“Preparing for the Duties and Practical Business of Life”: Technological Knowledge and Social Structure in Mid-19th-Century Philadelphia

Abstract

‘'Preparingfor the Duties and Practical Business of Life’ Technological Knowledge and Social Structure in Mid-19th-Century Philadelphia NINA E. LERMAN Industrialization is commonly described as a social as well as a technological transformation. Nonetheless, the tight links between the history of technology and social history suggested by such a phrase have remained largely elusive; the “social” and the “techno­ logical” are most often treated in opposition to one another.1 But scholars discuss both technology and social categories like gender in terms of their “social construction,” suggesting another, more parallel or even interdependent relationship. Indeed, phrases such as “social shaping of technology” invite transgression of traditional boundaries. Exploring the “social and technological transforma­ tion” ofAmerican industrialization in this spirit, I find that techno­ logical knowledge (a topic long since introduced in these pages) provides an ideal approach: the study of technological knowledge places people making and doing things—from cooking to carpentry— at the focus of our scrutiny, and demands integration of the techni­ cal and the social.2 Dr. Lerman teaches U.S. history, women’s history, and the history of technology at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. She is working on a book about technical education and social categories in industrializing Philadelphia. She thanks Lindy Biggs, Christian Gelzer, Mark T. Hamel, Gabrielle Hecht, Michael B. Katz, Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, Helen Longino, Judith McGaw, Arwen Mohun, Ruth Oldenziel , Philip Scranton, John Staudenmaier, and the Technology and Culture referees for their comments on the several incarnations of this article. ‘Studies integrating social and technological change include Merritt Roe Smith, Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology: The Challenge of Change (Ithaca, N.Y., 1977); Anthony Wallace, Rochdale: The Growth of an American Village in the Industrial Revolution (New York, 1972; paperback, 1980); Judith McGaw, Most Wonderful Ma­ chine: Mechanization and Social Change in Berkshire Paper-Making, 1801-1885 (Princeton, N.J., 1987). 2As Walter Vincenti has put it, “emphasis on knowledge . . . brings history of technology into symbiotic relation, not only with intellectual history and philosophy, but with social history and sociology as well.” Walter Vincenti, What Engineers Know© 1997 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/97/3801-0004$01.00 31 32 Nina E. Lerman Industrialization as a process of rapid technological, economic, and social change means, by definition, the great upheaval and over­ haul of technological knowledge as well as of social structures and ideas. By focusing on the acquisition of technological knowledge, or technical education, this article begins to explore the multilayered interconnections between social and technological change, and to study closely the fabric of the industrial transformation. Examining the technical education adults provide children—“preparing for the duties and practical business of life,” as one board of managers described girls’ sewing and boys’ shoemaking3—allows us to explore important questions about technological knowledge: What kinds of choices are made by whom in the acquisition and development of technological knowledge? Who learns how to do what?—and fur­ ther, who is allowed to learn how to do what? What knowledge is ubiquitous, and what is unusual? What does it mean, in a particular context, to say that a particular person possesses a particular skill? These questions draw our attention to the reciprocal shapings of technological knowledge and social ideologies such as gender, race, and class. This article examines the particular case of technical education in mid-19th-century Philadelphia, a city caught up in the whirlwind boom and bustle of changing technologies, changing populations, and the changing social strategies of urban industrialization. Mid­ century Philadelphia was a city in transition—an old social and tech­ nological order was, for many, being replaced with a larger-scale, more bureaucratic and industrial vision. The population of urban Philadelphia had more than tripled since 1820; when the whole of Philadelphia County was consolidated into one municipal jurisdic­ tion in 1854, its twenty-four wards housed more than 400,000 people, and How They Know II: Analytical Studiesfrom Aeronautical History (Baltimore, 1990), p. 5, citing Hugh Aitken, Edwin Layton, and Rachel Laudan. Philosopher Helen Longino has made a related argument about science: “What I urge is a contextualism which understands the cognitive processes...