Proceedings of the 150th Anniversary Symposium on Technology and Society—Southern Technology: Past, Present, and Future ed. by Howard L. Hartman

Abstract

148 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Proceedings ofthe 150th Anniversary Symposium on Technology and Society— Southern Technology: Past, Present, and Future. Edited by Howard L. Hartman. Tuscaloosa: College of Engineering, University of Ala­ bama, 1988. Pp. 186; notes. Paper. This symposium celebrated the 150th year of engineering educa­ tion at the University of Alabama. The proceedings—a keynote address, five papers, and excellent commentaries by W. Bernard Carlson, Melvin Kranzberg, and Edmund T. Cranch—focus prima­ rily on engineering education and business history with an emphasis on Alabama rather than the broader contours of southern technology. Two of the papers do address broad themes. Lewis M. Branscomb’s keynote address, “The Changing Face of Science and Engineering,” ex­ amines the present and future interrelationship of these enterprises within a national and international context. Optimistic about “the power of the new science and engineering marriage” (p. 20), he criticizes their present application within the United States, citing the inadequate sup­ port for engineering education and research, the need to function within a world market of trade and ideas, the overspending for military R&D, the limited vision of chief executive officers who only manage stock portfolios, and the low status ofengineering within industrial production. The origins of Japan’s industry, which Branscomb praises, is a major focus of T. Kobayashi’s “Japan and the American South: Parallels in Technological Development.” Kobayashi draws parallels between Japanese and southern industries (textile and steel) in terms of chronology, scale, labor, and the application of hydroelectricity, and discusses their similar positions as “latecomers,” a fact that has accelerated the introduction of new technologies. Kobayashi probably overstates the similarities; cultural, social, and geographical forces produced quite dissimilar industries, as he notes in discussing engi­ neering research and quality control. In Japan these activities flour­ ished at the municipal or grass-roots level, with quality control evolving from an earlier craft tradition; similar institutions never existed in the United States. At several points Kobayashi sounds like a turn-of-the-century southern Democratic politician portraying the North’s oppression of the South, which was “wrenched open by northern capitalists, including carpetbaggers” (p. 82). Is this exagger­ ated view common in Japan or does it reflect conversations with southern engineers and industrialists? Two papers deal with educating southern engineers: Robert J. Norrell, “A Promising Field: Engineering Education at the University of Alabama, 1837-1987,” and O. Allen Gianniny, Jr., “The Over­ looked Southern Approach to Engineering Education: One and a Half Centuries at tbe University of Virginia, 1836—1986.” Chroni­ cling developments within their institutions, these “company” histo­ ries are similar in tone, even though the programs were dissimilar. Virginia led the region during the antebellum period, while Ala­ TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 149 bama’s efforts remained intermittent until the 1880s. From meager beginnings and with halting progress, both programs persevered through numerous travails to a present and future full of promise. These internal accounts, supplemented by studies of other institu­ tions, could form the basis of needed interpretative studies replete with regional and national comparisons. Set in a broader context, engineering education can be used to examine questions about the South’s attitude toward technology, especially before 1865. Alabama’s industrial growth is examined in “Business, Industry, and Politics in the Antebellum South: The View from Tuscaloosa, Alabama.” George Daniels uses the career of RobertJemison, a cotton planter, to challenge the simplistic myth of planters impeding the region’s industrialization. According to this study, Jemison invested his cotton profits into a myriad of economic activities, including a controlling interest in the Warrior Manufacturing Company (1843). Despite the support of the local elite and the press, this textile mill foundered, which Daniels attributes to economic problems relating to capital, competition, labor, and marketing. While Daniels’s perspective might be limited, Jemison’s factory did resemble other 1840s southern mills created with capital from plant­ ers in response to falling cotton prices. Daniels might have minimized the technological dimensions of the adversities experienced by the Warrior Manufacturing Company. Its investors, as Carlson notes in his critique, failed to appreciate “the complexity of technology transfer” (p. 97). Also, the problems associated with using steam power might have been more significant...