The

industrial efficiency of civilized

man is of recent growth.

The home stage in

boot and

shoe manufacture.

The handicraft stage.

40. Division of labor in colonial manufactures 1

If we were to contrast the productive methods of savages with the methods employed in some of the largest and most efficient factories of modern times, it would appear that there is no comparison between the productivity of the savage and that of civilized man. And yet the highly effective methods of modern industry are only two or three centuries old. In some of the manufactures of colonial days, for example, there was not a sufficient application of the principle of the division of labor, and certainly not enough in the way of industrial efficiency, to warrant a contempt for the methods of the savage. The relatively unproductive methods of colonial times may be illustrated by the boot and shoe industry in early Massachusetts. The early stages of this industry are described by Miss Hazard as follows:

During the home stage in the shoe industry in Massachusetts shoes were made only for human consumption. There was no market for them. . . . The farmer and his older sons made up in winter around the kitchen hearth the year's supply of boots and shoes for the family, out of leather raised and tanned on his own or a neighbor's farm. . . . Each boy in turn stood on a piece of paper or on the bare floor, and had the length of his foot roughly marked off with chalk or charcoal. The shoemaker selected from among his meagre supply of lasts the one which came "somewhere near" that measure. There were only two styles, low shoes or brogans, and high boots.

The second or handicraft stage came in the Massachusetts boot and shoe industry with easier times in each village in turn. It had been foreshadowed by the itinerant cobbler. Now the real shoemaker could stay in his own shop, working on his own or his customer's supply of leather. He dealt directly with his market in the first phase of this stage and made only ordered or "bespoke" work. . . The number of master workmen in any one town was comparatively small, of course, in this "direct market" or "town economy" period, dependent as they would be upon the possible orders of a single community. Their journeymen went to the frontier settlements

1 From Blanche E. Hazard, "The Organization of the Boot and Shoe Industry in Massachusetts before 1875." Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. xxvII. February, 1913; pp. 239-244.

to set up in the craft for themselves, leaving the supply of apprentices to fill their places in the future. . .

...

There were times when the more advanced apprentices or even the journeymen spoiled a pair of shoes started for a definite customer, and these remained on the master's hands to be disposed of. Then there were slack times when the apprentices might fairly be expected to "eat their own heads off," to the shoemaker's loss. In such a case the craftsman ventured to make up the stock on hand, to employ this otherwise wasting labor, and then tried to dispose of the shoes in the village grocery store. Since the market was uncertain and slow for this extra work, both stock and labor may frequently have been below the standard used in the custom-made shoes. . .

The manufacture of "extra" or

"sale"

shoes.

In case the shoemakers lived in villages too far from Boston to The case of attract customers, but near enough to send in their surplus product, Quincy Reed of their attention to sale work would steadily grow. A seemingly typical Weymouth. case, with all its local flavor, can be followed in detail in the bills, letters, account books, and oral traditions of Quincy Reed of Weymouth. He expected to be a shoemaker just as his great-grandfather William, who landed in Weymouth in 1635, and his grandfather and father had been. In 1809 the father was a master with custom work and probably some sale work for local consumption. As Quincy tells the story:

"My brother Harvey began it by taking chickens to Boston. His story. He had a pair of chaise wheels in the barn, and putting on a top piece, loaded her up and drove to town. He hung some shoes on the chaise and we sold them in Boston. All the shoes . . . before we began business, were carried into Boston in saddle bags.

"We hired a store of Uriah Cotting at 133 Broad Street and fitted it up. Then I used to keep a chest of shoes in a cellar near Dock Square and on Wednesday and Saturday would bring out the chest and sell. I got $15 and $20 a day by it in 1809. I was sixteen and my brother was eighteen years old then. We moved into the Broad Street store with two bushels of shoes. I used to cut out what would promise to be $100 worth a day. We couldn't have them made [as fast as that], but I could cut them. One day I cut 350 pair of boot fronts and tended store besides. Most of the shoes were made by people in South Weymouth. We had nearly every man there

The
Industrial
Revolution
in England.

The mill

at Beverly, Massachusetts.

Samuel
Slater

comes to
America,

working for us before long. Used to bring out the sole leather swung across the horse's back in those days."

...

41. Slater introduces power machinery into America 1 The foregoing selection traces, to a slight extent, the increasing efficiency of individuals engaged in the boot and shoe industry. While this type of development was going on in this and a number of other colonial industries, the invention in England of a series of remarkable machines was permitting the manufacturers of that country to make greater and greater use of natural power. The Industrial Revolution, initiated in England after 1750, gave that country a decided advantage in the manufacture of textiles and other products. This naturally increased the desire of American manufacturers to set up machines similar to those in use in England. The following extract tells, briefly, the story of how power machinery was introduced into the United States from England:

It was at the period so prolific in inventions, and when the use of cotton had so increased in England, that the manufacture was commenced in the United States. The first [textile] mill was at Beverly, Mass. It had a capital of [about] $450,000, and was organized in 1787, for the manufacture of corduroys and bed ticks. ... The machines were very rude, inasmuch as the new inventions in England were then unknown here.

Samuel Slater was an apprentice to Jedediah Strutt, the partner of Arkwright. He served his time, and when of age departed for America, where he arrived in 1789. In the following year, he entered into partnership with Almey and Brown to start a factory in Pawtucket [Rhode Island].

Here, then, were put up, in the best manner, the whole series of machines patented and used by Arkwright for spinning cotton. There had been previous attempts at the spinning of cotton by water power, and some rude machines were in existence for spinning the rolls prepared by hand, in private families; but the machines that had been invented in England were entirely unknown here until put up by Slater.

1 From One Hundred Years' Progress of the United States. Hartford, Conn., 1872; pp. 277-281.

machinery

tucket.

Those machines were so perfect that, although put up in 1790, and sets up they continued to be used forty years, up to 1830, when they formed power part of an establishment of two thousand spindles, which still exists at Pawin Pawtucket under the name of the "old mill." Slater's business was prosperous, and he amassed a large fortune. He died in 1834. . . . It is to be remarked that his business was confined to the spinning of cotton. This business, of course, spread as soon as it was found to be profitable. . . . It will be observed that Mr. J. Slater got his mill into operation at the same period that the Federal government was organized under the new Constitution, a most auspicious event. The manufacture did not fail to attract the attention of the new government, and Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, in his famous report of 1791, remarks:

"The manufacture of cotton goods not long since established at Beverly, in Massachusetts, and at Providence, Rhode Island, seems to have overcome the first obstacles to success; producing corduroys, velverets, fustians, jeans, and other similar articles, of a quality which will bear a comparison with the like articles brought from Manchester. The [mill] at Providence has the merit of being the first in introducing into the United States the celebrated cotton mill, which not only furnishes material for the factory itself, but for the supply of private families for household manufacture."

Alexander

Hamilton comments

upon the significance

of Slater's work.

attitude

toward the

of machines.

It may be remarked that down to 1828 the exportation of machines England's of all kinds . . . was strictly prohibited in England, for fear other nations should benefit by English mechanical genius, of which they exportation supposedly had a monopoly; . . . Mr. Slater, the "father" of American cotton manufactures, was so closely watched at the English custom-house, that he could not smuggle over a drawing or pattern. He had, however, acquired a full knowledge of the Arkwright principle of spinning, and from recollection, and with his own hands, made three cards and twenty-two spindles, and put them in motion in the building of a clothier, by the water-wheel of an old fulling-mill. . . .

Extent of the division

of labor in American industry.

Importance of the cattle butcher.

Minute division of labor in

1

42. An example of the complex division of labor In an important sense, the division of labor in modern industry has developed along two lines: In the first place, men have in many cases divided up their labor so minutely that each man carries on by hand a highly specialized type of work. In the second place, certain complex activities have been broken up into operations so simple that they need no longer be done by hand, but can be performed by machinery. At the present time, a considerable number of American industries exhibit a minute and highly complex division of labor, both among hand workers, and among machines operated by individuals. The stock-slaughtering business in Chicago, Ill., is an excellent example of the complex division of labor among persons working primarily by hand. The following description is by Professor Commons:

The cattle butchers' local unions number 5,500 of the 50,000 members, and of these about 2,000 are the most highly skilled of all the workmen in the slaughtering and packing industry. Their importance has brought to them the title of "butcher aristocracy." Their strategic position is explained by the character and expensiveness of the material they work upon. The cattle butcher can do more damage than any other workman; for a cut in the hide depreciates its value 70 cents, and a spotted or rough carcass will be the last to sell, with the risk of the rapid depreciation of a perishable product.

The sheep butcher merely "pulls off" three-quarters of the hide, but the cattle butcher can pull off only 2 per cent. The entire hide must be neatly cut off, leaving the "fell," or mucous covering, intact on the carcass, to give it a good appearance. The "splitter," too, must make a neat and smooth cut straight down the middle of the ivory-like "fins" of the backbone, or the wholesaler cannot quickly dispose of the piece.

Yet, notwithstanding the high skill required, the proportion of skilled workmen in the butchers' gang is very small, owing to a the butchers' minute division of labor. It would be difficult to find another industry where division of labor has been so ingeniously and microscopically worked out. The animal has been surveyed and laid off like a map;

gang.

1 From John R. Commons, "Labor Conditions in Meat Packing and the Recent Strike.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. XIX, November, 1904; pp. 3–6.