Most Wonderful Machine: Mechanization and Social Change in Berkshire Paper Making 1801–1885 by Judith A. McGaw

Abstract

692 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE common with the batter and bailer of clay whose wages were barely at subsistence level. Such divisions within a trade were reflected, too, in the ability to retain privilege within a changed environment. McClel­ land and Reid show how the shipyard boilermakers adopted a policy of inclusion in relation to the hoíders-on and rivet boys and one of exclusion for platers’ helpers. There is a wealth of detail in this book; too much, perhaps. The essays, suffering from a surfeit of minutiae, lack the felicity of expression that one has come to expect from the hand of Royden Harrison. Argument is too easily lost in a welter of itemization and description. Nonetheless, the book deserves attention for the new case-study material that is brought to light and, in particular, for Harrison’s introduction and Zeitlin’s carefully argued comparison of engineers and compositors, in which he manages to retain shape and argument despite the detail. Jennifer Tann Dr. Tann is director of the Centre for Continuing Education at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Most Wonderful Machine: Mechanization and Social Change in Berkshire Paper Making 1801—1885. By Judith A. McGaw. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987. Pp. xv + 439; illustrations, tables, notes, appendixes, bibliography, index. $40.00. The papermaking industry was only a small component of Britain’s industrialization. In 1770 it contributed 0.4 percent of value added in British industry compared to cotton’s 2.6 percent and leather’s 22.3 percent. By 1831 its share had increased to 0.7 percent compared to cotton’s rise to 22.4 percent and leather’s decline to 8.7 percent. In the United States in 1810, paper mills produced 2.5 percent of the value of manufactures, and by 1899 output rose to 2 million tons, 900 times the output of 1810. This was a small industry, but one that had a distinctive organizational structure and underwent early and dra­ matic technological change. Papermaking always took place in mills, so its transformation was not one of organization and the location of work. But large-scale machinery—the Fourdrinier—transformed the scale of factories from the early 19th century. Judith McGaw gives us much more than an industrial history; she provides a study of a region—Berkshire County, America’s major paper producer in the 19th century—undergoing dramatic and large-scale mechanization. She leads us into a socially homogeneous and Calvinist community where kinship, religion, commerce, and skill provided the informal communication networks vital to the diffusion of innovation and initially allowed social mobility from millworker to millowner. But mechanization and large-scale factories had by the TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 693 1870s introduced a great divide between workers and owners. By 1885 family dynasties owned all the paper mills, and job structures had changed dramatically. Technical change fostered a rise in male employment and made sharp inroads on the women who had once formed two-thirds of the workforce. There was simultaneously a decline in the general papermaker; the highly skilled vat men of earlier in the century were replaced by machine tenders. But the latter still retained substantial degrees of skill, were members of relatively small workforces, and knew their employers. In this case, mechanization reinforced rather than destroyed craft consciousness. McGaw’s book provides a detailed and comprehensive survey of the progress of technology in the industry and combines this with a fascinating social history of the region and its main industry. The book is particularly notable for its analysis of the family structures, dynasties, and social and commercial networks among millowners that substantially affected their chances of success. There is also consider­ able discussion of women’s work in the mills, the rise of domestic ideologies in Victorian workers’ families, and the relations between the machine and manliness. The proportions of women employed fell, and the women remained confined to the rag and finishing room. While over 80 percent of married male paperworkers kept their wives at home, there were still substantial numbers among the women paperworkers who were either married (one-third) or over twentyfive (two-fifths). Shared masculinity, which implied...