Manufacturing and Processing

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Manufacturing and Processing

Restrictions on Manufacturing. The vast majority of colonists worked in the agricultural sector as farmers and planters, yet they were familiar with a wide array of manufactured goods. The colonists themselves had no large factories for manufacturing many of the products they used every day. British regulations forbade most manufactures in the colonies because the authorities wanted to prevent any competition with English industries. But there were other obstacles too, and in the end these probably were more significant. For one, manufacturing required a large labor force. Compared to agriculture, it also demanded a large amount of capital. Both of these factors of production, as economists call them, were relatively scarce and expensive in the colonies. Besides, the colonists could not protect their domestic industries by imposing tariffs on British goods, so the colonial-made products would have had to compete with affordable, well-made, and high-quality ones from Britain. Not surprisingly, most colonists concluded that it was not worth the effort to manufacture such goods on a large scale.

Successes. Even so, there were some significant exceptions. Imperial authorities encouraged the colonists to produce iron although they were only allowed to produce the raw iron, not the finished goods. In 1645 John Winthrop Jr., the son of the governor of Massachusetts Bay, established the first iron furnace in Saugus, Massachusetts. His venture did not last, but many later ones did. By 1775 at least 82 furnaces and 175 forges operated in the colonies, mainly in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey. The colonial iron industry was larger than that of England and Wales, and it accounted for a full 15 percent of the total world output. Shipbuilding was another manufacturing success story. The vast supply of timber available in the colonies made shipbuilding there relatively cheaper than in Europe. In the 1770s nearly half of the ships built in the colonies were sold to overseas buyers, sometimes as part of the cargo. Up to 10 percent of workers in Boston and Philadelphia were involved directly in shipbuilding. Colonial merchants also had some success in manufacturing consumer products. Among the most prominent were the four Brown brothers of Providence, Rhode Island. In the early 1760s the Browns produced high-quality spermaceti candles made from the oil of the sperm whale. The Browns packaged these candles in a distinctive box with their company’s logo, one of the earliest examples of a recognizable brand in American history. Colonial manufacturers succeeded in establishing cottage industries—wherein goods are produced in households rather than factories—for earthenware, nails, footwear, and textiles. Women made a large proportion of the textile products, including table linens, blankets, undershirts, shawls, and hosiery. Their contribution was significant: even in the early nineteenth century, the total value of homemade cloth was ten times that of cloth manufactured outside the home.

Artisans. Most colonial manufacturing was not done in factories. Instead it was done primarily in small work-shops or households by artisans, farmers, women, children, and slaves. The term artisan encompassed many occupations, including coopers, tailors, cordwainers (shoemakers), weavers, and silversmiths. Men who made their living primarily by doing artisinal work headed from 7 to 10 percent of all colonial households; most lived in villages and towns. They were self-employed, owned their own tools, did their own accounts, and worked at home or in small workshops attached to their homes. All of these shops produced goods in small quantities or made them to order for a few customers. Wives, children, and a few apprentices contributed to the artisan’s work, and sometimes two or more artisans pooled their resources to form a joint workshop. Although few artisans became wealthy, most owned enough property to qualify as voters. Because of their numbers and their ability to influence the outcome of elections, colonial artisans played a larger social and political role than did their European counterparts. Disruptions in local politics during the Revolution gave artisans even greater opportunity to participate in the political process. They formed mechanics committees to discuss and act upon issues that were important to them. In Boston, New York, and Philadelphia artisans organized or joined with other patriots to force reluctant merchants to abide by nonimportation agreements.

COLONIAL MANUFACTURED AND PROCESSED GOODS

Although the colonies depended on the mother country for many of their manufactured products, they engaged in a substantial amount of manufacturing and processing activities themselves. By the 1760s the colonial economy had become large and diversified.

Food and related products:

Wheat flour
Tobacco
Animal products:
Meatpacking
Leather goods:
Shoes
Whale products:
Lighting Oil
Candles
Fermented and distilled beverages
Refined sugar
Other food products

Textiles and textile products:

Woolen
Cotton
Linen
Other textile goods

Forest products:

Sawmill products
Casks and other wooden containers
Masts, spars, and other ship timbers
Pitch, tar, and turpentine
Furniture
Other forest products

Paper and printed materials:

Paper
Newspaper and other periodicals
Books
Other paper products

Chemicals and allied substances:

Industrial chemicals
Consumer chemicals:
Salt
Other chemical products

Stone, clay, and glass products:

Construction materials
Domestic utensils
Other stone, clay, and glass products

Metals:

Precious metals
Iron and steel products
Other metal products

Equipment and apparatus:

Machinery, agricultural and nonagricultural
Tools
Guns
Waterborne vessels
Land vehicles
Other equipment

Source: John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard, The Economy of British America, 1607-1789 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), pp. 328-329.

Processing. Mills, distilleries, and refineries used some of the colonies’ most advanced technologies to transform raw and semifinished products. Sawmills—the largest of them located in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey—cut lumber into boards. Mills processed iron into the pigs and bars that were turned into finished goods by some colonial artisans but mostly shipped to Britain. Tanneries, as well as papermaking and textile establishments, also used mills extensively. Sometimes mills were clustered near sources of water power. Wilmington, Delaware, emerged as a milling center that by the 1790s processed large volumes of cloth, lumber, paper, snuff, cotton, and iron. Distilling and refining also were important processing activities. From the mid seventeenth century the colonists had distilled molasses imported from the West Indies into rum. Domestic rum was a cheaper alternative to imported rum and brandy, and colonial demand for it remained high over the next century and a half. In 1770 about 140 rum distilleries, most of them run by merchants in the northern port towns, were in operation. Colonial distilleries produced nearly five million gallons of rum that year, or about 60 percent of the 8.5 million that the mainland colonies consumed annually. The colonists also processed large amounts of another West Indian product: muscovado sugar, which they refined into the more costly white sugar that colonial consumers had come to prefer. The colonists used the sugar to sweeten their imported tea, coffee, and chocolate drinks. Some twenty-six sugar refineries were in operation in 1770, and they met about 75 percent of the rising domestic demand. Like the distilleries, most sugar refineries were run by Northern merchants as adjuncts to their West Indian importing business.

Self-Sufficiency. Beginning in the 1760s the colonists tried to decrease their dependence on Great Britain by becoming more self-sufficient in manufacturing. They formed various organizations for this purpose. After the Sugar Act was passed in 1764 New York established the Society for the Promotion of Arts, Agriculture, and Economy. The colonists’ resolve intensified when Parliament imposed the Townshend duties in 1767. Colonial governments and eventually the Continental Congress began offering inducements to support native industry. These included bounties, loans, guaranteed markets at set prices, monopoly privileges, tax exemptions, and land grants. The Americans succeeded best in producing cloth, especially linens and woolens, made mostly by women working at home. In 1775 the United Company of Philadelphia for Promoting American Manufactures was formed to encourage textile production. Philadelphians established a manufactory that became among America’s largest enterprises, eventually employing hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of women. The home manufacture of cloth became a celebrated activity during the early years of the Revolution, and spinning schools were established in cities and villages. In 1769 the women of Middletown, Massachusetts, wove 20,522 yards of cloth. Women in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, produced 35,000 yards. Spinning bees became popular, and entire communities sometimes turned out for these events. Ezra Stiles estimated that the spinning bee held at his house in 1769 drew some six hundred spectators. Newspapers cheered on these patriotic women by referring to them as the “Daughters of Liberty” and reporting on their achievements. At times the newspapers used harsher tactics to encourage production. One newspaper in 1774 lectured women to “cease trifling their time away [and] prudently employ it in learning the use of the spinning wheel.” In the end the value of the formal spinning groups and spinning bees was more symbolic than real. Most did not even meet regularly. But they focused public attention on the importance of supporting native industry and allowed many women to make a political statement in support of the Revolution.

War Industries. The colonists tried to manufacture items other than cloth, but many of these could be produced only in households using inefficient tools and methods. Nevertheless several industries succeeded in becoming more permanently productive and efficient, especially when the colonies declared their independence and broke away from imperial restrictions. The war stimulated the domestic manufacturing sector as the demand for war matériel and other products that the colonists could no longer get directly from Britain increased. Armies on both sides bought locally produced items such as shoes—which became a major enterprise in Massachusetts and New Jersey—tents, clothing, and other military supplies. Great Britain prohibited the exportation of gunpowder, firearms, and other military stores, so the Americans had to produce these items locally. Maryland, located far from most of the fighting, became a center for gun making; Connecticut farmers produced saltpeter for gunpowder. In 1777 Congress established an armory in Springfield, Massachusetts. War supplies had to be transported, and this led to some permanent enhancements of the road network. The military demand for munitions stimulated the development of the iron and steel industries, and Americans erected new forges, mills, foundries, and shops. From 1775 to 1783 Pennsylvania alone built at least eleven new forges and furnaces. Along with the improvements in inland transportation the invigorated manufacturing sector allowed Pennsylvanians to enlarge their markets in the South. The war also proved a boon for paper mills because the number of newspapers rose from only thirty-seven in 1776 to more than a hundred by 1789.