The book, THE DAWN OF INNOVATION

[daveklepper]

I believe it was once reviewed either in Trains or Classic Trains.  The First American Industrial Revolution, by Charles R. Morris, published by PublicAffairs^TM, New York,  both soft and hard cover, 372 pages, black and white photographs and drawings, ISBN 978-1-61039-049-1

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Charles Morris is a lawyer, banker, and definitely an author, with three other well-received books to his credit.  Most of us have learned the conventional history of the United States, its early beginnings as an English colony, its War of Independence, its other wars, its political history, slavery and its abolition, but few up us have studied its economic and technological history in any depth.  This book meets that need in a straightforward, interesting, and easy-to-read text.  It is well organized, with chronology subordinate to technology.  The book discusses mostly the 19^th Century, when the USA moved from a basically agricultural economic base to a combination of agriculture, raw materials, and finished consumer and industrial goods, all the while catching up with and surpassing the British economy.

 

There are useful tables of statistics charting this growth, but the story is told mainly through histories of certain of industries and people important for that growth.  The inventions and the technology, including those taken from abroad, are explained, with many explanations assisted by high-quality line drawings.  The individual industry and company histories are chosen to be typical, rather than all-inclusive.  The comparisons with English industries show why the United States was surpassed it economically before the end of the 19^th Century.  English views of this process are also presented.

 

As a life-time student of North American railroad history, I can affirm that there are no errors or misinterpretations in Morris's railroad examples from that industry, in particular, important and unique characteristics of the construction of the Erie Railroad and of the growth of the Baldwin Locomotive works.  The Erie Canal, the pioneering Hudson and Mohawk Railroad, and Pennsylvania's canal and portage railroad system discussions delighted me.  The history of the long-lived Concord Stage coach (Concord, New Hampshire) was not included.  This is unfortunate, because it continued to build stage coaches profitably, after John Stephenson of New York City and other competitors had moved to railroad car construction.

The growth and development of Baldwin is discussed in deital.  No major builder built only standar designs; all were custom bulders for designs specific for each railroad or groups of railroads.  And Baldwin did not adopt assembly-line consruction.  But it did develop standard parts, and so parts on one Baldwin locomotive were interchangable with those of another of the same series, 

 

The War of 1812, its naval standoff in Lakes Erie and Ontario, and the resulting armaments competition were responsible for the early development of iron and other industries in the USA, and this factor surprised me.  Assembly-line mass production began with weaponry, much earlier than the Ford, Dearborn, Michigan, 1913 Model-T automobile assembly line.  Although promises were made earlier, the first to actually prove that a series of rifles could be assembled from mass-produced interchangeable parts was Samuel Colt. He opened a plant using this technology in England, and the technology was then adopted by a British Government for weapons.  The English did not, in general, move these ideas to other industrial projects, but the USA did so quickly in many cases, with precision gauges and milling machines. Although Britain pioneered economical steel-making and, continued to lead in the finest quality steel, the USA took improved this technology for even greater economy

 

I did not expect this book to cover pipe organs, a particular area of interest for me.  (Barbara Owen, The Organ in New England, The Sunberry Press, Raleigh, NC, 1979 is a very good guide to the tonal and mechanical developments of the pipe organ in all of North America during the 19^th Century.  But the Estey Organ Company's adoption of mass production technology took place in the early 20^th Century.)  .Pipe organ manufacture has always been a custom piece-work process.  Various components are often made of specific designs for specific instruments, with only "action" parts, those that control the entrance of wind to the pipes, having commonality of design between one instrument and another.  Components are made often from raw material in various parts of the building and then brought together on the erection floor, with the completed organ often demonstrated in a test concert before being disassembled for reassembly in the worship space or concert hall.  But, only in America, one organ builder did successfully adapt assembly-line organization and great uniformity of components, the Estey Company of Brattleboro, Vermont.  Henry Ford visited the firm in 1913 and ordered an organ for his Dearborn, Michigan home.  ⁽"The Vermont Organ Atlas," The Tracker, Spring, 2013, The Organ Historical Society, Richmond,, VA.  Page 184 and 185 describe Henry Ford's visit to the Estey factory.  This reference has additional information on 19^th Century American organ building, on into the 20^th Century, and the development of mass production at Estey, as well as their transition from building reed organs to pipe.)

 

The final chapter compares the rivalry between the USA and Britain with that in the 21^st Century between the China and the USA.  One recommendation is that the USA should be more protective of its technology.  For this reviewer, another is even more important.  In Morros's book, Tocqueville is quoted:  "All of these people have different languages, beliefs, and opinions…..What serves to bond such diverse elements?  What makes a people of all of this?  L'interet!"³  George Washington presented this concept with better wording in the opening body sentence of his letter to the four major USA Jewish congregations after his inauguration:  He stated that Americans "willingly bridge differences in religion and politics in their liberality of spirit."  In other words, in the USA, your ideas are important, not your spiritual belief system (if any) or your ethnic background.  (With , of course, the caveat that a long time occurred before blacks reached that measure of equality.)

 

 

Unfortunately, USA and other democratic countries have made very very intolerant oil-producing nations wealthy, and these nations have often subsidized terror to push their particular belief system.  The democratic countries then make matters worse by avoiding mentioning the problem, let alone trying to solve it; but instead single out the most tolerant country, where I live now, in the Middle East as the problem!   This is the affirmative action for idiocy that may most or all of the world economic slaves to the Chinese who have their own intolerant secularism.  Example, currently being held up for envirionmental concerns, Israel's government is planning for the Chinese to build and profit from the new railroad to Elat.  But there is a reailroad to Elat now.  OK, it goes to Akkaba, but Akkaba is just a few miles from Elat.  And there is already a freight branch of Israel Railways that is within a few miles of Jordan's Amman Aakaba railroad line.  For one-tenth the cost of the very expensive new line to Elat, needing tunnels and bridges, the connections could be made, the whole Jordanian system converted to standard gauge, and both Jordan and Israel would have rail service to both the Mediteainian and the REd Sea.  I am certain Jordan's King Abdulla would approve of such a scheme, but he remembers what happened to his grandfather Abdullah after extremist found out the grandfather would approve Churchil's plan to let a limited number of Displaced Persons enter the Holy Land.

Again, treating a symptom as a disease instead of treating the disease can result in the death of the patient.

[Bruce Kelly]

Dave,

You might also be interested in a couple of other books which relate history, global affairs, and railways. I mentioned them briefly in a piece I wrote for Railway Age a couple of years ago. Copy-pasted below:

 

Engines of War: How Wars Were Won & Lost on the Railways, by Christian Wolmar, dwells not just on the obvious armored rolling stock, troop trains, and mobile artillery involved in wartime railroading, but looks equally into the global strategizing that prompted construction of thousand of miles of new track into previously undeveloped territories. In fact, Wolmar echoes a belief held by many historians that the race between Britain, France, Germany, and Russia to build railways into the Middle East—at a time when coal was giving way to oil as the fuel that would drive air, land, and sea transport into the 20th century—was as much responsible for igniting World War I as anything else.

The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate, by Robert D. Kaplan, compares and contrasts nations and continents, pinpoints their respective resources, explains the advantage of abundant coastlines and seaports (the U.S.) vs. being largely land- or ice-locked (Russia), then puts all of that into motion from the earliest recorded history to modern times. The role of railways in maintaining domestic strength is frequently mentioned. In particular, China’s expansion of rail lines into neighboring countries, as well as its investment in railway construction into parts of the Middle East and Africa (where America is now in virtual retreat), are described as commercial wins for those regions, and certainly for China, but not without security and economic concerns for the U.S. and the rest of the West.

[daveklepper]

More important is how to reverse the USA's retreat.  In my original Brussels posting I suggested that wealthy Americans fund a real media permanent blitz giving moderate Muslems some opportunity to make their voices heard.  Leading the show would be Imam Palazzi, Imam of Rome, and head of Italy's Muslim community.   A second element would be for some very wealthy U. S. A. group to take both Jordanian and Israeli railways off government hands and make a united and profitable system out of them.    Well, I can dream can't I?

[Paul_D_North_Jr]

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-dawn-of-innovation-charles-r-morris/1111266452 

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781610393577

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Publication date: 03/04/2014

Pages: 384

Product dimensions: 5.60(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d)

http://www.amazon.com/The-Dawn-Innovation-Industrial-Revolution/dp/1610393570 

Looks like about $16 for a paperback copy.

Back in the 1960's, there were a couple articles in Trains which advanced the thesis that the coming of the railway, its technology, organization, training, etc. did a lot to bring undeveloped countries into the 19th and 20th centuries and modern economies. I'm pretty sure one was in one of David P. Morgan's "Jet Search for Steam" series; the other was in an article about the railways of India. 

- Paul North.

[Paul_D_North_Jr]

Engines of War: How Wars Were Won & Lost on the Railways (2011):

 http://www.amazon.com/Engines-War-Wars-Were-Railways/dp/1610390563 

About $12 - though some comments are critical about the content.  Apparently it does have good description and analysis of the use of railroads in the U.S. Civil War, and Herman Haupt's 2 principles.  From one comment (Les Feams, Oct. 28, 2013):

" . . . especially the US Civil War where railways first came into their own reflecting the influence of US Federal engineer, Herman Haupt, whose work for the United States Military Railroads in preparation for several battles, culminating at Gettysburg, would confirm the strategic role of the railways in warfare and who in effect produced the key guidelines for effective railway management and coordination with the military in time of war. Haupt's two main principles were that the military should not interfere in the operation of the train service, and that freight cars should be emptied and returned promptly, so that they were not used as warehouses (or even, as happened, as offices)."  

See also:    

http://www.naval-military-press.com/engines-of-war-how-wars-were-won-and-lost-on-the-railways.html 

I also found this book by the same author, perhaps more closely related to the subject of this thread:

"Blood, Iron, and Gold: How the Railroads Transformed the World" (2011):

http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Iron-Gold-Railroads-Transformed/dp/1586489496/ref=pd_sim_14_1?ie=UTF8&dpID=51ZJzxljYzL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL320_SR216%2C320_&refRID=1TP015FZZ58EV9NEQMZF

- Paul North.

[erikem]

Paul_D_North_Jr

Engines of War: How Wars Were Won & Lost on the Railways (2011):

 http://www.amazon.com/Engines-War-Wars-Were-Railways/dp/1610390563 

About $12 - though some comments are critical about the content.  Apparently it does have good description and analysis of the use of railroads in the U.S. Civil War, and Herman Haupt's 2 principles.  From one comment (Les Feams, Oct. 28, 2013):

" . . . especially the US Civil War where railways first came into their own reflecting the influence of US Federal engineer, Herman Haupt, whose work for the United States Military Railroads in preparation for several battles, culminating at Gettysburg, would confirm the strategic role of the railways in warfare and who in effect produced the key guidelines for effective railway management and coordination with the military in time of war. Haupt's two main principles were that the military should not interfere in the operation of the train service, and that freight cars should be emptied and returned promptly, so that they were not used as warehouses (or even, as happened, as offices)."  

I'm in the process of reading Robert C Black III's The Railroads of the Confederacy. A general theme of Black's  book is that the CSA typically violated both of Haupt's principles to their detriment. To be fair, the men who were charged with "managing" the military use of railroads in the CSA were well aware of the principles, but had great dificulty due to the decentralized nature of the CSA.

Compounding this was the almost complete lack of industrial capability of the CSA to build and support railroads.

On a more modern note, communication appears to be the most important technology for modernizing society, witness the way cheap cell phone technology is transforming Africa and India. Low cost transportation is probably next, followed by inexpensive energy.

 

[daveklepper]

The agreement that transferred two islands from Egypt to Saudi Arabia also included the plan to built a 22-mile bgridge across the Staits of Tiran, linking the two countries by road and rail.  Just like the Chinese were the low bidders for the Israel rail line to Elat, I suspect the Chinese will be involved in this bridge as well.

And jusat like it would mjake mjuch more sense to have the existing rail line to Akkaba standard gauged and used by both Jordan and Israel, so it would make much more sense to built this rail linke trough Akkaba and Elat and Rhat, an all-land route.

 

very worthwhile economic insntive for peace, and so I can dream.