USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. IV > Part 13
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95 | Part 96 | Part 97
Watch-making is another example of an art in which all the conditions have been radically changed by the application of machinery invented in Boston. Prior to 1852, each watch had been a thing by itself, in all its parts a handicraft; but at this time A. L. Denison and Edward Howard conceived the method of applying machine tools of most ingenious kind, and making all the parts interchangeable. Then the watch factory was called into existence. This art is one which, although conducted in the factory sys- tem, yet calls for the highest manual dexterity on the part of the men and women who do the work; and also for the application of the higher mathe-
1 [See the chapter on "The Industries of the last Hundred Years."- ED.]
100
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
matics to the various problems and methods of improvement that con- stantly occur in it. It has worked a complete change in the markets of the world; and the watches made at Waltham, where Boston capital has in large measure, been applied, are adopted in the railway service of India and of other countries, after being subjected to the most exhaustive com- petition with other kinds.
In connection with this art, another inconspicuous application of Boston capital may be named. When the watches of home manufacture began to be very numerous, a demand sprang up for the little pasteboard boxes in which they are packed. Six years previous to his invention of machines for watch-making Mr. Denison had invented a simple machine for cutting the forms of these boxes. In the year 1850 his brother took charge of this work; soon after, the making of tags, labels, cardboard, and other similar articles was added, most ingenious and substantially unique machinery was applied to the work, and a large export trade was established,-until now more than five hundred persons are employed in Boston, while work is sent out to families in the country, giving regular employment to as many more.
Another application of the factory system may be found in the bag manufacture, established in Boston by Mr. Henry S. Chase, about the year 1850. The woven seamless bag for grain had then but lately come into use, when the application of the sewing-machine called attention to the possibility of meeting the demand for bags for other uses, the scope of which was hardly dreamed of by the projectors of the enterprise. This was in the early days of the sewing-machine, and before the reputation of the standard makers had been made. The plan was conceived of build- ing sewing-machines specially adapted to this work; and this was accom- plished by Mr. John E. Bachelder, - a partner with Mr. Chase,- whose inventions, made during its progress, were adopted by the leading makers of other sewing-machines, and constituted an important clement in their final success. The next necessity was for a printing-press which should both print the labels upon the cloth and cut it at the same time into lengths and shapes suited to each special purpose. This also was soon accomplished. The work done in Boston is still large; but as the de- mand for bags is chiefly in the West, the original firm, as well as others, have established large factories in St. Louis, Chicago, and other places, until it is estimated that two hundred thousand bags are now made every day from textile fabrics, to contain flour, hams, salt, and for the innumer- able uses to which they are applied. The work has hardly begun, as bags are rapidly displacing barrels in the export traffic in flour, being cheaper, more easily handled, and capable of much more compact stow- age. Thus this art forms a not unimportant element in our great export of the product of wheat.
Another application of mechanical science which has become a special branch of work upon the factory system, although seldom named as a
IOI
BOSTON AS A CENTRE OF MANUFACTURING CAPITAL.
special manufacture, may be found in the elevator, which has become an essential part of the apparatus of every large warehouse and hotel. The first elevator for the use of a hotel was made by the late Otis Tufts of Boston, and applied in the Fifth Avenue Hotel of New York. It worked by means of a large screw operating vertically through the cab; and al- though quite different in its mechanism from those now in use, this elevator was the germ of a system which has altered all the conditions of the use of city buildings throughout this country, and has greatly changed the con- ditions affecting the distribution of population.
No record of the application of Boston capital to manufactures would be complete which failed to include the piano. It may not be claimed that Jonas Chickering actually established this work, but to him belongs its great development. He began business on his own account in 1823, and con- tinued in charge of it until his death in 1853, since which time his sons have conducted it. Under this honored name more than sixty thousand pianos have been made since April, 1823. In 1880 nearly three thou- sand were added to the list.
Another characteristic application of Boston capital to manufactures has been in respect to reed organs. In 1854 Messrs. Mason & Hamlin began business on a very small scale, in the manufacture of melodeons, so called, - that being the best instrument of the class then known. It very soon proved to be an imperfect and unsatisfactory instrument, and experiments were instituted for an improvement. At first, progress was very slow; and it was not until the year 1861 that they succeeded in making a satisfactory cabinet or parlor organ, substantially in its present form. The merits of the new instrument were immediately recognized, and its sale extended not only to all parts of the United States, but to all parts of the civilized world. Others followed the lead of these makers; and the business has increased, until there are manufactured annually in the United States between sev- enty and eighty thousand cabinet or parlor organs, valued at $5,000,000, or more. Of these the original projectors manufacture between ten and twelve thousand; and a large portion of the remainder is also made · in Boston at the present time. In both these branches, - pianos and organs,-various ingenious machines have been applied to several parts of the work; but it still remains in great measure a craft calling for especial skill, and for the application of brain and hand together in order to assure success, -the machinery being the lesser factor, and the special skill of the artisan the greater.
After this consideration of the special branches of work which have . been gradually brought into the factory system during a comparatively recent period, - which are but a few of the characteristic branches of man- ufacture, in the conventional sense, which have originated in Boston, - one may not be surprised to find in the data of Carroll D. Wright's admirable census of Massachusetts for 1875 the proof that the value of the product
IO2
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
of " Manufactures and Related Occupations in Suffolk County" (com- prising Boston and Chelsea) exceeded that of any other county in Massa- chusetts by over $40,000,000. It amounted to $140,809,856, out of a total for the State of $592,331,962.
In another respect it is proved that the principal and most beneficent application of Boston capital to manufactures has been within its own limits, by the fact that the number of persons employed therein in 1875 was larger than in any other county, comprising forty-six thousand nine hundred and seventy-seven, out of a total of two hundred and sixty-six thousand three hundred and thirty-nine; while the wages or earnings of the persons employed averaged very much higher. The average in the whole State was $475.76 per annum; in Suffolk County, $616.23. The next highest average was in Plymouth County, $472.62 ; Worcester County next, $453.96; and Middlesex fourth, $452.55.
Boston also stands as the example of the greatest diversity of occupa- tion in the manufacturing and mechanic arts. These establishments vary in their importance, from the single one in which one hundred dollars of capital are devoted to the annual production of one hundred and fifty dol- lars' worth of " insect bellows " to the three hundred and thirty-four in which somewhat less than five million dollars' worth of capital is applied to the annual manufacture of nearly sixteen million dollars' worth of clothing. They include those devoted to the making of pianos (in which art, as has been said, the late Jonas Chickering first gave reputation to American in- struments, and established the name of Boston), as well as those in which Boston crackers are made, - the latter still a handicraft calling for special skill not yet attained in any other city. They comprise among their num- ber the works of Mr. E. S. Ritchie, whose mariner's compass carries the name of Boston, under many a foreign flag, to the great harbors of the world where the flag of our own country now seldom appears.
The number of separate titles under which Mr. Wright listed the manu- factures of the city in 1875 was 381 ; the number of establishments, 2,616; the value of the products, $112,214,147. Under the head of " Related Occupations " the number of titles was 142 ; of establishments, 3,033; value of products $23,717,357. Total, -titles, 523; establishments, 5,649; value of products, $135,931,504.
Among the counties of Massachusetts, Essex County stands second to Suffolk in the diversity of its occupations; and among the cities, Worcester stands next to Boston.
The application of machinery to the arts of life, the development of manufactures, the concentration of the work under the factory system, the division of labor, and the diversity of occupation which have marked the conditions of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and especially of the town and city of Boston, have been a process of natural and necessary evolution. The various changes which have occurred in this progress have been in some measure effected by war and by legislation. Some branches
BOSTON AS A CENTRE OF MANUFACTURING CAPITAL. 103
of manufacture have been developed more rapidly than they might have been by changes in the laws for the collection of revenue, while others have been retarded or even destroyed by the same statutes. It would be out of place in this work to do more than call attention to this fact, in or- der that the place of Boston may be defined as the great example, within the State, of that necessary diversity of occupation which must exist among a free and civilized people, whatever the statute policy or method of col- lecting revenue may be. In like manner in the great cities of the West,- the industrial centres of States in which the possibilities of agriculture are vastly greater than in Massachusetts, - the development of manufactures is proceeding with great rapidity, and many of the applications of machin- ery and of the factory system which originated with us are now carried on in these Western cities on a yet grander scale. In fact it is rapidly be- coming apparent that so long as the legal obstructions to commerce, to ship-building, and ship-owning. are permitted to continue in force, the city that is flanked on one side by the sea is at the wrong end of a railroad as compared to its sister city in the interior.
We may now make a brief record of the most conspicuous example of the application of Boston capital to manufactures, using the latter word in its most conventional and limited sense, in its application to the con- struction of the textile factory. The history of this work is marked by broad lines, and has been well written by many persons; but this memo- rial would be incomplete without a repetition of some of its most salient ·points.
Although the linen fabric in which the mummies of Egypt are wrapped is the oldest known example of the textile art, it is fair to infer that a fabric made of cotton was the first spun and woven by human fingers, as cotton is indigenous in Central Asia, whence our ancestors are supposed to have migrated; and also because the fibre of cotton requires no artificial preparation, like wool and flax, in order that it may be spun. It is in the power of any one to spin a thread with the fingers from a ripe boll of unginned cotton, then to double and twist it into a strong strand, and by tying the ends of a warp to a set of reeds, to throw in the weft by means of a "picker stick," which might be prepared with a flint implement so as to serve its purpose. In the course of the development of the art there have been only two original inventions which can be traced to their source, - the extension of the strand, commonly called " spinning by rollers," which was applied by Arkwright, though probably not invented by him; and the saw-gin, invented by Eli Whitney. All the other appliances consist of modifications of pre-historic machines. These two inventions created the modern cotton factory, yet both are still imperfect in important particulars ; and the cotton fabric which meets the highest requirements of art is still the product of the human finger and of the hand loom, - the Dacca muslin ·of India, sometimes called " woven wind."
104
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
1
The germ of the modern cotton factory was established by Samuel Slater, the son of a land agent of Jedediah Stratt, the partner of Arkwright. He had been an apprentice in the " art of cotton spinning," and, migrating to this country in the latter part of the last century, became not only the founder of the art of cotton spinning, but, as has been well said by Mr. John L. Hayes in one of his articles on the textile arts, he also became the founder of "the manufacture of American textile machinery ; " and thus not only established the modern cotton factory, but the modern woollen and worsted factory as well.
The germ of the woollen factory had existed from a very early date in the numerous fulling-mills in which the homespun cloth of our ancestors was finished, and at a later period in the carding-mills in which the wool was prepared for spinning on the hand-wheel; but there was no complete example of the modern woollen factory in all its parts until 1830, when the Middlesex Mills were constructed, mainly by Boston capital, at Lowell.
The first application of power to the spinning of wool had been made at Peacedale, R. I., in 1819, in a factory established in 1800 by Rowland Hazard, and by his sons Isaac P. and Rowland G., the latter of whom still devotes his great ability not only to the material but to the mental progress of the country. The power-loom was also first introduced for weaving broad woollen goods in the same factory in 1828. The woollen manufac- ture is almost coëval with the settlement of the country, and the proto- type of the modern factory was to be found, as already said, in the fulling and carding mills from a very early date. In 1737, two thousand persons, or about one tenth part of the population of Boston, were engaged in mak- ing cards for carding wool, to supply the need of New England.
Up to 1814 the work of the cotton factory had been confined to spin- ning yarn which was woven upon hand-looms in the homes of the people ; but a little later the power-loom was introduced and applied to cotton fabrics by the late Francis C. Lowell of Boston, whose attention had been called to it while dwelling abroad in 1811 and 1812, and who returned to this country in 1813. He at once found associates among his fellow-citizens of Boston ; and, securing the services of Paul Moody, began the construc- tion of the modern cotton factory at Waltham. Soon followed the found- ing of Lowell: the starting of the Merrimack Mills, in September, 1823, completed the introduction of the cotton manufacture into the United States . in its modern form. To repeat the names of Jackson, Boott, Lawrence, Lowell, Batchelder, and many others, would be but to name those who succeeded the great merchants of an older time, and by whom the capital of Boston was in part diverted from the commerce in which it had been mainly engaged, up to the time of the embargo of 1809-1811 and the war of Great Britain in 1812, to the establishment of textile manufactures in the modern factory. These restrictions upon commerce, as well as the interruption of it caused by the war, had produced great reverses of for- tune and hardships among the people of New England; and the estab-
BOSTON AS A CENTRE OF MANUFACTURING CAPITAL.
105
42
NATHAN APPLETON. 1
lishment of the factory system applied to textile fabrics aided greatly in restoring prosperity to the people.
It was not until a much later date than the first inception of this method that it became the subject of political contention, and led to the great legis-
1 [This portrait follows a likeness by Stuart, belonging to Mr. Appleton's son-in-law, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and is by his kind per- mission engraved. Mr. Appleton was born Oct. 6, 1779, and died July 14, 1861. See the memoir of Mr. Appleton in the Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, October, 1861, p. 249, pre- pared by the Hon. R. C. Winthrop; also the latter's Speeches, 1852-1867, p. 502; the notice of Mr. Appleton in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, January, 1862; and Monumental Memorials of the Appleton Family,
by Dr. John Appleton, 1867, who also issued in 1864 a tabular pedigree of the family. Mr. Appleton's children by his first wife, Maria Theresa Gold of Pittsfield, were : Thomas Gold (H.C. 1831), well known for his benefactions and interest in art ; Mary, who married R. J. Mack- intosh, son of Sir James; Charles Sedgwick, who died 1835; and Fanny, wife of Mr. Long- fellow, who died July 10, 1861. By a second wife, Harriot C. Sumner, Mr. Appleton was the father of William S., Harriot, and Nathan. -ED.]
VOL. IV. - 14.
106
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
lative conflicts which have not yet ended. Nathan Appleton and Abbott Lawrence, two of the founders of the factory system, with other men whose names are as historic as these two in connection with the work done by Bos- ton capital, took part, Oct. 2, 1820, in a great meeting in Faneuil Hall, in pro- testing against the perversion of the revenue system in such way as to make the development of the factory system the main purpose of the statute and the collection of revenue the incident. James Perkins, Samuel P. Gardner, William Shimmin, John Dorr, and William Sturgis were the committee who framed the resolutions, and Daniel Webster was the speaker who sustained them. The identity of the interests of merchants, manufacturers, farmers, and mechanics was never presented more forcibly before or since. Mr. Webster deprecated the vacillating policy which might ensue if the meas- ures then pressed mainly by the South were adopted. He could " hardly conceive of anything worse than a policy which should place the great in- terests of the country in hostility to one another, - a policy which should keep them in constant conflict, and bring them every year to fight their battles in the committee rooms of the House of Representatives at Wash- ington. . .. For his part, he believed that the principle of leaving such things very much to their own course, in a country like ours, was the only true policy ; and that we could no more improve the order and habit and composition of society by an artificial balancing of trades and occupations than we could improve the natural atmosphere by means of the condensers and rarefiers of the chemists."
This remarkable speech, which is not included in any published collec- tion of Webster's speeches, and can be referred to only as it appeared in the columns of the Boston Daily Advertiser of Oct. 11, 1820, represented the solid sense of the great merchants as well as of the great manufacturers who had introduced the textile arts into Massachusetts under the factory system. Unfortunately their views did not prevail; the measures forced on New England by the South with the hope of making an almost exclu- sive home market for cotton were carried, and the capital of Boston and of Massachusetts was adjusted to the new conditions. Up to that time a very simple and moderate revenue system had prevailed, under which all the arts of peace had proceeded in their development in due order; the reaction which ensued after the war of 1812 had been overcome; but since then the application of capital to manufactures has been. subject to constant vacillation and change in the revenue laws. Since 1820 there have been thirty-three separate acts of legislation for the collection of revenue from customs, many of them gravely altering the conditions, especially in the textile arts.
But the application of new capital to the new conditions has been con- stant; and although we have now the most complex and obstructive system of taxation, both National and State, that ever prevailed in a civilized country,- a system which must be changed as the absolutely necessary condition precedent to any true reform of the civil service,-our manufac-
107
BOSTON AS A CENTRE OF MANUFACTURING CAPITAL.
tures, including textile fabrics as well as all others, are on a firm foundation and fairly prosperous.
The dangers of artificially or prematurely imposing the factory system upon the State by special legislation, which Mr. Webster and his associates so much feared, have not been as great as he anticipated. He said that "two generations, in his opinion, would change the whole face of New England society." In little more than two generations since that speech was made, the face of New England society has been changed in even greater measure than Mr. Webster could have foreseen; the whole sys- tem of agriculture which he then knew has been profoundly altered by the introduction of the railroad; foreign commerce, of the kind that he wit- nessed and sustained, has almost disappeared, and the factory system has been adopted not only in textile manufactures, but in almost all other branches of industry; yet the State and the city still maintain their pros- perity, and the changes of legislation have only altered the distribution of property and changed in some measure the conditions of progress.
At that time no rule had become established, but for many years after, and as late as 1840, the amount of capital needed to establish a textile fac- tory was more than double what is now required; the customary hours of labor were thirteen, sometimes even fourteen per day, against ten at the present time; the labor was continuous, and the product of yarn or cloth was only one half what it is now per day, - less than one half what it now is per hour, - while wages were only one half what they now are. The factory was low studded and ill ventilated, and all the conditions of the work were arduous.
As the obstructions to commerce caused by the war, the embargo, and revenue changes diverted capital from its previous uses, the occupations of the factory took the place of those which had previously been followed, and for a long period the textile factories, as well as others, were filled almost wholly by the natives of New England. As late as 1860 there was here and there a cotton or woollen factory in which the operatives were mostly native ; but with the application of machinery to other pursuits, and the greater demands of trade, work was found, especially for women, either at higher wages or else under conditions of life which the American women preferred. Presently the factory operatives became mostly of foreign birth, - English, Irish, and German ; and a little later their places were again taken by the French Canadians, who now constitute the larger proportion of the opera- tives in the textile factories which are worked by Boston capital.
Among the strange anomalies of our day, reference may be made to the singular fact that a section of country may still be reached within forty- eight hours' ride from Boston which is now only just being opened by the railroad, and which neither the factory system nor the fabrics of the factory itself have yet penetrated. In the very heart of the country, a sparse popu- lation inhabiting the fertile valleys of the Alleghanies and the hill-sides of the lateral mountain ranges of Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Caro-
108
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
linas still clothe themselves in the product of the hand-loom, and the whirr of the spinning-wheel may be heard now, as it was of old in New England, in every household. Cut off from their fellows by the surrounding pall of slavery, the free people of these mountains have brought the industry of the eighteenth, and some of the customs of the seventeenth, down even to the end of the nineteenth century; so that one may study all the changes which have occurred in the industry of New England in two hundred years by passing from the heart of western North Carolina northerly through Virginia and Maryland to Pennsylvania. Just as he may find between the top of Roan Mountain in North Carolina and the sea toward the east nearly all the flora and fauna which may be found from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, so he may pass from the spinning-wheel, the hand-loom, the domestic still, and the wayside iron-furnace worked with charcoal, through small yarn-mills and coarse weaving-mills and by the lesser iron-works to the larger factories of northern Virginia and Maryland, until he reaches the great factories and works of Pennsylvania.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.