Transatlantic industrial revolution: the diffusion of textile technologies between Britain and America, 1790-1830s 9780262100229

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Transatlantic Industrial Revolution

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3 ch »! : lw ‘ ~o| . o : QS ; > . oo a) et ——— ene bi | jai A ee 8 me :

reva:Ke ee i, «3aa 1.9ms Close-up woolen carding ;% r °GS Bay eeeae, . ee ar eebuilt . . of ”by .teeth ;Artemas ” eSoni qaDryden, ,double . ; Jr., DSO eer—_ —’ ass nenaS re, machine of Holden, Mas-

4 oh ee as - ieee sachusetts, pre-1830. Teeth on the worker cylinders Or : {—_—— ” (upper right andFibers upper left)on acttheagainst on the and main ’ . \er “ars wsaae “ cylinder. caught workerteeth are removed

or a. Fe 4 ay * “ss mn g ; . ° “ty ay 4 ‘aa Pf , a) “se ft returned to the> main cylinder by a> clearer roller (the aaF * v* fh wf? ge oe oe 9 aS ot ; | a : : os Gee Oo ge fi Sf eee” le. oe smaller cylinder next to each worker, one being visible a : : 2 eee a og pe il " Wl * " ? a ~ " & is Tote a eS Ra bd a sid : :

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4 yp ge ae Fe * ae ie, Gee Shere). Adjustments to the poppet heads supporting the gd roww age . > Pe oe axles a ”*imgk a ye meworker a s and PYclearer . ‘ Py qaltered 4 . iethei:tolerances : . ; ; between

d ’ftied & hee rtey*p.y rimack the cardValley teeth, to suit the stock being carded. (At Mer: mR Textile Museum; photo by author. )

Constraints on the Diffusion of Technologies

30.2—CO” spinner, who earned about thirty shillings a week shop manager’s salary was not much different from in the early 1790s, approximately three times a the Arkwright mill manager’s. Since mule spinners farm laborer’s wage, though out of this he paid an were their own bosses to a great extent, spinning

assistant or piecer a few shillings. 7! overseers did not enter the picture before mills

Learning times for mule operatives in the late reached tens of thousands of spindles in size. Cardeighteenth century are unknown. However, some ing-room Overseers would have received wages guesses can be made on the basis of subsequent parallel to those in water-frame mills. Most likely, mule spinners’ training times. Dr. Harold Catling, Americans found it less costly to hire these skills who himself worked in the mule gate before mov- than to set about learning by doing. ing into textile engineering, estimates that the op- The carding machine (but not its cruder variant, erative skills of spinning ona hand or automatic the scribbler), the billy, the jenny, the gig mill, and mule required no more than three months’ learning the shearing frame made up the new mechanical time.’* However, the mule spinner also had tolearn _ technology in Britain’s woolen industry unfamilmaintenance skills. This maintenance work needed iar to American woolen manufacturers in 1790. Unthree to four years to learn on the hand mule and, like operative tasks in carding, the billy and jenny certainly, aminimum of three years and generally required much skill, not least because the imbriseven years on the automatic mule. The surpris- cated woolen fiber was more difficult to spin than ingly short operative learning times, Dr. Catling the convoluted cotton fiber.’* The failure of early emphasizes, applied only to people brought up in woolen cards to produce a continuous sliver necesthe mule spinning room. They developed an in- sitated an additional processing stage in which stinctive knowledge of fiber behavior and machine short rolls, or slubbings, two or three feet long operation in their formative years and in their early were pieced together. The slubbing billy performed teens practiced operative skills like piecing before this work. As in the mule, the slubber controlled they took charge of a mule. The desirability of twisting and drafting. Children or pieceners were starting operative training early was emphasized in employed in the unskilled work of rubbing the card Arkwright mills, where ten was regarded as an op- rolls onto the ends of the slubbings. In a sixty-spintimum starting age, though this may have been dle billy the slubber required the assistance of an argument to buttress the case for child labor. ”? four pieceners, each responsible for fifteen ends. Unquestionably, adults unfamiliar with mule spin- Children who joined cardings unevenly or rubbed ning equipment would need longer than three ends too weakly so that they broke occasioned the months to learn to operate, and more than three proverbial cruelty of the slubber and were spurred

years to learn to maintain, a hand mule. with a strap or the more handy billy roller. Managing and machine-making skills in the The jenny, like the mule, had two basic moveCrompton system were identical to those in Ark- ments: the outward draw and the winding-on wright mills. Although data have not survived for motions. But with the jenny more than with the the 1780s, it may be assumed that a mule work- semipowered mule, the spinner controlled yarn

America’s Manufacturing Potential

1.10 English slubbing billy, as drawn in 1818. From the 31

feeding cloth on the left slubbings were drafted between the billy rollerC and the spindle tips on the moving carriage (on right). (Source: Rees, Cyclopaedia. Courtesy Merrimack Valley Textile Museum.)

Me .‘y. OK

} waes q— oe tal = . 8er)en 8 A a we f Qe Cc~— / i SA: 7. .ceree sh 2tsa ge ae 2 UI SH ASahaN wit nd Z om, . 0 ‘aon ee: Cal”

z OB i . :¢raAv 7\ ae > me? | » \ a “tl wy T / a po ey ° William Jenkinson, a Salford machine maker, also asserted in 1841 that spindle manufacture was almost

Constraints on the Diffusion of Technologies

68” wholly a manual operation: ‘’the man who ground techniques, the plates and verbal descriptions in the spindle could not set it true after it was ground.” __ the articles gave readers a clear view of machine de-

However, Jenkinson was referring to tapered mule signs and basic operating principles. For a waterspindles, more important to the British than the frame topography, the articles provided gear ratios

American cotton industry but essential in the and weights for rollers and calculated the draft woolen industries of both countries. His experience __ ratio, but they omitted essential technical informaof textile machinery making and especially the fact tion on spindle speeds. These data did accompany that spindle grinding and setting still remained be- the description of the water frame, but by 1812 it yond the capacities of the new machine tools led was obsolete in design, though not in principle. For Jenkinson to agree that machine making in London its successor, the throstle, Thomson gave no such was “‘more a theoretical science’ than in Manches- technical specifications. ter.°° British machine building practices thus sug- The completion of Rees’s Cyclopaedia in 1820

gested that American imitators would have to made available a large amount of information on acquire models of the new London machine tools, machine topographies, processing principles, and hire teams of specialist machine makers from Lan- general manufacturing techniques on a wide range cashire, or import key machine parts to be fitted by of textile subjects. Two articles especially pertinent

general machine makers from Britain. to cotton and woolen cloth manufacturing technolLike the patent publications, other inanimate ogy were published after 1812. That on “Weaving” sources of technical information were inadequate as_ = (May 1818), by John Duncan, the Scottish weaving

a vehicle of technology diffusion throughout the expert, briefly described the Johnson-Radcliffe period under consideration. Before 1820 the major dresser and Horrocks’s power-loom patents, mensource of technical information was Rees’s Cy- tioning the latter’s crucial variable batten motion. clopaedia, published in forty-five volumes between That on “‘Woollen Manufacture, Process of”’ (July 1802 and 1820.5” All articles relating to the textile 1818), by Robert Bakewell, a Yorkshire wool stapler industries were written by men with firsthand and author, was also well informed and accomexperience of manufacturing. James Thomson, panied by five plates. It described the operations of

a relative of the Peels and partner in the fam- the picker, carding engine, billy, jenny, woolen ily firm, who set up his own calico printing busi- mule, warping mill, fulling stocks, gig mill, Harness at Primrose near Clitheroe, wrote the two mar’s shearing frame, Lewis's helical shears, and the articles ‘‘Cotton Manufacture” and ‘Manufacture frizing machine. Both articles covered the areas of of Cotton.”” Published in May 1808 and November greatest inventive activity in the period 1813-1824 1812, respectively, these two contributions and sev- _ but appeared too early to register the major steps eral more on calico printing appearing in 1807- forward or to appreciate fully the steps already 1808, also written by Thomson, summarized the taken, judging by the short paragraph given to Hormost recent advances in cotton manufacturing rocks’s loom. In any case, the Cyclopaedia never technology. Although concealing exact operating pretended to supply processing rules to manufac-

Problems for Diffusion

turers. As its editor observed on its completion, the technologies of Britain and the United States at both 69

work was a “Scientific Dictionary | giving] under the technical level of machine design and the ecoeach distinct head of science, an historical account nomic level of mill profitability. of its rise, progress, and present state.’’ °> Refer- Cotton power-loom weaving and cotton finishing ences were given to other publications—frequently awaited a similar systematic, practical handbook the Repertory of Arts—and contributors consulted treatment until after 1840. No textbooks on woolen ‘‘the artisans and manufacturers themselves.’’ >? manufacturing appeared in Britain until after 1850. After Rees, the next significant publication was The works of Ure, like Baines’s on cotton, were Montgomery’s Carding and Spinning Master's Assis- essentially descriptive and did not provide the tant (1832). This offered an explication of much operating rules needed by managers or overlookers. representative cotton spinning technology and Americans, of course, had Partridge, but his book included processing rules, but it did not describe was outdated in the 1830s by the advent of the the latest British improvements like Bodmer’s pre- woolen mule and power loom. paratory innovations or Roberts’s self-acting mule. The publication of technical handbooks in Indeed all the most recent technology considered America was facilitated by the federal copyright law was of American origin: Arnold's fly frame differ- of 1790, which legalized the American printing of ential of 1823, George Danforth’s tube roving frame foreign works without regard to their authors’ literof 1824, Charles Danforth’s cap throstle of 1828, and _—_ary property rights.! An American edition of

the dead spindle. Rees’s Cyclopaedia was published at Philadelphia

Montgomery published a second volume, The between 1810 and 1824 (though the bibliographers Cotton Spinner’s Manual, in 1835, a year aftera seem a little uncertain of these dates).®°? As far as similar technical handbook, The Cotton Spinner’s can be judged from the addresses given by the 1,851 Companion by George Galbraith, was published American subscribers to Rees, the greatest inter(also in Glasgow). Omitting machine descriptions, est in publishing Rees existed in Massachusetts, Montgomery gave rules for calculating speeds and Pennsylvania, and Maryland, where the proportions drafts in carding and spinning equipment and for of subscribers substantially exceeded the respective calculating other necessary information such as states’ shares of the nation’s population (see table sliver or yarn size and the costs of various yarn 3.4). Regionally, northern New England exhibited numbers. A work whose “chief object is utility,” the highest interest in the ‘Scientific Dictionary,” this small book was designed for the pocket of probably reflecting the region’s strong educational carding and spinning masters, as well as ambitious traditions and the sort of cultural ethos that encouroperatives.® After he went from Scotland to New aged both the theoretical and practical approaches

England in 1836, Montgomery continued his to new knowledge for which New England’s uninote-making habit and in 1840 published his well- versities and mechanics became equally famous. known Practical Detail of the Cotton Manufacture of A few other British technical publications were

the U.S.A. In this he compared the spinning reissued in America. The second edition of John

Constraints on the Diffusion of Technologies

70 3.4 Subscribers to the American Edition of Rees’s Nicholson’s The Operative Mechanic, and British

Cyclopaedia Machinist; Being a Practical Display of the Manufacoo Sapereeen tories and Mechanical Arts of the United Kingdom Subscribers Proportion in 1820 (1825) was reprinted at Philadelphia ‘“with addi-__ tions” in 1826. Adhering to machine topographies

American U.S. Population ; oe ;

No. % No. % and general principles of processing, it was in the

Northern style of Rees and added little to it except greater

New England compactness and cheapness. °®? In cotton technology

Maine 52 2.8 298 335 3.09 one such publication was Joseph Stopford and Vermont 6 0.3 244,161 2.53 Nehemiah Gerrard’s The Cotton Manufacturer's

New Hampshire 49 2.6 235,981 2.45 Useful Assistant (1832), a collection of yarn and warp Massachusetts 323, «17.4 523,287 5.43 tables first published in Manchester.

Total 430 23.200 1,301,764 13.50 Americans became increasingly aware of the

Southern available sources for information. Thus among the

New England business receipts of Jacob Wendell, a Portsmouth,

Rhode Island 11 0.59 83,059 0.86 New Hampshire, entrepreneur, there is one for five Connecticut 16 0.86 275,248 2.86 dollars (dated April 16, 1816) for the second number Total 27 1.46 358,307 3.72. of Gregory’s Dictionary of Arts and Sciences. The

Middle states ; ; New Jersey 33 1.78 277,575 2.88 ; ; oe

Pantologia: A Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, edited

by Olinthus G. Gregory, was completed in twelve New York 233 12.6 1,372,812 14.2 . 4 . volumes in 1813.° Particularly novel was the par-

Total 266 4=6«14.4~—=«1.650387 «17.12 tially deceitful citation of an English publication by

p vani 355 19.2 1049458 10.9 New England mechanics in their attempt to evade

ennsyivania von’ Moody’s dressing0.75 machine patent of 1818. In ‘“‘speDelaware 11 0.59 72,749 . ” cial matter,”’ September Total 366 19.8 1,122,207lodged 11.6 . 15, 1820, the defendants, Jonathan Fisk et al., claimed that Moody’s

Maryland cae 407,350 4.23 dresser “had been used in England . . . & had been

Other described in the public works following (that is to South and West 531 28.7 4,798,438 49.8 say in the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia & in Rees

Location unstated 1 Cyclopaedia and in the Repertory of Arts.)’’®> But

Abroad 8 Johnson’s dresser patents were never published in Totals 1851 100 9,638,453 99.97 the Repertory of Arts. William Radcliffe, the inoS ——. _ ventor of this dresser, not only used Johnson’s Source: Rees, Cyclopaedia, vol. 46, “Ancient and Modern name to conceal his own interest in the invention Atlas” (1824?) (cited in Shaw and Shoemaker, American but also prevailed upon the editor of the Repertory

Bibliography, pp. 65-66). to forgo publication of these dresser patents.

Problems for Diffuston

3.9 Powered hand shears for shearing the nap on woolen cloth, as depicted in 1818. Patented in Britain in a more complex form in 1787 and 1794 by John Harmar, an Independent minister of Sheffield, Yorkshire, this compro-

AE» mise between manual and mechanized-rotary shearing

= = Sa was favored in Yorkshire mills until the 1820s. (Source: Se Ss a eee ag Rees, Cyclopaedia. Courtesy Merrimack Valley Textile

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Constraints on the Diffusion of Technologies

7! By the 1820s, Americans had a selection of their on the book as ’’a pretty thin potion.”’ 7° Its man-

own manufacturing and engineering textbooks. ufacturing chapter reads like a précis of Rees or Samuel Ogden, the immigrant Rhode Island Nicholson, and the section on mechanisms misses machine maker and cotton manufacturer, proposed Arnold's differential. Also in 1829, Zachariah Allen, publishing his manuscript essays on cotton spin- the Rhode Island manufacturer, published his Scining in 1814. He envisaged a four-hundred-page ence of Mechanics, a work more surely rooted in

volume selling at $2.50 a copy, in which “‘much val- practical experience but still more concerned with uable information would be laid open.’’®* Evidently |= mechanical principles than with the rules and de-

he found few sponsors, for the work never ap- tails of manufacturing methods. peared. The following year, however, Ogden did

publish a thirty-nine-page pamphlet in which he British cotton and woolen manufacturing techemphasized the importance of delegating more ex- nologies in themselves therefore posed several ecutive power to the mill manager and of managers problems for American borrowers: they were unexercising much closer control over their produc- dergoing increasingly rapid modification; these tion systems through weighing, reeling, timing, modifications were made in directions frequently

personally inspecting, clearly instructing, and inappropriate to American circumstances, espe-

using piecework.°’ cially concerning product market situation and facIn the 1820s, the Franklin Journal of Philadelphia tor endowment; and the technologies were not pioneered in publishing British patents. Its first completely described, in objective terms and to the volume (1826) included a few English patent spec- extent of processing rules, in either British or ifications. In its first years the journal also printed American publications until after 1830. Americans lists of British patents recently enrolled. To give therefore were compelled to select from and then practical help to its readers, articles by Peter A. modify the British technologies to suit their own Browne (a prominent member of the Philadelphia circumstances. The limits of published technical bar) on British and American patent law under the information forced Americans to rely more on imtitle ““Mechanical Jurisprudence” appeared in the migrant artisans than on any other method of

early volumes. transferring the technologies. But British artisans

Oliver Evans’s The Young Mill-Wright and Miller's also presented drawbacks to American entrepreGuide (1795) was revised for its fifth edition in 1826 neurs: Commingled in America, British workers by British-born Thomas P. Jones, editor of the would bring diverse regional technological tradiFranklin Institute Journal.®? Three years later, two tions into conflict, causing confusion; immigrant more introductory texts on mechanics appeared. workers from the preindustrial trades of hand-loom Jacob Bigelow, a Harvard professor, published his weaving and calico printing were likely to impart Rumford lectures as Elements of Technology (1829). A _ resistance to technological change; and in machine close inspection of the sections on machinery and making they might not be as cheap as the new textile manufacturing confirms Ferguson’s verdict machine tools or key parts imported from Britain.

ae Diffusion of the Technologies: The First Three Stages

Introduction An examination of the constraints on international

diffusion points to the emigrant British artisan as the best available carrier of the new textile technologies in this early industrial period. Ascertaining whether and how he fulfilled this potential occupies parts II and III of this book. Part II explores the transfer of four different textile technologies to the United States: machine spinning, power-loom weaving and mechanized calico printing in cotton manufacturing, and newly mechanized techniques in woolen manufacturing. They represent the most radical technical developments in British textile manufacturing to reach America during this period. Cotton rather than wool predominated because the structure and properties of its fiber, above all others except the far more expensive silk fiber, yielded most readily to the application of mechanical processing techniques. From these case studies, the roles of individual immigrants and of other agents of technical diffusion come into sharper focus. So too do the conditions in which the initial stages of diffusion occurred. In attempting to discover how institutional and technical obstacles to transfer in Britain and the prob-

lems of small markets and high capital and labor costs in America were surmounted, part II employs a stage analysis of each of the four technologies. When the stages are defined carefully, valid comparisons can be made and conclusions drawn about the nature of technology diffusion in a developing economy. As the introduction to this book indicates, the first stage consisted in the creation of the potential for international transfer. The buildup in America of the various carriers or vehicles—skilled immigrants, machine models, plans, verbal

Introduction

descriptions—just prior to the launching of pilot wrongly) that Samuel Slater typified all British tex- 78

production lines marked the completion of this tile workers arriving in America in the early indusstage. Pilot production, usually in mills or factories trial period. Making the commonplace distinction but for some wool machines also in workshops, between the individual and the group, therefore, constituted the achievement of the second stage. part III establishes the size and composition of This stage therefore deals with the first known and aggregate immigration into the United States from commercially successful manufacturing operations Britain’s textile industries, and assesses its contriin America to use the technology in question. De- bution to the growth of early nineteenth-century monstrable profitability and local acceptance led American cotton and woolen manufacturing. other manufacturers to copy the technology of the pilot firms, and so the third stage, internal spread or diffusion, unfolded. For various reasons the internal spread of a new technology might be aborted or delayed. Calico printing technology diffusion experienced such a delay. In this case, therefore, those firms that next followed the pilot firm, but, unlike it, activated the internal spread ofa new technology through a region or industry, have also been regarded as pilot firms. As such they have been used to provide evidence of the first stage of diffusion. When Americans became familiar with the imported technologies, and this might happen simultaneously with or subsequently to the second or third stages, they made modifications to the imported technologies to suit their own economic, social, or technical circumstances. This fourth stage of modification invariably left behind the immigrant artisan, who generally adhered to the technical patterns with which he had grown up in Britain. Consequently the fourth diffusion stage is treated separately in part IV of the book. Part III looks at the role of immigrant workers in technology diffusion from a fresh angle. Immigrants as individuals might have an impact very different from, even the reverse of, immigrants collectively. Certainly it is easy to imagine (quite

4 The crucial importance of builder the inmanager and machine the Arkwright system and of the operative in the Crompton system, heightened before

The Diffusion of New Cotton 1812 by the absence of published accounts of the Spinn IN Technology, 1790-1812 two spinning technologies, could not be sur-

mounted by importing machines without men. At Philadelphia a disassembled spinning mule confounded interested parties for four years and was eventually shipped back to Britain in 1787, leaving Philadelphians none the wiser but angrier. In New England three Arkwright machines, apparently imperfect models, for carding, roving, and spinning were built by two Scotsmen in 1787 for public exhibition but defied commercial exploitation until Slater arrived three years later. ! The late 1780s and early 1790s saw numerous efforts by Americans both to obtain workable models of the new machines and to recruit machine makers and managers. From Philadelphia, the federal capital from 1790 to 1800, emanated the most vigorous endeavors, several of which were linked with Hamilton and his assistant at the Treasury, Tench Coxe. In 1787 Coxe sent an agent, Andrew Mitchell (an expatriate Englishman), to England to procure models and patterns of Arkwright’s machinery, but Mitchell was caught and his haul confiscated. Undaunted, Coxe recruited George Parkinson, an English mechanic and mill foreman, and encouraged him to patent a flax spinning machine, probably derived from the water-frame design.” Another member of the Pennsylvania Society, the Philadelphia merchant William Bingham, explored the possibility of importing Arkwright machinery from France. Through Jefferson he obtained a price quotation from John Milne, a Lancashire cotton manu-

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4.2 Flat-top finisher cotton card used by Samuel Slater in crear Ea i

Rhode Island and dated to the 1790s. The similarities _ . ~~,

between Slater’s design and English models are evident , 7 ' when one compares this with illustration 1.2. (Courtesy 7 an 7

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National Museum of History and Technology, Smith- ) -- | a a sonian Institution, Washington, D.C.) : ; a Pt 1

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‘ tiosere ) ' g tie Ai ee a are wed oe Pie ag oe Se Ss a { Bee ee a Posi : . SR ee a "af SEE*2; ee acedille Sg epee: ma Be5.2s? Bogle’s annual salary was around Sailing cabin class with him on the Emerald from £300.33 In addition, Porter hired J. F. Street, an en- Liverpool were Prince, traveling as a ‘‘gentleman,”’ graver; Joseph Lawton, a designer; Thomas Lons- and his family (a thirty-four-year-old wife, six sons,

Diffusion of New Calico Printing Technology

6.3 Rotary calico printing machinery, 1836. This Ameri- 113

can print from White, Slater, clearly derived from a British one published a year earlier in Baines, Cotton Manufacture. In both, the mill interiors, equipment, sex and posture of operatives, and print cloth designs are identical. The only difference is that British operatives are shown dressed in knee-length breeches while American operatives are given trousers, a symbol perhaps of American democracy. (Courtesy Merrimack Valley Textile Museum.)

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The First Three Stages

14. and two daughters); Richard Worswick (thirty), de- mation about rates of pay, capital equipment, and

scribed as a turner but in fact an engraver, presum- product specifications.4? Why these workers were ably from the Manchester engraving firm of this obliged to Greenhalgh was unclear; perhaps his name, and his wife and son; Stephen Dickinson Methodist connection linked them together, or (forty), single, a block cutter; and Edward Payne perhaps they emigrated asa calico printing team. By (forty), a calico printer, and his wife. Among the December 1826 the Dover company had one desteerage passengers were a pattern drawer (William signer, two cutters, six printers, one machine Paul), three calico printers, and two engravers. In printer, and four other calico finishers, all from addition, Thomas Slater, who later entered the Mer- Thomson & Chippendale’s Primrose Printworks rimack printworks’ engraving department, also near Clitheroe, Lancashire, from whence traveled on the Emerald but went steerage and was Greenhalgh presumably originated. Significantly, described in the passenger list as a “letter press this factory was a leader in the Lancashire cotton

printer.’’ 38 industry; and one of its founders, James Thomson, While trusted agents became the major method had written articles for Rees’s Cyclopaedia.*3 by which the new calico printing technology was Once a technological potential was acquired, introduced to New England, a fresh influx of immi- prototype production lines were relatively easy to grant calico printers in 1826-1827 also supported establish. The basic complementary industrial the transfer. News of opportunities in New En- structures in factory spinning and weaving, with gland coincided both with the freeing of emigration their resources of capital, mill management, labor in 1824 and a 50 percent fall in Lancashire calico organization, and machine shops, already existed. printers’ wages between 1822 and 1825.7? No research and development costs were entailed At Dover one of the first of these unexpected arri- because the technology already existed in England. vals in 1826 was Thomas Greenhalgh. Aged thirty- In financial and organizational terms, the addition five, he arrived at Boston at the end of April witha of calico printing was no more than a grafting operforty-two-year-old wife and four children underthe _ ation, at least for the Waltham system or larger mills age of ten.4° Evidently he went straight to Doverfor — in the favorable economic conditions of the 1820s he was there within five days of landing at Boston. and 1830s. At the levels of technology, marketing,

Within a week the company agent sent him to and labor relations, however, a number of problems southern Massachusetts to collect “‘the people confronted managers engaged in adding calico who gave you the promise of their services before printworks to their mills. you left England.”’41 Williams directed Greenhalgh One fundamental technical problem related to the to bring fellow workers from Fall River and Taun- choice of yarn for print cloth. The British example in ton before they were engaged and not to stop short moving up-market with the production of finer of labor piracy and industrial espionage. A ‘‘good yarns looked hard to resist since finer yarns, made block cutter and a first rate designer” were to be se- on mules, permitted the manufacture of more delicured, as was valuable economic and technical infor- cate prints. When Kirk Boott was in England in

Diffusion of New Calico Printing Technology

1827, he found mule spinning “universal” and throstles was largely dictated by the American labor 475

heard “on all sides, that we shall never make cloth, situation, and strengthened by improvement in with water twist, suitable for printing.’’44 Yet the throstle spindle productivity. John Williams, agent Merrimack and other New England mills succeeded of the Dover Company, noted in 1827 that English in printing on cloth made from water- or throstle- mule technology meant ‘‘dependence on a set of

spun yarn. foreign mule spinners till we can instruct others.’’ 48

English manufacturers cannot have been doubt- And immigrant mule spinners were notoriously ful about the capacity of throstles to spin middling militant before the perfection and eventual introyarns. Montgomery, the Scottish manufacturer, re- duction of the self-actor.*? ported that throstles could spin as high as number Also, at the technical level, there arose some con50, provided that they used better cotton.*> So fusion, but not from the intermingling of immiAmerican success may have rested on their com- grant workers, for all came from Lancashire (as far parative advantage with regard to the supply of as can be ascertained) and the cotton industry was cotton. There is another possibility. Mule-spun technically more homogeneous than was the woolen. yarns were more uniform than were throstle yarns, Instead differences between British and American and uniformity of yarn was obviously important in dyestuffs terminologies flummoxed and misled printing; without it, exact and regular definition in American managers. This problem surfaces occarepeat patterns, especially those with fine lines, sionally in agents’ letterbooks; for example, Greenwas impossible. The agent of the Ware Manufac- halgh, printery overseer, was asked whether there turing Company, of Ware, Massachusetts, told his were other names for peachwood (he replied that Boston selling agents in 1829 that it was not in the camwood and peachwood were the same).°° Difinterest of the company “‘to attempt the printing ferences in nomenclature are more evident in the cloth. At present our machinery is not in order to workbooks of Samuel Dunster, one of the American spin No. 35. We are at this time to work improving apprentices hired in the late 1820s.5! the machinery and hope by and by to make even The numerous machine-level technical problems, yarn. Then it may be for our interest to attempt the particularly relating to the chemical quality control printing cloth.’’*° Manufacturers at Lowell im- aspects of calico printing, have been considered proved the uniformity of their throstle-spun yarns elsewhere; so too have the design problems Ameriby using stretchers, presumably of the throstle cans encountered.>? Here the difficulty lay in origtype. Both the Merrimack and Hamilton companies inating and executing salable designs. Immigrant had stretchers by 1830. Whether it was because of Englishmen were one source of new designs. The better cotton, or the use of stretchers, or a finishing European visits of Richmond, Porter, and Boott technique prior to printing, New England cotton must also have brought fresh ideas. And imported manufacturers succeeded at a technical level where cylinder shells, already engraved, were another.

their English rivals predicted failure.*’ Once the New England pilot firms acquired the The Waltham-system printers’ preference for technical capacity previously possessed only by the

The First Three Stages

16 Philadelphia calico printing firm, internal diffusion continuing influx of skilled immigrant printers,

soon followed. Compared withthePhiladelphiapilot the training of print managers under Prince (who, firm, the New England companies received greater unlike Yates and the Dover immigrant overseers, injections of capital and enjoyed a longer period of achieved distinction and longevity in his position), business expansion. More immediate considera- and the interlocking directorates and specialized tions made calico printing an attractive proposition machine shops at Lowell all facilitated the extension

to investors in textile manufacturing. of the center’s calico printing capacity. The profitability of calico printing with the new The case of the Hamilton Manufacturing Comtechnology was the major incentive. The Merrimack pany at Lowell illustrates some of these general-

Company’s earnings averaged 14 percent of net izations. The Hamilton started in 1826 with two worth per year between 1828 and 1835, the best for mills, one spinning number 20 yarn for twilled the period, and they remained among the highest stripes and stout bleaching and the other numbers in the antebellum period. Print prices did not fall as 40 to 44 for dimity or fine jean.5° By October 1827 fast as did sheeting prices, as table 6.1 shows.*? falling cotton and cotton cloth prices led the comIn addition, the trade depression of 1829 gave a pany treasurer to inform the stockholders: ‘The fine new fillip to colored goods since a number of com- goods which we made are found to be worth very panies switched to this line to bolster profit mar- little more than those of a coarser description and gins. At this point the Hamilton Company at Lowell — costing much more; it was thought expedient to added calico printing to its production line. So did change one half of Mill No. 1 in which we spun No. other cotton mills in the vicinity of Boston and 40 yarn to the same coarseness as the other half, of

Providence.** No. 22... . From the experiments we have made we

By 1831-1832, three of New England’s major are satisfied, that to make the most of our estabcalico printing centers turned out nearly 20 million lishment we must have a large proportion of our yards of prints: at Lowell, 90 percent of the Merri- goods printed.”’5” He went on to report that conmack and Hamilton companies combined produc- tracting the printing to other firms (which included tion of 10.1 million yards; at Fall River 4.4 million the Dover Company) was fraught with ‘“much trouyards; and at Taunton 6.3 million yards. Patrick ble, and we are subject to pay others a large profit Tracy Jackson, the Boston Manufacturing Com- on the printing.’”’ The stockholders approved his pany’s agent, estimated in 1831 that aggregate an- decision to set up a printworks, a dye house (to dye nual American output was 25 million yards. Under yarns for stripes), and a bleachery (to bleach yarns

the protection of the 1833 tariff, this figure was and cloth). quadrupled by 1843; at that date 100 million yards Land and water power were purchased from of prints amounted to more than a quarter of the Proprietors of the Locks and Canals, whose

Britain’s printed-goods exports.°*° machine shop built the equipment, estimated to The actual process of diffusion among firms can- cost $50,000. In January 1831 the company’s print

not have caused much difficulty at Lowell. The and bleachworks, with gearing and fixtures, was

Diffusion of New Calico Printing Technology

valued at $49,000; its machinery at nearly $13,000; influence may be seen & felt long after such persons 447

its padding and dye house at $5,600; its beetling have left it.“”©* The migratory habits of immigrant machine and house at $2,000; and its dye house at English workers suggest that other American mill $1,500.58 Certainly some of its equipment came managers would have met the same problem. from the Merrimack Company. A company waste book records the payment of $1,715.48 to its sister company for doctors, rollers, files, engraving

rollers, turning rollers, and the use of calender patterns.°? The Hamilton Company also made payments to England for printing and bleaching apparatus, the interest on which to April 9 was $39.72.©° More than likely it imported engraved and plain shells for its printing machines, the former to supplement its range of print patterns and reduce designing and engraving costs. These could be especially heavy, but perhaps less so in America than in Europe where the dictates of fashion were more frequently changing. One Manchester calico printer spent £5,000 on the design of three thousand patterns and the engraving of five hundred in one year (1833) alone.®!

The indispensable ingredient of diffusion, the training of indigenous workers, occasioned great difficulty at Dover. Williams, the agent, struggled against attitudes of secretiveness each time a key immigrant worker arrived. For the Dover management, it was essential to overcome immigrant secretiveness about technical matters. In England it might be tolerated because the most skilled were more permanently employed than in the States. But a higher social and geographical mobility in America demanded the institutionalization of knowledge, a crucial point of which Williams was shrewdly aware: “It is highly important that the knowledge & experience which every person brings to the institution should be retained by it that its

Americans made relatively few efforts to acquire the / appropriate skills for establishing the new woolen

technology. This was not altogether surprising, for

The Diffusion of New Woolen the profits in cotton manufacturing appeared fo Manufactu ring Technology, greater and the first effort to establish the woolen

1790-1830 technology at Hartford, Connecticut, encountered unexpected difficulties. American recruiting activities apparently extended no further than U.S. ports, which in 1787 Tench Coxe urged his fellow improvers to visit in order to meet disembarking immigrant artisans.! The introduction of the new technology was dependent on the state of the woolen trade in Britain, or rather Yorkshire, where the most capitalintensive technology was established. But most Yorkshire clothiers enjoyed expansive conditions between 1775 and 1790. Their adoption of the new carding and spinning machinery gave them an increasing share of British woolen cloth exports, which doubled in value over this period.? Another factor handicapped the transfer of woolen technology: in contrast to Arkwright spinning technology, woolen technology in the 1790s hinged on the presence of a range of skilled workers. The combination of these circumstances evidently delayed the introduction of woolen carding technology until 1793-1794. At Hartford, in 1788, Colonel Jeremiah Wadsworth succeeded in hiring only English army deserters and ex-prisoners of war with textile-trades experience. That experience was already outdated when Wadsworth organized his manufactory by the improvement of the carding engine and the appearance of the billy. An American manager at Hartford complained of his English workers’ trying wild experiments in efforts to

Diffusion of New Woolen Manufacturing Technology

catch up with technological changes in Britain.? one of the brothers while still in Yorkshire. Calcu- 719 One immigrant woolen manufacturer, Samuel lations for their cheaper cloths, retailing at three to

Mayall, reportedly arrived at Boston in 1788 or 1789 four shillings a yard and under, showed an expected and set up a wool carding machine on Bunker Hill. profit of up to three pounds eight shillings per piece For unknown reasons he departed in 1791-1792 to of forty yards. But for more expensive and better Gray, Maine, over 120 miles north of Boston. Most cloths, retailing at six shillings a yard, they incurred likely, he found an alliance with household manu- a discount charge of up totwo shillings and sixpencea

factures easier to maintain in the rural outback yard, imposed by the merchant who transferred the

than in Boston. cloths to more distant markets, including America.

Only a very close examination of conditions in Consequently the Scholfields’ profits on more exYorkshire will show the influences that drove some pensive cloths were little different, and sometimes men and families to emigrate in the 1790s. Few left less, than on their cheaper goods. Thus the move to the West Riding, where trade continued to expand, Boston could well have been an attempt to bypass with setbacks only in 1793-1794. But with far- distribution costs and sell more directly to New reaching consequences one family, the Scholfields, England consumers of fine cloths.® left Yorkshire for the United States in spring 1793. The Scholfields’ migration in the 1790s was not Looking back in 1810, John Scholfield wrote, “At an isolated one. With the clothier brothers, Arthur the time I left England I dreaded the consequence of _— (aged thirty-six) and John Scholfield (thirty-five) so hasty a move, but I have had no reason to reflect —and John’s wife and six children—went John on it since.’’> Expectation of diminishing opportu- Shaw, a spinner and weaver.’ In the 1790s too John nities seems to have played a part in their move. Mayall left Yorkshire to join his brother at Gray, Their clothier father had seven sons, all of whom Maine. At Newburyport, Massachusetts, in the potentially competed for local openings. And, in 1790s, the Scholfields attracted other English immithe area where the Scholfields lived, on the border grant workers to the factory, including three other between the West Riding and Lancashire, the cot- brothers. !°

ton industry was displacing some woolen manu- There is other evidence that the transatlantic facturers in the 1790s.° The outbreak of the Euro- movement of the new woolen technology was left pean war in 1793 could well have tipped the balance —_ almost entirely to small Yorkshire manufacturers.

in favor of emigration that spring. In August their Henry Wansey, a Salisbury gentlemen clothier father wrote to them in Boston, reporting that in and pioneer West of England user of the carding Yorkshire “trade of all sorts are very bad and pro- machine and jenny in the early 1790s, reflected the vishons of all sorts very dear. Things are strangely position of his fellow clothiers in 1796 when he

altered sins the [sic] left England.’’’ published a very pessimistic view of manufacturing Another possible reason for the Scholfields’ mi- prospects in the United States. It was based ona gration emerges from an examination of the cost tour of the country between Boston and Philadeland profit calculations recorded in a notebook by phia in 1794. Twice he was invited to settle and start

The First Three Stages

20 woolen manufacturing. In Philadelphia the Virginia — 1799-1800 John Mayall, Samuel's brother, was in congressman Colonel Josiah Parker asked him to Boston, and the Scholfields used him to purchase set up woolen manufacturing at Norfolk, Virginia, mill supplies. '4 where he might have “‘the work of slaves for almost The Scholfields had other assets besides their nothing” (the italics clearly expressed the liberal combined trade skills. Their kin group and young Wansey’s shock and disgust).'! Earlier on his tour children represented the greater reliability of a he met Wadsworth who made ‘‘very handsome more effective channel of transfer. And this was not offers” to induce Wansey to settle near Hartford. merely a matter of inspiring confidence in members Wansey declined them: ‘‘Many objections occur to of the host community. Dependents helped to brace me: besides the giving up the society and friends I the will to work and succeed. After a few months, am used to, a concern of this kind would require when they moved north of Boston, a distintwice the exertion and fatigue, and twice the capi- guished New England clergyman, the Reverend Dr. tal; and certainly, were I resolved to leave this Jedediah Morse, gave them a certificate or testimocountry... there are many other concerns to be nial, dated November 22, 1793, for them to take to engaged in, equally profitable, without half the Newburyport, which read in part, “since May last capital, or a quarter of the trouble and exertion.” !” ... they have conducted [their business] like William Partridge, a Gloucestershire dyer who honest, ingenious, industrious men.” '°

emigrated in 1808 and stayed in the American Far more mobile, and perhaps unreliable, was the woolen industry until after 1850, claimed in 1823 solitary carrier of technology. James Douglas, a nathat he knew of only four West of England woolen tive of Dumfriesshire and a machinist, was one of manufacturers in the United States.'? There were these. He moved first to Ireland where he worked in more, but his firsthand knowledge of both trade a woolen mill and then, in about 1792 or 1793, emiand immigrants reliably indicates America’s de- grated to Philadelphia. Here he introduced the gig pendence on the Yorkshire industry for the poten- mill and invented or introduced designs for a cloth

tial to develop the new woolen technology. shearing machine, a water-powered loom, anda Besides the influence of the Yorkshire industry brick-making machine. To be fair, part of his failure on the timing of the transfer, the crucial labor ele- to make a lasting adaptation to America arose from ments (card machine builders, spinning operatives, the patronage he secured in Philadelphia: the and supplementary finishing workers) meant that British consul, Phineas Bond, persuaded him to isolated workers, such as Mayall, would find it very return to England in 1797.'¢ difficult to set up the technology in America. The Given the unpromising start of low American optimum was a team of workers. This the Schol- interest in woolen technology the Scholfields asfields provided. The brothers may have perceived tutely used their capital and labor resources to esthe need to emigrate as a team, or they may have tablish themselves as a pilot manufacturing firm in been guided by unrelated motives. It is not impos- America. One outstanding feature of their early sible that they also knew Mayall at this point; in months in the United States was the cautious man-

Diffusion of New Woolen Manufacturing Technology

ner in which they established and consolidated 6d. a yard but sold for slightly less (perhaps for 497

their position. They set themselves up at Charles- cash) at £16 6s. on October 28, 1793. In this manner town, Massachusetts, as a household carding, they avoided the middleman’s charges of over 30 spinning, and weaving unit, demonstrating their percent of the wholesale price. Compared with imskill and establishing a reputation. With very little ports, the selling price was moderate. Superfine 7/4 capital (presumably only their combined savings) cloths were imported from Britain at 18s. to 19s. a they were in business within four months. A run- yard and sold in Philadelphia for 40s. to 45s. a yard ning account started by the partners on June 20, between 1791 and 1805. '8 1793, shows expenditures amounting to £112 3s. Impressed by their potential, Dr. Jedediah Morse, 7¥/2d. by December 1, 1793, the date they left minister of the First Congregational Church at Charlestown. Of this sum £71 3s. 6d. was spent on Charlestown, pesuaded his friend William Bartraw wool, purchased from nearby Watertown. The lett, a wealthy Newburyport merchant, to support rest was expended on tools, materials for machine an expansion of the Scholfields’ operations from making, and manufacturing supplies like oil. Evi- household to carding mill-workshop. This prodently they made no attempt to smuggle tools or vided the greater capital demanded by an increase equipment out of England. Files, planes, chisels, a in scale and the application of power. In December saw, a Vise, pliers, an auger, and a rule were pur- 1793 the partners left for Newburyport, taking chased locally in Charlestown or Boston. So too their tools and equipment with them. The followwere lumber, nails and screws, brass and iron wire, ing month, on the basis of enthusiasm generated iron for the shuttle ends, cane for reeds, and cord- by the construction of a prototype card in a local ing for harnesses. With these traditional tools and stable, the Newburyport Woolen Manufactory these commonplace materials, the partners made a was incorporated by the state of Massachusetts forty-spindle jenny, warping bars, and a loom, all with an authorized capital of £90,000. A factory completed on August 4 at a labor charge to the ac- building, three stories high and measuring one count of £12 3s. A few accessories came from local hundred feet long by forty feet wide, was built at specialists: a reed, a reedstock (partly made by a Byfield (about five miles inland from Newburyport) smith), and a pair of hand cards. When the Schol- on the Parker River to house the carding mill and fields closed their first account on January 27, 1794, spinning, weaving, and finishing workshops. !° £140 13s. 7Y2d. had been spent on tools and mate- The carding equipment at Newburyport was rials, and £86 18s. 61/2d. was debited for spinning built by immigrant labor. After the original partand weaving, work credited to stock. An income of ners assembled the prototype single cylinder, hand£155 5s. came from sales of cloth and stock in hand, powered card and set up the jenny and loom they leaving £72 7s. 2d., which the partners regarded asa _ brought from Charlestown, two more carding en-

credit balance. ’’ gines were constructed for the mill. Presumably

The first cloth they made was a twenty-four-and- based on Yorkshire multiroller models, they were a-quarter-yard broadcloth, which they rated at 14s. attributed to James Standring, Samuel Guppy (from

The First Three Stages

22. a family of Bristol metal merchants), and John War- (May 7, 1794). Most likely this was Thomas Ken-

ren Armstrong (a Wiltshire clothier), no doubt di- worthy, the immigrant spinner who reached Boston

rected by the Scholfields.?° in 1789 and for whom Moses Brown and William

The Scholfields’ card was different from that Almy, on hearing of his arrival from a Scottish imused by Wadsworth at Hartford. The design of the migrant weaver, sent a horse and chaise to bring two Hartford cards, built by a local general builder him to Providence. Kenworthy’s activities at Newin spring 1793, earned the derision of Wansey. He buryport are unknown, but in 1801-1802 he rethought them “of the oldest fashion. Two large newed his acquaintance with the Scholfields after centre cylinders in each, with two doffers and only running away from a British man-o’-war in New two working cylinders, of the breadth of bare six- Orleans.** Another was Abraham Taylor, who emteen inches, said to be invented by some person igrated in 1797 at the age of nineteen. When the there.’’?! The use of only one worker with the main Scholfields left Newburyport for Connecticut in cylinder or swift severely reduced the machine’s ef- 1798, he went with them. By the War of 1812, howficiency; the carding action would occur at only one ever, Taylor was back at Byfield as a woolen manupoint on the swift’s surface. The Scholfield card facturer with five in his family.?> One hint that remedied this by employing a number of small cyl- other workers besides Taylor and two other Scholinders (workers and clearers) over the main cylin- field brothers (Isaac, who emigrated in 1794, and der, asin England. In fact the Scholfield-Standring James, who came later) were at Newburyport is card design is well established from surviving mod- _—_ found in the Scholfield correspondence. After John

els in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Mu- and Arthur Scholfield left for Connecticut, John seum of History and Technology and the William Taylor (perhaps related to Abraham) wrote:

man Memorial vicodin ide mare enn Mr. Bartlett was up here this morning and informed NES patent 0 7, WNIC INCIUGES a ano us that the owners of this factory had agreed to

Old Engine.” This drawing shows a frame construc- carry it on another year with the present stock (viz.) tion and roller deployment (three workers over a 7000 Doll. so that the few that we left (viz.) Leach, swift) identical almost to those of the artifacts. 2 Lees, James Hall, your brother [Isaac], Hill, SanderThe Scholfields also introduced the billy at Byfield. son and I may have imploy. . . . [Brother James exIn 1798 they purchased an axletree for a billy for 9s. pects to meet John and Arthur Scholfield at Rygate]. Two undated plans of a billy in the Scholfield pa- ... We have no news from old England but expect pers show a machine very similar to that used in

:; ae ; some every post.

Britain’s cotton and woolen industries before The Scholfields established themselves cau-

1812.23 tiously, relied upon American merchants for capi-

Fellow immigrants assisted the Scholfields in the tal to set up a mill-workshop operation, and did operation as well as the construction of the New- not attempt manufacturing independence for a buryport manufactory. One was Thomas Kenwor- few years. In this adaptation they were remarkably thy, who received a single payment of £3 12s. 6d. like Samuel Slater. At the technological level too,

Diffusion of New Woolen Manufacturing Technology

the Scholfields’ behavior was similar to Slater's. I have been at a stand what to do about it for they 493

They did not stray from the technology with which are setting up Machienes all round me but have fithey grew up in England. Fortunately for them, its nally concluded to have one. Standring & Gukins basic shape remained unchanged throughout their 47€ Spreading all over the Country. They have lifetime. The caution paid off. Savings enabled Ar- secured almost every stand that is good for any pare 5 thing in the western part of New Hampshire, Verthur (and perhaps John) to invest in land in Ver- mont, Massachusetts & New York state as far as mont. And although the late 1790s saw other textile Whitestown: They reserve a part in almost all the

. g e western part of New Hampshire, Ver

manufacturing companies in difficulty (includ- Machienes they make.??

ing the Newburyport one), Arthur and John had enough savings to set up on their own at Montville, The Standring involved was possibly James StanConnecticut, in 1798. Furthermore another brother, dring, the English immigrant who built the Byfield Joseph, saved enough at Newburyport in the 1790s carding machine under the Scholfields’ direction to return home in January 1799 and to pay off his in 1794. Or it may have been Benjamin Standring creditors (from whom he may have fled), getting (perhaps a relation), who obtained an American card “the praise of all the Countrey Round a Bout.” 2’ patent in 1803. Another clue to the identity of the At the third stage of technology diffusion, woolen — Standrings involved in carding technology comes carding and spinning machinery spread in much from the artifact evidence. The Scholfield-type card the same way as did cotton spinning technology, at Harrisburg has two doffer comb blades with “E.

through kin and trade networks. Hitherto the Standring Newburgh N.Y.” stamped on them. role of the Scholfield brothers has been hailed They were not the original blades, however; on reas preeminently important in diffusing industrial moving one, I found old screw holes underneath. woolen technology through New England. How- The “E” could be an ill-formed “B.” Standring’s ever, their surviving papers suggest that they were partner was probably Richard Gookins, who took not the only agents of technology diffusion. Arthur out a U.S. patent in 1806 for ““machine for making Scholfield, the only brother to move from man- bats or frames for wool hats” and, like an itinerant ufacturing to machine making, started building mechanic, gave his address as ‘New Hampshire, carding machines soon after he went to Pittsfield, Massachusetts.” 3° Massachusetts, in 1801. In 1805 he charged $150 per The Scholfields’ rivals perceived profits in the sale card, excluding clothing (which cost $40 locally and of carding machines to local mill operators. This nearly $90 in Boston), and $40 per picker. In sum- perception was based on the high productivity of mer 1807, his orders amounted to twenty-two cards, — the Scholfields’ card, though the higher efficiency

besides pickers, valued at $1,500.78 of the machine card was not immediately reflected Two rival carding-machine makers, Standring in a fall in the cost of carding one pound of wool. and Gookins, spread the new English woolen card In 1793 the Scholfields at Charlestown rated their through New England in 1802. Arthur Scholfield hand carding at between fourpence and fivepence

told his brother in November that year: (equivalent to eight to ten cents) a pound; in 1801

. The First Three Stages

124 |

4 he os _

& os - : mo ) a

. | f. |

7.1 Single-main-roller woolen carding machine, included in the drawings for a British patent of 1804 and then described as “Plan of Old Engine.” It closely resembles the typical English woolen card of 1818 (see illustration 1.8). Here the feeding cloth is at the right-hand end of the machine. (G.B. patent 2766; courtesy Boston Public Library.)

Diffusion of New Woolen Manufacturing Technology

7.2 Single-main-roller woolen carding machine witha 125 thirty-inch-wide feed, built by the Scholfields ca. 1790s— 1820. The feeding cloth is at the left-hand end of the

machine. Comparison with illustration 7.1 confirms that the Scholfield card was a very close copy of the English carding machines of the 1790s. (At National Museum of

History and Technology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; photo by author.)

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The First Three Stages

D6 Arthur Scholfield charged twelve and a half cents a Montville where he was dressing cloth and likely to pound for machine carding at Pittsfield. Competi- take over from his father, John, Sr., who was runtion from other cards did, however, bring down the ning another mill at Stonington. When John, Sr., price of carding a pound of wool to under ten cents wrote his will in 1819, he had three manufacturing by 1802. The immediate advantage of the Scholfield establishments, all in Connecticut, at Montville, card was the 50 percent increase it permitted in the Waterford, and Stonington, and interests in a grist handspinner’s productivity. If she carded her own mill and sawmill at Stonington.34 Besides carding wool, a woman at home could spin four skeins machinery, the Scholfields later set up other im(each of seven knots, 560 yards long) a day; if the proved woolen equipment. The first woolen jack wool were machine carded, she could spin six in the United States was built by James Scholfield

skeins a day.°! after he moved to North Andover in 1802.35

Small operators of rival grist or fulling mills saw a Much slower was the diffusion of the woolen chance to increase their income with the addition of | manufactory form (carding and spinning, weaving, a wool card to serve local housewives, and they and finishing workshops) established at Newrapidly adopted the machine. Writing in March buryport. In 1810 two dozen such mills were re1803, the Leicester, Massachusetts, card clothing ported in the census: fifteen in Connecticut and all

manufacturer Winthrop Earle informed John but three in the other New England states. As with Scholfield that he had orders “‘to furnish Cards for cotton, the War of 1812 gave a great impetus to fifty Machines this Spring.’ 3? By 1810 the country manufacturing; by 1820, 253 woolen firms with inhad 1,776 carding machines in operation: 40 percent __ tegrated carding, spinning, and weaving were rein the six New England states, 23 percent in New ported. Of these 115, or 45 percent, were in New

York, and 19 percent in Pennsylvania.* England and 53, or 21 percent, were in New York. %° The Scholfields were effective carriers of carding Woolen manufacturing technology was not diftechnology because the various brothers and their fused by the act of machinery construction, except families moved from Boston and Newburyport to in the case of the carding machine. Much of the different parts of New England: Arthur and John to technology was a combination of equipment and Montville, Connecticut, in 1798; Arthur to Pittsfield operator skills. Consequently one factor was the in western Massachusetts in 1801; James to North time taken to learn new skills. About this little is Andover, Massachusetts, in 1802. John’s children known. Partly it depended on the ability of learnhad spread through Connecticut by 1810. John, Jr., ers, partly on the number of immigrants available with four young sons, at Preston, eight miles north-_ _ to teach, and partly on the willingness of immieast of Norwich, Connecticut, had a woolen mill grants to impart their skills. with two carding machines, a billy, two jennies, Arthur Scholfield retained some of the attitudes and four looms. James, with two children, was at of secrecy and suspicion with which he had been Canterbury, fourteen miles north of Norwich, and brought up, but not consistently so. In 1802 he was Starting a carding mill. Joseph was left at wrote from Pittsfield to his brother John in Mont-

Diffusion of New Woolen Manufacturing Technology

m- “ - 7 . w ‘ . . ° py: , 407

:ra. DILL .° opments in the English woolen industry, and a Again, however, the reliability of the carrier of number went to England to gather or share techthe technology complicated purely economic or nological and economic information. Through the technological influences. Clifford’s departure from eyes of Zachariah Allen, a Rhode Island woolen Louviers in 1814 both left the woolen factory in manufacturer who kept a diary of his visit to Britain highly inexperienced hands and deterred the in 1825, can be seen an American perspective of the French partners from employing anotherimmigrant __ state of British woolen technology and the methods as manager. In March 1814 Clifford was exposed as by which it was transferred to the United States.5° a bigamist who had deserted his wife and child in After having visited a number of mills in SadEngland. His real name, which he reported to the dleworth and Huddersfield, Allen noted, ‘Iam U.S. marshal when registering as an enemy alien, convinced that in making cloth in America we fail was Nathaniel H. (Clifford) Perkins. After his de- more from the hurry and want of care & attention parture, the Louviers mill was left in the hands of with which the processes are completed than from

The First Three Stages

132. want of skill & good machinery.” At Bradford-on- - gy FI:

Avon, one center of the West of England woolen My iA) >» . ty B 1 Cheeses Leas ag

industry, he summed up the manufacturing tech- Pe ae es) r * a .. PRR wile XZ nology tersely: ‘I did not perceive anything new or as Mi fiat tie, D / a g “_*

interesting in this place.” ©° The Rhode Islander was ise TYRES A a a decidedly unimpressed by the persistence of jenny * ES — yt Dic y spinning, hand loom weaving, and hand cloth | posse HU ed RNS se Ye , | i

shearing, which he found even in Gott’s mill in | Vie SSN | Sopys ON y Leeds. Totohisapply surprise, no manufacturers at- ald an tempting the cotton power loomwere to woolen f *\~is| as eeEROS SSN | ae _- |at; weaving. This reluctance to keep up with resistance the cotton 7ety industry he attributed chiefly to workers’ js !aSAE OS SES

based on fear of technological unemployment, as in , an : =M

the case of the cloth workers when gigs had been FIC 2. _ Ny A ae a : \

introduced in Yorkshire twenty years earlier. In y Gay ow B -\ \\ other instances, the rejection of a new technique (off i a ‘eo i yy sprang from danger of impaired quality. Benjamin if P| Ne) Yk EE

Gott and his aged head fuller both told Allen that eo BEA steam milling had been tried twenty years earlier ee TL ~

and was considered unsatisfactory because cloth x i / KR i color was injured in the process. And at Kirkstall lle fo \\ Abbey, hand shears were used in conjunction ai ye nae \

with a diagonal rotary shear because the latter was i | . A . , likely to damage the cloth when traversing it of ak “oO

longitudinally.®! a \

In Yorkshire, whose cloths he would be most in- VA | terested in imitating, Allen’s attention was centered | ‘oe

on finishing equipment. He sketched in detail a 8

steam dresser or brushing machine at Huddersfield me enmited! strermiva os eotenedt 3 ch that

and then visited the patentee, John Jones at Leeds, )

discovering that the price of one dresser was £118, 7.4 Cloth brusher, or dresser, patented in 1824 by John the brushes alone costing about £35 because “he Jones, brush manufacturer of Leeds, England. The used wire twisted in with the bristles to give greater —_ machine removed loose fibers, laid the nap in one direcaction for brushing flannel before burling.” ©? Find- tion, and fixed the nap by means of a steam apparatus (a

ing a new mill under construction at Kirkstall well-known system, according to Jones’s specification). Abbey near Leeds, Allen measured one of the cast- (G.B. patent 4897; courtesy Boston Public Library.)

Diffusion of New Woolen Manufacturing Technology

iron beams and learned that they were tested with : — OO -

twelve to fifteen ton weights. The item that at- | his Claus torr He nh thee a mite Mavevebiss Arnel Foot toned tracted his attention most was the gig. A machine Sort Make Heng pnd tra fr rome | hme - Che Mm aes nynten, flat ml shop at Leeds had gigs and cards under construc- loth of Be Carns hone — lan a worn ght 0 any theft,» a tas sof mms

tion, and Allen - Booed yo ron(pethae maw 4, sor cme, mee wth’Af ‘ rerecorded, hile sl““From aee several Cus,visits Seremade - Sf hayone tethere besbyAho

to these Machines we have been able to get a pretty p UFine offhncniin Omuselat teat ut Life? be tevin , he ins de accurate draft.’’Ve©ft The andtNdetails of conacelin drawing he bs hoe fi Mel meals pthene Ati nie, y| fa& Cams -

struction filled seven pages of his diary. Also in | Iietim weal Mect A Ulens ao he ructta_ Glos Hovas

Leeds he showed much interest in the layout, M nt. mae ena ao) aA ae seyuten fe “0 Med of wad.

mills belonging to Hirsttechniques and Gott.

nthe SO se Se » ote. “e 2 yyhapa 5% Se. aoesoa Ogae fkre55° ae >SPN ne OS . 4AG itsee ofeOo aa . Boe. pe 3 aSS a” ah ec se Fe A5oR Seok. oR b.. te Ow ee aE: ra ‘rn Sanne sae se wg RR as oy ees AES RE 8S. fi ce ee i ~~ a a a vu ; an ms 7 Wet * EME: ae oF Po i ore a. 5 ia a: Oe i: an . d aii” 3 zi hg ! 3 4+ Se At On se: 6 ge % cae reBele oe Sas “wee eee. Ry, Re i 6ea AE tte ee oe Ras os age . #* a Pee aOeRe Pencee Sire 3. aGREE Lae 7 ‘e’ on,vO * iswa Bee a a SS 2abe, ae % . :SCRE ty OW Fa8Ve Ss NS x Ps we Bee BsOr Phee i . aee SFi ,ngs “ We phased gic: a : ee coe ee, x oe a wx. i. . wr ree ee Be : S Dye watane: “ga ewe ‘ aus eesRe oR sid > i.ote wa: aaae wie ripe, aaos ;~ Tee . er, tk esan $ neAES. pe. ao eas. ae : . .ameOe “* oe igh.»% ¥ee yong oePreBe ghia CE.. 5oP ea ee BOS a.Rea Wee :Na ae ek & : 6 hie, aS aN fe ee ae eee! «fa. ” a eet come Es Fal rp ne an 7 os ate fo. eS Ye oerene iey oe¥4Ri Se ERS URE Ne AES pS Os .>. FS a: * & A Stags en Fe hae pe! :? ig hows . 7 -:ea: eS a6aiiOE ae eS oR Te :ae a, ny fc hentai hepape Sooy iean ai AR en eh OO: ..-os ileoeeo alate wold om 2? por Bnd enan, heARS ly reaent ‘.4. oeengage pte. ed i ci Poy “nde ‘ds . Pp Bb, 7Ae a pedeutoned reconde 8 Se geSomavheg. 8:adpat Cero mee Efestang .2cce oe

ge RES ee OES ae Mite 4 Radi, sinned. , oe . : . .aec ve Ay es : ¢ ee is, Fs I5

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ee as py eee, : ry ee : ARE ae F—_ B..9° v ees

tS saeco Be wcnerrerede prveled on hont fhe heraal beau nae ca + - = . ane Tn” Api nin an 2) :

re he 7fafen he flere cr hearela to hect tee he cwsl beans cs enmpooced poe borHho htadtape feslened miderivec a Lite aban! arnt ralendi ud~~i ,vi: ; i}. A4

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a Say ee » — = ;

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; , cnatothe Brmcel orealeMb ivctrhet cal cad receren Me a+erenra, Mi caks as . Me : 4t pimereg >a aL ms ° Pho pals af orreg othe: Me wre of Me packs Fb fo we °* renal eprancr.te5 yarn bh Laws Ca Borge s ‘3 ny aie ie ye oe poate ns rants 6 We D>wrens datingedweed WE ae gen: fattyom wheels Bie bey.; me Ainteefet Pr . ead pollen ene yarn Bearn, a x ;gm oo.tewm, soltcrs Coser ° s ypee sO ~AALS ee aneBo Bor Rm 4 ae [oT OO st f setter, placed a A towns Feu Nybhvug gf if s ade cue greeved paddler WH ya Prac on Lao ee "

. * . cen e, Farh ee 5 . : . : ores 0 #n nee geen ,

gms _* ; oat . 4 on li lee ete Th .oe nllee ana : ia y ¢ i aie ig eo oneeen . i : ht ett a ces Me ;yo baci agta : , Bho ® 4 iP aie | _ on | ar f MAPS Oe we aR RRS oem ORI pone . Fs ; ae he, a 2 : 1} 3 § j nee a fe .Acoo % a 2 . Ka cones ae % } papel wT ; cee *c* ‘g on d e ie se E * 3 ~ e . — bam s Vea ‘ 3° os ‘ ‘ . mm ’ 4 7 OR Ja ’ : 2 en 4 ; 3 7} . oan : oy aanat: Be qae|‘EON, é:;:¥a :Ls efa,;S4$erecta esé,. :P mmm raw soeae EY ;e"=:+:,=; A Tape rir of ‘| 8. boy . wok wang -p fig ahes Shuster io Sees cet, Sar Pee * ¢: ae oe et bss caren eee : : = : . . ros o *at Se — meine i : m 2 , pe. ' “g ae i . Be s: . = | Me pike x worn een oe } See 40 9 be = i Seal seme mraemaie a ( i“Ae i ee wy , . sme we y og oe wate a 7 i 3 ¢ { area ' 3 ee ; . : : Sg pooa : , , s | of er 8" UR ae SS a Pi ee oe ‘. 2 i tae By ak Wes i ; Bos + 40 | = im tra 6 ee gk s : *, : S § = + FSO ee , iy a or ; a : 4 : a i) Ci ee eS Se Re os Poe JO ; 6 ee G Me 7. ar Bey SP oe & ~~ a : ie © ya . * f a”. t : ~ i. cree nee on Ee sseee ne‘per atiaPoa I#S ryyny !‘can .aks testraorse oye tert Sn .aea go sl 7a : aa =P J on. an rDSee ee. ‘t saa, asé:nies er Fr. pinePuplrs, patter at Me al Whe t .ofi Ms 'ee ry ea? iSe a: {gpplaced t8as— - ..crvcsing aay Lae ait TM 3! hand itok:cee Pee -f “‘ ipre . Bia Winpe werweal frome ap adabcl

: ce . 4 ia : 3 é i . » ae a

. Te a.

Ye a j oe ’ . aa eee pal B bps Mel D tlt : o r: -_ aa +. ety . rd 3 3 roe we * ners “ Py well fos ttre pas aloo Mr porn Berar) *» = Pt si bE *s $/

“eit M. combating rae on paste fee erring Mecalles yerm Wy ihe one te oath Oe ey Dradio. ry "See eh Cfhec » ae fee reese PD brush. Lor mshiwg shal?a te eamh = esndwhcthines oPovrcatar ite trcadtee umbshn wes -how Fgha jo 99te10 ve by wecoArdsaia, toempetey ring oP mortal oA ah Me rrr

7 sa7 ee. +pe. Rn .. te bed eee aes rhe .AT 5 Cree: wee eae Mott aoe an 7. AeeMRL A civeater drach FP Plot ofaweh We Oo 080" Sa i - ae@ wna with ~ entar en dave ng breereen Se farBowers hype Af? Phe oh ~¥ 5 ee. — .Aes "A Ss aah - eet werowa me... “amps grerwer -bee :(whek Scches thewag: ay em uM she brving Po .remctes oo, eaarhetone meee ye eee r eer Broom. an ot Wel"ongrrsen Ceres comes ofcast Pimple. Pproi ss pring Ronea, Pnfone ae A Farr uvth aol on 4 EE 7 aft oftagbrook. . CO eayd pFSAN aR;0 Aas os rn ey ohio ~~ ee i BE npc thee tha Birars n° eekedBGR are ood ete. owe Ngby-cfdrwients ne aes .wsee “4 ol ii 5 ieee ey te 4RSOS Tae ee.erece ame face theAneWhe Menginges. eft ad on que af rotneCh .. >#1

” 6 EIN a et gee aa ~ - ee 4g, shee $ i e “ names w wun cone Me Mond tee % &. am wer, ae ate etoat down apen the wie yas Ace veelar ganten | a ee gy a) "y ‘ Maewh phat € ‘ . * .* ae enced pepacle Pael Pionds oF cress shat DP. tmal whred Pw het well greene Por band fahonre vn - #. wheat M mon LS Pee fy 4

we Pee wk ae * ~ath a ne WN os eping bony. wlhve Kt bree # wie st om Je, Are ore ® pace rong. . SecaeS&Pgh 2RE 4 ,,“ote aeLOR oS a. ee;

ae “Ark 1 9 7

American Modifications to the Imported Technologies

198 such a manner that the bobbins may be put into the age only two looms each in 1840, no more than in

shuttles for weaving, thus combining in one opera- England.75 tion the two several processes heretofore used, of In sum the patent evidence shows that the Walspinning, and afterwards winding the thread upon tham innovations made savings in capital and, es-

quills for the shuttles. ’2 ; .; ;

pecially, in labor costs. Both kinds of savings were

Moody also added a bolt and spring stop motion, achieved by higher running speeds (dead spindle, which stopped the filling frame when the bobbins warper, dresser, and loom temple), the displacewere full, another instance of automaticity. Of ment of skilled labor (double speeder and filling equal, if not greater, importance was the value of frame), the integration of two processes into one the filling frame in allowing the BMC to abandon its _ (filling frame), and greater automaticity through mule spinners, who previously made the filling stop motions (power loom, warper, dresser, filling

yarn. frame). Stop motions were apparently widespread In these early years of production, the BMC ac- in American cotton manufacturing equipment in quired at least one invention from outside its own this early period. In the 1821 revision of the 1819 machine shop. In April 1817 it purchased patent filling frame patent, Moody brushed aside the me-

rights for loom temples invented by James chanical details of the stop motion because “‘there Stimpson of nearby Dorchester. Their merit was to are so many modes of doing this, equally good and increase the speed of the power loom.’7? Without well-known, that I have not thought it worth while them, the loom had to be stopped once every six to describe it minutely.” 7° inches of cloth for the temples to be reset (temples An analysis of the earnings and composition of kept the cloth stretched laterally in the loom). The the Waltham labor force indicates the ways in Waltham loom was set at forty-four picks per inch; which the pressure to save labor costs was felt by assuming its shuttle speed was seventy picks per the Waltham entrepreneurs. The earliest extant minute (above hand loom rates of fifty to sixty per BMC payroll starts on May 3, 1817, unfortunately minute), then it made ninety-five inches of cloth an after Moody’s innovations were introduced; hour (the Patapsco Co. of Baltimore had power nevertheless it is indicative of the labor situation looms that made only sixty inches of three-quarter faced by the company in its formative years. Earnshirting an hour in 1820), which therefore involved ings for employees starting between May 3 and 17, about a dozen stoppages an hour anda possibleloss 1817, and paid off on or before August 30 are shown

of up to ten minutes in every hour’s weaving in table 10.3. It reveals a number of interesting time.’* Hence a perpetual or self-acting temple sig- points. Men in the manufacturing departments nificantly increased loom speed and also the num- overall received average weekly earnings nearly triber of looms an operative could tend, though even ple the overall average female earnings. Even the with self-acting temples (the most successful being lowest-paid man, a card hand, earned nearly twice as Ira Draper’s of 1816, to which the BMC turned in much as any woman, except the double speeder and 1824) American operatives were reported to man- dresser operatives and the drawing-in girls (who

10.3. Earnings in the BMC Mill, Waltham, May 3—August 30, 1817

Males Females Job Mean Weekly Pay No. of Workers Mean Weekly Pay No. of Workers

Superintendent $11.853 1 199 Picker 7.886 1 Roper 15.452 1

Card room

Double6.388 speeder $7 .39312] Hand 3 2.783

Hand 2.247 13

Spinning room

Superintendent 9.088 12 Mule spinner 20.267

Winding frame 3.484 6 Warping frame 3.443 3 Dresserin4.185 Drawing 5.285 32 Dressing Room

Superintendent 10.269 1

Weaver 3.516 304 Cloth picker 2.605 Sweeper in weaving room 2.483 2 Weaving room

Superintendent 10.742 1 Nonmanufacturing chores

Watchman8.845 7.523 12 Teamster Overall for the above 10.831 14 3.742 76 Machine shop

Superintendent Machine maker 11.882 10.730 11

Machinist 8.721 21 Carpenter 8.772 Laborer 6.221 42

Overall machine shop 9.265 29

Overall mill depart- 9.074 11

ments, excluding roper and mule spinner

Source: Baker MSS, BMC, vol. 80 (Wages, 1817-1818) ff. 1, 13, 14, 24, 34, 40, 53, 66, 81, 101, 117.

Note: The above covers only workers starting in the period May 3-17.

American Modifications to the Imported Technologies

00 manually threaded the ends of each warp through grossed 90s. a week in 1814 but their net earnings

the heddle eyes of the loom harnesses and splits in were 60s. Because the cost of living was generally the reeds). Most employees seem to have been paid assumed to be lower in America than in England, piece rates at this time, though this is not wholly emigration ought to have appealed to mule spinclear. In 1820 the company reported that some of its ners.®!

hands were paid by the piece and some by the Evidently inelasticity in the supply of mule spinday.’’ Mailloux, looking at the wage books for ners in Massachusetts combined with the demand 1817-1820, concluded that female spinners received for low-number weft yarns (spun more quickly than fixed weekly wages and most other workers re- fine yarns) and piece rate payments to give the mule ceived piece rates.’® But this was not true for the spinners twice the earnings of mill department months analyzed here. Whatever the method of re- superintendents. No wonder plans for expansion muneration, the consistently high wages com- late in 1817 impelled Moody to work on a filling manded by males led to the BMC’s well-known frame, so that the mule spinners could be displaced strategy of replacing them with females wherever and a bottleneck in production and labor costs possible. And some possibilities for doing this eliminated. Noticeably the double speeder operawere created by changing the technology. tive was already earning less than half of the roper’s The table also shows that some males—the roper wage; stretchers for producing coarse roving were and the two mule spinners—earned far more than on the way out in the Waltham system. Once the the overall average of $10.83 a week. The ropermust muleand stretcher spinners were retired, overall have been the stretcher operator noted above. Both average male earnings in the mill came into line the mule-type stretcher and the mule demanded with overall average male earnings in the machine high levels of skill from their operatives, but this shop. does not explain the high wages they commanded. It comes as no surprise to discover that two and The real reason for these high wages was the short possibly all three of the male operative spinners and inelastic supply of mule spinners resulting were British immigrants. Cowan, the roper or from Britain’s early-nineteenth-century shift into stretcher spinner, came from Manchester and was high-quality markets, as reflected in its technologi- still employed by the BMC in 1821.8? Joseph Robincal innovation. Not until the late 1820s and early son, one of the mule spinners, emigrated at the age 1830s, according to Montgomery, did British cotton of ten (presumably with his family) in 1803 and by manufacturers turn back to coarse yarn and goods 1812 was a cotton spinner working at Watertown, manufacture, a change attributed to the power Massachusetts, with a wife and three children. In loom.7? Slightly puzzling is the fact that fine mule 1817 his average weekly earnings were $16.31.°2 spinners in Lancashire were not earning as muchas Twoimmigrants named William Burgess (the name $20 or £5 a week at this time.®° Fine mule spinners of the other BMC mule spinner) were registered in Manchester in 1817 averaged 32s. a week, just during the War of 1812 as enemy aliens. One was a over $6; Thomas Houldsworth’s fine spinners machinist in Delaware who emigrated in 1809 at the

Shaping of Waltham-—System Innovations

age of twenty-nine. The other was a cotton weaver of the Hamilton Manufacturing Company’s work 201

at Watertown who emigrated in 1806 at the age of force in 1836 that 26.4 percent of the females on the twenty. The latter, with his operative trade and payroll entered or left the company over a five-week residence close to Waltham, was probably the BMC period. As a result over 20 percent of the employees mule spinner who in summer 1817 averaged $24.22 in July 1836 were ‘‘spare hands” learning a new mill a week.®4 If he was that employee, his switch from job, and another 20 percent were engaged in trainweaving to mule spinning underscores the acute- ing the newcomers to their respective depart-

ness of the labor supply situation. ments.®° In New Hampshire the Dover agent in In comparing male earnings in mill and machine 1827 reported that “the greatest difficulties which shop, another interesting trend becomes apparent. this establishment labours under, is to induce the Without the mule spinners, the company was help to continue. When the girls have been here achieving labor savings through the production of two or three months they immediately start off for capital-intensive, labor-saving equipment, with [the] lower works, Somersworth, New Market, or twenty-nine mechanics averaging $9.26 a week and Lowell; help from Dover Factory get a place in some eleven male mill workers averaging $9.07 a week. new mills. In this way we have to learn two or three While female wage rates were low enough to cut sets of hands in the course of a year.”’ In the face of the mill wage bill by around 66 percent, they were this, a situation that had perplexed him for nearly still high enough to attract girls from New England two years, Williams went on to recommend “‘leavfarms.®° Reliance on females presented other prob- ing off some of the most worn out machinery” and lems in reshaping the imported technology. One of making ‘’some little improvement and repairs on them was high turnover rates; as Gitelman noted, the rest.’’8° If the parent company in the Waltham the women were secondary wage earners witha system experienced turnover rates anything like transient attachment to industrial employment.®® this, then the BMC machine shop was surely chalOnly six of the thirteen female spinners and eleven lenged to make equipment that required little skill of the thirty female weavers working for the com- to operate, thereby reducing operatives’ learning pany in early May 1817 were still holding the same times, and had as many automatic devices as possijobs in the company three years later in March 1820. _ ble to compensate for operative inexperience durThis is a crude turnover rate and conceals the ing training times, which averaged two and a half movement of workers within the factory. For exam- months in 1836.7° ple, at least one of the departing spinners (Mary In a similar way, work sharing (the temporary Stetson) graduated to the company’s weaving depart- = substitution of one operative for another, to cover ment, and one of the departing weavers (Hannah for sickness or holidays) may have played some part Stimpson) moved up into the drawing-in section, in the drive toward mechanization and automaticin both cases for higher wages.®’ Dublin, in the ity. Dublin showed that work sharing was a feature most intensive study of the early Waltham system’s of the female Lowell work force in 1836; when it labor force produced so far, concludes fromasurvey started is unknown.?! However, my first ideas

American Modifications to the Imported Technologies

202 about the influence of the quality of the BMC’s though it might be pointed out that if the New

female work force still await verification.” Sources England girls went into the early mills for consulted do not positively show that intelligent noneconomic or secondarily economic reasons, and educated farm girls were more easily distracted then fines and even the loss of a job would be much or physically weaker than available male workers. less disastrous than in England or in states south of The question of how workers adjusted to the Massachusetts where the prevalence of family labor newly imported technology requires a study of its meant that all mill earnings counted toward the own. A superficial assessment suggests that the subsistence of the family. The remoteness but high Waltham-system mills more effectively displaced concern of parental authority and the inconsistency traditional habits and customs with a factory code between respectability and brutalizing corporal of respectability and industriousness than did their punishment probably meant that the WalthamEnglish counterparts. The choice of middle-class system managers would have to rely on moral and teenage girls provided, probably, the most respect- economic inducements and sanctions rather more able work force then available to America. Con- than did English-type mill managers.

centrating the girls in boardinghouses run by The physical aspect of working conditions in the determined and irreproachable matrons evidently Waltham system also seems to have required less diminished the incidence of irregular attendance, operative adjustment than it did in English facdrinking, bad language, and idleness that faced En- tories. Ware concluded that “‘the saving feature of glish mill masters.?3 Being teenage girls, at a for- mill work [in the boardinghouse mills] was that it mative stage of life, and living in a community was not strenuous.” ?° Of course degrees of mental where youth and femininity played subordinate so- taxation and physical exertion and hazard varied cial roles, they could be trained to think in terms of between departments in the mill. Dresser tending working by the clock rather than by the job more was reckoned to be the most wearisome. And diseasily than could a middle-aged craftsman. Ware, charges for poor work performance at the Hamilton and more recently Gersuny, showed that the Manufacturing Company in Lowell from 1826 Waltham-system girls served under punitive through 1838 most heavily involved weavers.?° In moral regulations that dismissed workers for minor various ways, Waltham technology lightened or personal deviations, including levity, hysteria, operative chores, although this goal was not always captiousness, and discontentedness.** Such harsh- uppermost in the minds of the Waltham innovators. ness evidently aimed to guard the respectability of Technically it was possible for women to operate the operatives and to inculcate a discipline that light mules, as Archibald Buchanan’s women had exalted the work of the factory. The aggravations done in Scotland in the mid-1790s.°’ Instead, and the girls experienced in adjusting to the moral de- largely because of operative turnover rates, the mands of factory authority have yet to be explored Waltham system replaced its stretcher and spinning beyond mill payrolls. Piecework and the threat of mules with throstles, which were much easier to fines or dismissal enforced this new authority, tend in making minimal demands on physical

Shaping of Waltham—System Innovations

strength and coordination. Numerous stop motions 903

compensated for operative inattention. The double speeder and the filling frame reduced the number of piecing operations per unit of work done and hence the physical activity of the operative. The self-acting temple further reduced operative interference with the moving parts of the power loom. In short, while Waltham innovations primarily were intended to allow the substitution of cheaper, unskilled, female labor for more expensive, skilled, male, and immigrant labor, they had the wider effect of relieving the work of most cotton factory operatives. The temptation then facing mill managers was either to increase the speed of the production line or to augment the number of machines allotted to each operative, thus nullifying the operatives’ gains.

71 1 Whereas Waltham innovations initially least, from the emerged, machine shop of one firm, Rhode Is-at fo land innovations appeared from a number of Modifica tions to the Imported machine shops both inside the state of Rhode Island Cotton Tech nology IT: and in states farther south where the Rhode Island

. system of manufacturing (smaller-scale mule

The Shaping of Rhode Island— spinning factories producing a variety of goods

System Innovations with family and child labor) was copied.

Rhode Island entrepreneurs secured a power loom rather different from that developed at Waltham. Incorporating the Horrocks’s variable batten speed motion, it allowed manufacturers to weave middling as well as low numbers of yarn, and varied qualities of cotton goods gave higher returns from shorter production runs. Consequently Rhode Island men felt less economic need than the Waltham management to achieve large-scale production. Thus of the seventeen Rhode Island firms with power looms in 1820, only four had capitalizations of $50,000 or more, and five had capitalizations of less than $20,000.! The largest of these firms had a fixed capital of $200,000, compared with the BMC’s $400,000, and the smallest power loom weaving firm had a fixed investment of $6,000. Each of them combined spinning and weaving, again confirming Stigler’s point that interrelated functions lead to vertical integration in the early history of an industry.?

Besides the initial power loom technology, product market influences also played a part in shaping Rhode Island innovations. Of the seventeen Rhode Island power loom weaving firms in 1820, nine firms with a total of 192 looms made four or more types of cloth, and five firms with a total of 89 looms made one cloth only (shirting in four and sheeting in one).? The cloths most favored by the seventeen

Shaping of Rhode Island—System Innovations

firms were shirting (thirteen stripes (eight 45 Remainder firms), sheeting (seven firms),firms), and plaids (seven muslins printed or(chiefly checked9005 — firms). Bed ticks (four firms), checks (three firms), | and stockings)

ginghams (two firms), and chambrays (two firms) 4.0 ll Muslins, white or plain

were also made by these power loom companies. Calicoes, printed or checked Plaids, checks, and ginghams were certainly not Po Calicoes, white or plain woven on power looms because they needed a drop 3.5

not. Fe oe box mechanism, then confined to hand looms; G2 | shirtings and sheetings certainly were, and stripes 2 39 Ih might have been quite easily but apparently were E ) a

While diversity and quality of product distin- y 2.5 a _ turers, they were unable to pursue these lines z a TH | be guished the aspirations of Rhode Island manufac- 8 a a |

immediately after the of War of 1812. Touring RhodeA&MN 20 aAll TH | Island in the summer 1816, Lowell and AppleTTMl a aa boas ton were told, ‘There was not a spindle running in Aimee wee ee oll i Pawtucket, except for a few in Slater’s old mill, 1 ale oe maa es ak Ame

Rhode Island manufacturers the protection in qual- |, Oa —ip| | Se of 1824 and 1828 helped a little by raising the fe — S\oy a aA be minimum valuation of imports to 30 cents (1824) 05 be ie a S Be Ee on cane se Ae ae

and thenfrom 35 cents yard, and ad valorem oe ee eae duties 6.25(1828) cents a(1816) to 7.5 cents (1824) andee_ Ee cee, tele - | ie then 8.75 cents (1828) a yard.° The effect of this was ise Cees Gens es ne ene a to reduce, but only marginally and intermittently, 1815 ‘16 17 18 ‘19 ’20 ’21 '22 ‘23 '24 '25 '26 ‘27 '28 ‘29 ’30 31 the values of British imports of calicoes (figure

11.1). 11.1 Exports of British Cotton Manufactures to the United States,

Despite the persistent and high levels of British 1815-1831. Source: P.R.O., Customs 9, vols. 3-18. imports of colored calicoes, Rhode Island manufacturers continued to emulate their English counterparts by moving up-market. When calico printing was introduced into New England in the 1820s, Rhode Island mills, attracted by the prospect of higher unit profits, began making fine print

American Modifications to the Imported Technologtes

06 cloths for Fall River and Taunton printeries. In 1831 Attention focused on the roving frame, in which it the Arkwright Cotton Mills of Warwick reported: was desirable to move one step beyond Moody: to

In 1820 the power-loom was adopted, which, to- aernieve the couple speed ° er ein to slow down gether with other improvements, caused the cloth open rotation and spindle Tal traverse IN UNISON to be made with much less expense. In 1823 built an but also to introduce a mechanism by which the additional cotton mill, with 2,500 spindles, and100 _ grist (thickness) of the roving could be easily looms, to make fine cloth of 50 skeins to the pound, changed. The Waltham speeder was designed to the two mills making about 2,000 yds of cloth per produce only one count of roving. An elegant soluday. The fine cloth, yard wide, sold at 25 cents per tion to the problem came from Aza Arnold, a Rhode yard and the coarser at 18 cents per yard for several Island mechanic who served his apprenticeship with

years. &

years. The same goods, now selling at 15 and 11 S 1 Slater. !° Hj t of this j tant cents per yard, have been declining for the last six pamuel olater. "TNS OWN account OF TNS HNporlan

7 invention, the differential gear which survives not

only in roving frames but in the back axle of nearly Moving up-market meant that manufacturers en- every motor vehicle, is worth quoting at length:

countered greater problems with respect to fluctu- .

:; ; ; ; ; as , and while repairing a Hines’ speeder in

ations in demand due to fashion. Farther south the I invented the compound wanes (so called’) as early

Philadelphia agent nat dan Phatede ‘ore oy 1820 it occurred to me, that by using it, I could

managers 1n January at Ine naderpna | simplify the speeder, and produce a much more

was believed that ‘‘cotton drilling pantaloons shall useful machine, by taking the exact difference bebe fashionable next season, & consequently, as not tween one graduated motion, and one uniform momuch has been ordered out from England, there is a tion, and using it for a second graduated motion. I fair opening to make a handsome profit on the arti- consulted the most able mechanicians of my accle, if it is made sufficiently good & is ready in quaintance to see if they could tell of any method by

time.’”8 which it could be accomplished; David Wilkinson, Ay th le of the infl € th duct Larned Pitcher and others thought it impracticable.

homer example or me iliuence OF ie procuc Ira Gay comprehended the correctness of the probmarket comes from the Taunton Manufacturing lem but thought it could not be mechanically used. I Company in southern Massachusetts. On October put the speeders in operation in 1822 and my pat26, 1827, its directors voted to procure ‘‘regular ent was issued in Jan. 1823 and a notable prejnotice and patterns of the styles of prints intended udice was kept up by Waltham and Lowell manufor the spring and autumn sales, so as not to be facturers: the Waltham speeder was exclusively anticipated in the market.’’? The essence of success used at Waltham and Lowell until I had constructed , h ket the technical ability to ch the Great Falls factory at Somersworth N.H. which In such markets was the technical ability to change actually produced 30 per cent more goods per week quickly from the manufacture of one type of yarn or than the Lowell or the Waltham factories had progoods to another. And this was a major product duced of equal quality. . . . this brought down the market influence in the shaping of Rhode Island directors of the Lowell corporations to our place, to

innovations. enquire into the cause of so great a difference. It

‘ 207 GN . Shaping of Rhode Island—System Innovations

fy

orn Cron /

; }Yprmd i | _.éBex.

emeneeremeet \ | a © , boo. ot ee a if oo a : : a LG

OL Lbs | Sag:

|_ Ld ait gd 2 -= eevLee t f i 4 * gD led in f Nese the laird wheds hq. oof they [ie teense Bow Me ave T. wwheels 4% 2

feet Cresty re fhe Slept Ss. are To gs fro en few Shiepl sé.

Sahin i News tha Same fecrrecshedt wii 11.2 Roving frame differential gear, for retarding bobbin

teas Spur rheals ABYC. Me whet speed during winding; patented in 1823 by Aza Arnold of

Cora gurl on the Shage 8 and erbrih the shape , North Providence, Rhode Island. Close-up reviews of the

by crete sell Coe cones differential are in sections 1 and 2. (Source: Zachariah Allen papers, Rhode Island Historical Society.)

Amenican Modifications to the Imported Technologies

08 brought also Mr. Moody, their engineer and Mr. $26,129 to $51,564 (1.97 times increase).!> Mas-

Geo. Brownell, the foreman of their Lowell Machine _sachusetts presumably had a larger number of very shop. They also sent the celebrated mathematician, big firms by 1831, though the McLane Report does right. [had the ples mn see t Pibiting all the was not show this (it lists three firms over $200,000 in machinery and explaining the minutiae of aR. Is- Massachusetts and four in Rhode Island). Ware lists

land invention, a third time, and the result was, nineteen firms over this size incorporated in Masthat Mr. Colburn told Moody that it was mathe- sachusetts between 1815 and 1831, but how many matically correct, and it was the only plan that he survived is not clear. '* had seen or ever heard of by which the machine The great difference between Rhode Island and caformed by Me azes of roping, (nave peer Massachusetts with respect to capital resources view they commenced making my kind of gears at n eTBES from a comparison of industry rather than Lowell and not only built my kind of speeders but firm growth in the 1820s. Whereas Rhode Island's also took up their Waltham speeders and geared aggregate fixed capital investment in cotton them over & converted them into differential manufacturing rose from $1,730,822 in 1820 to speeders by putting in my kind of compound $6,262,340 in 1831, a 12.4 percent annual (compound

motion. !! interest) growth rate, Massachusetts’s aggregate Another innovation to extend technical versatility xed capital investment soared from $1,567,745 in in production was the adaptation of the power loom 1820 to $12,891,000 mn 1831, a 21.1 percent annual

to make a twill as well as a plain weave. Job Man- growth rate.!5 At this level there was less capital chester, a Rhode Island mechanic, altered Gilmore’s available in Rhode Island than in Massachusetts, and loom of 1817-1818 by using “sliding cams” to acti- the rate of growth in capital investment was slower vate four harnesses as early as 1819. In 1825 over a in Rhode Island. Massachusetts manufacturers evihundred of Manchester’s looms were running in dently had greater access to capital than did those in

Pawtucket alone, all making bed ticks. ! Rhode Island." . .

Of the two more important factor influences Rhode Island innovations may have been influbearing upon Rhode Island innovations, capital enced by a shortage of capital for another reason. may well have been more important than labor. Av- Ware found that Rhode Island men tended to invest erage firm size, as measured by fixed capital in- a higher proportion of their capital resources in vestment, in Rhode Island was much the same as fixed assets; anon-Waltham firm invested as much average firm size in Massachusetts in the 1820s. as seven-eights of its capital in property, while the Whereas the average cotton manufacturing firm Waltham managers Keptat least a third of their cap(engaged in spinning, spinning and weaving, or ital in liquid forms.'’ This suggests capital abunwool and cotton spinning and weaving) in Rhode dance in Rhode Island, but only at the beginning of Island grew from $24,378 in 1820 to $53,986 in 1831 2 firm’s history. Thereafter a Rhode Island firm (a 2.2 times increase), in Massachusetts over the would be unable to spare much capital on imsame period the average cotton firm grew from provements unless it ploughed back profits. Thus,

Shaping of Rhode Island—System Innovations

Rhode Island firms possibly looked for capital- 11.1. Machinery Prices in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, 1817-1830

saving improvements, small modifications to nn Rhode Island:

existing machines, rather than new machines. Massachusetts Wilkinson

A contrary trend emerges from an impressionistic KE, Machine

glimpse of Rhode Island’s capital goods production Waltham-System Prices Ware Prices Shop,

during the 1820s, which indicates that a significant Pawtucket number of manufacturers were switching from Equipment 1817-1823? 1830° 1826-1827° 1827°

older son of the Quaker manufacturer Rowland

wooden to cast-iron frames. Isaac Peace Hazard, Picker = = = —S*&G«4OD.—~*~“‘i«é‘é«SS TWH age) =—“(’a:.:ye, SSPZ lfmal: i2a: ou Lot 2 oe eit ee Ne -1ffe «mane Ss ae4 SN ia:SaOQ *Fe! its technical nature, the Ware condenser was sold Mill machine shops also spread American inno- for $50 in summer 1826.°° Three years later, Ware vations in woolen technology, judging by the expe- double woolen cards fitted with condensers sold at rience of the Ware Manufacturing Company in $300 each.*° They were not as successful as GouldMassachusetts. The company, which manufactured ing’s device, which in twenty years was adopted by both cotton and wool, followed the policy of mak- a high proportion of woolen mills in the Union.*’ ing machinery for other manufacturers in order to Eastern machine makers, aware of the limited keep its own machine shop functioning to full ca- competition arising from poor transportation netpacity. Considering the terms of a contract with works in the Midwest, moved across the Appalaanother firm, the Ware agent observed, “If we con- chians to serve the small carding or carding and sent to a relinquishment of two thirds of the con- finishing mills and larger integrated concerns that tract, it must be done in such a way as to make it appeared there before 1820. One of these was Isaac for the interest of the 3 Rivers Co. not to erect a Hodgson, who emigrated from Manchester, EnMachine Shop or a cupola furnace, but to contract gland, in 1811, one of five brothers who settled first with us for the other two factories whenever they in the Brandywine valley in Delaware.°® In 1820 the shall be wanted.’’°? And the Ware machine shop census recorded Isaac at Woodbourn, Washington sought an edge over its competitors by offering a Township, Montgomery County, Ohio. With capiwide range of improvements, a strategy that com- tal equipment valued at $5,000 (including four pelled the company’s machinist, Anthony Olney, to turning lathes, two bellows, and two anvils), he invent or to borrow.°? Sale of the improvements made “‘all kinds of Cotton & Woollen Mushinry.’’°? achieved diffusion. In this manner the woolen con- Presumably he carried both British and American denser was brought to the Ware area. Four years textile manufacturing technology into the Midwest. after the event, the Ware agent recalled: ‘As near as Changes in labor costs partly reveal how that we can ascertain the condenser was applied to our factor induced alterations in the imported woolen cards about the 4th April, 1825. Mr. Cook left here technology. American woolen manufacturers calfor Canton on the 14th March, was gone 7 days and culated their labor costs in two different ways. One in about a fortnight after his return put the con- was to reckon a worker's earnings over time (per denser in operation.’’°* He referred to Canton, day, week, or month). The other method was to esMassachusetts, from whence Olney hailed. Signifi- timate how much the labor in each processing stage cantly it was close to Dedham, where John Gould- cost for the production of a given weight of wool or ing, patentee of the most successful condenser, length of cloth. British and American figures for the lived, though April 1825 was more than a year be- first method are given in table 12.4. It is clear that fore Goulding took out either English or American by the early 1820s, slubbers and mule spinners in

American Modifications to the Imported Technologtes

237. 12.4. English and American Woolen Industry Weekly the American woolen industry earned twice as

Wage Rates, 1814-1825 much as their counterparts in the West of England,

Job ~—__ English Rates? American Rates® and sometimes more than that. This figure neglects

aWool time difference of three to seven years in the two sorter $ 6.00 sets of figures and does not take into account the reWool scourer 5.00 spective costs of living, though the cost of living

Spinner , , , ;

Picker $0.84 was reputedly lower in America than in England.

Slubber 2 50-3.80 4.266.275 American woolen weavers earned between a fifth Billy boy 0.48-0.72 0.80-1.254 and two and a half times more than in England, while finishers’ earnings equaled top English

Male 1.44-1.92 5 50-6.00 earnings. Carpenters’ and laborers’ earnings were

Female 1.% 4.55-8.76° about the same in both countries, but mechanics e earned up to 35 percent less in America than in the Weaver 192-9.84 402 West of England, if Zachariah Allen’s American

Dyer 9-00 rates are to be trusted.

Fuller 5.00 5.25-6.25 These wage rates must be placed in the context of

Gigman 5.00 the development of British and American woolen

Shearer 2.40—5.00 5.50—6.00 technologies. By 1820 most American woolen mills

Finisher 5 316.27 had mechanical and powered cloth shearing

Burler 1.20 machines. For this reason, American shearers’

wages were not that much different from English

Overseer 7-00-9.25 rates. And the table distorts the true position beManager 20.00 cause skilled shearmen were not widely employed Mechanic 6.60-11.64 7.50 to run the American frames. Partridge in the early Carpenter 5.82 6.00 1820s claimed that a sixteen-year-old boy could run Laborer 4.44 3.75-4.50 two of Harmar’s frames operating four pairs of

7 ______—— _ shearing blades. The hostility of the shearmen

a. West of England wage rates, July 1825, copied froma delayed this technical development in England but London newspaper by Zechariah Allen, in RIHS, Allen, not in America.

“Journal,” p. 113. . The main point to emerge from table 12.4 is the

7 aa Ace. eet oon, OF ee aes nes du Pont, relatively high labor cost involved in slubbing and for the manager's salary This was Clifford's in 1814. ,~—~«SPitning in America. Attempts to reduce variable

«. Piece rates. costs through technical innovation might be exd. Apprentices. pected to begin with slubbing and spinning, espe-

e. Piece rates for one weaver, March-August 1819. cially after the War of 1812 when profit margins slumped. This in fact was the case. According to

Modifications to the Imported Woolen Technology

.; ; ; ; 61

Cole, attempts to find a substitute for the labor- 12.5. American Costs of Manufacturing Woolen Cloths, 1810-1830

meneive py began 1 eaneric i. early as 1810. Pair of Woolen Grey Narrow Grey Woolen onfirmation that slubbing and spinning were Blankets, Kersey, 30 Yards, Cloth, 100 Yards,

regarded as expensive labor charges is suggested by Expenses 1810-18202 1813-1814 1828" the efforts of Victor and Charles du Pont to shift eee their woolen spinners from piece to monthly rates. Wool 69.07% 61.27% 97.12% In 1818 this Brandywine company had three male Labor

, di , 359 589 36% 859

spinners (John Backhouse, James Lavars, and Cleaning 3.06% (8.57%) 1.41% (4.09%)

Henry Pierce), all on piece rates. Two years later picking

Lavars was still spinning for piece rates, but the 9.94% (34.61%)

other two male spinners (now Isaac Peters and sane and 7.35% (20.58%) 2.36% (6.85%) Henry Pierce) were on a rate of $22 per month, with Spinni 6 639, 308° 4.51% y ; ;

° . . ° . . . 0 . (e)

deductions for days off.°? It seems that the company pannn’ 6.69% (23.08%) SLi (12.62%) 7.58% (22.01%) was negotiating to pay time wage rather than piece rates, Warping | 6.63% (23.08%) 3.53% (9.88%) 0.72% (2.09%) in hopes of simplifying scales and reducing Weaving 8.82% (24.69%) 6.53% (18.96%)

labor costs. Finishing 5.52% (19.22%) 8.45% (23.66%) 9.97% (28.96%) The other way of carcuating labor nares was Sundries 5.86% (17.02%) applied by managers in England, as Julia Mann Total 28.72% (99.99%) 35.72% (100%) 34.43% (99.98%) showed. Labor charges, as a proportion of man-

ufacturing costs, varied according to the value of Materials 2.21% 3.19% 8.45%

the wool used and cloth made and the amount (oil, glue,

of machinery employed. Before the introduction of sacking, etc.)

machinery, labor charges comprised over 40 percent —_ Total cost $9.05 $20.40 $27.575

of all manufacturing costs and raw wool 38 percent. To By 1798 labor costs were down to 33 percent of a. EMHL, Longwood MSS, Group 6, Box 1, n.d. but c. 1810-1820 (one of the du Pont

manufacturing a West of England superfine woolen firms), undated bills and estimates.

broadcloth. And in 1825, after the introduction of b. Ibid. Ihave omitted wear and tear on $8,000 of machinery ($0.66) and interest on capital

mechanical shearing, labor was reckoned to cost ($2.40).

63 c. MVTM MSS, Ware MC, Agent’s Letterbook, S. H. Hewes (for agent) to James C. Dunn, half the value of the wool.®? Table 12.5 shows some b

American estimates. Unfortunately the three esti- Peptember 26, 1828. mates are not perfectly comparable since they were for different cloth types. Nevertheless, the cloths were all of medium to low quality, so to this extent approximate comparisons can be made. The falling proportion of wool costs reflects improving wool supplies in the 1820s, with wool growing increasing

American Modifications to the Imported Technologies

34. —~*” in Ohio as well as in Massachusetts and New York, The situation was worse in the supply of woolen and better transportation facilities. carders and spinners: none emigrated between 1773 Most interesting are the differences between the and 1775; one woolen carder and seven woolen respective components of the labor costs. Between spinners emigrated and stayed with their trades 1814 and 1828, picking, carding, and slubbing from 1809 through 1813, making a total of two charges fell from around 30 percent of labor costs to woolen carders and eight woolen spinners from 11 percent. Warping and weaving declined from 34 Britain in the United States during the War of 1812; to 21 percent. On the other hand, spinning costs in- but in the 1824-1831 period, only one wool picker creased from 13 to 22 percent. Without knowing and six woolen spinners arrived from Britain. cloth specifications—-number of warp ends, picks It might be countered that immigrant woolen per inch, yarn finenesses, and weave— it is impos- manufacturers like Isaac Bannister, manager of a sible to regard these changes as precise quantifica- Brandywine mill, were familiar with all processing tions; however, it is clear that the spread of the techniques and therefore could teach settled Americondenser was saving labor costs in carding. The cans a range of trades. This was true enough, but relative increase in spinning charges reaffirms the number of immigrant woolen manufacturers the point that in the 1820s spinning was the one also fell far short of the growth in new American manufacturing operation that could be expected to woolen firms. Thus, to a considerable extent,

attract a good deal of inventive effort. American innovations were a substitution of Evidently Americans succeeded in lowering labor — machines for skill, of capital for labor.

and capital costs in their innovations, but this does Still this explanation does not account for the low not explain why American labor costs for woolen numbers of woolen carders, spinners, and finishers carding, spinning, and shearing were higher than emigrating from Britain to the United States. RelaBritish costs. One explanation, that the supply of tive wages for slubbers and spinners evidently faimmigrant skilled workers was short, was indeed vored the United States in the period 1815-1825, the case (see appendixes B and C). Only three cloth and the failure of English wool spinners to emigrate dressers and three cloth workers emigrated to the to America remains somewhat puzzling. Perhaps American colonies from Britain between 1773 and workers found it more profitable to migrate into 1775; only two shearmen, who stayed with their British cotton mule spinning than to emigrate into trade, emigrated from 1809 through 1813, making a the U.S. woolen industry. total of three British shearmen registered during the The cloth shearers’ case is more readily explicaWar of 1812; and in the years 1824-1831 merely two ble. Prior to 1810 the American woolen industry cloth workers, three cloth finishers, three croppers, offered relatively limited opportunities for speand thirty-four cloth dressers emigrated to the cialist shearmen; there were few manufacturing United States. These numbers were far too small for | concerns, and their future was uncertain. Meantime skilled immigrant labor to meet all of the needs of in the 1790s shearing frames appeared in England,

America’s expanding woolen industry. and over the following decade rotary machines

Modifications to the Imported Woolen Technology

were developed in the United States, where they infringements of this he sued Benjamin Bussey of 235

were adjuncts to household manufactures. In re- Roxbury, Massachusetts (from whom Goulding sponse to the shearing frame, English shearmen rented his Dedham mill), for $5,000 in the First Cirturned to combinations and machine breaking, cuit Court and won.°®? Patent litigation again conthereby acquiring a reputation for militancy that firmed the commercial success of a technical could hardly attract potential American employers. improvement; with condenser carding, power By 1810 neither England nor the United States held could be applied to spinning and, as Cole noted, much promise for hand shearmen, with Harmar’s spinning machines could be increased in size.’° But frame in the former and a variety of rotary machines __ this was not all. In making a more uniform yarn, the

in the latter. Partridge summed up the situation in condenser card, in conjunction with the mule or 1823: ‘‘Hand-work is so expensive, that in some jack, paved the way for the power loom weaving of countries, in England, it is entirely laid aside, and woolen cloth. The problem lay in the relative weakwould be, in all of them, if the workmen would ness of woolen warps, explaining why woolen permit it.’””©° Like George W. Powell, a shearman manufacturers first used the power loom to make who emigrated to the United States in 1801 at the satinet or mixed cloths with cotton warps and age of eleven, the hand croppers would have to woolen weft or filling.

broaden their skills or else leave their trade al- Goulding pioneered the improvement. He was together. Powell, working for Victor and Charlesdu _—_ able to apply the power loom to woolen weaving

Pont between 1818 and 1823, adjusted to techno- probably because he was already improving the logical obsolescence by exercising other skills, uniformity of his yarns. According to the recollec-

such as warping, spooling, and pressing.°® tions of one of his employees, Daniel Bonney, One other formative influence shaped innova- Goulding started making broadcloth on a power tions in America’s early woolen technology. This loom in 1822. This antedated Goulding’s condenser was what Rosenberg has called complementa- patent by four years, but the claim remains conrities, technical accommodations that overcame vincing because of what Bonney also recalled was bottlenecks and allowed other inventions to suc- happening with Goulding’s carding equipment:

eee This ap pears fo have been why the con When I went to work in the factory at Dedham, in

enser was So important. Not only did it cut labor June, 1823, for Mr. Goulding, my work was atcosts, but also it produced uniformly drafted and tending cards, where the rolls were pieced witha twisted slubbing that would not break as easily as machine, instead of children’s piecing them by that which was pieced unevenly by hand. Gould- hand, as at Halifax (Mass.). This machine was used ing’s first condenser patent (May 2, 1826) shows until they began to make the roping on the cards, that he intended his condenser yarns, packaged on which was, I think, in 1824. Mr. Calvin Whiting, of spools or long rolls, to be spun on a woolen mule or rear was then an old man, who used to be at jack.°* The following year, he took out a second was experimenting on the long roll. He, Mr. Whit-

1 68 . e factory almost every day, while Mr. Goulding

American patent for condensing and spinning. For

American Modifications to the Imported Technologies

rs fo ‘os . ; ~2. ~” 7 Tyee oh se ot 236 en Sn 2 ~ ™ 7.” | | . e-; —~"w. camping. Gwen if Z eee ’ (9) Omedo - é CVerlding oes £ v @ 4 . 126 .. 4 605 4 Fig Sha tee teh ,Vermée e Yrs of manufacturing wool r eiKes Yebiread mate 1a be O

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Reverse Flows

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. sm ttedic,.: — SP ; * . Cee ME aeGD ted See eu ER — 13.4 The English fly frame incorporating Arnold’s American differential; a drawing of 1832. (Source: Montgomery, Carding and Spinning Master's Assistant. Courtesy Merrimack Valley Textile Museum.)

Movement of American Innovations to Britain

clothing machines spread slowly and were resisted machine, the more so because we know that +949

until the 1860s in Yorkshire, where hand setting Messrs. Risler Freres and Dixon have made great with child labor was cheap. Significantly, the exertions, not only to procure a machine, but also to American card clothing machine needed modifica- engage a workman, who had been employed in tion before it could be introduced in England. Dyer making similar machines, in either of which oe eee attempts we do not learn that they have yet recalled that he and Higginson “‘by our joint labors succeeded. 27 | made the machine] far more simple in several of its movements, whereby it could be worked with Coarse spinners in Glasgow took up the Taunton or much greater safety and speed than in its previous tube speeder in the early 1830s. 7° state.’’ 2? Goulding’s condenser was attacked until These were individual inventions that could be the 1890s by men who could remember the billy incorporated into English cotton and woolen manyarn. Indeed the condenser was said to cause a ufacturing production lines without too much difweaker yarn, a cloth with a lighter covering of fibers _ficulty. The whole range of innovations that confor fulling and raising, and a finish “‘papery to han- stituted the new system of cotton manufacturing dle and destitute of the usual suppleness of the best technology in northern New England was an enwest cloth.””*3 Yorkshire immigrants in America tirely different proposition. Kirkman Finlay told the in the 1820s used the condenser only with reluc- Select Parliamentary Committee in 1833 that most tance.*+ British manufacturers preferred the piecing © new improvements were easily adapted to other machines, developed in the late 1820s, which repli- machines, “‘till the late ones by Americans, which

cated the billy’s movements. ?5 would require the whole machinery to be taken out

On the other hand, Wilkinson’s reed-making and the new machine to be put in.” The reason was machine was established in Manchester, and Dan- explained by James Kempton, a Connecticut manuforth’s cap spindle was said to be more popular in facturer who also testified in 1833. Having stated England than in America in the early 1830s.7° Ar- that he had seen the best machinery in Manchester, nold’s differential, now erroneously attributed to he was asked, ‘‘Have you seen none equal to what Houldsworth, spread through and beyond British you have in America?” Kempton replied, “Not for cotton manufacturing districts. Within a year of the manufacture of coarse goods.” In other words, Houldsworth’s patent, Richard Roberts purchased the Waltham system’s cotton manufacturing an improved bobbin and fly frame (incorporating technology, shaped for the efficient production of the differential) for export to Mulhouse in France. coarser yarns and fabrics, had no parallel in LancaHis firm’s correspondent described it to their shire, where the technology was designed for the

French customers: production of fine yarns and goods. American

The opinion of its value is such, that numerous or- technology, it was observed, had the advantage of ders have been given by parties, who had machines economically USING better cotton qualities. Even upon the former principle. We think it therefore so, Kempton’s criticisms still remained true until

very desirable that you should possess such a the mid-nineteenth century and after.

In their Reports on American manufacturing of

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