Industry, Technology, and the “Labor Question” in 19th-Century America: Seeking Synthesis

Abstract

Presidential Address INDUSTRY, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE “LABOR QUESTION” IN 19TH-CENTURY AMERICA: SEEKING SYNTHESIS MERRITT ROE SMITH During the last dozen years or so, a torrent of publications has appeared about life and labor in industrial communities. Frequently referred to as “class and community studies,” these monographic works, while often emphasizing social conflict, have cast considerable light on worker culture and labor-management relations in specific locales. Some of the best work of the 1970s and 1980s came from scholars who embraced what became known as “the new social history.” Yet critics from within as well as outside their ranks fre­ quently complain that, when viewed as a whole, the work of the new social historians has a kaleidoscopic quality that makes their histories seem myopic, moves them away from the theoretical orientations of social science (“grand theory,” as a colleague of mine put it), and, most daunting of all, makes synthesis far more difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. Within SHOT circles, Brooke Hindle has been outspoken in his criticism of the new history as negative, dark sided, and advocacy oriented. He concludes pessimistically that the dominant historical consensus achieved during the post—World War II era “has now been so damaged by the challenge of the dark side reading of history that an acceptable synthesis has become hard even to imagine.” While he would doubtless take issue with Hindle’s observations about the new history’s sinister side, Philip Scranton recently observed in the pages of this journal that the new class and community studies “vary enormously in their emphasis on conflict, politics, culture, ethnicity, and institutions,” thus “complicating the job” of achieving synthesis. Even Herbert Gutman—one of the pioneers of the new social history Dr. Smith teaches in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at Massachu­ setts Institute of Technology. He delivered this presidential address at the Society for the History ofTechnology meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, on October 19, 1990. He wishes to thank Susan Douglas, Judith McGaw, Bronwyn Mellquist, John Staudenmaier, and Joel Tarr for their helpful comments and suggestions.© 1991 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040- 165X/91/3203-0005$01.00 555 556 Merritt Roe Smith in America—pointed to the problem as early as 1981. “At its best,” he wrote in the pages of the Nation, “this new history revised important segments of the national experience.” “But,” he added, “the stress on segments also reinforces the disintegration of a coherent synthesis in the writing of American history. Pattern and context are often ignored. The new history has failed to produce a new synthesis. And that is why its potential audience remains so small.”1 If Gutman is correct—that is, if public interest in and knowledge of history are declining in our society owing (among other things) to the fact that “American history has been without coherent focus and has lacked compelling central themes” for nearly thirty years—then there is reason to be concerned about the way historians are writing history. If the past is becoming more inaccessible to the public, as Gutman contends, are we abandoning the important task of synthesis to popular writers and television producers and thereby jeopardizing the future of our discipline, to say nothing of the way history is portrayed in print as well as in the public media? My concern is with the problem of segmentation in history because my reading of the new social history tends to corroborate the observations of Scranton and Gutman. For the past decade I have been working on a book about technology and society in 19th-century America, part of which is about the lives and labors of working people—the untold numbers of anonymous “hands” who helped to build and maintain the great technological systems we know so much about. The results of this research on early industrial communities suggest a virtually infinite variety of experiences. The process of industrialization presented many faces, to be sure. No single commu­ nity or groups of communities can really be singled out as being 'Brooke Hindle, “ ‘The Exhilaration of American Technology’: A New Look,” in The History of American Technology: Exhilaration or Discontent? ed...