Thomson on Meyer, _Networked Machinists: High-Technology Industries in Antebellum America_

[eh.net-review at eh.net]

Published by EH.NET (June 2007)

David R. Meyer, _Networked Machinists: High-Technology Industries in 
Antebellum America_. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. 
xi + 305 pp. $50 (cloth), ISBN: 0-8018-8471-3.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Ross Thomson, Department of Economics, 
University of Vermont.


The spread of mechanized production has been analyzed extensively, 
but the spread of the knowledge of how to mechanize has received much 
less attention. We often assume that producers simply choose among 
known techniques. Yet many case studies demonstrate that 
industrialization often failed because such knowledge was lacking, 
and succeeded only when innovators communicated knowledge to groups 
of followers. The challenge is to discover when and how technological 
knowledge spreads.

In _Networked Machinists: High-Technology Industries in Antebellum 
America_, David R. Meyer takes up this challenge. Meyer, who teaches 
sociology and urban studies at Brown University, has authored 
influential interpretations of the formation of the manufacturing 
belt after the Civil War. His current book can be seen as a companion 
to _The Roots of American Industrialization_ (Baltimore: Johns 
Hopkins University Press, 2003), in which he argues that elites in 
the major Eastern metropolises, fostered by progressive Eastern 
agriculture, led an industrialization process that localized in a 
manufacturing belt from Boston to Baltimore. Focusing on a central 
agent in the industrialization process, _Networked Machinists_ 
maintains that machinists formed communications networks that spread 
technological knowledge widely and so accelerated technological 
diffusion and productivity growth. Because such networks operated 
largely within the manufacturing belt, they help explain the 
localization of industry.

Meyer makes the case largely by mining a rich vein of contemporary 
accounts in books and journals, augmented by censuses, other 
government sources, and in places patent data. These sources make it 
possible to trace out networks in some detail, and Meyer is the first 
scholar to make use of this potential to explore wide ranges of the 
machinery sector, including textiles, engines, firearms, locomotives, 
and machine tools. At the same time he makes fine use of economic and 
technological histories of important cases. He insightfully includes 
the iron foundry within the machinists' domain, though machinists, 
narrowly construed, shaped metal that had already been wrought or 
cast. Casting is the unglamorous cousin of metal-cutting, much as the 
boiler is of the steam engine, but without effective casting, 
mechanization would have been fundamentally limited. By combining 
these sources, Meyer has created an excellent, up-to-date, synthetic 
volume with strong themes and evidence.

The main conclusions of the book pertain to the operation of networks 
and their geographic importance. Machinists' networks mattered 
because some knowledge was tacit, experientially based, and 
transmitted through interaction among machinists. When some firms had 
techniques that others lacked, knowledge of the techniques was itself 
valuable, and machinists advanced their position by spreading such 
knowledge. Machinists also sought out employment in leading firms, 
knowing their training would be valuable elsewhere. When such 
mobility was common, techniques spread rapidly among participating 
firms, providing advantages over other firms. Meyer demonstrates the 
importance of this diffusion in detailed studies of textiles, steam 
engines, firearms, and locomotives. The breadth of participants was 
narrower in locomotives and firearms than in engines or textiles, and 
the mode varied -- typically decentralized but in firearms organized 
by the Ordnance Department -- but networks organized knowledge 
diffusion in each case. He also shows how machinists used production 
knowledge gained in some industries to enter others, most clearly in 
locomotives and machine tools.

Networks existed in space, and Meyer adroitly depicts this geographic 
dimension. Much of the book is organized around studies of leadings 
centers and their linkages. One of the core issues concerns 
increasing returns: why, when local diffusion was easiest, knowledge 
spread beyond leading centers. Clear local economies existed, and 
innovation did concentrate. But adequate capital and skills in other 
areas, dispersed markets and high transportation costs, and the ready 
mobility of machinists all led to diffusion to new areas. As a 
result, machinery production spread in each sector, but spread only 
where markets and production capabilities both existed. The location 
of networks varied by industry but concentrated largely in and east 
of a line extending along the Connecticut River valley, the Hudson 
valley, and eastern Pennsylvania and Maryland. Inter-industry 
technology flows reinforced the industrial concentration. Had 
agricultural machinery been considered, the focus on the East would 
have relaxed somewhat, but this development occurred late in the 
period.

Networks evolved as mechanization expanded. In a phase extending 
through 1820, depicted in the book's first three chapters, 
machinists' networks originated in foundries, engine shops, textile 
mills, and federal and contract armories. Networks emanated out of 
leading firms at a time when hand skills were paramount and machine 
tools were primitive. As later chapters detail, from 1820 through 
1860, networks deepened in these industries, spread to locomotives, 
and integrated in making and using machine tools. Networks persisted 
over time even though firms rarely did; as a result areas that led in 
1820 continued to lead in 1860.

As Meyer recognizes, the book raises a number of questions that merit 
further research. First, Meyer suggests that firm owners trained 
workers and even shared knowledge as part of the community's norms, 
not out of some self-interested calculus, and this "bourgeois virtue" 
-- here Meyer adopts Deirdre McCloskey's term -- fostered the 
diffusion of knowledge. It would help to know more about the 
character of such norms, how commonly they were adhered to, and how 
they persisted if firms did not benefit from them. Second, it would 
be helpful to link the mobility of machinists to the evolution of the 
machinery sector. Was mobility greater within industries than 
between? How did mobility relate to the growing numbers of firms, 
firm specialization, and the rise of new kinds of machines? Third, 
how did networks relate to invention? Networks could diffuse 
knowledge over long periods of time only if new knowledge arose; how 
did networks give rise to that novelty? Meyer presents data linking 
the location of early engines and textile patents to centers of 
machinists, but more research will be required to develop this link. 
Moreover could the publication and sale of patents undercut the 
centrality of networks by offering an alternative mode of knowledge 
diffusion? Answers to these questions will complicate the 
understanding of industrialization, but they are unlikely to overturn 
the key role of machinists' networks that Meyer has so ably 
demonstrated.


Ross Thomson is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University 
of Vermont. He is completing a book entitled _The Structure of 
Change: Forming an Innovation System in the United States, 1790-1865_.

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