Manufacturing Advantage: War, the State, and the Origins of American Industry, 1776–1848

Abstract

As the newborn United States made the transition from a confederation of former British colonies to a centrally governed nation-state, political leaders and businessmen in the young, idealistic country found themselves on the horns of a dilemma. Theirs was a country founded, ostensibly, on the principles of free trade with the outside world, agrarian self-sufficiency based on westward expansion at home, and President Washington's famous injunction against foreign entanglements. But even before the ink was dry on the new Constitution, they faced serious challenges to those ideals at home and abroad. Imperial mercantilism, dominated by Great Britain, still prevailed in international commerce and threatened to throttle an American economy based on foreign trade before it could get started. Moreover, while philosophically pacifistic, the new United States was militant in practice toward Native American nations on its expanding frontiers, resulting in nearly continuous armed conflict somewhere or other on its western and southern borders.As the nineteenth century approached, a quasi-war with Revolutionary France and the threat of renewed war with Great Britain—which would occur in 1812—added to the country's problems. The need for a well-armed and adequately clothed national army bolstered by equally well-equipped militias was clear. But the ability to arm and clothe such a force during wartime was far beyond the industrial capacity of the United States as the new federal government came into being the 1790s. This is the context for Lindsay Schakenback Regele's Manufacturing Advantage, an interdisciplinary historical analysis of the birth and growth of two industries that started the United States on the path to becoming a global economic power.Manufacturing Advantage follows the development of the firearms and the textile manufacturing industries in New England from the Early Republican through the Antebellum periods in American history. Regele begins her study by juxtaposing the “paramount importance” placed by the federal government on “military and economic independence” (164) with the deplorable state of the nation's military firearms reserves and its dependence on imports for manufactured goods, especially textiles. Alexander Hamilton's Report on the Subject of Manufactures, published in 1791, argued that the solution to these issues lay in a national economic policy that actively promoted industrial development: “a federal stimulus” (33). Congressional ambivalence prevented such a policy from ever being overtly adopted. But the author observes that Hamilton's vision eventually came to fruition through the executive branch's control over military expenditures and diplomacy, which she calls “national security capitalism: a mixed enterprise system in which government agents and private producers brokered solutions to the problems of international economic disparities and war” (2). Domestic and foreign policies promoted the development and growth of these two industries.The book's six chapters are organized chronologically, and one can get an idea of how the story will unfold noting that the table of contents takes the reader from “Our Naked Troops” to “Industrial Manifest Destiny.” Each chapter treats the development of both industries by contrasting the quite different ways that “national security capitalism” worked in promoting their growth. The firearms industry, for example, was much more closely tied to the federal government than textile manufacturing was. The War Department contracted with inventor-entrepreneurs, such as Eli Whitney and Samuel Colt, who depended on those contracts to fund innovative research and development and for start-up capital to manufacture the firearms they committed to produce. The federal government soon consolidated military long arms manufacture in two arsenals, even though it continued to rely on private contractors for other weaponry. In general, Regele reveals the firearms industry as a wholly government-sponsored enterprise during the period of this study, resulting in rapid progress toward firearms self-sufficiency and beyond. By the end of the War of 1812, the United States was no longer an importer of firearms; it was on the verge of becoming a backdoor exporter to the revolutionary movements in South America through the clever device of allowing private citizens to buy and resell federally made firearms.In contrast to firearms, the textile industry was self-capitalized by merchant-investors, and, while key innovations in the firearms industry came from native-born inventors, the key technology in the mass production of American textiles arrived in the heads of British mechanics literally smuggled out of the United Kingdom. The author observes the slower growth of textile manufacture than firearms, which she attributes to a more laissez-faire governmental attitude toward it. But she also notes that textile manufacturers relied on active federal promotion at home by protectionist tariffs (when the political climate was right) and overseas through favorable trade relationships with foreign governments negotiated by American diplomats. And, of course, they aggressively sought lucrative contracts for military clothing from governments at home and abroad. The wars of liberation in South America and the Mexican War, therefore, were essential events in the expansion of American textile manufacture from a cottage industry to one that could not only clothe the growing population of the United States but could compete with British exports in the southwestern hemisphere.Regele makes extensive use of primary sources, including but not limited to business records, diplomatic and military correspondence, and records from the federal arsenals. She also makes effective use of many scholarly works from several historical disciplines to explain the complex business, technological, and political relationships relating to the two industries. In fact, fully one-third of the pages in this book are devoted to footnotes; the notes that pertain to secondary sources are discursive and informative. The extensive list of citations makes the lack of a bibliography regrettable.Manufacturing Advantage is an important addition to the field of policy history and an equally important contribution to scholarship in several other historical disciplines, including business history, history of technology, and military history. Her analytical framework of “national security capitalism” offers an important new perspective for scholars in the above fields. In the firearms industry, for example, it expands the scope of the impact of the “American System of Manufacture,” based on the revolutionary concept of interchangeable parts, to at least include US foreign policy. In 1851 Great Britain hosted the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London, an international display of manufactures from around the world intended to showcase the industrial might of the United Kingdom. The United States was the only country not to subsidize its participants. Nevertheless, observes Regele, they walked away with “a greater share of prizes than any other nation,” and, in fact, stunned the British into copying—or attempting to copy—the American system. Likewise, the intricate personal relationships between certain textile manufactures, politicians, and diplomats exposed by Regele's analytical framework shed new light on the success or failure of different enterprises that were making use of the same basic business models and technologies. In conclusion, Manufacturing Advantage demonstrates the importance of active federal involvement in promoting private enterprise.