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2 Paths of Initial Mechanization, 1790–1835
- Johns Hopkins University Press
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c h a p t e r t w o Paths of Initial Mechanization, 1790–1835 In the half-century after the United States gained independence, mechanical technologies transformed important industries and services. Textile machines, steam engines, and steamboats held the attention of contemporaries. Less-heralded changes reshaped printing, woodworking, clock making, and firearms. Such innovations helped bring industrial capitalism to an economy of small, unmechanized producers. In the process new institutions, including industrial firms, technological occupations, and governmental organizations, used and spread knowledge. Through such institutions technological change became ongoing . The classic question of how mechanization could begin and continue in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries took a particular form in the United States. Compared to Britain and much of Western Europe, the American economy was particularly agrarian, with limited mechanical skills and few institutions to spread technological knowledge, and yet its mechanization was especially broad. Mechanization followed different, largely independent paths for different technologies. Each path pioneered and diffused the new technique, made machines, and evolved though new institutions.And at the beginning each faced fundamental barriers.1 Prospects and Barriers At independence Americans had good reason to expect output growth but not technological change. Benjamin Franklin formulated a law that U.S. population doubled every 20 years, which was remarkably accurate. He rightly thought that population could grow without impairing living standards; per capita income had not fallen,and probably rose a bit,over the eighteenth century.As Thomas Jefferson recognized,Malthusian population pressures did not impair well-being if new land 16 Multiple Paths of Innovation could be settled. The United States remained overwhelmingly agricultural, with three-quarters or more of the labor force in this sector as late as 1800. It was also commercial, and markets grew as output expanded.2 While output rose consistently, productivity did not. Agricultural productivity grew in places, such as around Philadelphia, where labor productivity increased by perhaps 20 percent over the eighteenth century, due in part to greater investment per worker. But family farms distant from large markets experienced little productivity change. With some exceptions, such as the American ax, techniques came from Europe and,for corn and other products,from Native Americans.Some nonagricultural sectors grew more rapidly. Productivity in ocean shipping, the second biggest sector of employment, grew close to 1 percent per year, due less to new techniques than to organizational improvements, such as more annual trips per ship. Artisans increased productivity little, though they occasionally reorganized production for regional markets. Growth occurred largely by extending small-scale production with unchanged techniques.3 Americans could well expect more of the same. Early leaders from Jefferson to AlexanderHamiltonlooked tomechanizationforproductivitygrowth.Widespread mechanization required a ready supply of labor, ample capital, large markets, and considerable knowledge and skill. Each of these factors posed a barrier. Hamilton knew—probably more than any other leader in the early Republic—that large-scale manufacturing could succeed only if it overcame the scarcity and high cost of labor. He noted several elements of a solution, each followed in the nineteenth century: manufacture in areas with high population densities, employ women and children, use machinery extensively, and encourage immigration.At independence these solutions were far off. Hamilton recognized that the inadequate investment blocked mechanization, especially in the large-scale establishments he advocated. At independence the United States had much less wealth than England, perhaps one-third as much per person if slaves are excluded. The financial limit could be overcome by bank credit, imported capital, or public funds.As secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton helped by establishing the first Bank of the United States, funding the government debt, and stabilizing the banking system. To secure investment in new fields, especially when faced with European competition, Hamilton advocated such governmental inducements as subsidies,tariffs,export and import controls,prizes,and property rights for inventors and importers of new techniques.Markets were much smaller and less integrated than in Britain,though colonial growth had reduced this barrier. Regional markets were integrating, as indicated by price convergence for agricultural and other commodities. Yet urbanization remained low, and interior transportation was costly.4 [3.145.191.214] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 11:16 GMT) Paths of Initial Mechanization, 1790–1835 17 The United States could not match European knowledge of crafts,machinery,or applied science. Public policies supported knowledge diffusion but could not overcome technological backwardness on their own. Common school education was widespread in many northern colonies, and especially in New England illiteracy was...