The phrase “Yankee ingenuity” has become a part of the English language. If New England no longer holds all the good mechanics in the United States, there was a time when she came so near it that the term “New England mechanic” had a very definite meaning over the whole country.

The industrial development of New England was long delayed, but once started it was rapid. Up to 1800 New England artisans supplied merely small local needs and there was little or no manufacturing in any modern sense; but from then on the development was so rapid that by 1850 New England was not only supplying the United States with most of its manufactured products, but was beginning to export machinery and tools to England, where machine tools originated. For five generations, American mechanics had little or no industrial influence on Europe, and then within fifty years they began to compete on even terms.

There were several reasons for this. A market for machinery must of necessity be a wide one, for no single community, not even a large modern city, can alone support a great manufacturing enterprise. Machinery building can thrive only in a settled country having a large purchasing power and good transportation facilities. The colonies lacked all of these conditions; the people were widely scattered and poor, and there were practically no facilities for heavy transportation, at least by land. The colonial mechanics were often ingenious and skilled, but they had few raw materials and they could supply only their immediate neighborhood. Any approach to specialization and refinement was therefore impossible.

The second cause for delayed development was England’s industrial policy toward her American colonies. The colonists had hardly gained a foothold when they began to show a manufacturing spirit and an industrial independence which aroused the apprehension of the manufacturing interests in England. The first importations of iron into England from the colonies came from Virginia and Maryland, about 1718.[107] The importations for a few years thereafter are not known, as no records are available. They were sufficient, however, to arouse the jealousy of the English iron masters, for, although there was plenty of iron ore in England, they were beginning to feel seriously the shortage in wood which was then used for its reduction. They felt that the abundance of iron ore, fuel and water power in America constituted a serious menace, and they vigorously opposed the growth of any kind of manufacture in the colonies. This resulted in a prohibition of the manufacture of any form of ironware and of bar or pig iron by forges or other works. In spite of these repressive measures, a report on manufactures in the colonies, made to the House of Commons in 1731, indicated that New England had six furnaces, nineteen forges, one slitting mill and one nail factory.[108] These could, however, have supplied only a small part of the materials required even for colonial use. By 1737 much discussion had arisen respecting the policy of encouraging importation of American iron, and petitions in favor of doing so were presented to Parliament. England imported at that time about 20,000 tons of foreign iron, 15,000 from Sweden and 5000 from Russia, most of which was paid for in money.[109] It was urged that if this could be obtained from the colonies it could be paid for in British manufactures, at a saving of £180,000 annually. The annual production of bar iron in England was about 18,000 tons, and on account of the shortage of wood this could not be materially increased. To encourage colonial exportation of pig and bar iron to England would, it was urged, be the best means of preventing such further manufacturing as would interfere with their own. It was, therefore, proposed that a heavy duty be laid on all iron and manufactured products imported into the colonies from continental Europe, and on all iron imported into England except from America. These views prevailed and resulted in the act of 1750, which was entitled “An act to encourage the importation of pig and bar iron from His Majesty’s Plantations in America,” and provided that “pig-iron made in the British Colonies in, America, may be imported, duty free, and bar-iron into the port of London; no bar-iron, so imported, to be carried coastwise, or to be landed at any other port, except for the use of his Majesty’s dock yards; and not to be carried beyond ten miles from London.”[110] With this was incorporated another clause designed to arrest all manufacture at that stage. It was enacted that “from and after the 24th day of June, 1750, no mill, or other engine for slitting or rolling of Iron, or any plating forge to work with a tilt-hammer, or any furnace for making steel shall be erected, or after such erection, continued in any of his Majesty’s Colonies of America” under penalty of £200.[111] This attempt to stifle the industrial life of the colonies, persistently adhered to, ultimately brought about the Revolution.

From 1730 to 1750 there had been an importation of about 2300 tons of bar iron annually, 90 per cent of which came from Maryland and Virginia, and a little less than 6 per cent from Pennsylvania. New England and New York were producing iron by that time, but were using nearly all of their product, hence their small share in the trade. The iron masters of the midland counties in England protested against this act, prophesying the utter ruin of the English iron industry. England, they said, would be rendered dependent upon the colonies, and thousands of English workmen would be reduced to want and misery; American iron could never supply the place of the Swedish iron in quality, nor the Russian iron in cheapness, consequently the manufacture of tools would be stopped and numberless families reduced to beggary.

The manufacturers of Birmingham, on the other hand, petitioned that the bill was a benefit to their trade and to the colonists, who would exchange their raw products for British manufactures; that manufacturing was more valuable to the nation than the production of raw materials, and as iron could not be produced at home in such quantity and at such price as to supply all the needs of the manufacturers, it was the duty of Parliament to encourage the importation of raw materials, even if it should arrest their production in England; that the importation of iron from America could affect the iron works no more than the same quantity from any other country, and the home production was less than one-half the amount required, and growing steadily dearer: that the increasing activity of the English manufacturers rendered it more and more necessary to obtain these materials at the lowest price, and the only way to do this was either to reduce the duty on continental iron, or make it necessary for English iron masters to reduce their prices by raising up a rival in America. They heartily concurred, however, in the prohibition of all finishing of materials as an interference with British manufactures. The merchants of Bristol petitioned that American bar iron, which was admitted only at the port of London, be imported duty free into all of His Majesty’s ports. This discussion continued until 1757, when the privilege of importation was extended to the other ports of Great Britain.[112]

Under the act of 1750, the importation rose to about 3250 tons, 94 per cent of which still came from Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Practically all the iron produced in New England was used there, for, despite the repressive measures from the mother country, small local manufacturing enterprises, “moonshine iron works,” were constantly cropping up. The iron supply of New England came at first from the bog ores in eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island. By 1730-1760 better mines were opened at Salisbury, Conn., and in Orange County, New York, so that the production of iron in the bog-ore regions gradually dwindled.

The Revolution terminated British legislative control over the trade and manufactures of America. The war itself furnished a market for supplies for the army, and the manufacture of cannon and guns was active. Many of these factories were ruined by the flood of imports which followed the Revolution. In 1789 the present Federal Government replaced the ineffective Confederation, which had left to the separate states the duty of protecting their manufacturing interests, and a tariff was placed upon manufactured articles. Freed from the old restrictions, and with foreign competition largely precluded, manufacturing industries began to spring up on every hand.

A third cause contributed to rapid development at this time. An enormous production of cotton followed Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in 1792, and the South, which had never been a manufacturing community, furnished both a source of supply and a rich market, easily accessible by coastwise trade. The beginnings of New England’s manufacturing industries are closely identified with the rise of the American cotton crop, and most of the first machine shops were developed to manufacture textile machinery.

England, who seems to have blundered whenever she legislated on early American trade, made one more serious mistake. In 1785 Parliament passed a stringent law, with severe penalties, to stop the emigration of all mechanics and workmen in iron and steel manufactures, and to prevent not only the exportation of every description of tool, engine or machine, or parts of a machine used in making and working up iron and other materials, but even the models and plans of such machinery.[113] England was then the most advanced of all countries in the production of engines, tools and textile machinery, and it was hoped by this act that manufacturing might be kept there. It had the opposite effect so far as America was concerned. It was inevitable that mechanics, such as Samuel Slater and William Crompton, should get away, and with them, ideas. The act only stimulated a race of skillful mechanics in America to independent development of machine tools, textile machinery, and the like. America, instead of buying her machinery from England as she would naturally have done, proceeded to make it herself.

One of the earliest American mechanics was Joseph Jenks, who came from Hammersmith, England, to Lynn, Mass., about 1642, and died in 1683. With the backing of Governor Winthrop, he set up an iron foundry and forge near a bog-iron mine. The very first attempt in America to start an iron works had been made in Virginia more than twenty years before, at the settlement of Jamestown. It was hardly started, however, before it was destroyed in the general sack of the settlement, and for one hundred years there was no further attempt at producing iron in Virginia.[114]

From the little forge and foundry started at Lynn, there is no break in the spread of iron manufacturing in this country. The forge was located on the lands of Thomas Hudson, of the same family as Hendrick Hudson, the explorer. Jenks was “the first founder who worked in brass and iron on the western continent. By his hands, the first models were made and the first castings taken of many domestic implements and iron tools.”[115] The very first casting is said to have been an iron quart pot.

For many years the colonial records refer to his various activities. He made the dies for the early Massachusetts coinage, including the famous pine-tree shilling.[116] In 1646 the General Court of Massachusetts resolved that “In answer to the peticon of Joseph Jenckes, for liberty to make experience of his abilityes and Inventions for ye making of Engines for mills to go with water for ye more speedy despatch of work than formerly, and mills for ye making of Sithes and other Edged tools, with a new invented Sawe-Mill, that things may be afforded cheaper than formerly, and that for fourteen yeeres without disturbance by any others setting up like inventions; ... this peticon is granted.”[117] In 1655 he was granted a Massachusetts patent for scythes, his improvement consisting of making them long and thin, instead of short and thick, as in the old English scythe, and of welding a bar of iron upon the back to strengthen it, which later became the universal practice,[118] and no radical change has been made in the blade of this implement since his day. He built for the town of Boston the first fire engine used in this country, and also made machines for drawing wire. Jenks seems to have also been interested in another iron works started at Braintree between 1645 and 1650.

An iron works was started at Raynham in 1652 by the Leonards, who came from England about the same time as Jenks and had worked at Lynn.[119] The Jenks and Leonard families were all mechanics. It used to be said that wherever you found a Leonard you found a mechanic; and the Jenks family has been in some form of manufacturing continuously from the days of Joseph Jenks to the present time.

The near-by portions of Rhode Island and Massachusetts centering on the headwaters of Narragansett Bay, became famous for the production and manufacture of iron. A young Scotchman, Hugh Orr, settled in Bridgewater about 1738. He was a pioneer in the manufacture of edged tools, and is said to have introduced the trip hammer into this country. “For several years he was the only edge-tool maker in this part of the country, and ship-carpenters, millwrights, etc., ... constantly resorted to him for supply. And, indeed, such was his fame, that applications were frequently made to him from the distance of twenty miles for the purpose of having an axe, an adze or an auger new tempered by his hands.” In 1748, he built 500 stand-of-arms for the province, the first made in America, and later did much casting and boring of cannon during the Revolution. After the war, he made cotton machinery until his death in 1798, at the age of eighty-two. Weeden credits Hugh Orr with being “perhaps the most conspicuous” American iron worker in the eighteenth century. His son, Robert Orr, was also a skilled mechanic, and was one of the very early master armorers of the Springfield Arsenal.[120]

Joseph Holmes is another of the pioneers of this neighborhood. He is said to have made more than 3000 tons of iron from bog ore, and “Holmes’ iron” was famous for anchors. He also furnished many of the cannon used in the Revolution.[121] The Hope Furnace at Scituate, R. I., famous for many years, was started about 1735 by Daniel Waldo.[122] A nail mill was in operation at Milton, Mass., about 1740 or 1742. Another was started at Middleboro about 1745, on information stolen, it is said, from Milton by a mechanic disguised as a rustic.[123] A mill for making scythes was in operation at Andover in 1715, and a “heavy” forge was in operation at Boston in 1720.[124] Nearly all the cannon for the early American frigates were cast in and about Providence. Capt. Stephen Jenks was making arms in North Providence at the beginning of the Revolution.[125] An account of the early attempts in iron manufacture in Rhode Island can be found in Vol. III of Field’s “State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.”

The Jenks’ influence had spread to Rhode Island as early as 1655 when Joseph Jenks, Jr., who had learned the business with his father, moved from Lynn to the headwaters of Narragansett Bay, and founded Pawtucket. He built a forge near a bog-ore mine and water power, and began making domestic utensils and iron tools. The settlement was destroyed by the Indians in 1675, during King Philip’s war, but was soon rebuilt. The son of this Jenks, the third Joseph Jenks, was born there, and later became a very influential man in the colony. He was governor for five years and was interested in many of its activities.[126] Providence, from its better situation commercially, early became a trading center, but nearly all the manufacturing was done at Pawtucket on account of the abundant water power. In fact, it was not until the steam engine rendered manufacturing independent of water power that Providence took the lead as an industrial center.

In the enterprises centering about Pawtucket and Providence, one finds continually the names of Jenks, Wilkinson, Brown and Greene, among the latter that of Nathaniel Greene, the Revolutionary general, who had a cannon factory at Coventry. Of these early families the Wilkinsons were the most influential. Oziel Wilkinson, a Quaker, came to Pawtucket from Smithfield, R. I., established an anchor forge there in 1784, and soon became the leading man in the community. He built an air furnace in 1791, and three years later he furnished castings for the Cambridge drawbridge and for canal locks, probably those first used on the Merrimac River.[127] He and his family had a most important part in the development of early manufacturing in America. He had six sons and four daughters. Four of the sons worked in two partnerships, one of Abraham and Isaac (twins), the other of David and Daniel. The fifth son was also a successful manufacturer. One of his daughters married Samuel Slater, who will be mentioned later; one married Timothy Greene, another, William Wilkinson, and the youngest, Hezekiah Howe, all of whom were manufacturers. The remaining son, the only child unaccounted for, died at the age of four years.[128]

In 1794 David Wilkinson built a steamboat and made a trip in it of three and one-half miles from Winsor’s Cove to Providence. He was not impressed with the practical value of it, and dismantled it after their “frolic.” Before it was destroyed, however, a young man named Daniel Leach examined it carefully with the greatest interest. Later, when Fulton made his plans for the “Clermont,” the drawings were said to have been made by this same man, Leach.[129]

In 1797 David Wilkinson invented a slide lathe which was patented the next year. The writer has not been able to obtain an accurate description of this. The most direct reference to it is a letter of Samuel Greene to Zachariah Allen, a prominent Rhode Island cotton manufacturer, dated June 17, 1861, which says: “I suppose David Wilkinson to be the inventor of the slide lathe, at first applied to the making of large press screws, for which I believe he got a patent. I know he made application to the British Government, and I have heard said did get a grant.” The patent ran out before the lathe came into general use. Fifty years later Congress voted Wilkinson $10,000 “for benefits accruing to the public service for the use of the principle of the gauge and sliding lathe, of which he was the inventor.”[130] He seems to have been working on it in America at the same time as Maudslay in London.[131] Sylvanus Brown, who helped Slater build the first Arkwright cotton machinery at Pawtucket, is also said to have invented the slide lathe still earlier (in 1791) and to have also used it for cutting wrought-iron screws for sperm-oil presses.[132] There are good records of Maudslay’s slide lathes; in fact, screw-cutting lathes made by him prior to 1800 are in the South Kensington Museum at London. Priority can hardly be claimed for these American lathes until something more is known of them, and whether they were the equal of Maudslay’s in design and quality.

The Wilkinsons were closely identified with the early textile enterprises. As the gun industry developed the interchangeable system, so the cotton industry developed the American general machine tool. At the close of the Revolution, many attempts were made to start textile industries, by Orr in 1786, Cabot at Beverly in 1787, and Anthony at Providence in 1788, and also at Worcester. A man named Alexander is said to have operated the first loom with the flying shuttle in America, which was later moved to Pawtucket. Moses Brown, about 1790, imported a few spinning frames to Providence, but they proved a failure.

Samuel Slater, who married Wilkinson’s daughter, was an Englishman who had served his time with Arkwright and Strutt, and had become thoroughly familiar with the Arkwright machinery. In 1789 he had emigrated to America with the purpose of starting a textile industry. We have already mentioned the embargo which England placed on mechanics and on all kinds of machinery. This had compelled Slater to use the greatest caution in leaving the country. Disguised, it is said, as a rustic, he went to London and sailed from there, giving no indication of his plans until after he had gone, when he had a letter sent to his family. He went first to Philadelphia, but hearing of Moses Brown’s attempts at spinning in Providence, he wrote to Brown and made arrangements to go to Pawtucket and reproduce for him the Arkwright machinery. Slater was at that time only twenty years old. After a winter of hard work he succeeded in making several frames with a total of seventy-two spindles, and two carding machines. These were started in a small building, later known as the Old Slater Mill, with an old negro named “Primus” Jenks as motive power. During this winter Slater lived in the family of Oziel Wilkinson and married his daughter. The second mill was started in 1799 by Oziel Wilkinson and his three sons-in-law, Slater, Greene and Wilkinson.[133]

Doctor Dwight, in his travels, in 1810,[134] writes of Pawtucket:

“There is probably no spot in New England of the same extent, in which the same quantity or variety of manufacturing business is carried on. In the year 1796, there were here three anchor forges, one tanning mill, one flouring mill, one slitting mill, three snuff mills, one oil mill, three fulling mills, a clothier’s works, one cotton factory, two machines for cutting nails, one furnace for casting hollow ware—all moved by water—one machine for cutting screws, moved by a horse, and several forges for smith’s work.” This was long before Lowell, Lawrence and Manchester had come into existence.

The Wilkinsons were interested in other things as well as in the cotton industries. David established a shop and foundry in Pawtucket, where for one thing he made cannon which he bored by an improved method consisting of “making his drill and bore stationary and having the cannon revolve about the drill.” He built textile machinery for almost every part of the country, from northern New England to Louisiana, and made the machinery used at New Bedford and other whaling ports for pressing sperm oil.[135] About 1816 David and Daniel Wilkinson bought out a man named Dwight Fisher and manufactured nails until 1829, their output being about 4000 pounds daily.[136] In 1829 David Wilkinson moved to Cohoes, N. Y., and with DeWitt Clinton, Stephen Van Rensselaer and others, started the textile industries in that city.[137] In 1832 Zebulon White started up one of the abandoned Wilkinson furnaces, which three years later was known as the Pawtucket Cupola Furnace Company. This afterwards became the firm of J. S. White & Company.[138]

Oziel Wilkinson died in 1815, but the influence of the Wilkinson family continued for many years. Slater steadily widened his operations and was so influential in laying the foundations of the textile industry that he became known as “the father of the American cotton industry.” How rapidly the cotton industry spread is shown by a memorial to Congress in 1815, stating that there were 140 cotton manufactures within thirty miles of Providence, employing 26,000 hands and operating 130,000 spindles.[139] Only a few of the more important ramifications can be given.

In 1822 Samuel Slater, Larned Pitcher and three others bought a little two-story building at what was then Goffstown, on the Merrimac River, and founded the great Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, and the city of Manchester, N. H. It is now known as the greatest textile mill in the world, but the company’s original charter was very broad, and, in addition to its other interests, the company operated for many years one of the largest and most influential machine shops in the country, where were built locomotives, engines, boilers, all kinds of textile machinery, machine tools and mill machinery.

Alfred Jenks, who learned his trade under Slater, moved to Holmesburg, near Philadelphia, in 1810, taking with him drawings of every variety of cotton machinery, as far as it had then advanced, and commenced its manufacture.[140] He furnished the machinery for the first cotton mill in that portion of Pennsylvania and for the first woolen mill in the entire state, and developed what was for many years one of the most important plants for the building of textile machinery in the United States.

Eleazer Jenks built a machine shop at Pawtucket in 1813 for heavy forging and for the manufacture of spinning machinery, which was occupied by David Wilkinson for many years.[141] The same year, Larned Pitcher also started a shop there, and soon took in P. Hovey and Asa Arnold. In 1819 Ira Gay was taken in, and the firm became Pitcher & Gay, one of the largest manufacturers of cotton machinery. Gay remained in Pawtucket until 1824, when he went to New Hampshire in connection with the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company and the Nashua Manufacturing Company, then just starting.[142] A few years later Ira Gay and Zeba, his brother, started a shop at North Chelmsford for building textile machinery. With the growth of the Merrimac textile interests, this plant became very influential and is running today. The firm has changed several times with the deaths of various partners, and is now known as the North Chelmsford Machine & Supply Company. It has preserved many of the old tools used in the early days, and there are few shops of greater historical interest in this country.

Capt. James S. Brown, son of the Sylvanus Brown referred to, who had worked for David Wilkinson in 1817, succeeded Ira Gay in the Pawtucket shop, the firm becoming Pitcher & Brown. In 1842 Brown became sole owner and greatly enlarged the works. The shop which he built in 1847 was 400 feet long and employed over 300 workmen. Brown lived for many years and made many valuable inventions, which included a beveled gear cutter, boring machine, grinder, improvement in the Blanchard type of lathe, and many improvements in textile machinery. Some of the lathes which he himself built in 1820 were in use for seventy years.[143]

Col. Stephen Jenks started a shop in 1820 for the making of nuts and screws, which later became the William H. Haskell Company of Pawtucket. Alvin Jenks, of Stephen Jenks & Sons, went to Central Falls in 1829 and the next year entered into partnership with David G. Fales. This firm, known as Fales, Jenks & Company, built cotton machinery for many years, and moved to Pawtucket in 1865.[144] The Jenkses of the Fales & Jenks Machine Company, as it is known now, are lineal descendants of the original Joseph Jenks of Lynn.

In 1834 Jeremiah O. Arnold, who as a young man worked for David Wilkinson, and his brother, Joseph Arnold, started in Pawtucket the first press for making nuts. Later, Joseph Arnold retired and William Field took his place, the firm becoming William Field & Company. They moved to Providence in 1846, and in 1847 became the Providence Tool Company.[145] The Providence Forge & Nut Company was organized by some men from the Tool Company in 1852, and a plant was built. Four years later the new venture was absorbed by the parent company, which moved to the new plant. The Providence Tool Company had a wide influence for many years, manufacturing the Household sewing machine and the Martini rifle, as well as a line of tools. In 1883 it was reorganized and became the present Rhode Island Tool Company.

The Franklin Machine Company was started by Stanford Newell, Isaac Thurber and others, about 1800. The plant was always referred to in the old records as “The Cupola.” During the War of 1812 it was busy making cannon under the charge of Isaac Wilkinson, one of Oziel’s sons, who was then a boy only seventeen years old.[146] The Builders Iron Foundry, formerly known as “The High Street Furnace,” began business some time prior to 1820. The American Screw Company had its beginning in the Eagle Screw Company, organized in 1838 under the leadership of William G. Angell. Hampered by serious litigation and sharp competition, it continued with indifferent success until 1849, when Mr. Angell, adopting a machine invented by Thomas J. Sloan of New York, brought out the pointed screw. The New England Screw Company, whose inventor, Cullen Whipple, had come from the earlier Providence Screw Company, united with the Eagle Screw Company in 1860, forming the present American Screw Company.

The Corliss Machine Works were started in 1848.

Brown & Sharpe, the most important and influential of all the Providence plants, was established in 1833 by David Brown and his son, Joseph R. Brown. The history of this company is so important that it will be taken up in a separate chapter.

One can hardly turn from the history of manufactures in Providence without some reference to the manufacturing of jewelry. A Cyril Dodge made silver shoe buckles “two doors north of the Baptist meeting-house” about the time of the Revolution, but the first real manufacturer of jewelry in Providence was Nehemiah Dodge, who, just after the Revolution, started in a little shop on North Main Street as a goldsmith and watchmaker. He also made necklaces, rings and miniature cases. Dodge lived to be over ninety years old and to see the industry spread wonderfully. By 1805 there were three other jewelers, one of whom, by the way, was a Jenks, and they employed all told about thirty workmen. In 1810 there were 100 workmen; in 1815, 175; and in 1832, 282. The census writers of 1860 give eighty-six shops with 1761 workmen; in 1880, 148 shops with 3264 employees, and in 1890 there were 170 shops employing 4380. These figures cover Providence only. Many other shops were located in near-by towns. These were all small and tended to multiply. The journeymen were the highest paid artisans anywhere about, earning from $5 to $10 a day, and two or three were constantly setting up for themselves. The oldest jewelry firm in or about Providence is said to be the Gorham Manufacturing Company now located in the suburb of Elmwood. Jabez Gorham, its founder, was first engaged as a jeweler with four others about 1813. In 1831 he formed a partnership with H. L. Webster, a journeyman silversmith from Boston, and specialized on the making of silver spoons, thus starting the Gorham Manufacturing Company.[147] Palmer & Capron, another old firm, was founded about 1840.

There were other early centers of mechanical influence. With the invention of steam navigation, New York became a center of engine building for the steamboat trade, and the Allaire, Quintard, Fletcher, Delamater, and other works, were well known many years ago, but for some reason New York City has never been conspicuous for tool building, the Garvin Machine Company being the only large firm in this field. Worcester, Hartford, Philadelphia and Windsor, Vt. (small and secluded as it is), have contributed signally to tool building throughout this country and Europe, and will be taken up later. We have considered Pawtucket first, because it was the earliest center and because its wide influence in building up other centers is little realized. The extensive water power available in the Merrimac Valley gave rise to the great textile interests of Manchester, Lowell and Lawrence, which have far outstripped those centered about Pawtucket, but the textile industry began in Pawtucket and with it the building of machinery and tools.