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Anthracite Coal and the Beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in the United States*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Alfred D. Chandler Jr.
Alfred D. Chandler Jr.
Affiliation:
Straus Professor of Business History, Harvard University
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Abstract

Professor Chandler traces the rise and spread of the factory system in American industry, suggesting an explanation for the timing and the pattern of development of the industrial revolution in the United States.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , Summer 1972 , pp. 141 - 181
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1972

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References

1 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Executive Document No. 308, Documents Relative to Manufactures in the United States, Collected by the Secretary of Treasury [Louis McLane], 22nd Cong., 1st Sess. (Washington, 1833).Google Scholar Hereafter cited as the McLane Report. The following generalizations are based on an analysis made of this report by Alfred D. Chandler III for all enterprises with assets of $50,000 or over. This analysis includes for each enterprise its name, location, product, source of power, legal form, fixed assets, working capital, number of employees, and date founded.

2 The number of employees in the hydraulic equipment firm was only twenty.

3 I am indebted to Robert Brugger for making this check for me.

4 North, Douglass C., The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790–1860 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1961), 159.Google Scholar

5 The McLane Report lists two steam powered mills in operation, and a third at Newport about to commence operations (I, 966–67). Samuel Slater reported in 1832 that four textile mills used steam, and two more were under construction (I, 927). One of these four may have been the Eagle Mill, reported in 1838 to have had its engine in operation since 1831. U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Executive Document No. 21, 25th Cong., 3rd Sess. (Washington, D.C., 1838), 81.Google Scholar Hereafter cited as the Woodbury Report.

6 Temin, Peter, “Steam and Water Power in the Early Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Economic History, XXVI (June, 1966), 189.Google Scholar

7 McLane Report, II, 242–255, 393, 461, 467. There was an iron works in Fayette County that used both water and steam power.

8 Allen, Zachariah, The Science of Mechanics (Providence, R.I., 1829), 351.Google Scholar

9 Report of Henry Moore, McLane Report, II, 207, also 223–24.

10 I am indebted to Edwin Perkins for compiling these data on the 247 Massachusetts blacksmiths. Only one reported using over 30 per cent American iron.

11 For these four companies, see the McLane Report, I, 410–11, 416–17, 510–11, 994. Gibb, George S., The Saco-Lowell Shops (Cambridge, Mass., 1950), 50, 82CrossRefGoogle Scholar, notes that the early textile machinery making shops relied on British, Russian, and Swedish iron.

12 McLane Report, II, 638. Pursell, Carroll W. Jr., Early Stationary Steam Engines in America (Washington, 1969), 61–66, 80–81.Google Scholar

13 Gibb, Saco-Lowell Shops, 81, 107, 158, points out that there was little metalworking machinery used in the making of textile machinery until the 1840's. Craft workers continued to use the traditional hand tools, and the textile machine shops did not have their own foundries until the late 1830's. For leather belting see Gibb, Saco-Lowell Shops, 79–80; and Taylor, George Rogers, ed., Early Development of the American Cotton Textile Industry (New York, 1969), xiv, 88.Google Scholar The best way to appreciate the lack of metal in early machines is to view the numerous specimens available at the Merrimack Valley Textile Museum in North Andover, Mass.

14 Temin, Iron and Steel, 15; Hunter, Louis, “Heavy Industries Before 1860,” in Williamson, Harold F., ed., The Growth of the American Economy (New York, 1951), 174.Google Scholar

15 For example, of the three central Pennsylvania counties having the largest iron output (Center, Huntington, and Bedford), there were in 1832 in Center County five iron plantations operating forge and furnaces, four separate furnaces and two forges (one of which included a rolling mill, foundry, and wood screw factory). In Bedford, there were two plantations, one forge and two furnaces, while in Huntington, there was only one plantation, eleven separate forges and seven separate furnaces. In Fayette County, in the western part of the state, the pattern was similar to Huntington's. McLane Report, II, 638–642.

16 This is most clearly spelled out in Hunter, Louis C., “The Influence of the Market Upon Techniques in the Iron Industry in Western Pennsylvania up to 1860,” Journal of Economic and Business History, I (February, 1929), 266–281Google Scholar; for Temin's disagreement with Hunter on the reasons for the timing of these developments, see Temin, Peter, “A New Look at Hunter's Hypothesis about the Ante-Bellum Iron Industry,” American Economic Review, LIV (May, 1964), 344–351Google Scholar; and Redlich, Fritz, History of American Business Leaders: Men and Iron (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1940), 71–76.Google Scholar Hereafter cited as Redlich, Men and Iron.

17 Hardware and metal were major importing businesses in the 1820's. Albion, Robert G., The Rise of New York Port, 1815–1860 (New York, 1939), 66–70Google Scholar, outlines the development of this trade, while Tooker, Elva, Nathan Trotter, Philadelphia Merchant, 1787–1853 (Cambridge, Mass., 1955)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, fills in the details of how it was carried out. See especially Tooker's Chaps. IV–VIII. In fact, the importing of wrought iron and finished iron products was second only to textiles in value during the 1820's and 1830's; North, Economic Growth of the United States, 287; also Taylor, George Rogers, The Transportation Revolution (New York, 1951), 449.Google Scholar

18 Zevin, Robert, “The Growth of Cotton Textile Production After 1815,” and Fogel, Robert W. and Engerman, Stanley L., “A Model for the Explanation of Industrial Expansion During the Nineteenth Century: With Application to the American Iron Industry,” both in Fogel, Robert W. and Engerman, Stanley L., The Reinterpretation of American Economic History (New York, 1971), 122–146, 148–162.Google Scholar

19 Taylor, Transportation Revolution, 360–67, has an excellent brief summary of tariff legislation to 1860.

20 Temin, Iron and Steel, 62. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Eighth Census III, Manufactures of the United States in 1860 (Washington, 1865), clxvii–clxviiiGoogle Scholar, points out that a few bushels of western coal reached the seaboard as early as 1828. However, even in the early 1860's, when railroad transportation across the mountains was fully developed, the shipment of bituminous coal from western Pennsylvania to the east, the Census reported, was “never large,” with that of “Virginia and Nova Scotia underselling it in the eastern markets.”

21 Quoted in Eavenson, Howard N., The First Century and a Quarter of the American Coal Industry (Pittsburgh, 1942), 64–66.Google Scholar

22 U.S. Census, Manufactures in 1860, cixx; Morton, Eleanor, Josiah White, Prince of Pioneers (New York, 1946), 89Google Scholar; Redlich, Men and Iron, 71.

23 Hudson Coal Company, The Story of Anthracite (New York, 1922), 36–41, 47–72Google Scholar; Morton, White, 89, 91–95; and Yearley, Clifton K., Enterprise and Anthracite (Baltimore, 1961), 23–28.Google Scholar

24 U.S. Census, Manufactures in 1860, cixx; Morton, White, 131–134, 149–150; Johnson, Walter R., Notes on the Use of Anthracite in the Manufacture of Iron (Boston, 1841), 3Google Scholar; Hudson Coal Company, Anthracite, 93–95.

25 In 1824, 1825, and 1827 the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company had published in Philadelphia Facts Illustrative of the Anthracite, or Lehigh Coal Found in the Great Mines at Mauch Chunk. The figures on the savings at the Pennsylvania Hospital are from p. 17 of the 1827 edition. The quotation in this paragraph and other statements are from pp. 5–12, also 18–19.

26 McLane Report, II, 115–122.

27 Rothwell, Richard P., “Coal Production of the United States,” Proceedings of the American Institute of Mechanical Engineers, V (1876–1877), 378–79Google Scholar, is the source for the figures in Table I. Hunt, Freeman. Merchant's Magazine and Commercial Review, VIII (1843), 548Google Scholar, also gives the information on Virginia and imported coal used here. The information on the opening of the three canals is from Jones, Chester L., Economic History of the Anthracite-Tidewater Canals (Philadelphia, 1908), 13–17, 26–27, 78, 128–29Google Scholar. For the Schuylkill, see also Poor, Henry V., History of Railroads and Canals of the United States (New York, 1860), 540Google Scholar. The supplementary canals — the Morris from Easton to New York harbor, the Delaware division of the Pennsylvania State Works from Easton to Philadelphia, and the Raritan, connecting Trenton and New York, were completed between 1830 and 1835; see Jones, Anthracite Canals, Chaps. III and VI. It should be stressed that Graph I represents only the U.S. coal consumption east of the Allegheny Mountains.

28 Hunt's, Merchant's Magazine, XVI (1847), 205Google Scholar. In 1842, Boston was importing 2,070 tons from Liverpool, 7,518 tons and 1,028 cauldrons from Newcastle, and close to 20,000 tons from Nova Scotia.

29 The prices were: 1830, 27s 6d; 1835, 20s 3d; 1840, 22s 9d; 1845, 17s 3d; and 1850, 13s 6d; or in dollars at a rate of $4.80 to a pound, $6.60, $4.86, $5.45, $4.04, and $3.24 respectively. Porter, George R., The Progress of the Nation (London, 1836–1843), 216.Google Scholar

30 A useful table of amount and prices of foreign and Virginia bituminous and American anthracite shipped into Boston during the 1830's and 1840's is given in Taylor, Richard C., Statistics of Coal (Philadelphia, 1855), 458–59.Google Scholar By 1861, there were 420 coal gas works in the United States. U.S. Census, Manufactures in 1860, clxxiii; also Williamson, Harold F. and Daum, Arnold R., The American Petroleum Industry: The Age of Illumination, 1859–1899 (Evanston, Ill, 1959), 38–42.Google Scholar

31 The annual output for Virginia, Nova Scotia, and Maryland fields is given in Eavenson, American Coal Industry, 443, 476, and 500 respectively.

32 Porter, Progress of the Nation, 217.

33 McLane Report, II, 115–122.

34 Hunter, “The Influence of the Market,” 247–49, 250–51.

35 Danielsson, E. G., Antegkningar on Novva America Fri-Staters Jerntillverking samt handel met Jern-oeh stålvaror (Stockholm, 1845), 72.Google Scholar

36 Hazard's, Register of Philadelphia, XIV (December, 1834), 414–15.Google Scholar I am indebted to Diane Lindstrom for this citation.

37 Johnson, Notes on Anthracite, 3–4, 11–13.

38 Quoted in Hunter, “Influence of the Market,” 253. For percentages of rolled iron made from cast pig and from wrought blooms see p. 247. Report of a Committee to the Iron and Coal Association of the State of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1846), 8, 13Google Scholar, has reports from thirty-two rolling mills listed in the Census of 1840; eight are in Pittsburgh, seven in the central part of the state, and eleven in the southeast. It also lists fourteen more anthracite rolling mills completed between 1840 and 1845, all in the southeastern part of the state.

39 Danielsson, Antegkningar, 9–10, 72–73. According to Danielsson, anthracite sold from $3.25 to $5.00 a ton and charcoal on the average sold at 5¢ a bushel, ranging from 3¢ in the forests of upper New York to 7½¢ on the Hudson River near New York City.

40 Temin, Iron and Steel, 100.

41 McLane Report, II, 637–645; Report of a Committee to the Iron and Coal Association, 8,13 shows the location of the rolling mills in 1845.

42 Temin, Iron and Steel, 86, and Overman, Frederick, The Manufacture of Iron in all its Branches (Philadelphia, 1850), 460Google Scholar, indicate the universality of the use of steam power instead of water where coal was used in the making of iron by 1849. Report of a Committee to the Iron and Coal Association, 13, records the increased output of the new anthracite rolling mills.

43 Johnson, Notes on Anthracite, 13–14, 24–26.

44 Carr, J. and Taplin, W., History of the British Steel Industry (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), 8.Google Scholar The story of the coming of the hot blast in the United States can be followed in Swank, James M., History of the Manufacture of Iron in all Ages (Philadelphia, 1892), 267–270Google Scholar; Johnson, Notes on Anthracite, 12–13; Temin, Iron and Steel, 58–62; Redlich, Men and Iron, 71–73; Morton, White, 212–15; also, The Annual Report of the Lehigh Coal Company for 1840. Significantly, James B. Neilson, the inventor of the hot blast, was a man whose career was in coal, not iron. He began work in a colliery and was for thirty years engineer and manager of the Glasgow Coal Gas Works, Dictionary of National Biography (London, 1921–1922), XIV, 179–181.Google Scholar

45 These furnaces are described in detail in Johnson, Notes on Anthracite, as are all but two of the fifteen furnaces that had gone into operation before his book was published in the fall of 1841.

46 Report of a Committee to the Iron and Coal Association, 13; U.S. Census, Manufactures in 1860, clxxli; Overman, Manufacture of Iron, 179.

47 As indicated in Table 1, the rapid increase in the coal used at the mines and not shipped to tidewater in the Wyoming section after 1840, and in the Schuylkill region after 1842, and the Lehigh Valley areas after 1843, illustrates the growth of both iron smelting and refining in those regions.

48 Danielsson, Antegkningar, 15–16, 70–71.

49 Temin, Iron and Steel, 87–90.

50 See Engerman, Stanley, “The American Tariff, British Exports and American Iron Production, 1840–1860,” in McCloskey, Donald N., ed., Essays on a Mature Economy: Britain after 1840 (London, 1971), 15.Google Scholar See also Temin, Iron and Steel, 264–66.

51 Danielsson, Antegkningar, 71–73. Danielsson points to one place in western Massachusetts close to the source of iron where pig could be made for $14. At Salisbury, Connecticut, New England's largest local source, charcoal pig was made for $23 and sold for $28. The retail price of charcoal pig in Philadelphia as listed by Temin for 1844 was for No. 1 Foundry Pig, $25.75 and for No. 1 Charcoal Foundry Pig, $28.25; Iron and Steel, 283. Danielsson's prices may have been for 1843 rather than 1844.

52 Mitchell, B. R. and Deane, Phyllis, Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1962), 493Google Scholar, and Porter, Progress of the Nation, 246.

53 While the Tariff of 1844 did substantially increase the price of imports until 1848, Engerman stresses that “the market-induced changes in British prices … had a greater impact on the transatlantic iron market than did legislative changes in the American tariff.” Engerman, “The American Tariff,” 22.

54 Pursell, Early Stationary Steam Engines, 73; Woodbury Report, 379. Virginia, long a coal-using state, followed Massachusetts in number, with 124 engines.

55 For Boston, see the Woodbury Report, 41–44; for Pittsburgh, 191–95; for Middletown, 82; for Providence, 88. The McLane Report listed nine stationary steam engines in and about Boston; Niles Weekly, XLV (November 30, 1833), 217Google Scholar (cited in Pursell, Early Stationary Steam Engines, 83) lists eighty-three in Pittsburgh for the same year. Pursell has an excellent account of the increasing use of steam power in the Northeast in this period, pp. 83–89.

56 The engine installed by Samuel Slater (see footnote 64) in 1828 had been replaced.

57 The McLane Report, I, 1030–31, consolidated the three Middletown, Connecticut, armories (Nathan Starr, R. & J. Johnson, and Simeon North) into one listing, with ninety workers and total capital assets of $105,000. In 1822, North had a capitalization of $75,000, and sixty workers, while the Johnsons and Starr employed thirty and fifteen workers apiece. Each listed assets of $30,000. Only two other New England contractors and three from other areas are identified by Deyrup, Felicia J. in her “Armsmakers of the Connecticut Valley,” Smith College Studies in History (Northampton, Mass., 1948), 43–46Google Scholar, 48, 220–21.

58 McLane Report, I, 994–95, 510–11, 1038. Some of Collins' workers may have been at this time working at home under a putting out system. “The Collins Company, 1826–1867: Reminiscences of Samuel Watkinson Collins,” a typescript in the Manuscripts Division, Baker Library, Harvard University, has good information on that firm. According to the McLane Report, Warner Hunt and Company in 1832 purchased 900 tons of Lackawanna coal at $8,100 and obtained only $600 worth of charcoal. Its iron still came wholly from Europe (at a cost of $29,890), as did the Collins Company's iron. After 1846 Collins began using “Pennsylvania iron;” see “Collins Company,” 2, 25. For Pittsburgh, see the McLane Report, II, 638–39, and Rosenberg, Nathan, ed., The American System of Manufactures: The Report of the Committee on the Machinery of the United States, 1855, and the Special Report of George Wallis and Joseph Whitworth, 1854 (Edinburgh, 1969), 112–144.Google Scholar

59 For the Ames Shovel Company, see U.S. Census, Manufactures in 1860, ccxiii; and Johnson, Allan, ed., Dictionary of American Biography (New York, 1946), I, 253–54.Google Scholar See also U.S. Census, Manufactures in 1860, clxxiv. For Philo Remington, see Hatch, Alden, Remington Arms in American History (New York, 1956), 28–42.Google Scholar For Nathan P. Ames and his brother James T. Ames, see Johnson, , ed., Dictionary of American Biography, I, 243Google Scholar, 250.

60 For example, in 1845 the cost of making wrought charcoal iron at Salisbury, Connecticut was $82 a ton compared to a cost of $47 a ton of anthracite rolled wrought iron in New Jersey. The cost of the fuel for the first (with charcoal at 5¢ a bushel) was $20 a ton, and of the second (with coal at $3.25 a ton) was $3.25 per ton. (Labor costs were higher at Salisbury [$20.50 per ton as compared to $15.00], probably because of the longer time involved in making charcoal wrought iron.) Because Salisbury was some distance from tidewater and the New Jersey mill was on tidewater, the transportation costs from New Jersey to many New England ports was approximately the same; Danielsson, , Antegkningar, 16, 71–73.Google Scholar The rapid growth of large-scale factory production in wire and rail manufacturing is best indicated in Nevins, Allan, Abram S. Hewitt, with Some Account of Peter Cooper (New York, 1935), 71–72, 83–93Google Scholar; Temin, Iron and Steel, 117–18. For its growth in other ironworking industries, see Rosenberg, ed., The American System of Manufactures, especially 100–118, 129–144, 262–270, 278–79, 334–37 and 341; U.S. Census, Manufactures in 1860, ccix–ccxiii, clxxxvi–cxcvi; Roe, James Wickham, English and American Tool Builders (New Haven, Conn., 1916), 281–291Google Scholar; Hatch, Remington Arms, 48–50, 54–69; Williamson, Harold F., Winchester: The Gun That Won the West (New York, 1952), 6–11Google Scholar; Hutchinson, William T., Cyrus Hall McCormick (New York, 1935), IGoogle Scholar, Ch. 13; and Charles E. Goodrich, “Story of the Washburn and Moen Manufacturing Company, 1831–1899,” a typescript (written in 1935) available in the Washburn & Moen Papers, Manuscript Division, Baker Library, Harvard University.

61 Rosenberg, American System of Manufactures, 287–290; and Scoville, Warren C., “The Growth of the American Glass Industry to 1880,” Journal of Political Economy, LII (September, 1944), 197–99Google Scholar; Clark, Victor S., History of Manufactures in the United States (New York, 1929), I, 417Google Scholar; Pursell, Early Stationary Steam Engines, 83.

62 U.S. Census, Manufactures in 1860, cxxvi–cxxvii; McLane Report, II, 817.

63 The average capitalization for these industries was: cotton textiles, $48,000; glass, $35,000; paper, $16,000; iron, $12,800; U.S. Census, Compendium of the Sixth Census (Washington, 1841), 358–363.Google Scholar The figures for 1850 are from A Digest of the Statistics of Manufactures According to the Returns of the Seventh Census, in U.S. Senate, Exec. Doc. No. 39, 35th Cong., 2nd Sess., 138–140. The only other industry with available figures from the Census of 1840 which had an average of ten or more workers per establishment was the still unmechanized rope and twine industry, which had an average of eleven workers per unit. While twine is given in the 1850 compilation, there are no figures on cordage.

64 For sugar, see Eichner, Alfred S., The Emergence of Oligopoly (Baltimore, 1969), 3134Google Scholar; Pursell, Early Stationary Steam Engines, 85; McLane Report, I, 951; for the use of anthracite at Lowell see Roberts, Christopher, The Middlesex Canal, 1793–1860 (Cambridge, Mass., 1938)Google Scholar, Appendix H.

65 Woodbury Report, 85, 88–89 for Rhode Island; 35, 48, 52, 57, 70 for other coastal towns; 160–63, 165, 210–11, for Philadelphia and Baltimore. See also George R. Taylor, ed., The Early Development of the American Cotton Textile Industry; and citations for footnote 5.

66 Temin, “Water and Steam Power,” 196–98.

67 Lathrop, William B., The Brass Industry in the United States (Mt. Carmel, Conn., 1926)Google Scholar, Ch. IV; Rosenberg, American System of Manufacturers, 277–79, 338–348; Jerome, Chauncey, History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years (New Haven, Conn., 1860)Google Scholar; McLane Report, I, 734, 828, lists only small shops making brass clocks in 1832.

68 U.S. Census, Manufactures in 1860, lxiii–lxv, lxxi; Rosenberg, American System of Manufactures, 343–47, 385; U.S. Census, Manufactures in 1860, clx–clxxviii.

69 Woodbury Report, 41–44, 65–66, 159, 161. See also footnote 73.

70 Jones, Anthracite Canals, 131.

71 Yearley, Enterprise and Anthracite, 23–26, 57–64, 74–75, 108–115, 165–66. The extensiveness of the wide range of activities carried on by these two companies is emphasized by their annual reports, available in the Corporation Records Division, Baker Library, Harvard University.

72 After the great flood in 1840, the capitalization of the Lehigh Company was increased to $6,000,000; Jones, Anthracite Canals, 23. See also 13–17, 81–85.

73 Temin, Iron and Steel, 91–93. However, the U.S. Census, Manufactures in 1860, clxxxvii, suggests that mining outside of Pennsylvania was still small in 1860. The other two major extractive industries were salt and stone quarrying. The former required more equipment and larger enterprises. Stone quarrying could be carried on in small units. Salt, because it involved pumping of water, required a larger investment, and the pumps were usually powered by steam. U.S. Census, Manufactures in 1860, cxcvii-ccl.

74 Gallman, Robert E., “Commodity Output, 1839–1899,” in Conference on Research on … Income and Wealth, Trends in the American Economy in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, N.J., 1960), 26.Google Scholar Gallman begins his study in 1839. Since most economists believe there was some growth in the manufacturing sector before 1830, it is hard to believe that sectoral shares could have grown at a greater rate than 13 per cent in any earlier decade.

75 Gallman, “Commodity Output,” 28. Except for one variant of construction, which read 143 in the decade ending in 1854, the rate of change for mining in the decade of the 1840's was also larger than any other sector in any other decade.

76 Gallman, “Commodity Output,” 31.

77 These views and the sources in which they are stated are listed in David, Paul, “The Growth of Real Product in the United States before 1840: New Evidence, Controlled Conjectures,” Journal of Economic History, XXVII (June, 1967), 151–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

78 Gallman, Robert, “Gross National Product in the United States, 1834–1909,” in Conference on Research on Income and Wealth, Output, Employment and Productivity in the United States After 1800 (New York, 1966), 23.Google Scholar The reader hardly needs to be reminded that Walt W. Rostow identified the 1840's as the decade of the “take-off” of the American economy.

79 David, “Growth of Real Product,” 156; the next quotation is from p. 195. Gallman's answer to David seems convincing. See Gallman, Robert, “The Statistical Approach: Fundamental Concepts as Applied to History,” in Taylor, George R. and Ellsworth, Lucius F., eds., Approaches to American Economic History (Charlottesville, Va., 1971), 65–86.Google Scholar

80 Besides Rosenberg's introduction to American System of Manufactures, see Burns, D. L., “The Genesis of American Engineering Competition, 1850–1870,” Economic History Review, II (1930–1933), 292–311.Google Scholar The returns of the Census of 1850 emphasized that manufacturing was no longer the handmaiden to agriculture that it had been before 1830. The processing of agricultural products was no longer manufacturers' major task. The list of the twelve largest industries by capital assets in 1850 suggests the growing industrial nature of manufacturing. These industries, ranked by size, were: cotton textiles, flour and grain, iron (including nails), lumber, tanning, wool textiles, machinery, clothing, coal mining, cabinet ware, and paper. “Statistics of Manufacturers according to the Seventh Census,” 137–142.

81 As late as 1869, only 29.7 per cent of total power (steam and water) used in New England was generated by steam. This was because water remained in that area an inexpensive form of power, particularly for small mills and shops usually producing for local markets, especially for lumber, wood, flour, paper, and fulling mills. Water power remained, of course, significant in textiles where heavy investment had been made before the coming of cheap coal. By 1869 the industries in the United States as a whole in which more than 50 per cent of the power was still generated by water were: food, textiles, and pulp, paper and allied products. Those where more than 70 per cent of the power was generated by steam were: metal; fabricated metal products (69.6 per cent); machinery; transportation equipment; stone, glass and clay; rubber products; products of coal and petroleum; tobacco; apparel; and printing and publishing. In all but the last two, heat was used in the process of manufacturing. These data are from Fenichel, Allen H., “Growth and Diffusion of Power in Manufacturing, 1838–1919,” in National Bureau of Economic Research, Output, Employment and Productivity in the United States After 1800 (New York, 1966), tables B-12 and B-13.Google Scholar

82 U.S. Census, Tenth Census II, Manufactures (Washington, 1883), 548.Google Scholar