Midnight Ride, Industrial Dawn

by Robert Martello

  According to the technology transfer model discussed in Chapter Four, technological dissemination takes place through demonstration of potential, establishment of a pilot manufactory, diffusion of new technology, and modification to suit local conditions.13 Industrial espionage represents a variation on the “modification” stage of technology transfer, in which managers and workers alter the transferred technology to better suit local conditions or the changing marketplace. Revere’s letters illuminate his painstaking attempts to gather relevant information from books, experts, and the observations of travelers. Although he received the most help from American craftsmen and metalworkers, he looked to Britain for improvements and error correction after his mill opened. Industrial espionage was a highly efficient form of technological transfer because the search for information targeted the highest-priority questions. Joseph Warren had years of experience with Revere’s operations and could orient his search at the most complicated aspects or biggest bottlenecks in the copper-rolling process. The fruits of this labor were guaranteed to fall on fertile ground. This espionage must be understood in the context of the times, as Revere and his son viewed it. Instead of apologizing for his son’s spying, Revere cited it as a major asset of his operations for the remainder of his life. He was a borrower, trying to duplicate the best available technical processes, and industrial espionage represented the most direct and helpful manner of becoming a “master of the business” and helping his country close the technological gap with its primary competitor and former adversary.

  Before Joseph Warren embarked, father and son diligently prepared him for different contingencies. Joseph Warren obtained a Commonwealth of Massachusetts passport signed by the governor, while his father obtained letters of introduction from the attorney general, influential friends, and himself. These documents enabled Joseph Warren to enter Britain, and once there to receive a passport from foreign minister James Monroe that allowed him to travel to other countries. In the age before photography, these passports contained a physical description, broken down into categories such as his height (five foot ten), eyes (light), mouth (small), nose (common), forehead (common), chin (large), complexion (rather light), hair and eyebrows (dark brown), and face (full). During his travels he received other official documents from American consuls in Hamburg, Rotterdam, and Kiobenhavn containing copies of his passport description. Joseph Warren preserved these documents for the rest of his life, as they reminded him of what might have been his greatest and most productive adventure.14

  Throughout his trip Joseph Warren maintained a journal and sent many letters to his father detailing his discoveries. These letters contain a wealth of observations on European society from an American perspective. For example, he noted that Sweden had “by far the best roads I have ever seen” and marveled at repeated evidence of ongoing political turmoil in Napoleonic Europe: the French captured him on the road to Rotterdam, he was detained en route to Sweden, and he had to circumvent a blockade of the Elbe River. He also took the time to send several personal messages, informing his father of the death of an old friend and urging his younger brother John to stop smoking cigars because he felt the practice was harmful.15 However, the majority of his observations concerned manufacturing matters.

  Joseph Warren’s notes reveal as much about his own operations as the ones he observed. For example, he often seemed frustrated by the lack of quantitative precision of the workers. While studying a London bell foundry on December 12, 1804, he complained, “They did not weigh the tin which they added but took out some metal & broke it & then added as they thought it wanted.” This provides an interesting juxtaposition of working styles: the young American had already adopted more of a quantitative and exacting mindset, while the Old World artisans remained craftsmen to the core. He also felt less than impressed by their new furnace, declaring that it resembled a baker’s oven “inside a one story building which I should have supposed would have burnt the first time they used it.” But even amid disappointment he noted that their bell molds and other tools surpassed his own.

  The trip enabled Joseph Warren to learn more about state-of-the-art water-wheels. On December 19 he visited an Eastbridge rolling and slitting mill built for copperworking but improved for iron, basically a high-technology version of his shop back home. He noted that the mill drew power from a “good” stream with only a four-foot fall. The rolls fit into a “cast iron frame similar to a goldsmiths plating mill” using only one shaft and cog to move the bottom roller, which itself moved the top roller via some gears. He included an excellent diagram of this machine, and a later diagram illustrated how the two rollers could be powered independently in a more complicated setup. By 1809, the Revere mill used separate waterwheels to drive the top and bottom rollers. British firms still used the horizontally inclined breastwheels, as opposed to the more efficient enclosed turbines that appeared soon after.

  Joseph Warren also identified the importance of managerial coordination and efficiency. On December 22 he visited a gigantic, comprehensive copper-works in Harefield, which cast, rolled, and cut copper in different buildings. The Canton property eventually adopted a similar layout. Joseph Warren’s concluding paragraph best expressed his amazement:

  This works all the time imploy 150 workmen night & day, before I saw these I thought the works for Iron extremely well fitted but this is beyond description. altho so many wheels & all of iron there is no noise no chattering but all goes like clock work & you can talk & be heard the same as in open air these works have been all newly built within fourteen years & should suppose from the immense stock not less than a million sterling capital.

  One can imagine the noise and “chattering” that must have taken place at his own mill in contrast to this one. Joseph Warren seemed most impressed by the organization and continuity of operations, as workers continually added large quantities of copper and fuel to the casting furnace, which produced a steady output: “as soon as the pig on tile was black another was poured on the top of it & so on untill full.” Although he noted the rolling mill’s six-foot width and impressive set of waterwheels and cogs “as true as clock work altho of this imence weight,” the degree of mechanization generally failed to impress him: workers even used manual cutting shears to slice the copper. Many of these efficient procedures eventually helped him improve his own operations. He answered his father’s longstanding copper-cleaning problem by noting that one boy mopped the copper sheets with urine or chamber lye before heating them, making them “sinfully clean & not liable to tarnish.” Also, workers rolled copper sheets “square then corner ways then square untill got to the width then length ways until thin enough to shear.” These simple, easily copied processes immediately found a home in the Revere mill.

  His other travels drew a complex picture of old and new methods. He could not believe that Birmingham watch, toy, and pin manufactories used epic quantities of manual labor instead of switching to simple and efficient machines. In contrast, brassworks in Bristol impressed him with their use of steam power and ancillary equipment (a crane and a stretch of wooden rollers) to simplify the maneuvering and rolling of tremendous sheets. Best of all, a cog enabled the mill’s rollers to turn in either direction, so the workers could simply move a sheet forward and backward until it was finished.

  Figure 8.1. Joseph Warren Revere’s sketch of British rolling technology, 1804, from Joseph Eayrs Financial Journal, volume 56, page 10. From Revere Family Papers, 1746–1964, microfilm edition, 15 reels (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1979), reel 15. Joseph Warren Revere made this diagram of a rolling mill in Uxbridge, England, during his 1804–1805 visit to England and Europe. His thinly disguised industrial espionage mission uncovered great quantities of usable information about state-of-the-art metalworking practices. This image illustrates how to use a single waterwheel to drive two horizontal rollers as well as a vertical blade for slitting iron or copper. Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

  In light of Brit
ain’s strict policies regarding technological secrecy, Joseph Warren had a surprisingly easy time gaining entrance to a range of establishments. He occasionally mentioned that an owner refused to share proprietary information or turned him away, but most of his journal pages contain detailed observations and drawings. His journal from other countries on his itinerary is not included in the Revere Family Papers, but correspondence and other writings allude to interesting visits to mines, foundries, and copperworks.

  Revere never codified the specific consequences of his son’s espionage, but many of his technological improvements over the next few years drew upon these observations and sketches. As important as these improvements were, Joseph Warren’s most valuable discoveries related to organizational procedures. He witnessed gigantic concentrations of labor and capital, dwarfing anything in America at that time, all laid out “like clock work” to efficiently transform raw materials into finished products. In the years to come, Joseph Warren applied these overseas lessons by altering the Revere mill’s processes and machinery, bringing it a major step closer to the modern factory ideal.

  Paul Revere practiced what he preached. As a lifelong beneficiary of technology transfer, someone who easily left behind any adherence to the artisan’s protective and proprietary attitude toward technical knowledge, he repeatedly shared his own experiences with others. At some point before September 1808 he received a letter, now lost, from Philadelphia merchant-manufacturer Levi Hollingsworth. In 1804 Hollingsworth constructed his Gunpowder Copper Works along Gunpowder Creek outside Baltimore to provide copper products for Baltimore’s thriving port, but by the time of this letter he had run into numerous production problems and requested assistance from the far more experienced Revere. Revere did his best to clarify many details of the copper bolt-manufacturing process. Revere suggested a high-tech method to use special rollers, described in a following section, to roll copper bolts far more efficiently than the previous tool-based process. He even included a labeled diagram. Revere could have ignored the letter or offered limited advice that avoided disclosing his most advanced techniques. Instead he went out of his way to share everything he knew that might help a fellow manufacturer. Revere’s generous support eventually provided him, or more accurately, his firm and descendents, with a form of karmic payback, because the corporate successor to Hollingsworth’s Gunpowder Copper Works later merged with Revere’s company. In a shorter time frame, Hollingsworth remained friends with Revere and collaborated with the Revere and Son firm on a new petition for tariff protection in 1815, again ignored by Congress.16

  Revere also offered assistance in an 1810 correspondence with H. M. Salomon, a Philadelphia plating mill owner. Salomon initially purchased copper from Revere in February, optimistically expecting to need a large quantity. A May letter to Revere explained how disaster had struck:

  An accident has happened in our mill which will unfortunately prevent our Roling out any more plated metal until it gets remedied. One of the large cast steel rolers broke last week directly thru the middle in two pieces. In this City and Philadelphia we cannot find a person capable of making another. Mr H Hendricks has just now informed me that you make rolers in your foundery. If so please to let me know how soon you will be able to furnish us with a good Cast Steel roler of the size we require . . . The Iron casters here have thought that good Iron ones would answer. I have made 2 pair for us but found they would not do. If no one here can do it, I shall send to England for one.17

  This letter portrays Salomon’s desperation but fails to offer many specifics, as Revere indicated in his rapid response.

  the break of the Roler is more from want of attention than accident, they must be constantly greased. Mr Hendricks information is not quite correct we have cast Roles but only for our own use. We now have them cast but turn them ourselves, everything depends on their being turned true, we cannot give our opinions as we do not know the dimensions of your roles, we use English & American Roles they are Cast Iron we esteem them equal to Cast Steel. You do not mention the cause why the Roles you got last in New York will not do. Ours are cast from the best of Iron.18

  Salomon responded with a grateful two-page letter that illustrated some of the differences between himself and Revere. Salomon knew nothing of the business apart from what his workers and his superintendent told him, revealing himself to be an owner lacking in technical experience, a prevalent category by the later nineteenth century. Salomon’s workers repeatedly attempted to make their own iron rolls but could not remove the small holes from their surfaces, and therefore the rollers produced pitted, pockmarked sheeting. Based solely upon Revere’s first letter, Salomon trusted him enough to ask him to procure a pair of rolls “such as you think in regard to quality.” In spite of Revere’s help, Salomon closed his shop doors in November and asked Revere to buy back the unused copper.19

  Revere’s willingness to help strangers and potential rivals such as Levi Hollingsworth and H. M. Salomon illustrates the camaraderie shared by manufacturers at this time. Many businessmen and manufacturers cooperated in order to regulate economic activity, exchange tools and personnel, or share information: profit maximization and collaboration often coincided. When firms were small in comparison to the market, cooperation usually helped everyone because information sharing spread risks and shared rewards.20 In addition to his confidence in his mill’s technical sophistication, Revere did not feel threatened by producers in other cities. Manufactories on his side of the Atlantic had never posed a threat to his sales, and could become allies in his battle for tariff protection against the true enemy, cheap imports from British facilities. Kindred spirits and potential sources of advice or support, these allied manufacturing pioneers worked together to advance the technical skill of American workshops, and America.

  Standardization and a Tour of Revere’s Product Lines

  By the first decade of the 1800s, Revere’s growing firm had to begin considering the challenges of transfer, growth, consolidation, and competition that face most mature technological systems. While his son eventually completed this journey after Revere’s death by fully breaking with artisan traditions and beginning new organizational and production processes, Revere and his workers still altered their production line in order to make the manufactory larger and more efficient. Along with his fellow forward-looking manufacturers he focused his efforts on innovating, transferring technology, standardizing his output, and developing new products.

  Revere’s altered technical methods highlight contemporary trends of machine use and early mass production. The earliest American craft establishments used power machinery only for the initial processing of raw materials, for example, to saw lumber, grind grain, or smelt iron. Skilled workers typically took over at that point and converted the processed materials into usable goods with tools rather than machines. These practices changed after the Revolution, when entrepreneurs applied powered machinery to the production of finished goods such as textiles and copper sheets. Many American machine adopters did so because of the exceptional fluidity of labor: a machine could be relied upon over the long term whereas skilled laborers came and went. As craft and proto-industrial workers shifted from multipurpose hand-held tools to less versatile and externally powered machines, the duties and nature of the workforce changed. Creativity, versatility, and independence became less important than machine-based mechanical skills, discipline, and consistency. At the same time, population growth, increased consumerism, and circulating currency—in short, the expansion of markets and capitalism—inspired manufacturers to move toward the “American system,” a predecessor to mass production.21 Historian Eugene Ferguson defined the American system as “the sequential series of operations carried out on successive special purpose machines that produce interchangeable parts.” One of the major goals of the American system (and later, of mass production) was the cheap, large-scale production of standardized output. Four technological components paved the way for large-scale standardized production:
efficient machinery, high-quality raw materials, the intensified application of energy, and the use of gauges to measure the quality of the output.22

  Revere’s operations certainly met most of these criteria by 1802, when advances in other fields enabled him to purchase reliable machine parts and fairly steady supplies of quality raw materials. He never specifically mentioned any use of gauges but he did depend on accurate and consistent measurement of his products: for example, he classified his sheet output into different grades usually measured in ounces per square foot. The majority of his earlier production depended upon skilled laborers and produced carefully crafted individual items such as teapots or church bells. But Revere started incorporating machinery and experimenting with standardized output for his silver shop operations as early as the 1780s, and by the 1800s his Canton mill employed devices in a variety of operations. After relocating all his operations to Canton and exploiting its waterpower and concentrated workforce he made even greater strides toward the methods and goals of the American system.

  By his retirement in 1811, Revere had set up a copperworking complex housed over three buildings. Several letters describe the layout and the titles of his facilities. The rolling mill building contained a rolling mill powered by two twenty-one-foot diameter waterwheels; two furnaces for heating the copper bars and sheets; “Machiniary for Boring from the solid”; and machinery for turning cannon, drawing wire, and heading spikes. The hammering mill building contained one heating furnace, two forges, and two trip hammers, powered by an eighteen-foot waterwheel. And the foundry building contained “two large furnaces for melting with the necessary apparatus for moulding.”23