Page 245 - American Stories, A History of the United States

rather than working artisans; and journeymen often became wage earners rather than
9.1 aspiring masters. The growing market for low-priced goods also emphasized speed,
quantity, and standardization in production. Even where no substantial mechanization
was involved, shops dealing in handmade goods for a local clientele tended to become
9.2 small factories turning out cheaper items for a wider public.
A fully developed factory system emerged first in textile manufacturing. The first
cotton mills utilizing the power loom and spinning machinery—thus making it possi-

9.3 ble to turn fiber into cloth in a single factory—resulted from the efforts of three Boston
merchants: Francis Cabot Lowell, Nathan Appleton, and Patrick Tracy Jackson. On a
visit to England in 1810–1811, Lowell memorized the closely guarded industrial secret
of how to construct a power loom. In Boston, he joined with Appleton and Jackson to
acquire a site with water power at nearby Waltham and obtain a corporate charter for
textile manufacturing on a new and expanded scale.
Under the name of the Boston Manufacturing Company, the associates began their
Waltham operation in 1813. Its phenomenal success led to the erection of a larger and
even more profitable mill at Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1822 and another at Chicopee in
1823. Lowell became the great showplace for early American industrialization. Its large
and seemingly contented workforce of unmarried young women residing in super-
vised dormitories, its unprecedented scale of operation, its successful mechanization
of almost every stage of the production process—all captured the American middle-
class imagination in the 1820s and 1830s. But in the late 1830s and 1840s, conditions
in the mills changed for the worse as the owners began to require more work for lower
pay, and some of the mill women became militant labor activists. One of them, Sarah
Bagley, helped found the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association in 1844. She led
protests against long hours and changes that required more work from each operative.
Other mills using similar labor systems sprang up throughout New England, which
became the first important manufacturing area in the United States.
The shift in textile manufacture from domestic to factory production also shifted
the locus of women’s economic activity. As the New England textile industry grew, the
putting-out system declined. Between 1824 and 1832, household production of textiles
dropped from 90 to 50 percent in most parts of New England. The shift to factory
production changed capitalist activity in the region. Before the 1820s, New England
merchants concentrated mainly on international trade, and Boston mercantile houses
made great profits. A major source of capital was the lucrative China trade carried on by
fast, well-built New England vessels. When the success of Waltham and Lowell became
clear, many merchants shifted their capital from oceanic trade to manufacturing. This
had important political consequences, as leading politicians such as Daniel Webster no
longer advocated a low tariff that favored importers over exporters. Many politicians
now supported a high duty to protect manufacturers from foreign competition.
The development of other “infant industries” after the War of 1812 was less dra-
matic and would not come to fruition until the 1840s and 1850s. Technology to improve
rolling and refining iron was imported from England; it gradually encouraged a domes-
tic iron industry centered in Pennsylvania. The use of interchangeable parts in manu-
facturing small arms, pioneered by Eli Whitney and Simeon North, helped modernize
the weapons industry and contribute to the growth of new forms of mass production.
One should not assume, however, that America had already experienced an indus-
trial revolution by 1840. In that year, 63.4 percent of the nation’s labor force was still
employed in agriculture. Only 8.8 percent of workers were directly involved in factory
production (others worked in trade, transportation, and the professions). Although this
represented a significant shift since 1810, when the figures were 83.7 and 3.2 percent,
the numbers would have to change much more before it could be said that industrial-
ization had really arrived. The revolution that did occur during these years was essen-
tially one of distribution rather than production. The growth of a market economy of
national scope—still based mainly on agriculture but involving a rapid flow of capital,
commodities, and services from region to region—was the major economic develop-
ment of this period. And it had vast repercussions for American life.
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