Industrialists And Growth In The 19th Century

The Industrialists and Growth Settled in a vast country with abundant natural resources, Americans soon developed a sense for industry which was characteristic of the 19th century. Unlike Europe where the craftsmen guilds long opposed progress in manufacturing, America was eager to use new technologies that would save labor, which was scarce. Thus the young nation, once freed from Colonial restrictions, progressed faster than its former mother country and eventually emerged as the foremost industrialized country in the World, just a century after its Independence. England had given its American colonies a purely agricultural vocation, discouraging any form of industry that could once challenge the mother country's preeminence in the field. In the same way as commerce was regulated, industry was banished from the colonies, to ensure their dependence
on the Empire and its prosperity. Despite these impediments, vital industries such as iron foundries were started by the leading families of the Colonies, as witnessed by the Philip Livingston's Ancram or the Morrises' Tinton Falls properties. Leading Southern aristocrats, like Councillor Robert Carter III of Nominy Hall and the Carrolls of Carrolton drew large profits from their Baltimore Iron Works. David Ross, Virginia's leading ironmaster, owned 100'000 acres and exploited his 450 slaves in several iron foundries, notably the Oxford Iron Works. All these developments would prove vital during the Independence War for the supply of much needed arms and fortifications. Thus it was no surprise that when the bounds were lifted, the founding fathers of America favored industrial development as an act of emancipation from England. The Federalists, Alexander Hamilton, Peter Schuyler and George Cabot were among the mighty backers of industrialization, whereas the Southern planters were more concerned to maintain agriculture prosperous and secure markets for their crops. It would take another war with England though to set the stage for domestic industrialization also in the minds of the nation's leading merchants. Years after the unsuccessful Beverly Cotton Manufactury of the Cabots and their associates, textile mills became a favorite investment of Boston shipping merchants. It took the memorized records of Samuel Slater, who had worked for Strutt and Arkwright, pioneer textile industrialists in England and the observations of Francis Cabot Lowell, scion of a Boston Brahmin family, to grow profitable textile works in New England. But during the war of 1812, when supplies of cheap textiles and apparel from England dried up, American merchants found in the textile mills a ready source of supply and a good investment opportunity. Textile manufacturing cities, shaped on the model of Lowell, grew everywhere in New England and leading merchants increased their already substantial fortunes. Lowells, Jacksons, Lawrences, Appletons and many more from Boston as well as the Browns from Providence Rhode Island and many other families grew their wealth through the New England textile mills.
Iron foundries and mines continued to be favorite industrial ventures. Anson Greene Phelpsstarted a successful metal trading concern in New York City and subsequently branched out into the copper and brass smelting business in Connecticut, where Ansonia was named for him. Under the guidance of his sons-in-law William Earl Dodge and Daniel James, and later his grandsons Daniel Willis James and William Earl Dodge jr, the Phelps Dodge company grew into a major copper mining concern with many other industrial interests, including lumber yards and saw mills. Peter Cooper made an initial fortune manufacturing glue and then invested the proceeds in the Trenton Iron Works, near Baltimore. From there he moved on to manufacture the first American locomotive and later became a key factor in the telegraph industry. Long before the steel industry grew in Western Pennsylvania, the Colemans developed their Cornwall iron ore mines and built furnaces close-by and in Lebanon Pa. As a nation born in war, the United States of America early understood the importance of a local armory industry. Thus Eli Whitney successfully developed the Springfield Armory after failing to struck wealth with his cotton gin. Others like Eliphalet Remington, Samuel Colt and Oliver Winchester followed in his footsteps, growing a firearms production complex in Connecticut, which was to 19th century manufacturing what Silicon Valley is to computer technology today. And in the quiet Brandywine valley of Northern Delaware, the son of a French immigrant started the gunpowder works that would once become the largest chemical company in the world and make his family the richest in America. Thus government orders for army supplies sponsored both the manufacturing sector and the early chemical industries.
Soon these technologies were applied to more civilian uses, from clock-making, printing presses to the vast array of agricultural instruments, soap and candle works, such as William Colgate's in New York and Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati. The Lorillards produced and marketed tobacco in ever larger quantities and the Havemeyers launched the largest sugar refining plants in Brooklyn, reengineering an industry that had already made the fortunes of the Van Cortlandts, the Bayards and the Roosevelts in colonial New York. With the manufacturing came a spirit of engineering, which brought always new machines and useful devices that more and more organized plants turned out in quantities for the merchants to market. Singer sewing machines revolutionized household garment production as much as the reaper did agriculture. Heavy manufacturing plants were built to turn out locomotives and axles for the rapidly growing railroads and soon American locomotives from Baldwin or Norris were exported
worldwide. In 30 years from 1820, the value of manufacturing multiplied fivefold from just over $ 60 million to $ 300 million. In the same time pig iron production rose to 600'000 gross tons and railroad mileage was extended to 30'000. But this was just the beginning of a drama that was still to come. The industrial spirit which more and more supplanted mercantilism would tower during the Gilded Age in unprecedented concentration of wealth, as the ever larger manufacturing plants were merged into the almighty trusts.