Over the course of the 19th Century, the United States transformed from a frontier nation dependent on trade with former colonizing nations to a leading manufacturer and exporter of goods. Charles R. Morris describes how America accomplished this change in The Dawn of Innovation.
The forces that led to the development of an American system of manufacturing were practical and cultural. There were labor shortages, especially for skilled labor. Americans in every field were interested in mechanizing work to get it done with the people and skills available. Americans were also largely middle class, at least in their way of thinking. They had to have the means to cross the Atlantic, and once here wage pressure and the availability of resources quickly made many people middle class. The middle class valued improvement and economic independence. In the U.S. they were free from the limiting class structures of Europe.
The middle class were also consumers. They were interested in the goods and lifestyle associated with wealth, but at prices they could afford. And there were a lot more of them that the handful of rich people who were the consumers of traditional luxury goods. Americans wanted to produce, market and distribute goods on a mass scale that was hard for Europeans of the time to even imagine.
The cloth-making industry was one of the first to bring together the aspects of modern manufacturing: specialization, organization of work flow, mechanization and automation. American cloth makers took—sometimes stole—these things from the British. A leap that the Americans made, but not the British, was to apply these same concepts to all kinds of production.
The organization of work was especially helpful in the U.S., where the skilled workers needed for precision machine making were few. Morris uses the arms industry as an example of American leadership in the transformation from craft piecework to an organized workflow with uniform standards.
Morris also undertakes some myth busting. Eli Whitney is associated with first rifles—really the first manufactured goods—to have interchangeable parts, which is a hallmark of modern manufacturing. Whitney and others promised interchangeability to win contracts with the Army, but he never achieved it; it took him a while to even become a good gun maker. It took decades of work by others to achieve interchangeable parts. This was both a matter of organizing work and developing more precise machining equipment.
Morris shows how innovations accumulated over time to create American manufacturing leadership. He shows how the culture and natural environment were incubators for such development.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
The Gentleman Scientists by Tom
Schachtman
Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick
The Power Makers by Maury Klein
The Society for Useful Knowledge by Jonathan
Lyons
Waste and Want by Susan Strasser
Morris, Charles R. The Dawn of Innovation: The First American Industrial Revolution. New York: Public Affairs, 2012.
