USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 4 > Part 37
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IMPETUS TO MANUFACTURES (1820-1889)
One reason why the manufactures of New England went ahead so rapidly during the nineteenth century was the fact that they had got an early start. They were centered in that part of the country where population was densest and where
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the domestic market was best. It was also a region well located for foreign trade, and the repute of New England goods early became established in foreign markets. Then, too, industries based upon the exploitation of natural resources, notably whaling, had made possible the accumulation of capi- tal which was available for investment. Much of this went into manufacturing plants in Massachusetts, and a good deal of it went into the development of the interior, as will appear from the chapter on "Massachusetts in the West." Finally, it has long been apparent that seaboard towns had special advantages in the matter of obtaining foreign labor. In the establishment of the textile industries this was a matter of particular value, because men of the necessary technical skill had to come from abroad before it was possible to set up mills in this country.
Aside from these advantages of location, industry in Massa- chusetts gained impetus also from improvements in the utiliza- tion of iron. With the introduction of power looms in the textile industry, iron foundries in Worcester and Fall River began the casting of parts for the framing of the machinery ; and a little later cylinders were also cast for cards. After 1840, although wood was still used, cast iron predominated in the machine assemblies.
Improvements in the design of water wheels, culminating in the development of the turbine, were reflected in technical improvements in casting methods, and elaborate designs were manufactured which made possible a combination of intricacy and strength which had been denied with wood. It is said that the wide use of stoves made necessary the casting of irregular shapes which should be both strong and light in weight, and that this requirement stimulated the technical advance of the industry. Then by 1850 malleable iron came into use, and to some extent supplanted forgings for certain machine parts.
This improvement in the devices with which the work was to be done was a response to the demands of industry and at the same time a stimulus to the advance of many industries. Principles which had been applied in woodworking were adapted to the working of metal, and nimble high-speed
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machinery was made possible because metal was used in its design.
WATER POWER OR STEAM (1820-1889)
There appears to have been at least one mill operated by steam in America as early as 1801, but the ready availability of water power and the cheapness with which it could be em- ployed left little inducement for the introduction of the com- paratively costly and inefficient steam engines, particularly in an area where coal was not then available and wood was the only fuel. Naturally, however, steam commended itself for use in transportation because water power was bound to its site, and the steam engine was the only portable form of power.
In colonial times small grist and fulling mills occupied water powers of local importance. With the development of the industrial use of machinery it became desirable to utilize larger rivers. On these wing dams were used to divert the water to the mill wheels, and in a few instances entire streams were turned aside.
By 1830 the water powers of the smaller streams were pretty well taken up. But ten years before that Ezra Worthen had pointed out the advantages of the falls of the Merrimac River as a site for a really large development. This resulted in the creation of the present city of Lowell, the story of which as an ideal mill community will be recited later.
Efficiency was not a notable feature of the wooden pitch- back wheels, which were the commonest type in American mills down to 1840. Water flowed into buckets just as they passed the top of the wheel, and by its weight caused the wheel to rotate. A mechanic from New Hampshire adapted French ideas in the construction of a turbine which was introduced in Fall River in 1843; and more efficient designs were subse- quently evolved until, in 1846, Uriah Boyden had put in operation three 190-horsepower turbines at Lowell, where their efficiency was determined to be 88 per cent. This was by far the most effective device employed up to that time,
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and added about 25 per cent to the power actually available in the mills.
In 1831, out of the 137 manufacturing plants in Massa- chusetts, printing establishments being excluded, all but seven were run by water power. There was a controversy during the next two or three decades over the relative advantages of water and steam, especially as it became feasible to bring coal by water to the growing New England communities along the coast. But water power, reflecting an evenly distributed rainfall and regulated by the chains of glacial lakes, was in general reliable and succeeded in holding its own. In 1870 it provided 70 per cent of the power used for manufacturing in New England, and even in the twentieth century one third of the New England cotton industry is still carried on by the power of water.
TRANSITION TO SHOPS (1820-1840)
There is a logical connection between the power sites of New England and the character of the industrial development. The utilization of machinery, especially if the machines are elaborate and expensive, predicates the assembling of such equipment in a factory and its operation by some considerable source of power. Factories with this requirement could not have grown up in Massachusetts when they did except for the availability of water powers.
Circumstances combined to make possible a shift in the character of industrial employment. Crafts which had been carried on in small shops, or perhaps by workers who received materials and performed labor upon them in their own homes, were found adapted to machine production and were expanded into factory industries.
In various communities various explanations are given as to the precise factors which brought about the change. The truth is that it was dictated by very broad considerations, and that certain local matters, such as dissatisfaction with the want of uniformity in home products or the necessity of quantity production to meet special demands, were mere catalyzers of a reaction which was bound to come.
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The stages of the transition have been described by Tryon as three: "First, there was the stage in which the home was absolutely independent of the factory; secondly, the stage in which the factory was supplementary to the home; thirdly, the stage in which the factory was independent of the home."
By 1830 the girls and women of New England were carry- ing on their spinning and weaving, for the most part, not at home but in the factories. In some other industries the change did not come until considerably later; but the same stages are observable in the history of the boot-and-shoe in- dustry, which by 1855 had turned well away from small shops and "putting out," to large plants in which elaborate machinery was employed.
PROGRESS OF TEXTILE INDUSTRY (1814-1860)
A very important advance in the manufacture of textiles was signalized by the introduction of ingenious machinery. Those devices which mark the leaps and bounds of the prog- ress of textile manufacture in Massachusetts were in large part borrowed from England. In the old country manu- facturers were striving to guard inventions and secret proc- esses, and the exportation of plans or the emigration of men skilled in the industry was forbidden.
Francis C. Lowell, however, made a close study of the machinery in use in England, and succeeded in perfecting a power loom in Massachusetts in 1814; whereupon a factory was built in Waltham, said to have been the first mill in which cloth was completely manufactured under one roof.
Samuel Slater, trained in England, decided that his talents would command a special reward in the new country, and succeeded in evading the prohibition against emigration. He came to Rhode Island, and was so well versed in the intrica- cies of the English machinery that he was able to reconstruct it from memory and to get under way a successful plant there.
The ring spinner was perfected before 1840, and from that time on American mills manufactured increasing quanti- ties of cotton cloth at decreasing prices, until in 1860 there were over 5,000,000 spindles, using above 423,000,000 pounds
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of cotton, in contrast to around 500,000 spindles which, in 1815, used about 5,000,000 pounds; and the cost of calico fell in that period from about 35 cents to 10 cents a yard.
WOOLENS (1820-1880)
Relying upon the wool of their own flocks, the colonists of early Massachusetts developed their household manu- facture of cloth. Down to 1840 supplies came principally from Vermont and the Berkshires, where the fine wool of Merino and Saxony sheep was produced for the manufacture of broadcloth. Inferior sheep along the seaboard yielded a coarser wool, used in small plants for flannel and satinet.
The first power-operated spinning jenny was introduced in 1819, and in 1821 two warehouses were opened in Boston for the sale of American woolen goods. That same year a com- pany was incorporated at Southbridge for the manufacture of broadcloths and cassimeres. The plant had thirty-two looms. In 1836 New England had about 60 per cent of the establishments using wool. They were for the most part on an unpretentious scale, as may be gathered from Cole's descrip- tion of a small mill: "Housed in a wooden structure 26 feet by 50, and two stories high, were four sets of cards, 155 spindles, and 4 looms; while the labor force of the 'factory' consisted of only 9 persons."
The growth and localization of factories was a gradual process. Anything for which the raw material and simple machinery were so easily to be had quite naturally was wide- spread in frontier communities; and manufacture, therefore, moved westward until about 1870, while both during the inter- vening years and afterward the position of New England as the center of the industry was consolidated. By 1869 Massa- chusetts mills had three quarters of the combs employed in the worsted manufacture, and Boston was established as the principal wool market of the country.
COTTON (1813-1889)
It is quite impossible to discuss the subject of cotton manu- facture without thinking at the outset of the name of Lowell
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-a name which today brings to mind the industrial com- munity on the Merrimac River, but which ought also to stir recollection of Francis Cabot Lowell, who conceived that com- munity and in whose honor, though he never saw it, the town was named. The factory at Waltham with which he had been associated was successful, and it was thought desirable to expand operations. The site at Pawtucket Falls on the Merri- mac was chosen with the deliberate purpose of settling the new development where it could be carried on to the best ad- vantage. There was a thirty-foot drop of the river there and the mill was planned to make full use of that power.
Construction began in 1822, and by the autumn of the next year the plant was put in operation. At the same time a novel and elaborate program of building went forward to carry out the plans formulated by Francis Cabot Lowell, who thus became the founder of the paternalistic type of mill com- munity. Tenements and boarding houses were built to ac- commodate the employees of the mill; and their daily life, whether at work or at leisure, was elaborately supervised. The character of the community will be discussed below. The system was widely copied in the textile developments of New England, and later found expression in a rather less idealistic way in the mining and steel districts of other States. In its original it reflected Lowell's conviction that the deplorable living conditions of English mill operatives must be avoided here, and that such a result could best be obtained if the com- pany which employed them undertook to provide them with adequate dwellings and suitable food at a minimum cost.
The mills promptly attracted a considerable population, largely composed of the daughters of farmers, who occupied the mill boarding houses ; and what was in 1822 a rural district of about 200 farm families had become by 1826 an industrial community with some 2,500 population. The nature of that population is brought out by the fact that only twelve were tax- payers.
Water powers influenced the location of similar enterprises at Nashua and Manchester in New Hampshire, and at Law- rence, Massachusetts, all on the Merrimac. Mills were built also at Fall River and at Chicopee Falls, and later at New
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Bedford and Taunton. The factories of southern New Eng- land enhanced their advantage when coal became an important source of power in the industry, because they were advanta- geously located to receive it by water. In the cities along the Merrimac the skilful arrangement of canals made it possible to use the water again and again as it flowed from mill to mill, so that even as late as 1900 the census figures show that water was supplying 49 per cent of the power for the cotton mills of Lowell.
When the Civil War cut off the supply of cotton, New England manufacturers experienced a period of severe depres- sion. Some mills were closed and others were converted to the manufacture of woolen goods; but protective tariffs after the war encouraged the industry again, and enabled American manufacturers to control the domestic market. The excel- lence and cheapness of their product enabled it to supplant linen as the common household cloth.
LEATHER (1810-1860)
Some mention has been made of the factors which helped to encourage the manufacture of boots and shoes in Massa- chusetts. This was one of the industries first established in response to local demand, and so early did it get on a produc- tive basis that, though it was still a handicraft, over 135,000 pairs of boots and shoes were exported in 1810. Not until thirty years later did improvements in tools initiate the change in the character of the industry.
Down almost to the Civil War a great many shoes were made for local use in the tiny shops known as "ten-footers," although some of them were as large as fourteen feet square. Another part of the production came from "outworkers," who received from a central shop materials of their trade, and returned to it the completed articles, for which they were paid on a piecework basis.
Since some of these workers had highly individual ideas about shoe design, there was occasionally some very remark- able cutting done, and this, combined with the fact that the actual assembly of the parts was often not accomplished in a
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strictly conscientious way, impressed upon the manufacturers the necessity for standardization. It was apparent that this could be got if the workers were brought together where they could be supervised; and the movement to the shop began.
When the processes that had been performed by hand in the home or small shop were reduced to matters of machine practice, it became possible to employ power on a large scale, and the shop became a factory. This transition was marked by the invention soon after 1850 of a machine which served to sew together the uppers, and the perfection in 1858 of the McKay stitching machine to sew the uppers to the sole. The later introduction of machines for welting and lasting reduced to a minimum the importance of hand labor in this branch of industry.
In 1860 Massachusetts possessed more than a half of the factories of New England, and produced footwear worth over $46,000,000. Essex, Worcester, and Plymouth Counties pro- duced in point of value more than one third of the boots and shoes of the United States.
OTHER INDUSTRIES (1820-1889)
The early years of the nineteenth century marked the ex- haustion of the bog iron ores that had played so important a part in the economy of the colonial settlers. Shipbuilders and operators of forges were under the necessity of using iron, and were confronted by the dilemma of getting European iron, subject to a high tariff, or domestic charcoal iron, that had been becoming increasingly expensive as the seaboard forests adjoining the ore deposits were exhausted.
By 1831 the machine manufacturers of Massachusetts were using almost none but imported iron and steel, and well before 1860 it became apparent that those industries in which large quantities of the metal were to be employed must be better located with reference to fuel and ore than was possible in Massachusetts. What it was possible to retain of such indus- tries was of the class in which ingenuity and skilled labor play a principal part in determining the value of the finished product.
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CONDITIONS OF LABOR
Two other industries which enjoyed greater distinction than they now do were rum distilling and the manufacture of tobacco. The rum distilleries of New England were entirely dependent upon imported raw material; but as the West and South were opened up and the Louisiana sugar producers, who resented the competition of the West Indian product, joined hands with the middle-western grain distillers, who preferred to have the public drink whiskey instead of rum, it was possi- ble for them to secure a tariff on molasses which considerably impaired the domestic distillation-except for export, in which case the duty was remitted.
Clark comments that "with whisky costing 25 cents a gallon and two cigars retailing for 1 cent, the convivial indulgencies of the early Republic were easily purchased."
The special fitness of the soil of the Connecticut Valley for tobacco culture gave rise to a very early household industry there in the manufacture of cigars. About 1810 this had developed into a shop industry; and in 1831 it appears that Salem, Saugus, and Newburyport were turning out cigars at the rate of ten to twenty million a year. Cigars of Cuban tobacco could be produced at $5 per thousand, or less, of which about half represented the cost of the material.
MILL TOWNS AND CONDITIONS OF LABOR (1823-1860)
To read the account of the supervised life of mill operatives in that ideal community that was Lowell in the days of its founding, is to wonder whether all of the merits of the system were conceived with an eye totally to the welfare of the workers, or whether now and then there were not some thought that two birds could be killed with one stone and the mill- owners themselves might profit a little?
In the first place, women had not been accustomed to work- ing away from home and, if they were to be induced to settle in Lowell and provide a working force for the mill, special concessions would have to be made to Mrs. Grundy. Ac- cordingly, tenements were erected for families, and boarding houses were built which appear to have been operated more or less on the plan of the dormitories of a modern girls' college.
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From two to six girls shared a room, and a parlor was pro- vided for the reception of guests. Except by special per- mission of the housekeeper, the girls were not permitted to remain out after ten o'clock at night.
Considerable emphasis was laid also upon the importance of religion, with a resultant saving in illumination costs, for it was provided that lamps would not be lit on Saturday nights in the company houses, inasmuch as the workers were supposed to be preparing themselves by prayer and meditation for the Sabbath.
Such English observers as Dickens and Trollope were particularly struck by the comparatively high intellectual caliber of the mill girls, their interest in reading and music, their attention to serious lectures, and their apparent concern with the better things of life. If one assumes that the actual value of the lectures and libraries that were provided has not been exaggerated, it is still possible to explain the differ- ence between the interests of those days and the interests of our own in part by the fact that the population of the early mill communities was almost entirely of pure Yankee stock. The workers came from homes that were essentially of a class, and they did not feel the reluctance to live intimately with each other that they began to feel when foreign labor was introduced; nor did they lack the common heritage of Yankee shrewdness and aspiration to better things. So it was that they could be reached as a group by the type of uplift that was directed to them.
Wages were not large, according to modern standards, and the working day was long-until 1850, 1312 hours a day, or about 80 hours a week, for a reward of $1.25, of which the corporation collected 75 cents for board. By announcement of the Bay State Mills at Lowell in 1850, "labor begins, or the gate closes, at 5 A. M. from May 1 to September 1, and at ten minutes before sunrise the remainder of the year. A first bell is rung 40 minutes before, to allow time to prepare for work. Labor ends 7:30 P. M. from September 20 to March 20; and 7 from May 1 to September 1; and 15 minutes after sunset for the remainder of the year. During the whole year dinner is at 12:30 P. M. 45 minutes are allowed for each
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BEGINNINGS OF TRANSPORTATION
meal." At that time skilled labor, such as that of carpenters, was being paid at the rate of from $1.25 to $1.50 a day.
That there was always a fairly close understanding between workers and mill owners in Lowell is evidenced by the fact that, down to 1890, there were only eleven strikes, and none of these was general.
In that community there was little employment of children; but in some other mills this was common, and boys and girls between six and fourteen years of age were frequently a majority of the operating force. Practically nothing was done before the Civil War, but in 1866 and 1867 Massachusetts forbade the employment in factories of children under ten; in 1869 evening schools were authorized, and in 1883 they were made compulsory in towns of over 10,000 population. By successive steps the age of compulsory attendance at schools was raised until 1889, when it was established at fourteen years and children were obliged to attend school for thirty weeks out of each year. The ten-hour-day law for women and children was held constitutional by the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 1876.
BEGINNINGS OF TRANSPORTATION (1639-1835)
New England is isolated from the country west of the Hudson by reason of the fact that difficult highlands intervene and the general course of the rivers is from north to south. Such transportation as the aborigines required was accom- plished either by packing over the trails or carrying in canoes on the rivers. These devices had naturally to supplement one another because of rapids and rough water, around which portages were necessary. The two routes that were known in those days as the Bay Path and the Mohawk Trail now accommodate railroads, which is perhaps the best testimony to the wisdom with which they were originally selected.
But the possibilities of such primitive methods made them inadequate even for the fur trade with the Indians; and as population began to spread back from the coast and industries began to develop, there was a demand for connection with the principal market and commercial center, Boston. As early
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as 1639 the General Court decreed that "the ways" should be from six to ten rods wide, in order that vehicles might pass. "The ways," however, were hardly more than tracks across country, and were characterized by bogs and a general con- dition of roughness and disrepair. The sad state of the high- ways and the cumbersome character of the wagons, then es- sential if they were to hold together on such roads, combined to make overland transportation very costly. Ease of haulage, the convenience of heavy loads, and the comparatively low expense had commended canals, the construction of which commenced about 1820 and was at times marked by an agita- tion far in excess of anything that was really achieved.
STAGE COACHES (1818-1835)
In 1818 the Eastern Stage Company commenced the opera- tion of coaches from Portsmouth to Boston, and in 1832 it was operating routes from Dover and Portsmouth in New Hampshire to Newburyport, Salem, and Boston; from Salem to Haverhill and Lowell; from Gloucester to Ipswich, and from Lowell to Newburyport. For its time, the elaborateness of this program was almost equivalent to the frequent motor coaches of today, which in their turn are giving competition to the railroads that by 1835 spelled the doom of stagecoaching. Lines that had prospered exceedingly on such moderate fares as $1 from Boston to Salem and $11 for the 200 miles from Boston to Burlington-lines that had operated with such efficiency that Henry Clay travelled from Salem to Boston in a single hour, and Daniel Webster from Boston to Portland at an average of sixteen miles an hour-went down before the competition of a still cheaper and faster form of travel, and passed out of existence except as they became tributary to the railroads.
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