Eventually, the American Revolution eliminated the long-standing connections and set the new nation on its own course. Indeed, the Revolution foreshadowed the importance that manufacturing would assume in the nation in the years ahead. Some industry grew out of the war effort. Smelting iron in small charcoal furnaces helped to produce items for the colonial army. George Washington’s winter encampment in 1777 to 1778, for instance, was at Valley Forge near metal workshops. The army also required shoes, caps, uniform items, firearms, and powder, but the demand surpassed the production capability of small and fledgling colonial industries. In addition, America no longer provided Great Britain with raw materials and served as the focal point for its finished products. The new nation found markets for timber, tobacco, cotton, and other raw materials in far distant ports from Spain to the Indian Ocean. After the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the United States and Great Britain gradually restored their economic ties. This relationship ultimately prevailed in spite of the renewed tensions with Great Britain during the Napoleonic era and the War of 1812. However, the development and growth of a national economy was not assured and at times seemed to advance at only a snail’s pace. Manufacturing was present but not highly visible and in the early 19th century lagged well behind that of Great Britain, as only one of thirteen males worked in the trade or manufacturing sectors. In some respects this disparity was misleading because a number of farmers continued to serve as rural artisans and produced manufacturing wares such as soaps, candles, cloth, and simple tools at the local level. The larger industrial enterprises were centered in the towns and cities. In 1787, Philadelphia, for instance, had some 60 examples of manufacturing but their scale remained small. Iron foundries did outpace Great Britain but produced only 30,000 tons a year, an amount about equal to lesser developed countries today. Nails were so scarce that restless pioneers who moved often burned down their old houses in order to gather the nails for use in constructing their new homes. The up-to-date flour mills exported only 250 tons a year and shoemakers in New England produced only 60,000 pairs a year or one pair for every forty persons in America’s white population.
Despite this small hint of the potential for manufacturing, the interest in industry that had been piqued by the Revolution waned and the new nation returned to an emphasis on agriculture and the trade of foodstuffs and related products. Even such leading figures as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams advocated that the country revert to its pre-war practices. The United States had not adopted or developed the necessary industrial techniques to compete with Great Britain, which in the first few years following the Revolution forbade export of technology and impeded access to its markets. This situation changed with the arrival of Samuel Slater in the United States in 1789. Slater had been employed by Richard Arkwright. He labored to create efficient cotton mills and collaborated with Moses Brown, a Rhode Island textile pioneer who had previously failed in his effort to establish a working mill. Within two years the pair had built a successful machine that had 72 spindles. After several missteps, Slater and Brown had a mill in operation at Pawtucket, Rhode Island that employed nearly 100 children under the watchful eye of adult overseers. Over the next several years more than two dozen mills of the Slater-Brown type sprang up, although almost all of these factories failed soon after beginning operations. Furthermore, until the second decade of the 19th century, manufacturing developments in the United States remained haphazard at best because of a series of bounties, an awkward patent application process, claims and counter-claims, little investment of public funds, and the paucity of technical publications to assist in standardization of machines and processes.2
World History
