadelphia was one of the world's premier builders of locomotives at mid century. Employing 600 men by 1855, they used a vast array of machines to build the locomotives. With its own forge shop for creating the forged iron from which the locomotives were build, it also had a vast machine shop powered by a central steam engine. Side lathes, panning mach9ines, slotting engines were all connected to the steam engine by means of a system of clutch, belts, pulleys and shafts. The labor of skilled machinists using precise micrometers and other tools of their trade were under the management of inside contractors who were themselves skilled machinists. Other less involved "Small Machine Shops," such as the Alfred clock factory and machine shop in Harwinton, CT were run by jacks of all trades who made rifles, carpenter's tools and blacksmith's tools from scratch. "The Machinists' Trade" was crucial to the industrialization of America. "So important," write Hindle and Lubar, "were the skills of the machinist that they became fundamental to the spread of the Industrial Revolution in America. Itinerant machinists diffused new ideas throughout the country. By moving from one industry to another, they transferred the knowledge that allowed the American Industrial Revolution to happen as quickly as it did." (p. 181) Isaac Markham of Middlebury, VT and Simeon North of Middletown, CT were two such men whose work had a widespread impact.

Chapter XI: Textiles and the Styles of American Industrialization considers the ways in which factories involved in the manufacture of textiles set the styles of American Industrialization. "Early Factories and Machines" in the mid 18th C were often set up as industries to employee poor women at spinning and weaving, such as the House of Industry in Boston. These were of limited success. Preferring to keep this work at home, colonial Americans used domestic spinning jennies or plantation spinners in the South outside the factory environment. It would take some effort and time to overcome the ideological predisposition against the factory form. "The New England Mill Village" pioneered by Samuel Slater in Pawtucket, RI began to break down the barriers to factory production by working within the New England environment and culture. "Only spinning was done at Slater's mill; weaving was still done in the homes of families throughout the area, as it had always been. Slater made sure that traditional family structure was reinforced in work at the mill." (p. 191). From Pawtucket, the mill villages spread out through the Blackstone Valley into Southern Massachusetts. By 1860 there were dozens of mill villages throughout southern New England, employing men at skilled trades and women and children at the less skilled and lower paid positions. "The Large Corporate Mills" of Lowell, MA built by the Boston Associates brought together money, machines and water power to produce integrated factories for the production of textiles. Establishing a paternalistic regime, the Lowell Mills attracted young native-born women from the farms of New Hampshire to work the machines. As T. Dublin has explained, these mills had the effect of fostering women's independence and empowering the women who worked there for brief periods before marrying. In the 40s the pace and intensity of work sped up, paternalism broke down and Irish immigrant workers began to work the mills with their families. The moral workplace thus gave way to the search for profits. "The Philadelphia Style," in contrast to the course cloth produced at Lowell focused on fancy and specialty goods at hand looms employing skilled workers. Dozens of "Southern Mills" were founded in the 40s and 50s, but at their peak in 1860, all of them combined had fewer spindles than Lowell alone.