The Dawn of Innovation (53 page)

70
John H. Hall,
Remarks upon the Patent Improved Rifles Made by John H. Hall of Portland, ME
(pamphlet) (Portland: F. Douglas, 1816) 1, 5 (in the collections of the New York Public Library).

71
“U.S. Rifle Model 1819 Breechloading Flintlock Hall .52,” Catalog Entry, Springfield Armory National Historic Site,
www.museum.gov/spar/vfpegi.exe?IDCFile=spar/DETAIL
.

72
Smith,
Harpers Ferry Armory
, 186–194.

73
James Thomas Flexner,
Steamboats Come True: American Inventors in Action
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1978), 177–184; Malone,
Jefferson and the Rights of Man
, 385–387;
American National Biographical Dictionary
online.

74
Huntington,
Hall's Breechloaders
, 3.

75
Smith,
Harpers Ferry Armory
, 188.

76
Fitch,
Manufacture of Fire-Arms
, 6–7; “U.S. Rifle Model 1819”; John Walter,
Rifles of the World
(Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 1998), 159.

77
Smith,
Harpers
, 196; Huntington,
Hall's Breechloaders
, 305.

78
Huntington,
Hall's Breechloaders
, 17.

79
The discussion of Hall's technology contribution draws on Smith,
Harpers Ferry Armory
, 224–241, and his “John H. Hall, Simon North, and the Milling Machine: The Nature of Innovation Among Antebellum Arms Makers,”
Technology and Culture
14, no. 4 (October 1973): 573–591; Fitch,
Manufacture of Fire-Arms
, 56–63.

80
Raber et al.,
Conservative Innovators
, 139–141; Fitch,
Manufacture of Fire-Arms
, 7.

81
Smith,
Harpers Ferry Armory
, 240–241.

82
Ibid., 200, 201.

83
The 1827 military board and manufacturing reviews are reprinted in full in Huntington,
Hall's Breechloaders
, 306–323, quotes at 311, 319–320, 323.

84
Gordon, “Simeon North,” 183; Doron Swade,
The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer
(New York: Viking, 2001), 229.

85
Green,
Eli Whitney
, 139.

86
John K. Mahon,
History of the Second Seminole War, 1835–1842
(Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1991), 120–121.

87
Robert B. Gordon, “Who Turned the Mechanical Ideal Into Mechanical Reality?”
Technology and Culture
29, no. 14 (October 1988): 744–778.

88
Deyrup,
Arms Makers
, 182; Charles T. Haven and Frank A. Belden,
A History of the Colt Revolver and Other Arms Made by Colt's Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company from 1836 to 1940
(New York: William Morrow & Co., 1940), 389.

89
Raber et al.,
Conservative Innovators
, 98–101.

1
Frances Trollope,
Domestic Manners of the Americans, Edited, with a History of Mrs. Trollope's Adventures in America, by Donald Smalley
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949). The biographical note follows Smalley's. In her book, Trollope makes only the barest allusion to her entrepreneurial activities in Cincinnati.

2
Barbara M. Tucker and Kenneth H. Tucker,
Industrializing Antebellum America: The Rise of Manufacturing Entrepreneurs in the Early Republic
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 47.

3
Trollope,
Domestic Manners
, 6.

4
Robert E. Lipsey, “U.S. Foreign Trade and the Balance of Payments, 1800-1913, in
The Cambridge Economic History of the United States
, vol. 2:
The Long Nineteenth Century
, Stanley L. Engerman and Robert E. Gallman, eds. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 685–732 (Table 15.9).

5
Trade data from the Bureau of the Census,
Historical Statistics of the United States, Millennial Edition Online
, Table Ee7.

6
Namsuk Kim and John Joseph Wallis, “The Market for American State Government Bonds in Britain and the United States, 1830 to 1843,” Working Paper 10108, National Bureau of Economic Research, November 2003.

7
Bray Hammond,
Banks and Politics in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 268–325. Thomas Payne Govan,
Nicholas Biddle: Nationalist and Public Banker
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), is a detailed biography.

8
Hammond,
Banks and Politics
, 324, quoting Jacob Viner.

9
Govan,
Nicholas Biddle
, 92–95, 95–97, 205–206.

10
For criticism of Biddle, see William M. Gouge,
A Short History of Paper Money and Banking in the United States
(Philadelphia: T. W. Ustick, 1833), 183–184.

11
Hammond,
Banks and Politics
, 600–601.

12
Douglass C. North,
The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790–1860
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1961), 66–74.

13
Jeremy Atack and Peter Passell,
A New Economic View of American History
, 2nd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1994), 155.

14
Paul Bairoch, “International Industrialization Levels from 1750 to 1980,”
Journal of European Economic History
11, no. 2 (Fall 1982): 269–333.

15
Alexis de Tocqueville,
Democracy in America
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), 1:53.

16
Quoted in Leo Damrosch,
Tocqueville's Discovery of America
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 136.

17
Harriet Martineau,
Society in America
(New York: Sanders and Otley, 1837), 2:26.

18
Trollope,
Domestic Manners
, 43.

19
Ibid., 120–121.

20
Ibid., 52–53.

21
Ibid., 44–45.

22
Charles Dickens,
American Notes
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985), 180.

23
Martineau,
Society in America
, 2:211.

24
Damrosch has a fine discussion of Tocqueville's development of his doctrine of interest, which I follow here. All of the quotes in this section are drawn from his book,
Tocqueville's Discovery
, 47, 136–142.

25
Martineau,
Society in America
, 2:1–2, 21.

26
T. J. Stiles,
The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), 24, 31–32.

27
Niles Weekly Register
, June 8, 1816, 234.

28
Louis C. Hunter,
Steamboats on the Western Rivers: An Economic and Technological History
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949), is the basic source. Except as noted, this section is drawn from Hunter.

29
Hunter,
Steamboats
, 33, calculates that there were 187 operating steamboats on western rivers in 1830, representing about half of total American tonnage. Since eastern boats tended to be considerably bigger, there would have been correspondingly fewer of them.

30
Ibid., 63.

31
Ibid., 38.

32
Trollope,
Domestic Manners
, 49.

33
Hunter,
Steamboats
, 31–32; Joseph T. Rainier, “The ‘Sharper' Image: Yankee Peddlers, Southern Consumers, and the Market Revolution,” in
Cultural Change and the Market Revolution in America, 1790–1860
, ed. Scott C. Martin (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 89–110; David R. Meyer,
The Roots of American Industrialization
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 271–277.

34
Cincinnati population from Wikipedia (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnati#Demographics
); Michael R. Haines, “The Population of the United States, 1790–1920, in Engerman and Gallman, eds.,
The Long Nineteenth Century
, Table 4.4.

35
Dickens,
American Notes
, 147.

36
Sean Wilentz, ed.,
Major Problems in the Early Republic, 1789–1848: Documents and Essays
(Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1992), 175–177.

37
Trollope,
Domestic Manners
, 49.

38
Ibid., 177.

39
Ibid., 177, 294.

40
Sean Wilentz,
Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1785–1850
(1984; rept., New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 211–275.

41
Rodney Finke and Roger Stark,
The Churching of America, 1776–1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 89–95.

42
The account herein, and the quotations, are from Trollope,
Domestic Manners
, 167–175.

43
Sara R. Danger, “The Bonnet's Brim: The Politics of Vision of Frances Trollope's
Domestic Manners of the Americans
,”
Philological Quarterly
(Summer 2009),
www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3362/is_3_88/ai_n57776663/?tag=content;col1
.

44
For more information about the footnote on page 186, see Robert W. Fogel,
Railroads and American Economic Growth: Essays in Econometric History
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1964). The basic argument is laid out in the first chapter. Note that Fogel's argument is organized around agricultural commodities as the primary railroad freight, which permits him much greater flexibility in discounting the value of speed. Later in the century, railroad speed, in my view, was an essential precondition to the mass consumption economy.

45
J. Parker Lamb,
Perfecting the American Steam Locomotive
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 7–9.

46
John F. Stover,
American Railroads
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 21–25; Christian Wolmar,
Blood, Iron, and Gold: How the Railroads Transformed the World
(New York: PublicAffairs, 2009), 70–75; John H. White, Jr.,
American Locomotives: An Engineering History
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968), 8–10.

47
Harriet Martineau,
Society in America
(New York: Sanders and Otley, 1837), 2:10–11.

48
British data are from Grace's Guide (
www.gracesguide.co.uk
), which accumulates the data from
Bradshaw's Manual
, the equivalent of Henry Poor's compilations for the United States. The American data is from Old Railroad History (
www.oldrailhistory.com
), which accumulates the data from Poor's and several other manuals and reconciles them with those of the Census Bureau. The manuals give slightly higher numbers in earlier years and converge about 1850.

49
Robert V. Remini,
Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, 1767–1821
(New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 252–255.

50
Trollope,
Domestic Manners
, 227, 235.

51
William B. Sipes,
The Pennsylvania Railroad: Its Origins, Construction, Condition, and Connections
(Philadelphia: Passenger Department of the Pennsylvania Railroad, 1875), 7–8.

52
Dickens,
American Notes
, 139–140.

53
William Bender Wilson, “Altoona to Pittsburgh,” in
History of the Pennsylvania Railroad Co.
(Philadelphia: Henry T. Coates, 1899), 1:94–164.

54
Edward Harold Mott,
Between the Ocean and the Lakes: The Story of Erie
(New York: John S. Collins, 1899), 356.

55
Mott,
Between the Ocean and the Lakes
, 350, 352.

56
Ibid., 92–93; Frederick Lyman Hitchcock,
History of Scranton and Its People
(New York: Lewis Historical Pub., 1914), 1:23–26.

57
The account of the excursion follows Mott,
Between the Ocean and the Lakes
, 90–101.

58
Ibid., 52–56, 45.

59
Ibid., 91–92; Stover,
American Railroads
, 41.

60
Mott,
Between the Ocean and the Lakes
, 104.

61
Herzog zu Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach Bernhard, “
Reise Sr. Hoheit des Herzogs Bernard zu Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach durch Nord Amerika, in den Jahren
1825
und
1826,
” (
Weimar: W. Hoffman, 1828); Captain Basil Hall,
Travels in North America in the Years 1827 and 1828
, Royal Navy, 3 vols. 12 mo. Edin.,
Quarterly Review
41, no. 82 (1829): 417–447, at 427, 420–421, 445. An English language version of the duke's book is William Jeroninus, trans.,
Travels by His Highness Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Weimer-Eisenach Through North America in the Years 1825 and 1826
(Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2001). Although an interesting travelogue, it is much blander than Trollope or Dickens and lacks the insight of a Tocqueville.

1
Robert A. Margo, “The Labor Force in the Nineteenth Century,” in Engerman and Gallman, eds.,
The Long Nineteenth Century
, 213.

2
Robert A. Gallman, “Growth and Change in the Long Nineteenth Century,” in Engerman and Gallman, eds.,
The Long Nineteenth Century
, 52 (Table 1.15).

3
Stuart M. Blumin,
The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 112–117; Brian P. Luskey,
Clerks and the Quest for Capital in Nineteenth Century America
(New York: New York University Press, 2010), 42–45, 89–91, 219.