• different resources: wood plentiful, resources like ores very spread out
• shortage of labor: most people wanted to farm, might work in a mill a few years to earn money
• people very spread apart, distances very large
• shortage of skilled workers, people with knowledge about technology
• immigration of people eager to build a new life
  

• England passed a law in 1765 (repealed 1824-25) prohibiting export of textile machinery and emigration of skilled mechanics.
• E. I. duPont said in 1802: "The greatest danger to my business is that of attracting the attention of the English... They employ all possible means to prevent the establishment of manufactures here.  They burned my predecessor's cotton mill, and might easily try to do the same to my mills."
• Thomas Jefferson: fear of the misery of industrial cities in England and belief that an agricultural nation was essential for democracy.  Felt that farmers were by nature virtuous.  He wasn't against technology--he had a lot of machines on his plantation, but he was against industrialization until the blockades starting in 1807 that lead to the war of 1812 convinced him that the U.S. couldn't afford to be dependent on other countries for manufactured goods.
• Early efforts to smuggle in machines weren't very successful, eg. disassembled mule that arrived in Philadelphia in 1783 was never successfully assembled.  The first useful drawings of textile equipment were not available until 1812, published description of how to run machinery not until 1832
• shortage of labor, shortage of capital, shortage of skills

  Slater Mill

• Samuel Slater had served a 7 year mill apprenticeship in England.  Came to the United States to make his fortune and made a partnership with a hardware merchant--Moses Brown--in Pawtucket, RI
• Slater put up his expertise and his partners put up the money, and Slater got half ownership
• set up in an old fulling mill in 1790, then build a new mill in 1793.  100 spindles, spinning only, Arkwright water frames, little innovation.  Metal parts made by local blacksmiths, relying on Slater's knowledge of critical dimensions, gearing, settings, surfaces.
• At first used almost entirely child labor--hired 7 boys and 2 girls between the ages of 7 and 12 in 1790.  By 1800 he had more than 100 employees, and he relied on recruiting families and providing housing for them around the mill (fathers often worked as hand loom weavers, not in the mill).
• Slater owned or had an interest in 13 textile mills, and left an estate of $690,000 when he died in 1835.
• By 1810 there were 54 mills in Massachusetts, 26 in Rhode Island, 14 in Connecticut--all small mills without integration
• British immigrants made up about half the managers and machine-makers before 1830.

the green line points to the location of Lowell north and west of Boston
map from National Atlas of the United States

• Boston merchants became interested in textile factories after the War of 1812 showed the advantages of diversification.  Boston Manufacturing Co.: Nathan Appleton, Patrick Tracy Jackson, Francis Cabot Lowell
• hired an English mechanic named Paul Moody to build a power loom and set up a factory on the Charles river in Waltham.  Opened in 1815--first complete (both spinning and weaving) cotton factory in the US.  Capitalized at $400,000 (10x Slater).   
• Needed more water power in order to expand, and wanted to build a new town to avoid the corrupt city.
• Lowell, Mass, at the beginning of the Middlesex canal.  First mill opened in 1822--built by more than 500 Irish laborers who were subject to such discrimination that they were not allowed to work in the mill.  They lived in a shanty town called The Acre

• land was cheap in the United States and people wanted to own their own farms, not work in mills. Where to find a workforce for a large mill?
• hire young women from the countryside to work for a few years before they get married.  Women lived in heavily supervised dormitories, were required to attend church, followed many factory rules, and made good wages for women at the time.
• The women averaged $3.60 a week in 1836, at which point they were paying $1.50 a week for room and board.  This compared favorably to $1 a week for domestic work.
• until the mid 1840s the work was not stressful, although they worked 73 hours hours a week (a 12 to 14 hour day, six days a week, 309 days a year, with only three holidays).   Timetable.   Intermittent labor, mostly fetching and carrying.

 weaving (image #10)

• Lowell population
  • 1820--200
  • 1830--6,000
  • 1850--33,000
• The Boston Manufacturing company returned an average annual dividend of 19% from 1816 to 1826.  Even in the more competitive 1850s the Merrimack Company (which operated some of the Lowell mills) averaged 12% annual return for most of the decade.
• Competition began to result in a worse deal for the workers as early as the 1830s--in 1836 there was a strike in reaction to a cut in wages of $1 a week.  Speed-up made the work damaging to health
• immigrant workers began to be hired in the 1840s: immigrant workers in mills: 1845--8%, 1850--33%, 1860--60% (of those 47% were Irish--potato famine started in 1845).

• again England took the lead
• the technologies were copied in the United States
  
• U.S. conditions were different particularly because the distances were much greater

Turnpikes in the U.S.:

• First turnpikes (improved toll road) in the United States in Pennsylvania and Virginia in 1795.  1796-1814 Mass. chartered 97 turnpike companies.
• in 1775 it took a week to go from Boston to New York by land, in 1800 it took four days.
• cleared and leveled land, built simple wooden bridges (even floating bridges to cross deep ponds).  Large rivers were crossed by ferry.
  • 1785 bridge over the Connecticut at Bellows Falls--wooden covered bridge 365 feet, 50 feet above river--build by a simple carpenter.
  • Bridges longer than a single stringer were built first with arches then with trusses--Burr Truss was one American innovation that combined the two.

Canals in the U.S.:

• Many proposals for canals in late 18th century America
• First canal completed: Santee Canal in 1800,  Charleston to Columbia
•  Christian Senf: Hessian mercenary with knowledge of military engineering
  
• Almost no engineering schools until the 1860s--lack of experts

• engineering learned by apprenticeship, no clear distinction between an engineer and a mechanic or entrepreneur
• Bridges built by the local carpenter
• short distance canals for grain mills were projects led by local businessmen or civic leaders (the first canal on the Merrimack at Amoskeag was build by a judge of common pleas)
  

The Middlesex canal--27 miles joining the Charles River with the junction of the Concord and Merrimack, with 20 locks, 8 aqueducts, and 48 bridges.   Map ,  History, Visitor Center

•  Chartered in 1793 by Boston merchants  
  
• Director: Loammi Baldwin,  a retired colonel who dabbled in cabinetmaking, surveying and experimentation and had a Harvard-education in Latin and Greek.
• A local surveyor and magistrate, Samuel Thompson, set out to survey the route, using a compass, his eye, and his best judgment.  In one 6 mile stretch he measured the route with a rise of 16 1/2 feet.  A later survey turned up a descent of 25 feet.
• You can't build a major canal without specialized knowledge
  • tools available: axes, hoes, shovels, mattocks, crowbars, scythes, and pitchforks, cold chisels for cutting stone.
  • They did not know how to excavate efficiently, how to seal the canal so that it would not leak, or what was the best shape for retaining walls and the best material for locks.
  • They did not know how to make mortar that would hold under water or how to design the machinery to open and close the valve gates of the locks.
• They needed an expert.  In 1793 they hired William Weston, an experienced Englishman who had recently come to America to supervise the construction of a canal in Philadelphia.
  • He agreed to come to Boston in the summer of 1794 because the Philadelphia project had run out of money.  For six weeks work and travel time he was paid $2107.60.
  • sent in advance the key instruments--a spade, an improved wheelbarrow, and his own leveling instrument
  • 
• The wheelbarrow got lost in transit, and no one could figure out how to use the leveling instrument until Weston arrived himself.
• When he arrived he did the necessary surveying and taught the locals how to solve their problems--taught them the specialized knowledge of canal engineers
  • sealing the canal by puddling with clay in many thin layers
  • he arranged for machinery for the lock gates to be cast in a foundry in New York from molds he made himself
• The Middlesex canal was finally successfully completed in 1803 at a total cost of $1,164,200.  It was a moderate financial success, but, more important, the investors profited by increased trade through Boston.  "The trip to New Hampshire took five days, and passage back to Charlestown took four days, and while the cost of carrying goods from Boston by a team of oxen was $20 per ton, the rate of boating freight on the canal cost from $5 to $13." (source no longer available, was http://www.townonline.com/northwest/chelmsford/columnists/tomsileo/colBIsilio_0930_3.html)
• Three people who worked with Weston went on the be successful canal engineers--Loammi Baldwin's son Loammi Baldwin Jr., Benjamin Wright (the chief engineer for the Erie Canal), and Robert Brooke

 

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• Planning began about 1804, construction authorized in 1816 after much unskilled study.
• Completed in 1825--at 363 miles the longest canal in the world.
• engineering training--by 1825 all but one principal engineer had worked their way up in the canal system and at least 11 of the 24 principal engineers went on to other engineering work.

 Celebration of the Completion of the Erie Canal

• started with short horse-drawn lines such as the Granite Railroad, Quincy, Mass., 2 miles long, also in coal mines

 Best Friend of Charleston, 1830

• From Charleston to Hamburg on the Savannah River--136 miles opened in 1833.  The South Carolina Canal and Rail-Road Company hired an engineer names Horatio Allen who not only built the first domestic-built locomotive, The Best Friend of Charleston, but also was a pioneer in the 1830s in adapting locomotive design to American conditions by inventing the swivel truck.
• the railroad met a tremendous need and grew quickly

started with the problem that English locomotives were too heavy and rigid--distances were long, iron track was expensive.  Inventions concentrated on  cost/mile

• wooden ties in loose gravel instead of granite blocks
• T-rail--requires less iron and skilled labor

 railroad construction (image HD217)

• equalizing lever suspension (1839) to prevent damage on rough roadbeds
• swivel truck--jointed locomotive for sharp curves
• engines that burned anthracite (though wood lasted a long time)
• cowcatcher--because roads were not walled off.  Isaac Dripps's first design impaled the cow on prongs--difficulty of extricating the cow alive led to design to sweep the cow aside
• gauge standardized by law in 1863--30 years after England.  Issue of states rights but also Erie Railroad deliberately chose 6 ft. gauge to prevent diversion of traffic
• standard time 1883

 The John Bull,  imported in 1831

Government helped with the huge expense.

• State charters gave privileges of eminent domain, sometimes monopoly, no taxes--about 20% of railroad capital came from state purchase of stock and loans
• Many projects failed, eg. Stumphouse Tunnel north of Walhalla
• Federal congress started early debating land grants for a transcontinental railroad --debates over the constitution and sectional jealousies over the route.
• In 1850 there was a federal land grant for a railroad from Illinois to Alabama, but the transcontinental railroad was blocked by route partisans until the civil war.
• 1862 Pacific Railway act set a route from Omaha Nebraska to Sacramento Calif, completed May 10, 1869 .  Other routes in 1880s.