A new introduction to American Studies
Chapter9: Industry and Technology
Author: Christopher ClarkChristopher Clark grew up in the London area, studied at the University of Warwick, and obtained his PhD in History at Harvard. He taught at the University of York for eighteen years, and was Professor of North American History at the University of Warwick for another seven years before moving to UConn in 2005. He is a specialist in 18th and 19th century North American and United States social and cultural history; the social history of economic life; the history of American capitalism; rural societies and industrialization; abolitionism and utopian communities and New England. His current research interests are rural society and land reform in the U.S. and overseas, c. 1750-1960. Some of his publications are Social Change in America from the Revolution to the Civil War and The Roots of Rural Capitalism: Western Massachusetts, 1780-1860
http://www.history.uconn.edu/people/clark.php
World's attention to the U.S. for:1. Political system and ideologies
2. Technological advances and industrial power
*Industry and technology: hallmarks of American accomplishment symbolizing America as archetypal ‘modern’ society
*Benjamin Franklin epitomized the virtues of practical ingenuity and pursuit of useful knowledge
*A few poor colonists came to excel all nations
*Inventive figures like Franklin, Morse, Whitney: true subjects for the history of the U.S.
*Emergence of an industrial power from an overwhelmingly rural and agrarian society
*Connection between farm and factory, nature and machine helped shape the processes that drove industrial expansion
Four main phases of American industrial and technological change
From colonies to Civil War: between revolution and civil war a new manufacturing economy grew up in close connection with patterns of rural economic life
After the Civil War: manufacturing became modern, rural America still expanding which helped shape industrial growth
20th century: industrial and urban activities outstripped their rural origins
Postmodern era: tendency to conceal processes of production, connection between agriculture and industry obscured by other concerns
From colonies to Civil War Roots of American industrial development in the colonial period
Iron production, house-based textile production, urban craft trades and ship building
Export of raw materials and producers’ goods from Britain to America
Industrial development: a means to secure a hard won political independence
Developments after the revolution:
i. Transfer of technologies to America from abroad
ii. Development of new technologies within the framework of American manufacture
The most dramatic innovations involved the establishment of machine-based factory process especially in textile industry
New textile technology introduced from England
1814 onwards, eastern Massachusetts: group of merchants invested in large-scale textile production in mills
1820, town of Lowell: grew rapidly into an industrial city with large mills drawing water power from the company’s dams and canals
Most manufacturing in the hands of craft workers and farm families
Small-scale producers produced different goods from shoes, tools and implements to pumps, metal ware, furniture and clocks
By 1820 American manufacturers achieved higher productivity than their British counterparts
Key factors influencing early American manufacturing:
Imported technology
Diffusion of mechanical skills across rural and urban populations
U.S. manufacturers outperformed their British counterparts by installing machinery where the British used hand-powered equipment
Hallmarks of antebellum industry: development of techniques for using machines to help make finished goods & produce the machines themselves
Early American machines: labor-saving
19th century: rapid growth in population and land area, plentiful land but scare labor, high labor wages
Scarcity of labor: incentive to introduce machinery to reduce the number of workers and lower the costs of wages
Early 19th century: capital scarcity as well as labor scarcity
Rapid expansion of machine-based industries after 1850s when immigrants from overseas helped reduce labor shortage
Rural character of early America fostered the adoption of mechanized techniques
Development of simple interchangeable devices by furniture makers, tool makers and wagon builders
Advances in gun making and clock making: British commissioners were sent to the U.S. to learn ‘the American system of manufactures’
Interest in inventiveness and experimentation with devises diffused among the people, many patents were issued
Early American achievement : capacity to use machines and make them
Yankee ingenuity Vs south slavery: claims about practical ingenuity: part of the sectional struggle leading to the civil war
South concentrated on staple-crop production using slave labor
Yankees worked for themselves, not relying on chattel slave to do their work from 1840 onwards, most immigrants avoided south
Reasons for North’s military success in the Civil War:
Economic diversity
Technical dominance of manufacturing
Supply and transport requirements essential for military operations
From Civil War to the Great Crash Turning point in industrial development under the stimulus of war production , population growth and higher capital expenditure
By 1880 employment in manufacturing and mining exceeded that in agriculture
Farming: more mechanized except in the south
Processing activities such as meat-packing developed on an industrial scale
Iron, steel, coal: central components of technologies
Steel: provided rails, bridges and trains for railroad system and other construction purposes
1880s onwards: the first urban skyscraper office buildings the prime symbols of American modernity
By 1906 the average size of American manufactories had reached 67 workers whereas in 1869 it was less than 5
Considerable shifts towards mechanization
working conditions different from those of the antebellum period
Interchangeability became broadly feasible in the production of a range of products
Subdivision of work: many tasks were accomplished by relatively unskilled labor
Industrial technology: a system of interdependent parts capable of producing more than its individual components
Firm sizes & capital investment grew
Social contexts shaped the process of technical change
Growing workforces: growing influence of labor unions
1870s & 1880s: strike action and conflicts over wages
Companies pursued competitive advantage over rival firms and greater control over their own workforces
The effort to achieve optimum output led to the adoption of new techniques of shop-floor organization and management
By the end of 19th century: time-and-motion studies, premium-rate methods, production planning, system design were introduced to factory work
Lewis Mumford: “clock : the key machine of the modern industrial age”
First 2 decades of the 20th century: new techniques of closely managed production emerged in the new automobile industry
Michigan manufacturer, Henry Ford: evolved a culmination of various 19th century developments in the new production line methods
Ford evolved the moving assembly line by adopting the principles of efficient layout and division of tasks from the scientific management movement, the principle of interchangeability from 19th century machine production and sequencing and belt systems from the slaughterhouses of meat-packing industry
Ford evolved the moving assembly line in which the speed of production was controlled by management and the line itself was the instrument of labor discipline, Fordism, later called Mass Production
Toward the end of 19th century: institutional changes fostered further technological developments
From abroad: chemicals and electrical applications
From domestic developments: telephony, electricity, automobile and aviation technology
Immigration from Europe and other parts of the world affected technical change
Steel framers, elevators, electricity, chemical and petroleum-based technologies, automobiles and wireless transmission
Stimulus for industrial investment: growing market for consumption
Significant shift in the social character of invention
Edison: America's most prominent inventor, also noteworthy for pioneering new methods of industrial research based on capital investment and collaborative effort
Edison and his group adopted factory methods for the very process of invention itself
Inventiveness removed from domestic, individual environment and became corporatized
Ordinary people were now the subjects not the agents of industrial progress
Science finds, industry applies, man conforms
The state and the industrial complex Most developments emerged in private sectors
Calvin Coolidge: the business of the U.S. is business
Industry and technology in private hands
Growing role of government as a sponsor of industrial development after World War II and the Great Depression
National Bureau of Standards: founded in 1901 to establish consistency and interchangeability across systems and manufacturers’ products.
Ford: you can have any color you like as long as it’s black
1929 to 1933: economic depression drove down industrial production
Under Roosevelt's New Deal ,government agencies played active parts especially in the areas where the private sector had failed
Technologies extended to rural areas
WW II brought government into industrial production more directly by manufacturing tanks, guns , ships and aircrafts
After WW II government kept close connection with industry
Symbiosis of government and industry produced many key developments like sending people to the moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s
A postmodern era
Dehumanizing character of industrial society
Industrial activity despoiling and polluting the landscape
Skepticism about the atomic power and space program
Japanese manufacturers’ use of ‘lean production’ techniques outstripped U.S. mass production methods developed by Ford
Plant closures and job losses
New technological developments replaced older industrial work
A shift in emphasis from manufacturing employment in the traditional sense toward s work based on service functions and communication of information
Knowledge and data: raw materials and output of new industries
Interest in knowledge about techniques of production faded
Many facets of production became concealed, micro technology worked in hidden ways only accessible to specialist understanding
Atomic technology in its military form spelled the potential for destroying the world
New technologies no longer seemed simply beneficial
American industry in national and international contexts Shifts towards ‘postmodern’ interpretations of American industry influences its place in wider world history
All phases of industrial change contained important elements of U.S. involvement in developments overseas
i. Pre-Civil War: intersection of domestic social structures and cultural patterns with technology transfer across the Atlantic, growth of international commerce, arrival of great numbers of skilled and semi-skilled immigrants
ii. Mid 20th century: rise of state government, creation of military-industrial complex, emergence of America as global power
Early 20th century: more than half of the world’s biggest companies were American and the U.S was the largest importer of immigrant labor
Now only one-fifth or fewer of the world’s largest companies are American-based mainly caused by influences from other parts of the world especially Asia
Continuation of American economic leadership is challenged by the relative weakness of its industrial base
Key to American success in technology
Improvement on imitation
