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Pioneering Foreign Direct Investment in British Manufacturing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

Andrew C. Godley
Andrew C. Godley
Affiliation:
ANDREW C. GODLEY is a lecturer in the Department of Economics at theUniversity of Reading.
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Abstract

This article analyzes all known cases of foreign direct investment in British manufacturing prior to 1890. From 1890 onwards the bulk of foreign entrants were industrial goods producers. Before 1890, the pioneering entrants were mostly consumer goods manufacturers. The article demonstrates that, with one monumental exception, these pioneers were narrowly focused, driven entirely by a concern about enhancing access to the British market. Typically they failed. The one exception was the Singer Manufacturing Company. This investment was of an entirely different nature. Singer's commitment was large and non-reversible from almost the very beginning, and was predicated on an awareness of the possibility of using Britain as an export platform. Its consequence was the emergence of Singer as the world's first modern multinational enterprise and as one of the world's largest firms by 1900.

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Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 73 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1999 , pp. 394 - 429
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1999

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References

1 Wilkins, Mira, The Emergence of Multinational Enterprise (Cambridge, Mass., 1970)Google Scholar; Wilkins, Mira, The Maturing of Multinational Enterprise (Cambridge, Mass., 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wilkins, Mira, “Comparative Hosts,” Business History 36 (1994: 18–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Blaich, Fritz, Amerikanische Firmen in Deutscheland, 1890–1918 (Wiesbaden, 1984).Google Scholar

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4 Wilkins, “Comparative Hosts,” 20, table 1. The U.S. was also a host economy for significant amounts of market-led inward investment by foreign manufacturing companies, most notably the giant thread manufacturer Coats of Paisley. But this was defensive investment, precipitated by the high American tariff barriers, without which it is unlikely to have occurred. Coats, for example, never exported any of their U.S. manufactured product outside the American market. Moreover, market-led investment represented a very small proportion of total foreign direct investment in the U.S. before 1914, less than 10 percent, in contrast to the U.K. Wilkins, Mira, The History of Foreign Investment in the United States to 1914 (Cambridge, Mass., 1989) 129–30, 361–9, and tables 5.9–16, 164–73.Google Scholar

5 Bostock, Frances and Jones, Geoffrey, “Foreign Multinationals in British Manufacturing, 1850–1962,” Business History 36 (1994): 96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also see Jones, Geoffrey and Bostock, Frances, “U.S. Multinationals in British Manufacturing before 1962,” Business History Review 70 (1996): 207–256CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Jones, Geoffrey, “Foreign Multinationals and British Industry before 1945,” Economic History Review 41 (1988): 429–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Adapted from Bostock and Jones, “Foreign Multinationals,” table 3, and including subsequent amendments. See the Figure 1 caption, above.

7 Calculated from the database.

8 Bostock and Jones, “Foreign Multinationals,” and Jones, Evolution, emphasize technological advantages, for instance.

9 Wilkins, Emergence; Wilkins, Maturing; Dunning, John H., Multinational Enterprise and the Global Economy (Wokingham, 1993)Google Scholar chap. 4; Buckley, Peter and Casson, Mark C., The Economic Theory of Multinational Enterprise (London, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar emphasize internalization advantages.

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11 Woodruff, William, The Rise of the British Rubber Industry during the Nineteenth Century (Liverpool, 1958), 1–14, 133–43, 153–4Google Scholar on J. R. Ford's use of the Scottish Goodyear patent. French, Michael, “The Growth and Relative Declineof the North British Rubber Company, 1856–1956,” Business History 30 (1988): 396–415CrossRefGoogle Scholar covers post-1869 development.

12 Woodruff, William, “The American Origins of a Scottish Industry,” Scottish Journal of Political Economy 2 (1955): 17–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Babcock, Glenn D., History of the United States Rubber Company (Bloomington, Ind., 1966), 13–15.Google Scholar

13 Woodruff, “American Origins” Woodruff, Rise, 143, 153–4. Sales figures are from Woodruff, Rise, 71, 92–3, 227. Market share calculated from 1860 imports of crude rubber (less re-exports) and assuming that the cost of crude rubber was 25 percent of the firm's selling price. Woodruff, Rise, app. 4, 202–3 for imports, and app. 7, 222–4 and esp. 81 for estimated cost of crude rubber out of sales. North British were also exporting rubber goods, so some minor adjustment to their share of the U.K. market would need to be made. See Payne, Peter L., Rubber and Railways in the Nineteenth Century (Liverpool, 1966), 191Google Scholar on exports of railway springs to India in mid 1870s. Employment in 1861, Woodruff, Rise, 71. Citation from French, “North British,” 397, 401 citing India Rubber Journal.

14 Woodruff, “American Origins,” 29–31; Woodruff, Rise, 209; Babcock, United States Rubber, 15 (on 1864 withdrawal) and 20–34 on U.S. industry restructuring. Dannithorne, Audrey, British Rubber Manufacturing: An Economic Study of Innovations (London, 1958), 49Google Scholar; and French, “North British,” on later developments.

15 The history of Siemens' British activities is covered by Feldenkirchen, Wilfried, Werner von Siemens: Inventor and International Entrepreneur (Columbus, Ohio, 1994)Google Scholar; Scott, J. D., Siemens Brothers, 1858–1958 (London, 1958)Google Scholar; Siemens, Georg, History of the House of Siemens, 2 vols. (Munich, 1957)Google Scholar; Weiher, Sigried von and Goetzeler, Herbert, The Siemens Company—Its Historical Role in the Progress of Electrical Engineering, 1847–1980 (Munich, 1983)Google Scholar; and Weiher, Sigfried von, Die Englishen Siemens-Werke und das Siemens-Überseegeschäft in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1990)Google Scholar.

16 Britain pioneered the development of a telegraph network, Feldenkirchen, Werner von Siemens, 68 and 181 n.3. By 1872 the British state-owned network comprised 100,000 miles of line, the largest public network in the world, see Sabine, R., “Telegraphy” in British Manufacturing Industries, ed. Bevan, G.Phillips (London, 1877), 105.Google Scholar

17 On underwater cable telegraphy technology see Sabine, Ibid., 74–95, repair cost, 94; and Feldenkirchen, Ibid., 71–5.

18 Feldenkirchen, Ibid., 72; Scott, Siemens Brothers, 32.

19 Feldenkirchen, Ibid., 101; Scott, Ibid., app. Also see the plate of the Woolwich factory in von Weiher and Goetzeler, Siemens Company, 31, dated 1866, showing how small it was.

20 von Weiher and Goetzeler, Ibid., 14–15. Also von Weiher, Englischen Siemens-Werke, 58–61; Scott, Ibid., 31–5 and 52 on the disaster; and Siemens, House of Siemens, 41. William Siemens's (Werner's younger brother and the London agent) over-confidence (“übermut”) led to the loss of £15,000, half of the total capital of Siemens & Halske, von Weiher,Ibid.., 61. (n.b. Feldenldrchen, Ibid., 75 gives the amount lost as £150,000, but this is surely a typographical error. In 1863 Siemens & Halske employed only 515 in total and had less than half a million marks in sales, or less than £25,000, Ibid., 161, table 1.)

21 Feldenkirchen, Ibid., 74–9 and 101; von Weiher, Ibid., 61, (“treue brüderlicher Verbun-denheit” my translation); Scott, Siemens Brothers, 37–9.

22 Scott, Ibid., 64–5 (on profits) and 68–70; Feldenkirchen, Ibid., 123–5 and 137, and on profits 99–105 and 169 table 9. Siemens Brothers developments can be followed through Hannah, Les, Ehctrieity before Nationalisation (London, 1979), 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wilson, John F., Ferranti and the British Electrical Industry, 1884–1930 (Manchester, 1988), 7, 10–12Google Scholar; Byatt, Ian C. R., The British Electrical Industry 1875–1914 (Oxford, 1979), 2Google Scholar, 17–18 (sales), 21, 3, 47, 143, 194.

23 Scott, Ibid., 71 on the pessimism in the 1890s, and 68–78; Feldenlkirchen, Ibid., 137; von Weiher and Goetzeler, Siemens Company, 58. Byatt, Ibid., 26, 69, 148, and 194.

24 Byatt, Ibid., 150, 156, and 194.

25 Byatt, Ibid., 166, table 37 on global sales in 1899; 150, table 32 on Siemens Brothers output. I have assumed 1899 to be the mean of 1896–7 and 1900–1. Siemens imports inferred from German imports of electrical goods (167–8) and the concentration of the German industry (163–6).

26 Byatt, Ibid., 146–51. The value of Siemens factories in Britain afterthe third investment was still probably only about 5 percent of Siemens' total assets, which were valued at over £25 million in 1912, but total employment increased from 963 in 1885 to 4,000 in 1913 (which included non-manufacturing employment in the service of cable-laying). See Schmitz, Christopher, “The World's Largest Industrial Companies of 1912,” Business History 37 (1995), 89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Feldenkirchen, Werner von Siemens, 162, table 2. Von Weiher gives the capital value of Siemens Brothers as £600,000 after 1899, Englischen Siemens-Werke, 207–8. Even with generous additions for the value of the new factories, these British assets must have amounted to only around £1 million by 1912. Les Hannah has recently estimated that the market value for Siemens would have been only about $65m, or just over £13m. Les Hannah, “La evolucion de las grandes empresas en el siglio XX; un analisis comparative” Revista de Historia Industrial 10 (1996): 119.

27 Siemens Brothers managed a return on capital of 6 to 7 percent from 1896 to 1913, higher than the India Rubber and Gutta Percha, but lower than Henley and Glover, the other principal manufacturers of telegraph cable. Returns in power cable were at least 10 percent. Byatt, Ibid., 136–76.

28 Bostock and Jones, database, subsidiary reference no. s/00078. On the economics of fashion demand see, Godley, Andrew, “Immigrant Entrepreneurs and the Emergence of London's East End as an Industrial District,” London Journal 21 (1996): 38–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Godley, , “Credit Rationing among small-firm networks in the London and New York garment industries,” in Interfirm Networks, ed. Grandori, Anna (London, 1999).Google Scholar

29 Dunning, American Investment, 18–19; Bostock and Jones, database, subsidiary reference no. s/00747. Employment estimate of 50 in 1885 and 1914 (Table 1) is at the upper end of the likely range.

30 The principal studies of Singer are: Wilkins, , Emergence, 37–47Google Scholar; Carstensen, Fred V., American Enterprise in Foreign Markets: Studies of Singer and International Harvester in Imperial Russia (Chapel Hill, 1984)Google Scholar; Davies, Robert B., Peacefully Working to Conquer the World: Singer Sewing Machines in Foreign Markets, 1884–1920 (New York, 1976)Google Scholar; and Hounshell, American System, chaps. 2 and 3. That the Scottish factory was the largest sewing machine factory in the world can be seen from the relative output figures in Table 2 below. The only other comparable factory was Singer's American factory at Elizabethport, N.J. That Clydebank was also “one of the largest manufacturing concerns in Great Britain” was a claim made by the Company's President, Douglas Alexander, in 1906 and cited by Davies, Ibid., 197.

31 The importance of the British-based activities is emphasized by all of the company's historians, but newly deposited records in the Singer Manufacturing Company archives held at the State Historical Society in Madison, Wisconsin, as well as hitherto unpublished material held at the Clydebank District Libraries, Central Library, and at the archivesof the Business Records Centre, University of Glasgow, considerably augment the evidence on Singerin Britain. References below to material from the Singer Archives at the SHSW, Madison, follow the recently adopted classification system: the box number is listed first, followed by the folder number for all manuscript documents. Also the microreels held at the SHSW, Madison, are listed by their serial number. The records held at Clydebank Central Library are relatively fewand are individually referenced here. For example, the figure for employment in the U.K. retailing organization for 1914 comes from a company brochure, “Where Singer Sewing Machinesare made in Great Britain,” (n.d., c.1914) held in a box file with other press cuttings and company publications (hereafter Clydebank box file).

32 Wilkins says it was “the first American international business” (Emergence, 37); Davies also calls it “the United States' first international company” (Peacefully Working, v); but Carstensen puts the company in global perspective with the claim that the Singer Company was, “perhaps the first modern multinational enterprise of any nationality” (American Enterprise, 2), a claim completely endorsed here.

33 Roberts, Richard, Schroders: Merchants and Bankers (Basingstoke, 1992), 86–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 Matthew, W. M., The House of Gibbs and the Peruvian Guano Monopoly (London, 1981)Google Scholar; Matthew, , “Peru and the British Guano Market, 1840–1870,” Economic History Review 23 (1970): 112–28Google Scholar; and Roberts, Ibid., 87–8.

35 Roberts, Ibid., 51 and 86–8; and Matthew, Gibbs, 30.

36 Roberts, Ibid., 87–90. The only history of Ohlendorff & Co.'s British subsidiary is a short, unpublished manuscript, “The Anglo Continental Guano Works Ltd,” (no pagination, no date) held in the Fisons” archive at the Suffolk Record Office, Ipswich. It was probably written by a company employee at the time of the company's acquisition by Fisons in 1937.

37 “Anglo Continental”; Roberts, Ibid., 90 and plate 35. For fertilizer developments see Matthew, “Peru” Skaggs, Jimmy M., The Great Guano Rush:Entrepreneurs and American Overseas Expansion (Basingstoke, 1994), 139–57Google Scholar; Haber, L. F., The Chemical Industry during the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1958)Google Scholar; and Greenhill, Robert G. and Miller, Rory, “The Peruvian Government and the Nitrate Trade, 1873–1879” Journal of Latin American Studies 5 (1973): 107–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 “Anglo Continental” and Roberts, Ibid., 90 and n. 35, 564.

39 Roberts, Ibid., 90–1; Matthew, “Peru,” 122–3; and Greenhill and Miller, “Peruvian Government,” table 2, 111 on guano exports to Britain and 112.

40 “Greenhill and Miller,” “Peruvian Government,” 123–5.

41 Roberts, Ibid., 91, 110, 128; Greenhill and Miller, “Peruvian Government”; “Anglo Continental” and Haber, L. F., The Chemical Industry 1900–1930: International Growth and Technological Change (Oxford, 1971), 117.Google Scholar

42 Employment for 1885 and 1914 inferred from “Anglo Continental” and Haber, Ibid. 117.

43 Nestle and Anglo-Swiss Holding Company Ltd., This is Your Company, (privately published by die company, New York, 1946)Google Scholar; and Heer, J., World Events 1866–1966: The First Hundred Years of Nestle (privately published, Lausanne, Switzerland, 1966)Google Scholar are the two company histories. Your Company, 1–2; and World Events, 28–9, 38–9 and 56 on origins.

44 Your Company, 35–9 on technology; World Events, 28–9, 38–9 and 56.

45 Your Company, 2 on motives for investment and new plants; World Events, 56–8, 64 and 65–6 on U.K. output.

46 Employment for 1885 and 1914 estimated from World Events, (total employment of 400) 71, (Swiss employment over half) 72, (Aylesbury factory) 67, and there was alsoa factory in Bavaria, 65.

47 Your Company, 61–4. A fourth condensery, at Staverton, was opened in 1897. Nestle also had one British condensery so total U.K. labor for 1914 was a littlehigher than for 1885, around 200 (not reported in Table 1 because of the change in ownership). The period of rapid growth was after after 1918. By 1939 the U.K. subsidiary employed 4, 365, Your Company, 64; and World Events, 72–104.

48 Red Book of Commerce (London, 1907); Bostock and Jones, database, subsidiary reference no. s/00111. 1885 employment estimate of 50 (Table 1) at the upper end of the likely range.

49 Morel, Julian, Pullman: The Pullman Car Company—Its Services, Cars and Traditions (Newton Abbot, 1983)Google Scholar, citation 23.

50 Morel, Ibid., 23–5 and passim; Behrend, G., Pullman in Europe (London, 1962), 33–35.Google Scholar

51 Morel, Ibid., 23–44.

52 Red Book of Commerce (London, 1907); Scott Fletcher and Andrew Godley, “Foreign Direct Investment in British Retailing,” 1850–1962, Business History 42 (2000): forthcoming. Employment estimate of 20 (Table 1) for 1885 for manufacturing employment only and at upper end of likely range.

53 Dunning, American Investment; Bostock and Jones, database, subsidiary reference no. s/00409. Employment was 20 shortly after World War II and has assumed to havebeen stable beforehand, Dunning, John H., “U.S. Direct Investment in U.K.” (unpublishedms. and database, University of Reading archives, 1955).Google Scholar

54 Wilkins, Emergence, 59; Red Book of Commerce (London, 1907 and 1933). Employment estimates (Table 1) at upper end of likely range.

55 Robert Jones and Marriott, Oliver, Anatomy of a Merger: A History of GEC, AEI and English Electric (London, 1970).Google Scholar Employment estimate (Table 1) at upper end of the likely range.

56 Bostock and Jones, database, subsidiary reference no. s/00239.

57 Bostock and Jones, database, subsidiary reference no.s s/00080 and s/00159;Fletcher and Godley, “FDI in British retailing” and Godley, Andrew, “The Development of the Clothing Industry: Technology and Fashion,” Textile History 28 (1997): 6, 7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

58 Chandler, Alfred D. Jr, The Visible Hand (Cambridge, Mass., 1977): 302–5Google Scholar, 402–6, is the best summary of the thesis, although dependent upon Davies, Peacefully Working. See also Jack, Andrew B., “The Channels of Distribution for an Innovation: The Sewing Machine Industry in America, 1860–1865,” Explorations in Entrepreneurial History 9 (1957).Google Scholar

59 Red [S] Review (Singer's in-house corporate magazine published from Sept. 1919, copies held in the Clydebank Central Library): various issues, on the importance of after-sales service and demonstration; this is also rightly emphasized by Carstensen, American Enterprise, in the Russian context. Oliver E. Williamson emphasizes the importance of demand externalities in “The Modern Corporation: Origins, Evolution, Attributes,” Journal of Economic Literature 19 (1981): 1537–68.

60 Davies, Peacefully Working, on early competitors, 5–15 and 54–5; also Hounshell, American System, chap. 2; and Bourne, Frederick G., “American Sewing Machines,” in One Hundred Years of American Commerce, ed Depew, Chauncey M. (New York, 1968, orig. 1895), 530.Google Scholar

61 See Table 2 on Singer's annual output. Also Bourne, Ibid., 530–60n U.S. output and limited exports. On the characteristics of the early U.S.-market and post Civil War change see Davies, Ibid., 19 (branches in manufacturing centers), and 21–2 (productivity gains to industry); also Carstensen, American Enterprise, 5; Hounshell, Ibid., 87, fig. 2.11; (on early technology) Thomson, Ross, The Path to Mechanized Shoe Production in the United States (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1989), 73–117Google Scholar; and Jack, “Channels,” 124–8, 134; Godley, Andrew, “Comparative Labour Productivity in the British and American Clothing Industries, 1850–1950” Textile History 28 (1997): 67–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

62 Figures for U.S. and World markets are given in Bourne, Ibid., 530; Davies, Ibid., 161–2; and, for 1914, Carstensen, Ibid., 71.

63 In 1882 the firm's total capital employed was “more than five million pounds sterling,” Report of the Proceedings on the Occasion of Breaking Groundfor the Singer Manufacturing Company's New Factory, May 18th 1882 (pamphlet privately published by the firm, Glasgow, c. 1882, copy held in Clydebank Central Library), 23 (and 35). 1887 see Davies, , “[Peacefully Working to Conquer the World:] The Singer Manufacturing Company in Foreign Markets, 1854–1889,” Business History Review 43 (1969), 321CrossRefGoogle Scholar (which may have made it the largest industrial firm in the world in die late 1880s); and 1900 see Davies, Peacefully Working, 108–9. For 1912, see Schmitz, “World's Largest Industrial Companies.”

64 Bourne, Ibid., 535. Also, Wilkins, Emergence, 41–2. It is not known what other U.S. firms Bourne was referring to.

65 London and Glasgow “ad hoc” assembly operations in 1865 in Davies, Peacefully Working, 43. The 1867 Glasgow factory is best covered in Breaking Ground, 20–1 (cit. 21) and 32–4; and Red [S] Review (1922): 717 (“distribution centre”). Also see Davies, Ibid., 42–5; Carstensen, American Enterprise, 24–5; and Wilkins, Ibid., 41–2. U.K. sales from Godley, Andrew, “Singer in Britain; The Diffusion of Sewing Machine Technology and its Impact on the Clothing Industry in the United Kingdom, 1860–1905,” Textile History 21 (1996): 59–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Total assets in 1868 were $262,559.89, or £54,021; Wilkins, Ibid., 42.

66 On the early Glasgow factories from 1867 to 1871 see Red [S] Review (1922): 716–7, 740–1, 764–5; Hounshell, American System, 93–5, 356, n. 78; and Davies, Ibid., 46–7 where the source of the citation is given. Also see Red [S] Review (Sept. 1930): 3340, a reprint of a speech given in 1870 by Alexander Anderson, the then Glasgow factory manager, on the early factories. See Table 2 sources for breakdown of Bridgeton's output, and the correspondence between the German agent and Head Office, Box 84, folders 1–3. The cost of the original Bridgeton Street factory was $90,000. Also see Anderson's short speech in Breaking Ground, 33–4. Russell, Iain and McDermott, Michael, “The Sewing Machine—The Singer Factory,” in The History of Clydebank, compiled by John Hood (Glasgow, 1988), 15Google Scholar for 1880 employment. They suggest that Bridgeton was not completed until 1873 but this must refer to the extension.

67 Carstensen, American Enterprise, 19–20; Godley, “Singer in Britain”; Godley, Andrew, “The Development of the U.K. Clothing Industry, 1850–1950,” Business History 37 (1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Godley, , “Jewish Soft Loan Societies in New York and London and Immigrant Entrepre-neurship, 1880–1914,” Business History 38 (1996): 104–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

68 Breaking Ground, 8. On Elizabethport, see Red [S] Review (1946), 7013; and A Century of Sewing Service (pamphlet, privately published by the firm, n.d. c.1914, Clydebank box file).

69 Cabinet Factory at Govan Street, see Red ]S] Review (1922) 740. Bonnybridge castings see Davies, Ibid., 45, and George Ure, Breaking Ground, 8. Coatbridge engineers see Engineering 35 (1883): 41; and capacity see The Glasgow News, 24 July 1883, 2, both in Clydebank box file.

70 On the Kilbowie decision see Davies, Ibid., 78–81; Carstensen, American Enterprise, 32 ff.; Wilkins, Emergence, 44–5; and Russell and McDermott, “The Sewing Machine,” 15–18. Citation from North British Daily Mail, 10 July 1885; and The Glasgow News, 24 July 1883, 2 on planned capacity, both in Clydebank box file.

71 Wilkins, Ibid., 44.

72 Kilbowie was a small village in what, in 1886, became the burgh of Clydebank. The factory assumed the name of the burgh a few years later (c. 1900), Russell and McDermort, “Sewing Machine,” 19. The only data on the value of investment at Kilbowie/Clydebank comes from fragments in the archives reported by Wilkins, Emergence, 44 and 261 n, 27 ($868,264 in Feb. 1883 for, seemingly, costs of building); and by Davies, Peacefully Working, 78–9, 351 n. 62 ($67,000 for the land and $2,013,600 in Dec. 1883 for the costof contractors). Adding all three 1883 figures together probably gives a reasonable figure forthe cost of land, bricks and mortar and building, coming to almost £600,000. (Russell, Iain, Sir Robert McAlpine and Sons Ltd. The Early Years [Glasgow, 1989]Google Scholar, saysthat McAlpine—the principal contractor—was paid £300,000 to £350,000 for erecting the factory, 41). But this does not include any of the machinery, which was mostly built in-house and is impossible to price, but which probably exceeded the value of land and buildings. For the 1867 assembly shop relatively little was needed. For Bridgeton in 1869 machine tools were shipped over from New York, Breaking Ground, 33–4. For the later factories most machinery was made on-site. See North British Daily Mail, 10 July 1885; and Hounshell, American System, 94–6 and 120–1. There is no extant archival data on the total subsequently invested in the extensions and electrification of the Clydebank factory from 1904 to 1914, except that McAlpines received a total of £775,000 for all Clydebank building work to 1919, implying that at least £400,000 of building work took place from 1904 to 1918, when capacity was more than doubled, Sir Robert McAlpine & Sons, McAlpine Contracts (privately published, Glasgow?, n.d. 1919). It is likely that the (undepreciated) value of Singer's investments exceeded £1 million by 1884 and £2 million to £3 million by 1914.

73 For example, Vice-President McKenzie, “not much doubt about the new factory being a success” in Breaking Ground, 31. In the company records the debate was limited to particularities of site. McKenzie reported to President Clark “that wewere open to receive tenders for eligible sites. As a natural consequence we have received quite a lot of proposals from every quarter in and around Glasgow. “The only question which seems to perplex me is that of labor,” he added. It was important to retain as many of the original workers as possible because the fit-and-finish production methods required considerable skill and dexterity. McKenzie was afraid that he would “have difficulty in getting the people to go any considerable distance out of Glasgow,” 10.5.1881, Box 94/1.Rail links were unsatisfactory between Clyde-bank and Glasgow at this time. The Company was evidently committed to the Glasgow area, but McKenzie appears to have decided on Clydebank/Kilbowie only after June 1881. The problem of bringing workers out of Glasgow continued to dog him until then and a large plot of land seen in Paisley, with appropriate rail and river finks, he thought would be very suitable because “it has this advantage over Kilbowie that in Paisley we should experience no difficulty in drawing whatever labour we require,” McKenzie to Clark, 11.6.1881, Box 94/1. However, Kilbowie was preferred and by the following spring the “location for the various buildings has been practically settled” and McKenzie was very enthusiastic, “[t]he business looks admirable here. I am very much gratified and encouraged,” McKenzie to Clark, 31.3.1882, Box 94/4. For the Russian investment see Carstensen, American Enterprise, 28–39.

74 Hounshell, American System, 93, suggests that Clydebank was chosen on the basis of the low cost of docile labor (as well as good shipping facilities) on the apparent authority of Davies, Peacefully Working. But Davies is much more equivocal and the source of McKenzie's alleged comment on the cheapness and docility of Glasgow labor would seem dubious—it was to an official inquiry in New Jersey in 1885 and it is impossible to know what was top of McKenzie's agenda in his responses. Glasgow labor was certainly not cheap within Britain and had no reputation for docility, see Hunt, E. H., Regional Wage Variations in Britain, 1850–1914 (Oxford, 1973)Google Scholar, chap. 1. Although, of course, it was considerably cheaper than American labor. In 1888 the Clydebank workforce received $5 per week, 40 percent of the average weekly wage of Elizabethport workers, who received nearly $13per week. See Andrew Carnegie letter to Singer Sewing Machine Company, 13 Feb. 1888, and attached newspaper clipping, Box 63/1.1 am indebted to Kristine Bruland for this source.

75 Employment in 1885 was “between 3,000 and 4,000,” North British Daily Mail (10.7.1885, Clydebank box file). For 1900, see Saul, S., “The Market and Development of the Mechanical Engineering Industries in Britain, 1860–1914,” Economic History Review 20 (1967): 124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Singer's weekly payroll was 14,437 at the Scottish factory in the summer of 1914. This probably does not include salaried employees, sothat the true figure was close to 15,000.

76 Clydebank was initially a replica of Elizabethport, even using the same architect, and Elizabe-thport was still referred to as the “chief factory,” Breaking Ground, 4. By the 1890s the two factories were “equal in capacity,” Bourne, “American Sewing Machines,” 535. Most other factories did not produce sewing machines, only stands. The Canadian factor), at Montreal, was established in 1883 but remainedsmall. Between 1904–06 it produced only 2 percent of the firm's total output. See Hounshell, American System, 117–8; and Comparative Factory Shipments, 1904–06, 10.1.1907, Box 107/3 (it made 33, 107; 34, 482; and 34, 749 machines per annum respectively). The German factory was small and was not listed as producing any machine-heads between 1904–06. The Russian factory at Podolsk produced its first machines in 1905–5, 430–and its first significant number in 1906–42, 322 or 2.2 percent of total firm output. Comparative Factory Shipments, 1904–06, 10.1.1907, Box 107/3. There was also an Austrian factor, which just produced stands, and, after Singer acquired Wheeler and Wilson, a second sewing machine factory contributed to the firm's American output after 1906.

77 There is some confusion over the Clydebank start date: Russell and McDermott suggest that it opened in the summer of 1885, “six months ahead of schedule,” “Sewing Machine,” 18; Davies, Peacefully Working, 79, suggests late spring 1885. I assume these were errors. Work commenced in 1882, after the ceremony reported in Breaking Ground. Moreover, “Commercial Glasgow” in Glasgow and its Environs, author unknown, (Glasgow, 1891), 42, Clydebank box file, confirms that work commenced in 1882 and was completed by 1884; Red [S] Review (1922): 740, “From James Street and Govan Street the factories were transferred to Kilbowie in 1884,” although in two stages, with work beginning at Clydebank already in 1883 according to A Century of Sewing Service, 5.

78 For 1885–7 some sources refer to “planned” employment reaching 5000 at Clydebank, for example, 1885, Dorman, A., “A History of the Singer Company (U.K.) Ltd.,” (unpublished bachelor's thesis, University of Glasgow, 1972)Google Scholar, n.p. (I am indebted to Professor Fred Carstensen for sending me a copy of this valuable source); 1886, Russell and McDermott, Ibid., 18; and 1887, Davies, Ibid., 79–80. But actual employment must have fallen short. Employment was only “between 3000 to 4000” in the summer of 1885 (North British Daily Mail, 10.7.1885, Clydebank box file).

79 Davies, Peacefully Working, 121, citing Boume. Hounshell, American System, 119–21, also refers to early problems at Clydebank.

80 Elizabethport employment calculated from Carnegie to Singer, 13 Feb. 1888, Box 63/1. The weekly payroll there was $35,000 and mean pay was under $13, giving 2,700 workers. Unfortunately, Elizabethport and Clydebank output for 1888 is a crude estimate, table 2.

81 Davies, Peacefully Working, 121. Another source confirms the drive to productive efficiency at Bridgeton. A cost account ledger from the Bridgeton factory, held at the Clydebank Central Library, lists the annualized costs of components for all of the different models manufactured at the Bridgeton factory. The most popular model by far was the New Family, only 5 percent of Bridgeton output between 1871 and 1881 was of non-Family models. In 1871 the New Family's component costs were £149.73 per hundred machines. The 1872 and subsequent accounts excluded some of the labor charges included with the 1871 calculation so that the first year may not be strictly comparable with later ones. The 1872 cost certainly fell dramatically to £101.62 per hundred machines, however, the component costs continued to fall, in 1873 to £97.20, in 1874 to £91.35, and in 1875 to £85.62. Costs increased in 1876 but fell to a new low of £83.64 in 1877, increased again in 1878 before falling very quickly to £74.76 in 1879, £69.37 in 1880 and £65.13 in 1881. Component costs had fallen by more than 35 percent in the nine years from 1872. As output increased so component costs fell. The coefficient of correlation between growing output and falling unit costs from 1872 to 1881 is 9325. The implication appears to be clear. The company's factory management at Bridgeton were learning about and exploiting very significant economies of scale.

82 Century of Sewing Service, 9; and Davies, Peacefully Working, viii, 140.

83 There were by 1914 perhaps as many as 150 foreign firms engaged in manufacturing in the U.K., see Bostock and Jones, “Foreign Multinationals,” 95. Dunning estimated the total of U.K. employees of U.S. manufacturing affiliates in 1914 as 12,000–15,000, (incorporating an estimate of Singer's Scottish factory employment of 7,000) which is obviously woefully short, American Investment, 36. The estimate here of Singer'sU.K. employment as half of all employment in foreign manufacturers' U.K. affiliates is based on Dunnings upper figure for non-Singer U.S. affiliates (say 8,000—Dunning thoughtthat there were about 70 U.S. branches in 1914, which is confirmed by Jones and Bostock, “U.S. Multinationals,” 213–5) and an estimate of some 7,000 employees from the 70 or so manufacturing subsidiaries of non-U.S. firms identified by Bostock and Jones, the three largest of which employed less than 4,000 in aggregate, “Foreign Multinationals,” 97–9. Most subsidiaries were very small.

84 Materials sourced from outside the factory were from British companies like John Dewhurst's of Skipton and John Clark's of Paisley who supplied the enormous amount of thread required. On the competition between thread suppliers see McKenzie to Clark, 11.6.1881, Box 94/1; and Woodruff to McKenzie, 3.8.1881, Box 94/1. On Dewhurst see Red [S] Review (1921): 438–9 on the Skipton factory. The only inputs imported from America were the wooden units for the unveneered cabinets, Bourne, “American Sewing Machine,” 535. Singer's cabinet making facility was concentrated onto one site, South Bend, Indiana, and output exported in a pre-finished state to Clydebank and elsewhere. See Hounshell, American System, 136–44. American export figures unfortunately include Singer's wooden cabinets with sewing machines, so that any kind of substitution effect from the Scottish investments is not easily discernible from the official sources, Bourne, Ibid., 536–7. By 1914 exports were worth £2.5 million, Dunning, American Investment, 18.

85 Bostock and Jones, “Foreign Multinationals”; and Jones, Evolution, for example.

86 Nicholas, Stephen, “British Multinational Investment before 1939” Journal of European Economic History 11 (1982)Google Scholar; and Nicholas, , “Agency Contracts, Institutional Modes and the Transition to Foreign Direct Investment by British Manufacturing Multinationals before 1939” Journal of Economic History 43 (1983): 675–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

87 Dunning, John H., Multinational Enterprise and the Global Economy (Wokingham, 1993)Google Scholar chap. 4; Buckley and Casson, Economic Theory.

88 Vemon, Raymond, “International Investment and International Trade in the Product Cycle,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 80 (1966).Google Scholar

89 Davies, Ibid., 162–3; Carstensen, American Enterprise, 89.

90 Cantwell, J., “The Globalisation of Technology: What Remains of the Product Cycle Model,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 19 (1995).Google Scholar