Midnight Ride, Industrial Dawn

by Robert Martello

  Capital Concerns: Sales, Profits, and Management

  In 1788, for the first time in his career, Revere found himself in the position of starting a new technical business from scratch. Thanks to a profitable silver shop and an unspecified arrangement with his well-off cousins he avoided the pitfall of limited investment capital that plagued the vast majority of new endeavors in postwar America. But financing his foundry’s construction hardly ended his pecuniary challenges. He still had to manage the operations, balance day-to-day problem solving against longer-term strategic choices, and simultaneously wear technical and managerial hats. Many of the prominent startup manufacturing operations of this era succeeded due to fortunate alliances between technical practitioners and moneyed entrepreneurs such as Samuel Slater and Moses Brown in the Rhode Island spinning mills, Robert Fulton’s and Robert Livingston’s work on early steamboats, and Paul Moody and Francis Lowell in the Lowell textile mills. In keeping with the theory of large technological systems, Revere played the combined role of an inventor-entrepreneur by overseeing all aspects of the new business, technical and otherwise. Even if Hitchborns fronted some of the money and skilled employees performed most of the work, success or failure, with all of the consequences, rested almost solely on his shoulders.

  Revere’s sales information, while sketchy, paints a picture of early financial success. One of his ledgers records payments (income) and expenses (costs) for most of the year 1793. The lower estimate of income from his sales during his 1793 foundry operations is slightly more than 393 pounds. His 1793 expenses total slightly more than 311 pounds, yielding Revere at least an 82 pounds profit for the year, and possibly more.55 Revere’s strategic efforts as manager of his shop centered on this fundamental equation, and for the remainder of his career he attempted to raise his income as much as possible while lowering his expenses.

  The very existence of separate credit and debit tallies reveals Revere’s growing interest in accurately measuring his financial performance. The foundry represented another giant step in his proto-industrial progression from informal barter and credit exchanges to monetary accounting. His silver shop began as an eighteenth-century craft operation, but like most American businessmen in this period he started adopting capitalist techniques in response to the expanding market economy. Revere’s workshop and early foundry operations involved an even greater reliance upon cash, wage labor, and written contractual agreements. He started writing receipts for many services and these receipts invariably included the monetary value of all services rendered. He also changed his accounting and recordkeeping technique upon opening his furnace. His early silver shop records are far more confusing than the surviving furnace records: for example, he freely commingled credit and debit accounts, listing expenses and sales together.56 With the beginning of the furnace, Revere clearly separated his expenses from his sales and income via a double entry bookkeeping system.

  Revere gained familiarity with the sales and pricing patterns of metal goods from his mercantile experience. Starting in 1783, his all-purpose hardware and general goods store sold metal items such as candlesticks, kettles, saws, files, window weights, hinges, iron nails, locks, and buckles, as well as items used in a metalworking shop such as bellows, melting pots, and “moulding sand.” Although he probably did not make many of these items at first, the retail business placed him in contact with merchants, local blacksmiths and coppersmiths knowledgeable in their arts, as well as the local clientele, a much larger group than the generally well-off patrons of his silver shop. Revere had lengthy and complex transactions with local producers, involving a reciprocal exchange of goods, services, cash, and debt. As a result, he gained an intimate awareness of the local demand for different items, the range of available products, typical wholesale and retail prices, and the practices of the metalworking community such as the use of the most popular metalworking tools. This experience also allowed him to inspect the construction details of different items and chat with their makers, which must have helped him learn the technical processes as well.

  Furnace records illustrate the seasonal nature of iron production and sales. The working year began with slow sales in March, which increased by the end of April. The high production season extended from May through September. Business dropped off in October and November, and operations then ceased until the following spring. Incomplete customer cash payment records reveal a lag of several months (averaging around sixty days) between product sale and payment. Customers usually started paying their bills in June and July, the cash inflow picked up in August, and the largest number of payments arrived in September and October.57 This cycle reveals the close ties between Revere and the networks that supported him. His production cycle relates to that of a blast furnace, which ceased operations in winter when rivers froze and in summer when rivers ran low. The payment cycle also coincides with a typical harvest season, since most farmers sold their crops at some point in the fall and used the proceeds to pay their debts and make purchases for the next season. As Revere shifted his operations from silver into iron casting, he started falling out of touch with merchants’ patterns and grew more connected to natural rhythms of water flow and agricultural production.

  Although Revere served in a managerial capacity when he directed his silver shop workers, the iron trade required significantly more complex purchasing strategies, market research, and labor supervision. Revere observed the practices and cultures of different ironmaking establishments, the largest of the technical communities and some of the largest managerial concerns in America, throughout his ironworking career. Ironworks introduced many managerial innovations as well as some of the first rigid labor expectations, and the industrial discipline that spread throughout textile and other factories in the mid-nineteenth century had roots among colonial furnaces and foundries.58 The overlay of individual skilled labor and rigorous supervised discipline grew increasingly prevalent in Revere’s shop, although as we have seen, he still allowed his men to enjoy many of the privileges and freedoms of skilled laborers. His managerial practices reveal, as do so many of his other operations, how Revere kept a foot in both worlds, bringing in or devising his own new policies to deal with the growing scale of his operations while often falling back on the tried and true artisan traditions that guided his own training.

  Ironworks, from the smallest foundry to the largest iron plantation, represented a vital step in America’s proto-industrial transition, as they retained ties to rural and pre-modern traditions and practices while also necessitating the adoption of continuous flow processes, the designation of a distinct managerial class, labor discipline and regimentation, and the concentration of large quantities of investment capital.59 Paul Revere joined this movement for practical reasons, as he expected to quickly learn the business and profitably meet a market demand. But he soon thought about manufacturing and management from a perspective even farther removed from that of the skilled practitioner. Revere’s iron career brought him into a new world, across a point of no return. The days of artisanal skilled labor in his silver shop lay forever in his past, to be replaced by an ever-increasing scale of production. In the years from 1787 to 1792, when he focused on setting up his foundry and worked primarily on iron goods, he engaged aspects of large technological systems, technology transfer, and environmental impacts that later characterized the age of industrial capitalism.

  Revere’s rapid foundry success resulted from fortuitous timing, innate technical aptitude, thorough research, and the casting experience he gained from silverworking. He came to realize that the foundry oven melded the characteristics of tools and machines: it required skilled labor and could be used in a flexible manner to produce different products, but an expert could produce consistent output by following a standard set of production practices. During his iron-casting career Revere taught himself and his employees to use the foundry oven in an even more machinelike way, optimizing its use until they could produce highly standardized output. He gained great
experience in the technical aspects of this challenge and his confidence served him well in the years to come.

  Paul Revere had already begun moving toward standardized output while working in his postwar silver shop but he truly embraced this ideal as a founder. As a silversmith, Revere produced works largely custom-made for each individual customer. Although silverwork styles imposed certain common forms and conventions on all pieces, customers prized many items for their uniqueness. Revere and other silversmiths started rethinking their trade after the proliferation of fairly standardized utensils and common items, aided by the output of silver-flatting mills, but the highest calling of all silversmiths remained the prestigious production of unique silver plate. Ironworking imposed entirely new values and goals upon the producer: from blast furnace operators to founders and finers, the measure of a skilled ironworker was his ability to produce uniform metal and standardized objects. The use of molds and patterns imposed an ideal upon the founder in particular: the best objects duplicated the model used in casting, and all deviations from it decreased the item’s value and perfection. Iron founding changed Revere’s standards as well as his methods.

  Revere could not control the managerial aspects of standardized output at this time, nor could anyone. The iron network, while strong, had a long way to go before iron production took place with any regularity. American pig iron had a fairly consistent quality by this point but its scarcity forced him to turn to undependable “old” iron. And even if he had arranged a reliable iron supply, his laborers still expected to be treated as craftsmen, with control over their work schedules manifesting in ways that disrupted regular foundry operations. These complications did not particularly concern Revere because standardization did not yet exist in the technical vocabulary. His version of standardization essentially enabled his shop to produce more objects cheaper and faster without requiring his own labor. In this sense he succeeded. For his next endeavor, standardization was not even a possibility.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Bells, Cannon, and Malleable Copper (1792–1801)

  In 1792 the leaders of the New Brick Church convened a meeting to discuss a matter of some urgency. Their church bell, transferred from its previous home in the Old North Church in 1780 after somehow surviving the wartime dangers of the British occupation, had developed a substantial crack. The damaged bell could no longer be used for services, and, in fact, could only be rung in the case of fire. The membership of this meeting included thirty-five church officials and major donors, including Thomas Hitchborn, Samuel Hitchborn, and Paul Revere.

  Paul Revere’s presence at such a meeting reflects a lifetime of diligent church membership and service. Even as a 13-year-old boy he took his religion seriously and equated it with public service, signing a formal compact with six friends who joined him as bell ringers. Two years later he risked his father’s wrath to attend a controversial sermon at a different church. In spite of this youthful rebellion, Revere followed his father’s lead by remaining loyal to the New Brick Church as long as he lived in Boston and he served on numerous church committees between 1788 and 1800.1 As with his other activities, Revere’s church membership afforded him the opportunity to network with colleagues, drum up potential customers, serve in prestigious positions of authority, and play a visible role in his community. But even if the church offered occasional benefits he never exploited it, and the majority of his charitable church work or religious comments in his letters and speeches demonstrated his piety without yielding any tangible reward. His youthful respect for religion had only increased by this later stage in his life, and he took matters such as the 1792 church bell committee to heart.

  The primary purpose of this meeting involved a subscription drive to generate the funds needed to pay for a new bell. In a moving show of solidarity, the group voted that any member then present who failed to pay the amount of his promised donation would not be allowed to ever hear the bell. In a more serious vein, these men had to determine the proper course of action in acquiring a new bell. We can imagine 57-year-old Paul Revere half-listening to proposals to ship the old bell to England for recasting while quietly calculating the price and availability of bell metal, the size of his own furnace, and the process for making what, to him, would be a gigantic mold. He knew a thing or two about bell making from earlier readings and discussions, but the field remained abstract to him, both intimidating and intriguing. Technical challenges abounded, and he had to wonder about the optimal thickness; the ratio of height to width; the proper proportion of copper, tin, and other metals; and so many other issues great and small. Bell casting would be difficult, but not impossible for a man who had already mastered the art of casting small silver items and large iron ones. Could he afford to take on this responsibility, or more accurately, could he possibly refuse such an exciting challenge?

  Revere accepted the job at that very meeting and immediately set off to work. Despite the complexities of bell making and the lack of a supporting network along the lines of America’s close-knit ironworking community, Revere’s broad range of skills prepared him quite well for this new task. Most important of all, he did not need to modify his furnace for this new trade. He added 412 pounds of new copper and tin to the approximately 500 pounds of material salvaged from the cracked bell, and to help with the casting process he visited other foundries. By the end of 1792 he had succeeded, in a manner of speaking. The bell’s tone received poor reviews, such as Reverend William Bentley’s private observation that “The sound is not clear and prolonged, from the lips to the crown shrill.” Furthermore, alone among the more than one hundred bells his shop produced during the period of his active involvement, it contains visible creases and imperfections and soon showed many signs of wear, a sign of his inexperience.2 And thus began Revere’s latest enterprise, not with a bang, but with a shriek.

  Even this inauspicious beginning made Revere proud, with good reason. His was the first bell cast in Boston, as attested by its inscription “THE FIRST CHURCH BELL CAST IN BOSTON 1792 BY P. REVERE.” This same bell received an extended tribute from the Reverend Edward G. Porter almost a century later:

  Few bells have such a record as this. It has hung on three conspicuous churches, either in its original or enlarged form. It has summoned six generations of worshippers to the sanctuary. It has tolled for the dead, and awakened the living from their morning slumbers. It has opened the daily market, announced the hour for lunch, called the hungry to their dinner, and the weary to their beds. It has broken the stillness of the night by its dread alarm of fire. On momentous occasions it has rallied the citizens to meet in defence of liberty. It has sounded the tocsin of war, and rung merrily on the return of peace. It has assisted in the patriotic celebrations of the Fifth of March, the Seventeenth of June, and the Fourth of July. Truly such an active and faithful participant in the affairs of Boston during so long a period of our history deserves a place among the famous bells of the world.3

  Reverend Porter’s reverential listing of the tasks performed by Revere’s bell and his placement of the bell into the center of local history personified it with a level of respect accorded to few other technologies. This encomium could just as easily serve as a memorial to a human being.

  Bell casting opened doors that soon led to new endeavors. Sitting in that meeting room, volunteering to learn the bell-casting business, Revere completed a paradigm shift that began when he first established his foundry. He now saw his “air furnace” as a multifaceted machine that could cast items from different metals or even alloys of metals, in sizes far larger than anything he previously attempted. Following this realization and armed with growing confidence, Revere embarked on a host of new metallurgical adventures in the years following 1792. If he could make the leap from iron implements to bronze bells, surely he could transfer his bell experience to cannon casting. And after working with large objects consisting primarily of copper and tin alloys, he had no reason to fear a shift to smaller items made solely of copper.
In the wrong hands confidence becomes a great liability, but in this case it was well placed. By 1795, Revere’s product line had grown so large that some experienced observers found it hard to believe any American could really do all of that.

  Revere’s rapidly increasing experience coincided with local and nationwide economic and political developments. His timely shift from iron to copper alloy products possibly resulted from an assessment of his location and an understanding of his raw material needs and limitations. New England’s iron sources paled in comparison to sources in the rest of the country, particularly in the mid-Atlantic states. When small New England furnaces could not supply his needs he had to pay expensive transportation fees. While he could (and did) continue to produce cast iron implements on a moderate scale, he had more trouble expanding his output and making his mark on the field when saddled with exorbitant operating expenses. In contrast, America possessed only scarce supplies of copper. The ideal site for a copper manufactory was a location near a major port city that could provide supply and demand, surplus labor, and mechanical expertise. Boston was one of the three best locations in the nation.

  The economic climate also favored his new endeavor, as the credit contraction and depressed markets of the mid-1780s had faded to an unpleasant memory. The establishment of a stronger national government headed by George Washington in 1789, as well as Alexander Hamilton’s proactive array of aggressive economic policies, provided the nation with much needed stability. This stability offered a firm platform for steady economic improvement in the late 1780s and 1790s, fueled by internal factors such as population growth and the growth of urban centers that expanded America’s market economy, as well as external factors such as rising foreign demand for American goods and shipping. The new nation now benefited from stronger political leadership, solid national credit, and increased circulating capital.4 It needed these assets in the coming years, as a series of international crises required the creation of a military establishment practically from scratch. Many Americans, including Revere, took advantage of the strong economy by enlarging their operations to satisfy the growing national or international demand for manufactured goods. His wonderful ability to learn new trades was vital once again, but as his operations matured the technological challenges were rivaled by the need to secure sufficient amounts of investment capital, manage and coordinate a growing body of skilled workers, and react to rapidly changing market conditions. The successful eighteenth-century manufacturer continually integrated technical, entrepreneurial, and managerial aptitudes as Revere had done for some time.