A Poetic Community: Colonel David Humphreys' Model Industrial Village

Abstract

AbstractThis is the story of David Humphreys' efforts to plan and develop America's first sustained and successful woollen textile mill and village in the United States beginning in 1806. Informed by the debates over the future economic direction of the new nation, his efforts represented a coalescence of the pro‐agricultural thoughts and ideas commonly espoused by the Democratic‐Republican Party and the pro‐manufacturing positions of Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists. The Humphreysville experiment showed that America could competitively manufacture high‐quality woollen goods; factory‐based manufacturing could be undertaken in a healthy, safe, and moral community; and agricultural and industrial interests could be combined for the public welfare. Moreover, Humphreysville was intended to be a model village where economic, social, and cultural aspects of the community were just as important as the economic production of cloth. Many of the elements of the social planning found in Humphreysville were later applied in the Slater‐Rhode Island and Waltham‐Lowell systems of textile mills and settlements throughout the nineteenth century.