Western Continental Europe, especially the UK, had begun diversifying from medieval-feudal agriculture and supporting feudal class system at points throughout the sixteenth century, and in the early seventeenth century it gathered considerable momentum. Wonderful you think, but how in the hell does this become a concern in a history of American state and local economic development? Actually, it is when modern American economic development first assumed form in womb of our sainted old mother, Merrie England.
When our initial thirteen states became colonies, way back when, they were instilled with the DNA of what had transpired in England, it was their frame of reference, their historical culture, and for their inhabitants their lifelong experience up to emigration. After emigration, England was, of course, their colonial, i.e. imperial master. In any event we, “over here” in America, inherited the course of English evolution as it emerged from the throes of Henry VIII to Charles I.
It is that evolution from feudal medievalism and its class structure to something that at some point developed into British urbanism, mercantilism, industrialism and capitalism, and the embryonic class structure that it was based upon. This is the womb of American state and local economic development. In this module, I focus on the development of the scientific-artisan movement that led the break away from traditional, Catholic, Renaissance philosophy and humanism. It is to this movement that we owe our pretention to be a nation, a policy system that is of the people and dominated by its middle class democracy.
A good deal of what is usually included in so-called American exceptionalism has its roots in this transition period. In polite society we no longer talk about this stuff. The period was obscure, boring, and led to nothing of consequence, which is exactly what our forbearers in the scientific-artisan movement thought of the ancient traditional classical Renaissance humanist paradigm!
So let’s skip all that movement for the moment, and focus on us i.e. the USA, to see how that scientific-artisan movement hit the beaches of the thirteen colonies. It was a massive D-Day like invasion that started at Jamestown and moved to Plymouth Rock, our two bookends of early settlement. Literally hundreds of Englishmen (and some women) found vacuum-like land without evident Indian tomahawks and they built a settlement and our colonial history was off and running. They carried over with them the seeds from which our political and economic development sprang. The typical English immigrant, of all religions, political cultures, and regions of the British state, shared, in varying degrees and styles, the experience of “movement” and understood quite well that they first settlement would be copying, as much as possible, that experience into the new order, society, economy, and socio-economic class configuration that they were to create in that settlement. American colonial history, it seems, did not really “start from scratch” as I suggested in the opening paragraphs of this section.
Populated mostly through the seventeenth century with British emigres, the challenge of the wilderness ripped off old Merrie England class distinctions and instilled an egalitarianism characteristic of the hostile forested unsettled frontier. The need to survive in that frontier, however, put on steroids the pace and the parameters of social and economic change in order to settle and build the new communities. Three thousand miles of hostile water gave us a measure of autonomy to figure it all out ourselves and make what departures were necessary to accomplish our goals, outlined in our self-sufficiency economic development strategy.
In Pennsylvania we learned what happened was the literally immediate rise of a commercial class (elite) that assumed leadership in the policy system, and practical dominance in setting up the economic base and implementing the self-sufficiency strategy. That commercial class was already well established in England, and without thought or much planning it was transplanted to America. The commercial-plantation class in America fit comfortably within the class distinctions of the old order, and so our discussion of that elite in previous sections above raised few of the issues that we now must discuss; what about everybody else that was not to be a commercial or plantation elite?
In this module we concern ourselves with Philadelphia and Pennsylvania’s small county seat towns which is where many of feudalism’s lowest classes (serfs, former freeman householders, yeomen) had pitched their tents. Their break with the English medieval order was more abrupt and transformational; they had to form into socio-economic classes for which there were few models or even a vision of the future–they were after all in a transitional period of change and had no real sense of where all this change would lead.
They were risk-takers, otherwise they would still be in England, and they had the hopes and skills that the scientific-artisan movement had carved out to that point. They were founders of the artisan and scientific (i.e. professions) occupations and trades of an emerging new economy, political-economic, and class system. They will become the working and middle class of colonial urban society.
They were the Mob, or the “middling sort”, who, in the British world, were thoroughly infused with the values of Protestantism. Most were content to a new life as independent agricultural homesteaders in the new world; a minority, however, turned in another direction, towards crafts and mechanics, learning through trial and error, not dissimilar with the scientific approach which was breaking away from traditional humanist classical studies.
Early English artisans entered into a variety of economic sectors and concerns. Health, education, as well as business of every sort and sector. Tinkering with established technology soon overlapped into mechanics and inventions, and finding new uses for old commodities (whale oil, for example), and new-fangled glass “bulbs” for Franklin’s electric experiments. Franklin’s tinkering led to a Franklin stove, which was further tinkered with by the Baron Stiegel of glassmaking cluster fame (who’s stove outsold Franklin’s unpatented stove).
Rather than broad, macro metaphysical concerns, artisans focused themselves on middle-range experiments and knowledge that could enter into daily life, affect one’s lifestyle, budget and comfort, while expanding avenues for economic growth and personal profit. Artisan experiments sooner or later focused on machines, clocks, and mechanical widgets, and production techniques, leading to innovations that could light a dark room, heat a cold house, cure a sick child, travel faster and more safely, and grow more food, goods, and services and transport/distribute them where they were highly valued.
In short artisan initiatives, knowledge, experiments, and machines brought value added to their user, and the knowledge upon which they were based served future generations, who frequently benefited from their improvement.
From the start artisans were either freeholding agriculturalists or adventurers in a new economy. The former, upon arrival in Pennsylvania headed for the hinterland; the latter split between hinterland and cities/hinterland towns. In this module we are concerned with the latter. Their rise, almost unchecked in the wilds of North America, over a relatively short period of time, developed into what we now call middle class America or the working man. Big City Urban in sheer numbers, they were also essential to hinterland economies, and its policy system in general. Artisans were everywhere in colonial America, and from the founding of a colony, they carved for themselves a place in the new economic base and its society..
Many were indentured “servants”, others were sons and daughters of English artisans without capital for the most part, looking to continue in the trades of their fathers. In the new world, they mixed craftsmanship with entrepreneurism, and started new business, partnerships, and family-based enterprises, in a land where the old medieval guild could not find solid footing. Through these activities they entered into our American state and local economic development history.
Of concern, these artisans do not play a role on the fringes; they are central players in my historical drama. To complicate matters, over the course of the colonial period, urban artisans will become arguably one of the two major players in the “making of America” and the American Revolution. Ah! But we get ahead of ourselves, yet again. In any event we must examine in some depth who and what artisans were and believed, to understand their plight as they tried to break into the New World economic base, its society, and eventually, its policy system.
It was in the course of American colonial history, fueled by the Bunsen burner of the American wilderness that they acquired and then experimented in using a class consciousness. That consciousness and American artisan’s first leadership arose in Pennsylvania, mostly, but by no means exclusively in Philadelphia. That was no accident by the way. It was Quakers that provided the “cultural” and political opening for the emerging artisan class.
It was the failings of that religion as applied to politics that created the opportunity-vacuum that its amazing leader of the Leather Apron Club was able to fill. Through his efforts, creativity and inspiration, Benjamin Franklin not only barged into dominance of its policy system, but redefined the budding dynamics of American privatism to include artisans, professionals, and middle class small business. Perpetuated into today’s Midlands’s political culture, artisans were the leaders of the “average man”, the bulwark of the American economic base, and the core of its work force.
More interested in their trades and business than in abstract religious/philosophical topics or morals; they were pragmatic, and remarkably non-political. More interested in their families and local communities, they lacked a macro vision which they left to others–until they feared their “system” and “the world they knew and drew benefit from, was threatened. Then they would step in, sometimes with a vengeance. In that context, they were the leaven in the bread that we call “populism”. Coming out from behind the curtains in numbers no one knew existed, they provided the muscle and the legitimacy as the vanguard of the amorphous thing we refer to as “the American People”. They are the wielders of the American mandate from heaven.
The reader can now see we have opened up a very large can of worms. Not all aspects of the rise of the artisans can, or will. be dealt with in this history. It is not in my job description to provide a comprehensive treatment of the transition of English Traditional Renaissance Classical Humanism and the breakaway of the Scientific-Artisan Movement. But we do need to understand its outline in the development of English urban communities, industrialization, and capitalism to understand the underlying new class system they produced. Professions and Artisan trades would take their seat alongside the commercial elite in the policy system and economic base.
The prism as always is economic development, and in this module Pennsylvania and Philadelphia is the location being observed. Of necessity since economic development is a policy made by a policy system, we will examine how the artisans affected the Pennsylvania (colonial) policy system. We also need to see how these folk participated in the colonial economic base. And since Pennsylvania’s artisan class was well-led by its scientific-artisan Lenin, we shall delve into Benjamin Franklin’s vital role in this very important transformation.
First, the part we skipped earlier:
Rise of Artisans in England and America: the Artisan Paradigm
By the time they arrived in Pennsylvania, England had experienced several generations of artisans-scientists. That will explain how the artisan trades and skills, in particular, were imported into Pennsylvania’s economic base. Suffice it to say, Franklin’s grandfather was an artisan, and so was his chandler (candles-soap) father. As the reader shall see, there is not a perfect consensus among historians as to who specifically and when/where specifically, artisans first appeared, but we can see their contributions in diversifying the English agricultural base–so we will talk about that. After that we will deepen our knowledge about the artisan-scientific paradigm, and how it got a welcome-mat treatment in Quaker Pennsylvania.
Two simple statements serve as our intro into artisans/scientists. First this grouping formed in reaction to the hitherto dominant–pervasive-Catholic traditional Aristotelian classical natural philosophy and Renaissance humanism. Second the artisan-scientific movement was an important element in the transition from the medieval agricultural class structure to something akin to our modern capitalist-industrial-urban based class configuration. That movement achieved an unplanned reception in America so significant that it became a hallmark of the American economy/economic base and the typical American policy system. Our modern forms of economic development policy and strategy have been greatly impacted.
It is easier to trace advocacy of ideas/values associated with artisans. It is helpful to link them to the founding institution, in this case the Royal Society of London, to understand how the artisan-scientific community developed a paradigm counter to that of the dominant Renaissance Humanists. Experimentation was always fundamental to the movement. Experimentation as we understand it in science was one definition used then, but another was “testing a hypothesis” and see if it is valid. The expression of the time for “testing a hypothesis” was experimentation.
One can test a hypothesis about anything; it does not have to be a science, medicine, astronomy, or math-physics. Besides sheer utilitarian interest, there was a stress on “useful”–that word was pervasive in the debate of that time. There was also a stress on “improvement”–which calls attention to adding benefit derived from “stuff” already in use.
From agricultural tools to household goods and lifestyle-occupational technology, reducing cost, improving efficiency and effectiveness, using different materials-composites, and adding to the infrastructure to what today we call the “power” or energy sector were all hot buttons of interest. The benefit was to be immediate, and cumulative as one improvement could lead to others. Useful knowledge was intended to increase mankind’s ability to master the forces of nature–and in so doing offer opportunity, meaning, and yes material profit to those performing these experiments. As Bacon said early on in the movement, improvement of one’s personal estate was an accepted reason for experiment. Knowledge no longer was confined to the classroom where only the elites could enter; it was meant to be accessible to all to the degree possible.
Hence, the effects of the scientific-artisan movement were felt most intensely in academic curriculum. Universities and colleges were certainly ground zero for change, but arguably even more central to the movement was to bring useful knowledge to the general population. K12 curriculum, religious or in public school systems, was tasked with teaching what was to be of use to their students in the course of their life. Ingrained in the scientific-artisan movement was an egalitarianism which assumed that non-elites can develop/produce useful knowledge, and that they should be consumers of its products, machines, and services.
Basic skills, reading, math, as well as such science and technology commonly used were high priority–with a clear diminution of ancient languages, particularly in higher education. The general idea was to improve among the general population an understanding for and appreciation of skills and principles most helpful to life, career, and the community at large. In later years of this period, much of the dialogue embraced ideas and content that would today be thought of as vocational, and for colleges to adjust to purposes congruent with today’s American community college. Basic skills, an essential for today’s workforce curriculum, were a first order priority of the useful knowledge and improvement advocates.
And so as this ethos permeated from scientific and artisan elites to the general population experiencing change/pressure on their hitherto agricultural life in first half of the seventeenth century an avenue of opportunity seemingly was opening up. Applying the Protestant ethic’s alleged thrust to hard work, the less present-minded of them assumed risk that allowed them to change residences, abandon the life and work of their fore bearers, and to acquire new skills, and to assume risk in hopes for future reward. I suspect strongly, that America captured more than its fair share of those with this mentality–and that is proved, I assert, by the role played by immigrants in startups, and acquiring new trades and occupations.
Francis Bacon, an prominent sixteenth century politician (he was at one point Lord Chancellor of England (1618), who today is often credited as the founder-promoter of the “scientific method”– is our first official scientist. Implicit within his “method” was that knowledge derived from it should be “useful”–its ends should be utilitarian or put to good use in practice and business; “the public good and the relief of man’s estate” is how he put it [99] Richard Jones, Ancients and Moderns: A Study of the Rise of the Scientific Method in the Seventeenth Century (2nd Ed, 1961), pp-59-60
Part of the reason Bacon and other proto-scientists/artisans stressed this “usefulness and improvement” was to literally break away from the sterility of the existing paradigm of Renaissance English intellectual life. Metaphysics, Aristotelian thought and methodology, natural philosophy and humanism with its concern with morality and “correct thinking”, saturated to the point of paralysis both in intellectual thought and the conclusions it reached. Bacon, in challenging the Renaissance traditional classical paradigm was simultaneously battling, and seeking reform of, the English educational curriculum and its principal educational institutions (Cambridge, for example).
Lost in the mists of time and smush was a very bitter and important struggle by the scientific-artisan movement in asserting its right to depart from the Renaissance paradigm. Keep in mind, Galileo, the path-breaking astronomer and “father of modern science and physics, had his books banned then burned by the Pope/Inquisition, was placed under house arrest, threatened with burning at the stake, for almost twenty five years (1615-1638) until his death.
When Jamestown and Plymouth/Boston were being founded, and England was heading into its Civil War, scientific experimentation and artisan “improvement” were breaking away from the Renaissance-Catholic universal laws (“traditional classical paradigm)–no more would the intellectual world be focused on how many angels danced on the head of a pin. The Cromwell Puritans who came to power as this struggle intensified, Bacon died in 1626, and this struggle took a secondary place during the Civil War and the Cromwell Protectorate–daring only to reassert itself in the post-1660 Restoration.
The Artisan Movement from its ambiguous birth had ignored county and religious boundaries. Its membership were composed mostly of scientists, physicians, and “natural philosophers” who were moving onto new ideas. England, protected by its Protestant Reformation, and the political influence of scientific leaders such as Bacon, the Artisan-Scientific Movement evolved without conscious/sustained interference of politics or the Anglican Church. Its break through was their formation of the Royal Society of London in 1660.
But before I start singing America the Beautiful, one cannot ignore the role played by England’s elites and their children in developing and advancing the scientific-artisan movement–and making explicit its prevailing tenets and aspirations. Examining in some depth the development of one man, the son of a squire (landed gentry–i.e. an non-aristocrat/noble, but a lower level elite), born in 1632, who came of age in the period of scientific-artisan ascendancy, in rural Wiltshire County (Stonehenge). His elite status set him off as he had access to education, but how that educational experienced adjusted to the dynamic forces of change at play in this time is not atypical of many of this man’s cohort.
He started out studying the old paradigm, learning Latin and studied the works of Aristotle, but in his mid-teens experimented with new ideas and interests like anatomy, and using some math and drawing skills to create anatomical drawing of the human brain. That drawing wound up in a medical textbook which coined the term “neurology”.
At eighteen, he arrived at Oxford (1650) where he studied “the old school” Aristotle and moral philosophy, but also became a protégé of his math teacher, who was also a Dean. From his mentor our young man developed an interest with the design and construction of mechanical instruments. So he changed majors and got a degree from Oxford in science and mathematics with a specialty in surveying. He followed up with a Masters. Oxford hired him as a teaching Fellow (1653, he was twenty-one), and by 1657 he held a professorship in astronomy.
During this time in academic, his mentor, the Dean, had assembled a campus group that included some well-known and formidable intellectuals all of whom were infected with the scientific-artisan mentality, Our young scholar met with that group for over a decade from 1650-1661–the Cromwell Protectorate) in a study-discussion club, similar to Franklin’s later Junto. His ability and drive canceled out his young age. They developed the core of the scientific-artisan paradigm, which a fellow club member, Robert Boyle, as early as 1646, wrote was applying dedicated to experimentation in ‘mechanics and husbandry [agriculture]” [99] Meyer Reinhold, “The Quest for ‘Useful Knowledge” in Eighteenth-Century America”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 119, No. 2 (Apr 16, 1975), p. 109.
Artisans gathered their strength to await the day they could advance it against the old paradigm. In 1661, our young man gave a lecture to the group, after which the group adjourned to a tavern and formally decided to print its paradigm up, go to the new Restoration King, and get a charter to set up an public-private organization to achieve the scientific-artisan goals.
At the first opportunity (1662, 1664), this group could meet with the Restoration King Charles II. He thought it a bonny idea and issue a charter to form an organization to implement and achieve that paradigm. So skillful in surveying and constructing new buildings, he was appointed in the same year by the King to be his Surveyor of Works (his construction manager); he held that position for forty-nine years (until 1718).
Between 1662 and 1664 the group formalized into a professional “Society” who’s founding Board of Directors included the luminaries of the scientific-artisan movement, and, lo and behold, our classical humanist, turned medical neurologist, astronomy professor, now architect-surveyor and the King’s Surveyor of Works.
His name was Christopher Wren.
When the Great Fire of London hit in 1666, it was Wren that conducted the rebuilding of Old London. It destroyed over four days the Old London within the city walls–over 13,000 homes, displacing 70,000 of the 80,000 London residents. The rebuilding, according to the old plan of London, took three decades. The Rebuilding of London Act (1670) conveyed to the City of London Corporation many of the powers associated with a modern city–including zoning and building codes. The restoration plan set as its primary goal the resettlement of displaced Londoners, and eschewed any significant attempt to reconstruct the area with more grandiose design–as did Paris in the 1870’s. Our present day St Paul’s Cathedral was the signature restoration project of the King, and became the symbol most recognizable by Londoners. Wren –one might say he was the Robert Moses of London’s first urban renewal, a urban renewal project not without its controversy, but one that worked, and whose goals were resident-oriented.
Over the next half century, he was the third President of the Royal Society, a Member of Parliament, a founding master of London’s highly prestigious Free Mason Lodge. His architectural style became a rage of the time (St Paul’s Cathedral), and it heavily influenced the design of our Capitol Building, home of our Congress.
This is the path of the gentleman, a Renaissance man in his own right, who is the acknowledged founder of the present day Royal Society of London, the oldest and arguably most prestigious society of scientists, in the broad sense of those who test hypothesis, in the world. I convey upon him the title: First Artisan,
The King’s chartered new society: the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. The Royal Society, the Society promulgated by the King, became the trade association of the now well-positioned counter paradigm to the traditional classical humanist paradigm. If I may offer a somewhat cynical observation, whatever its historical merits, the creation of the Royal Society set up a “big tent” under which a wide variety of individuals, striving in professions, business, and science could join. That the professional classes, scientists and physicians, brought some measure of public acceptance to the businessmen and mechanics who also became members, and that many were of high status in English society.
The unifying consensus behind the Society was that useful knowledge could be expanded through experimentation, a new science previously called for by Francis Bacon: “a utilitarian end for knowledge; the public good and the relief of man’s estate”. The Royal Society was not a organization of scientists as defined by today’s definition of science; it was the society of experimentation–tinkering if you will. Under its aegis the scientific-artisan movement became legitimate, and the gateway to patent issuance for new technologies and methodologies, and machines–like the combustion engine and the American steamboat.
Well over a hundred members were admitted into the Society in its founding years. The Society’s first editor, in 1664, promised that there would be ‘profitable discoveries‘ grounded in ‘solid and useful knowledge‘–an expression that seems to have acquired popularity in public discourse. In 1739, after the twenty-four year tenure of Sir Isaac Newton as its President, its membership was over 300. In 1753, Franklin received from the Society, its most prestigious medal, the Copley Award (he was the second winner), and in 1756 Franklin was admitted as North America’s first “Fellow” to be admitted into the Society. The Royal Society was the gateway to Franklin’s status as a global scientist–all this for flying a kite in a storm.
Handicrafts: the Economic Womb of Artisans?
Many technological changes expressed themselves in making new tools, often using different materials, such as iron as a proxy for wood. New tools (and repairing tools) meant adding expertise in those areas to the occupation vocabulary of the agricultural household. Such diversification of skills and varieties of work did not necessarily require any change in residence. One sees the incremental development of a “cottage industry”, with non-agricultural activities entering into the daily, certainly seasonal, activities of the rural agricultural household.
These activities have acquired the moniker of “handicrafts”–and in this area we see one of the first concrete manifestation of the rise in an artisan class. Immigration to America drew heavily from these folk, and a considerable number who, if asked, were hoping to homestead and set themselves up in a new agriculture in a new world without the barriers of the old one. Much research has already observed the Puritans (and a core of Quakers) were middle class merchants and professionals, but German and Scots Irish for example came straight from the countryside, seemingly without non-agricultural skills. Let’s explore if in fact that was correct.
Arguably, Franklin Mendels formally exposed this handicrafts movement and saw in it the first phase of the industrial revolution. He called it “proto-industrialization”, and for him it was a solid first step in that transformation.
Well before the beginning of machine industry, many regions of Europe became increasingly industrialized in the sense that a growing proportion of their labor potential was allocated to industry. Yet that type of industry–the traditionally organized, principally rural handicrafts–barely fits the image of a modernizing economy. There is, however … advantage in thinking of the [handicraft] growth of ‘pre-industrial industry’ as part and parcel of the process of ‘industrialization’, or rather, as the first phase which preceded and prepared modern industrialization proper [99] Franklin F. Mendels, “Proto-Industrialization: the First Phase of the Industrialization Process, the Journal of Economic History, Vol 33, No. 1 (Mar, 1972), p. 241
For various reasons, European historians had some degree of difficulty with seeing this handicraft movement as the first phase of the industrial revolution. It did not fit well into the prevailing view of the evolution of social-economic class, and it did not correspond with any substantial movement into cities. No “machine tooling” sector or even agglomeration/cluster appeared, save for Flemish textiles, and handicrafts were absolutely agriculturally focused and practiced by feudal serfs and freemen households. For many there were more vital early manifestations of early industrialization than handicraft cottage driven production.
Whatever the merits of these concerns, I and others suggest the hinterland handicraft movement assumed a huge importance to developing nations (which certainly the wilderness colonial North America was), and this handicraft movement transported into the American wilderness was a foundation (not the only foundation) for the rise of manufacturing in the thirteen colonies.
Moreover, handicraft skills, were not only foundational for the development of industrial sectors in America–but was the route that produced America’s vibrant, innovative artisan class. This dynamic toward industrialization was intensified and expanded due to the needs and prerequisites of the American self-sufficiency economic development strategy. In a colonial America dotted with small towns and hamlets one would see the almost miraculous appearance of small scale artisans in the smallest of villages, as well as newly founded port cities. Transported into a wilderness, their crafts skills were elevated in prominence, status and priority to become something more than yeoman–they rose to a lower, if not middle class–essential to the success of any self-sustaining colonial ED strategy.
Carl Bridenbaugh picks up on this proto-industrialization without mention–for a good reason. He wrote his classic “the Colonial Craftsman” in 1950, not Mendels 1972. His opening sentence in Chapter 1 asserts “Crafts–and the artisans who practiced them–played a most important part in early American life; even more than historians have generally supposed. Next to husbandmen [small tenant farmer or landowner, a master of his homestead, whose status was below yeoman], craftsmen comprised the largest segment of the colonial population; whereas the the former made up about eighty percent of the people, artisans constituted about eighteen percent“.
When they spoke of a ‘craft’, our forefathers and the English and German ancestors thought of a skill, an art, an occupation. or they meant a calling requiring special training and knowledge, or possibly even the members of a given trade or handicraft taken collectively … The craft system, then, was a method of producing articles used in daily life, and this activity, by its very nature was at the same time artistic …’creative… Among the thousands who went to Continental colonies in the seventeenth century was a large proportion of skilled artisans who took with them the medieval English craft tradition, as part of their cultural baggage. … It is of profound significance that in the development of class of colonial artisans many English craftsmen bred in Old England during its great age of village life shared in a migration to the New World [99] Carl Bridenbaugh, the Colonial Craftsman (Dover Publications, 1990; first published 1950 New University Press), pp. 1-4
Role of Quakerism, Penn and Pennsylvania in the American Artisan/Scientific Movement
The artisan/scientific movement, and its paradigm, were a threat to the established intellectual-university order, which the highest social classes (aristocracy, land gentry, and commercial elite in particular) had been educated. The higher status group could not forget that on the main, the artisan-scientific movement was saturated with transformed members of the former self-lower class deplorables of that time period, and their knowledge of the classics was a higher form of education than that received by the typical artisan. The problem of the upper classes with the artisan-scientific movement was that the latter generated considerable innovation, comfort, positive lifestyle changes, and in general economic prosperity and some social stability. The artisan-scientific stress on “improvement” brought visible-felt benefits to the community.
When transported into the settlement of the new colony/provinces of America, artisans in particular were no longer merely a mixed-bag of discordance and prosperity, they were an absolute necessity if the colony were to achieve its goals associated with self-sufficiency. Except for Virginia/South Carolina and to some extent Maryland, which of course installed the old feudal serf economy), we shall find artisans were in a position of some importance, with whom not only must some sharing of power be accepted, but also some commitment must be made to its socialization and education if the relationship was to be sustainable, and bring stability to the new policy-making, and yield population and economic growth to the province.
This doesn’t sound particularly earthshattering, I suspect, but it was a breathtakingly different approach to that found and employed in Olde Merrie England. It was part of the so-called egalitarian atmosphere frequently attached to “frontier” settlement. That America was perceived as receptive to the emerging former medieval class, was without any doubt the best people-attraction economic development strategy for the thirteen colonies.
That it depended on word of mouth and the experiences of those who took the risk, found some success, and wrote home made it inexpensive. Likely, the local church in the English village, was the source of much positive news, i.e. a socialization-economic development intermediary, religion and charitable/ missionary religious practices played no small role either–in Pennsylvania George Fox’s missionary pilgrimage and the imposition of his beliefs and values upon rank-in-file Quakers, predisposed that province to affecting a more facilitative and tolerant approach to artisan immigration-emigration. The first colony created after the Cromwell period, was Penn’s Pennsylvania in 1681–little more than a generation after the founding of the Royal Society and the acceptance of the scientific-artisan paradigm by the Restoration monarchy.
On this side of the Atlantic, there emerged an explicit concern for ‘useful knowledge’ in the second half of the seventeenth century, particularly in the middle provinces, where the classical curriculum was in least vogue …. It was in Pennsylvania, among the Quakers, that the first impulse toward a definition of ‘useful knowledge’ in America was given. The utilitarian direction of Quaker thought first charted by the founder of the Society of Friends, George Fox, who introduced the ‘guarded education’ of the Quakers, and whom William Penn characterized as a man ‘ignorant of useless and sophistical science … {and who] had in him the grounds of useful and commendable knowledge and cherished it everywhere” [99] Jonathan Lyons, the Society for Useful Knowledge (Bloomsbury Press, 2013), p. 110.
The Quaker religion differed noticeably from Anglican and Puritan notions of Protestantism. The distinctions between these religions are not subtle, but they have been lost in the smush of Protestantism abounding today. All relied on the Bible, but Anglicans “knelt before a great and noble Pantocrator who rule firmly but fairly over the hierarchy [Great Chain of Being] of his creatures“. Puritans on the other hand possessed a very different tone or style to their God. Drawing from both Old and New Testaments their god “was equally capable of love and wrath–a dark, mysterious power who could be terrifying in his anger and inscrutability” and who possessed an all-encumbering plan to which humans were held accountable. [99] David Hackett-Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (Oxford University Press 1989), p. 426
Quakers, however, relied chiefly on the New Testament, repudiated the “Five Points of Calvinism“, and their God was “a God of Love and Light whose benevolent spirit harmonized the universe“. Of all three forms of Protestantism, Quakers were on the whole more inclined to a future in which progress based on individual human will and action could be achieved. I assert the artisan-scientific movement had more room for acceptance in the Quaker religion than in the other two [99] David Hackett-Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (Oxford University Press 1989), p. 426
Hackett-Fischer also asserts that whatever effect their religion had on conventional mercantilist policy systems, Quakers were far from anarchists in their internal organization, and were quite accepting of leadership (by elders within the Society), but held that authority was derived from the Quaker Society itself. Quaker authority over its members was legitimized and exercised through a “complex structure of meetings–men’s meetings and women’s meetings, meetings for worship, and meetings for business, monthly meetings, quarterly meetings and yearly meetings“. Quakers created a parallel set of religious structures to those of the civil policy system, and it infused their members with the charge of carrying over to the latter the values and predisposition of the Society. “Special attention was given to the rearing of the young–an important factor in the survival of Quakerism, and in the culture that it created in the Delaware Valley” [99] David Hackett-Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (Oxford University Press 1989), p. 428.
While civil libertarian-oriented historians stress Quaker predispositions toward religious toleration, democratic individual freedoms, strong (unbending, Inner Light driven) individualism, social (ethnic and even racial) pluralism–and of course, pacifism– I extend that list, congruent with Hackett-Fisher, that Quakers were predisposed to concerns for “basic literacy, and their contempt for higher learning [which placed scientific inquiry on its back foot in Pennsylvania–Quakers were actually forbidden in England to attend a university (p. 465,Albion’s Seed)], but placed great stress on the “sanctity of property … as well as their ethic f work, their ideal of worldly asceticism, their belief in the importance of family, and their habits of sexual prudery” [99] David Hackett-Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (Oxford University Press 1989), p. 429.
These cultural predispositions contained latent implications that shaped Penn’s policy system, and extended to its dealings with and policies toward the artisan-scientific group. In England most Quakers were not gentlemen or drawn from England’s higher classes (Penn the notable exception); “most male Quakers called themselves husbandmen. A majority in urban areas tended to describe themselves as manual workers, artisans, tradesmen and small shopkeepers … In marriage records of Philadelphia … only one man in ninety called himself a gentleman, and only one a laborer. The rest were mainly craftsmen, tradesmen, and merchants” [99] David Hackett-Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America, p. 436-7. When the time came to immigrate to Pennsylvania, Penn’s citizens, excepting his First Purchasers, overwhelmingly Quaker in the first decades, had no natural affinity to the traditional classical Renaissance humanism of the old paradigm, and were reasonably open to artisan (not scientific) thought.
Moreover, the bias against government, meant reliance on the Quaker meetings structure was likely to be their preferred policy-making guide and implementer. Inward looking, individually rooted, anti-elite, this belief system was not only tilted strongly to an egalitarianism that would be passed on to their offspring. Education in Pennsylvania was religious; Pennsylvania did not establish a public education system until 1834 (Boston Latin, established by the Town of Boston in 1635 funded by land sales and donations, and the first taxpayer supported, the Mather School in Dorchester, 1639). These biases, not surprisingly, also reflected the Proprietor’s approach to Pennsylvania governance and policy.
William Penn, in 1682, presided over the writing of guidelines to policy-makers, and his Frames (structure of his proposed government). In particular he expressed his thoughts for his colony’s hoped for education system. Calling for grants to be paid to ‘authors of useful sciences and laudable inventories” he personally added as Proprietor, ‘ I recommend the useful parts of mathematics, as building houses or ships, measuring, surveying, dialing, and navigation‘ [99] Jonathan Lyons, the Society for Useful Knowledge (Bloomsbury Press, 2013), pp. 11-13. No Latin or Greek here, and Aristotle was not likely to be stressed. No call for higher education either. In a subsequent letter, Penn reinforced his commitments to useful education writing…
We press their memory too soon and puzzle and strain and load them with words and rules to know grammar and rhetoric [attacking classical education] and a strange tongue or two [language] that it is ten to one may never be useful to them; leaving their natural genius to mechanical, physical or natural knowledge uncultivated and neglected, which would be of exceeding use and pleasure to them through the whole course of their lives [99] David Hackett-Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America, p. 534.
Instead, there was stress on vocational-occupational skills, vital to the self-sufficiency proposed as his economic development strategy. The ship-making cluster, a cornerstone in the strategy, benefited from the education systems’ workforce tilt. Interestingly, Penn formally empowered the Governor and his Council of Advisors “to erect and order all public schools“; and, in 1683, the year of its founding, the legislature approved an act that required all students to be taught to read and right by the age of twelve AND, concurrent with basic education all students would be trained in a useful trade or skill, no matter whether rich or poor. Fines were applied to those negligent [99] David Hackett-Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America, p. 534. The legislature, however, did not establish any public education system then in 1683, or at any time during the colonial period (again 1834 it was finally set up).
Also included in Penn’s Frames was his explicit call for “premiums” (scholarship grants) to authors of useful sciences and laudable inventions”–a remarkable example of a public-private initiative. If Penn did not require a K-12 public education, the values and English experiences of his Quakers, permeated their thoughts on who should do the teaching.
In England’s North Midlands … many humble people who became Quakers, regarded educational institutions as alien growths. Throughout that region, churches and schools were in the hands of a foreign elite. As a consequence, ordinary people tended to be strongly hostile to institutions of formal education … [and] contributed to the Quakers suspicion of a learned [i.e. university-certified, as in Harvard], and indeed of learning itself… Pennsylvania and West Jersey [dominated by majority Quaker populations] had nothing like New England’s school laws, or the comparatively high rates of enrollment that existed in Massachusetts. .. Schooling was perceived in Pennsylvania as a matter of [individual] conscience, which every sect, family and individual was expected to work out in his own way” [99] David Hackett-Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America, p. 533.
What happened instead was most Quaker congregations of sufficient size commenced their own school system, handled by their own leaders. To satisfy, the public requirement that poor receive an education, the Friends established “a Friends Public School” to the Quaker poor. By 1776, about sixty such Quaker schools existed, and an equal number of urban “neighborhood” schools were also set up. What followed over the next ninety years was that each religious sect/group would set up its own religious-based education system. [99] David Hackett-Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America, p. 536-7
Interestingly, when given the chance in the 1780’s, during the Revolutionary Articles of Confederation when the Pennsylvania province had transformed itself into an American state, the Quaker Annual Meeting “authorized a broader scope for the education of Quaker youth, [and] many Quaker communities began to reassess their commitment to education. Many were content to reaffirm their obligation to provide instruction for the youth in ‘useful learning’, which contented itself with practical subjects in … [lower education] [99] Jonathan Lyons, the Society for Useful Knowledge (Bloomsbury Press, 2013), pp. 111.
Already, I once again remind the reader, it is evident that from the beginning of each colony, it was evident that a cultural prism would exert influence on policy decisions, inevitably leading to considerable, if subtle differences among the colonies. The differenced in education policy were not subtle, however, and the practical, egalitarian bent of Quakerism was to be socialized in its future generations, with its artisan and anti-scientific bent, its reliance on private–religious–education one more expression of its unwillingness to empower a potential hostile government with such a critical policy area.
Higher education in particular suffered. “Of all the major Christian denominations in early America, the Quakers were the slowest to found colleges. Every major Protestant denomination was more active in this field. Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Baptists, Dutch Reformed, and Methodists all founded colleges before 1800–only one, however, existed in Pennsylvania during this period–the present University of Pennsylvania (instituted by a coalition led by Franklin), which had very little support from Quakers. [[99] David Hackett-Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America, pp. 536-7). That institution, however, as stressed by Franklin himself, would be based on “useful knowledge”, reflecting Franklin and the Quaker artisan roots. Moreover, as we shall soon see, Franklin also recognized the deficiency of those attracted to the sciences and professions (health, and to those who served the poor–an overlap). In short order we shall discuss his founding of a replica to the Royal Society in Philadelphia–again through private action.
England and its colonies again entered into a period of political-economic disruption, the Glorious Revolution which gave the boot to the Stuart King, James II, and welcome in a new branch, the Hannover with Mary and William as Queen and King. Parliament was the instrument of this hereditary monarchical transaction, and it instigated both domestic turmoil and foreign reaction and intervention that intermittently disrupted the following several decades. From our perspective, the new regime and its Parliamentary allies possessed different views than the Stuarts on the management, indeed purposes, of the colonies, and the relations between Mother England and the thirteen colonies were both “complicated”, involved several serious wars and very disruptive to the political development of the colonies.
The swarm of issues, events, and dynamics that followed during these years pushed aside those associated with the Royal Society and the rise of a scientific, professional and artisan proto-classes. By no means did it stop, or seriously inhibit the evolution of any of these groups, but rather had the effect of both making them less controversial, and in their own way, useful to the larger dynamics that had displaced them. Our next topic transfers our attention to the transplanting of artisans and scientists to the North American colonies, and then to its rise in Philadelphia in particular.
“Useful Knowledge” the Value Added that Brought Legitimacy to Artisans
In the minds of some contemporaries, Artisans were mostly a “bottoms-up”, rags to riches group of aspirants. This is decidedly not the case, at least for pre-1750 artisans. Proto American aristocrats of the colonial period shoved their sons (and some daughters) into professional classes, providing them with an English experience, a serious American education, and providing offspring with financial sustenance in their endeavors. Tench Coxe fit into this, and Benjamin Rush might have if fortune had been so kind, Albert Gallatin’s father was a wealthy aristocratic commercial Swiss merchant. Entry of these young aristocrats into an artisan endeavor obscures an aristocratic tendency to depreciate artisans and business, and an unwillingness of at least some artisan offspring to engage in artisan businesses–Tench Coxe again is an example. It is not hard to dig up comments by high status and wealthy disparaging the artisan, and including him in “the Mob”. Notwithstanding this tension, sons (and daughters as Tench Coxe’s mother) did find themselves in the artisan community for a variety of reasons.
But most artisans usually were offspring of the middling sort, from artisan households. Working class and peasant offspring customarily wound up coming to America as indentured, and lacked sufficient contacts to attain an apprenticeship, or a live-in work experience.
This seems to have drawn support from the more practical, and less conceptual Quakers who set off to America. In fact Franklin’s first employer in Philadelphia, the printer Samuel Keimer advertised his newspaper as “the richest Mine of useful knowledge ever discovered“. [99] Jonathan Lyons, the Society for Useful Knowledge (Bloomsbury Press, 2013), p. 14.
“Useful Knowledge” often linked with “improvement” became a sort of synonym for both a body of knowledge, experimentation, progress and improvement of society and economy. That expression applied to most anything associated with artisans, and it not only legitimized their skills, knowledge, businesses, and tempered their frequent failures, but it also added to their commonly shared identity, creating a bond with those who were committed to its values and practices. In an America dominated by the self-sufficiency ED strategy, it extended its artisan big tent status to the embryonic start of what would be a social-economic class so vitally needed in the wilderness of North America.
The shortage of skilled labor in colonial America, the accompanying high wages, and the lack of restrictive regulations meant that many a master craftsman or mechanic could aspire to become an independent entrepreneur, with considerable economic security, social standing, and political influence … ‘Hence, it is that Artisans generally live better, and more easily in America than in Europe, and such as are good Economists make a comfortable Provision for Age and for their Children’ [99] Jonathan Lyons, the Society for Useful Knowledge (Bloomsbury Press, 2013), p. 15.. [The last quote made by Franklin in his “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries“, He concludes that sentence with “Such may therefore remove with Advantage to America [i.e. leave England for America].
The expression and the meaning attached to it was not restricted to Quaker Pennsylvania, but extended to each colony, and it embedded itself with each passing decade. In May 1783, for example, at the inauguration ceremonies of Phillips Exeter Academy, its principal speaker and trustee noted that “A growing taste for useful knowledge is an important characteristic of the people of this new world“.
What he was telling his audience was that Phillips Exeter “that everyone in America favored useful knowledge (even if few could formulate or agree to a precise definition) or that the concept was not a native product but a British transplant increasingly cultivated in the new country”, but rather Exeter was to serve not the advancement of useful knowledge but was to impart the older traditional classical curriculum” that useful knowledge had marginalized in the new world. By the founding of our Early Republic, the principles and approach of the Royal Society, and the artisan class that followed in its wake, had come full circle to become the paradigm for education and individual aspiration in the new world [99] Meyer Reinhold, “The Quest for ‘Useful Knowledge” in Eighteenth-Century America”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 119, No. 2 (Apr 16, 1975), p. 108.
Advancement of Artisans/Scientists in Pennsylvania
Simplistically, individuals were left to make their own decisions and determinations, act on them or not, and each of these groups attracted their share of consideration and accordingly spread through England and through immigration into the various colonies. In Pennsylvania, Penn’s open door policy certainly encouraged immigrants and brought “a rich array of skilled artisans to the Delaware. Penn’s first ship sent from London in 1781, the Bristol Factor, brought on it Cesar Ghiselin, an 18 year old silversmith, Thomas Wharton, a tailor, Nehemiah Allen, a cooper, Josiah Carpenter, a brewer, Thomas Paschall, a pewterer,, and Abraham Hooper, a cabinetmaker … In this single ship arrived the core of the artisan and commercial enterprises of the early [first] decade. Each established a family that prospered … Working in their small shops, Philadelphia’s diversified artisans … [and] Philadelphia’s many craftsmen produced articles on demand for urban customers, called ‘bespoke work’, but they produced as well for the entire Delaware Valley [99] Gary B Nash, First City (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), p. 54.
As their numbers increased the different institutions and players crafted their own accommodations–including the Anglican Church which reciprocated with its “Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK). SPCK, led by the Anglican divine, Thomas Bray organized many public lending libraries in England, Wales and North America. Bray defined his vision of “useful knowledge” broadly, with a bias toward religious professions (clergy), but also to physicians and lawyers–the professions. By 1730, SPCK had established 39 lending libraries in the colonies, and sent over 34,000 books to them. All this caught the attention of our Franklin.
As we might suspect, Franklin, an Anglican (if he was of any religious persuasion) was aware of all of this, and his own 1726-9 adventure in establishing his own lending library, defined in his terms to a mostly artisan, but also scientific (James Logan) constituency. Franklin we might remember, spent the better part of two years previous to this in London, and his diary records ample contact, meetings, discussion, and even group sessions with the great names of the English scientific, professional and artisan community. His was a laundry list of names that one wonders how a young man in his early late teens could access. This guy really knew how to network. By 1727 he as back in Philadelphia and there his career took off like a subtle rocket.
[Franklin] began to encounter on his early forays into London’s intellectual world, a world comprised of physicians, clerics, artisans, scholars, nobles and businessmen in and around the Royal Society. And it was from this circle that Franklin first gleaned a real appreciation for the value and power of science, and intellectual pursuits in general [99] Jonathan Lyons, the Society for Useful Knowledge (Bloomsbury Press, 2013), p. 33
Diffusion into Popular Culture–Two sympathetic dynamics seeped into the artisan movement from society and politics. First, a popular culture that stressed topics touching upon self-improvement that generated a host of “how to”, i.e. characteristics to develop, clothes to wear and proper manners, and attitudes congruent with rise of the individual in society. Bookstores had them for sale. Quick to follow were artisan trades and techniques handbooks associated with the budding clusters (bookkeeping, surveying, navigation, for example) that were jelling in the various colonies.
True to form, a “night school” cottage industry of courses, speakers, and semi-formal artisan-relevant offerings were available, and no doubt advertised at the local tavern. This popular culture flourished in each of the thirteen colonies–with oddly enough, Virginia where Rev. Hugh Jones a professor of math and natural philosophy developed a curriculum of the most “useful branches of learning” for the benefit of the “young gentlemen of the plantations”.
The second dynamic, quite the opposite from the first, was political, in the form of Governor, then ex-Governor, William Keith.
Keith, Pennsylvania’s governor, appointed by Hannah Penn at the suggestion of James Logan (1718) was a decidedly bad choice from the Penn family perspective. Able in his own right, he fitfully navigated through the political civil war, causing his own disruptions in it and taking personal advantage when he could, Keith was his own man in Pennsylvania. By 1724, the forces arrayed against him, assembling a momentum that would cause his dismissal by the Penns in 1726.
In that period and after, Keith looked for support for his projects and ambitions where he could find it. That meant a serious entry into “populist” electoral politics–what Logan would describe as the politics of the “Mob”. Over the course of several years, Keith involved all sorts of our artisans, workers, merchants, political dissidents, and dissatisfied urban residents and not only mobilized them against the Municipal Corporation of Philadelphia (Logan’s proprietary leaning government), but got folk elected into the provincial legislature.
Keith’s key entry issue was soft/paper money with the goal of creating a general, Keynesian like, prosperity in the Pennsylvania economy. Franklin, who knew Keith (it was Keith that sent him off to London), got significantly involved in the issue (to be described in another module), and along with him his Junto, his newly owned newspaper joined in. Franklin’s rivals joined the fray. In essence, Keith played an important role in developing artisan self-awareness and the development of its internal leadership.
Franklin himself, got a boost in this direction by his first employer once back in Philadelphia, the printer Samuel Keimer. Keimer announced his intention in 1728 to promote “useful knowledge” to help dispel Ignorance and Superstition for the Publick Good” [99] Jonathan Lyons, the Society for Useful Knowledge (Bloomsbury Press, 2013), pp. 113.– a rather controversial and business killing idea that may likely have been prompted by Franklin himself. Franklin in that year bought the remains of his newspaper ( a peek into Franklin’s dark side here).
From this point on for sure, Philadelphia artisans had a taste of Pennsylvania-style politics, some leadership and an increased willingness to make itself known and “felt”. Franklin, using his Junto as an activist wedge, had a distinct organizational advantage, and his brilliance and his inspired agenda–which embraced an encyclopedia of issues and interests–made itself felt in Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania legislature, of which he was clerk, and record-keeper.
His jaw-dropping networking, his pen and growing national ascendancy–he was appointed Philadelphia superintendent of the postal services, a British colonial office–and his ability to navigate among the factions of the political civil war without burning any bridges was remarkable testimony to his personality and charisma. The years between 1728 and 1743 were truly foundational for him and his constituency–and by the early to middle 1740’s Franklin, Philadelphia artisan community, were coming of age and in 1743 was seemingly the breakout year. The issue Franklin chose was to mobilize his own Royal Society-like organization whose ambitions were to unify the scientific-professional-artisan communities across all the colonies.
A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge among the British Plantations“
was written and promoted by Franklin in 1743. The missive was a call to form an association of those who sympathized with and those who produced such useful knowledge in the several colonies. This association, a society, could be the vehicle under whose auspices the British North American scientific-artisan community could maintain contacts with each other, and provide support to one another. It could be taken as an extension of Franklin’s Junto, or the Lending Library, but a look into why Franklin wrote the Proposal tilts us in another direction. Franklin, it appears, was sympathetic to the plight of Pennsylvania’s most prolific scientist, his Quaker friend and arguably North America’s leading botanist , John Bartram.
Bartram’s tale sensitizes us to those colonials who were interested in more scientific endeavors (pure experimentation/classification of natural phenomena) than artisan (machine, tinkering with existing tech-production processes, consumer end-user products/services). Using Bertram as an example, his tale exposes the little known underside of colonial scientific innovation. It may be surprising to contemporary innovation commentators that an innovation “industry” linked American inventors/scientists to the Royal Society–and that industry contained many of the features, business models, and relationships found in current innovation discovery and funding.
In any case, it was Bertram who prodded Franklin–for more than a decade–to organize an American Royal Society equivalent. Bertram was not the author of “a Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge …, Franklin was, but Bertram was its inspiration and its principal driver. Who the hell was John Bertram?
Rummaging Around the Basement of Colonial innovation: John Bertram–Bartram discovered and classified North American flora and fauna by the wheelbarrow, and sent them to contacts with the Royal Society. They were well appreciated by such as Linnaeus who was then a member of the Royal Society; Linnaeus described Bartram as “the greatest natural botanist in the world” [99] Jonathan Lyons, the Society for Useful Knowledge, p.68. Well, Linnaeus, who was Swedish, connected Bertram to Sweden’s Queen, an avid gardener, and she in return for his seeds and cuttings conferred on him membership of the Swedish Royal Academy of Science in 1769–the British Royal Society, however, preferred an arms-length relationship with its American counterparts. If you get my drift, the British Royal Society had its issues with its loyal colonial compatriots. The British rather enjoyed the status and near-monopoly of the Royal Society, and they welcomed no threat to its position. “For the Royal Society, members of this tiny American [scientific] vanguard were little more than helpmates … ill-prepared for the rigors of true natural philosophy [99] Jonathan Lyons, the Society for Useful Knowledge, p.63.
A more egregious example of abuse was suffered by Pennsylvanian poet, glazier, and inventor of Hadley’s Quadrant, a double reflecting mirror quadrant that made its use effective at sea. In 1730, Pennsylvanian Thomas Godfrey, after extensive experimentation on the Delaware and a voyage to Jamaica. Through our James Logan he sent them to the Royal Society, he developed a prototype and master details of its construction. In short order the Royal Society published both and claimed its Vice President John Hadley was the inventor. Hadley’s Quadrant revolutionized English marine navigation and therefore in effect the Royal Society had stolen a significant advance for its own. Logan reacted and led a campaign to give Godfrey his credit–which was successful, although Hadley still got the prestige of Hadley’s Quadrant. Godfrey’s mistreatment is enormously relevant to our history as future events would tell–he was a member of excellent standing in Franklin’s Junto, and a close personal friend.
Bertram, said and done earned his living as a household-level farmer. Bertram developed a working relationship with James Logan (who at minimum was Pennsylvania’s leading intellectual/scientist, and held allegedly the largest private library in America), and he attached himself to Franklin’s Junto–and was granted free access to his Lending Library. Why this convoluted entry into the province’s scientific community–he was a rural, self-taught rube. He supplemented his meager income with plants, seeds and samplings that the elites of the Royal Society paid for. They were shipped by a Quaker merchant, Peter Collinson, who developed a multi province network of scientists such as Bertram–his was the access into the Royal Society membership. Through him the South Carolina physician, Alexander Garden, sent flowers and seeds to Linnaeus–who in gratitude named the gardenia species after our friend Garden.
Collinson, however, had his dark side; he did not question the various discriminations practiced upon American scientists–his business model was rife with them. Several Royal Society books of flora and fauna were published without any credit to the Americans who actually did the reports, and sent the seeds and cuttings to Britain. Today this would be called plagiarism. This was not an uncommon practice [99] Jonathan Lyons, the Society for Useful Knowledge, p.69.
Collinson actually developed an English network of funders, which from time to time, included King George III, the last who actually funded one of Bertram’s gathering expeditions. Knowing what his Royal Society clients were interested in, Collinson actually planned projects, expeditions, and fused North American findings into British experimental projects. Collinson actually was able to raise sufficient funds to offer a permanent salary to various American scientists, such as Bertram. Bertram was in operation from the early 1730’s and his private middleman venture capitalist business plan lasted until his death in 1768.
Back to “A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge among the British Plantations“– Franklin put a lot of himself and his network of contacts behind the launch of The American Philosophical Society in 1743. Despite Collinson’s opposition to the idea–conveyed to Bertram–, Bertram and Cadwallader Colden, a botanist (an a full time politician)–he was the Royal Governor of New York), from New York, finally got Franklin to assume leadership of an organization whose function and purpose, as well as its constituency, was an American version of the Royal Society. The American popular phrasing “useful knowledge” was embraced and served as a organizational tent-legitimizing name to capture innovation within colonial America–and its scientific-artisan communities in each province.
The Junto was heavily involved, led by Thomas Bond, a leading Philadelphia physician (and with Franklin a co-founder of Philadelphia’s Hospital, the America’s first in 1751), and our earlier mentioned friend, Thomas Godfrey. Several other noteworthy names from other colonies were garnered as activists and members of the new organization. A scientific journal, the American Philosophical Miscellany, was founded, and published several issues. Colden, ever the politician publicly wrote the organization was off and running in mid-1744, but the reality is the American Philosophical Society never got off the ground. “The project was virtually stillborn” In an “Update” he published in 1745 Franklin “blamed the habits of his fellow colonials, in particular those from the upper crust whose discipline, he suggested, compared unfavorably to that of the Leather Aprons. ‘The Members of our Society here are very idle Gentlemen, they will take no pains”. Bertram suggested (I am not kidding) that it could be revived if they met in a tavern or club, and offered chess and coffee–that offers another insight into the quality of activism within the Philadelphia group [99] Jonathan Lyons, the Society for Useful Knowledge, p 70.
Truth be told, Philadelphia and colonial America just were not yet ready to assume leadership. The Royal Society, heavily backed by the Crown was not about to back down, and the Philadelphia and its colonial port city allies were just too few and far between-Philadelphia was not yet a well-connected urban society that could counter London’s–and for what it was worth, the Proprietary or Legislature remained uninvolved.
And, let’s not forget, America was a system of colonies–dependent from the get to. Add to this the lack of any meaningful cooperation among provinces, their leadership and governments, or even their residents–AND–equally important Philadelphia Pennsylvania politics soon entered into a very turbulent period–a period in which Franklin himself, no less, would organize “the Association” a province-wide militia to defend Philadelphia and the Delaware River Valley. For the next several years, Franklin’s first priority was the Association–and it was also the period in which he retired formally from printing–i.e. lifestyle change and his version of retirement.
The timing as terrible.
If the timing was terrible it did not mean the British North American “useful knowledge” movement had failed, relegated to the trash bin. First, New York in 1748 created its version headed by William Livingston (future governor of the STATE of New Jersey), William Smith Jr. and john Morin Scott). Essentially it suffered the same fate as Pennsylvania–informal and short-lived. American innovation did not cease, as American scientists worked out their own relationships with the Royal Society, and the latter in some cases did, while continuing its depreciation of the American role, continue to finance and utilize American research.
Franklin moved on–and that points out the critical role provided by a leader capable to sustaining action. Franklin gravitated, due to public events to forming a militia, the Association is what he called it. Since Pennsylvania would not create a public militia to defend itself from the Spanish bombarding Delaware River cities, then he did. It consumed the better part of two years, and it probably pushed him more into a public career (he was a retiree after 1744) than he first thought.
Although Franklin’s greatest period of success as a scientist lay before in the late 40’s and early 50’s, he got elected to public office in 1748 and then to the provincial legislator in 1751. His leadership role in the Quaker Party, his prominent stand against the Proprietor in 1755-6–and then his mission to London as a lobbyist through 1762 (not to mention his 1753 Deputy Postmaster General position) clearly had to have impacted his time commitment.
Still, it would be incorrect to think of the American Philosophical Society as dead and buried after 1745. It did serve as a reason for various scientists to keep each other informed, and to render what assistance and support they could. And it still admitted new members to the original group; Charles Thompson, an individual we shall hear about in other modules (he is sometimes entitled the Sam Adams of Pennsylvania), was admitted in the 1750’s. During this period, since a goodly number of Franklin’s initial Junto had passed to their reward, a Young Junto attached itself to Franklin.
Like the older version, the Young Junto met and conducted its affairs in secret, and informally. Franklin was in London most of the time and his was a more distant relationship. That grouping masked the arrival of a new generation cohort, and it used the aura of Franklin as much as he found it helpful. There was, as we shall discover, a substantive shift in its agenda and research focus. In fact it was Thompson and others like Tench Coxe and Benjamin Rush that would start a process in 1765 (Stamp Act) that led to the formation of the Society for Promoting and Propagating Useful Knowledge in 1768.
That promoted an original American Philosophical Society member, Thomas Bond, to resuscitate the rather sedate remains of the older organization. Eventually the two would merge–but I would rather leave most of that to another module. It might also be mentioned, that immediately previous to the Revolution, 1774, Virginia formed its own Society for Promotion of Useful Knowledge. In the mid to late 1780’s a virtual flood of attention focused on Societies of Useful Knowledge, and the reader should sense the “timing” for American useful knowledge movement was during that time period.
One, hopefully final observation for this module, is the matter of useful knowledge versus the traditional classics moved after 1750 into the curriculums of American colleges and universities–and punctuated the proposed curriculums- and purposes–of American colleges founded during that time period. It starts, as always, with Franklin’s post 1748 project to begin advocacy for “an Academy and College” for Philadelphia. Through years of dialogue and point-counterpoint, the Academy and the College were founded–and the discussion and debate of useful versus traditional classical (and language) curriculum fleshed out a hybrid model that with nips and tucks became a hallmark for pre-1800 higher education [99] For an excellent summation see Jonathan Lyons, the Society for Useful Knowledge, pp. 114-18.
The Diffusion of Artisans through Geography and Economic Base
While we all expect Philadelphia to become “the Mecca” for artisans and commerce, we might be surprised to know many artisans will be found in the towns around the City. In fact, we shall see that several vital manufacturing clusters (flour processing, and iron and glassmaking) were until the eve of the Revolution exclusively hinterland clusters–with iron and glass plantation employing several hundred workers each–alongside a host of associated occupations and business that lived off that cluster. Shipbuilders located along interior rivers, and nearby timber mills and wagon makers. In 1773, there were 107 mills (grist works) in Philadelphia County alone, and Wilmington (part of Pennsylvania) was the leading milling town in the thirteen colonies on the eve of the Revolution.
All of this was not government-driven; it was entrepreneurs taking advantage of an expanding market, offering new products and processes that in food-agriculture fit into the self-sufficient strategy. This meant artisan-driven clusters and the development of industries and sectors in these early years was by no means confined to the port cities–in fact it became a vital element of the economic bases of the larger, county seat, hinterland towns
This, as you might suspect, is tribute to the handicraft skills of is homesteading settlers. Germantown, founded by Germans during Penn’s first stay in the colony, was nine miles from Philadelphia at the time. By 1774 106 master artisans in twenty-seven crafts were paying taxes out of a total 481 taxpayers. Leather related trades accounted for 31 (including 14 cordwainers -i.e. shoemakers and 5 saddle-makers, 14 coopers (cask-barrel makers). two coach/wagon makers, several clockmakers, bookbinders, chair and furniture makers. Germantown was known for its warm, wool stockings–a specialty that employed a goodly number of women and young girls [99] Carl Bridenbaugh, the Colonial Craftsman (Dover Publications, 1990; first published 1950 New University Press), p. 55.
Another town, also settled initially by German Moravians was Bethlehem. In 1774, it held nineteen master craftsmen in eleven trades, from a total of 145 taxpayers. Adjacent Durham Ironworks had fostered a small cluster of millwrights who specialized in water pipes, and “self-acting water pumps” with a triple crank. On May 2, 1755 water was forced up into a Bethlehem’s newly-built seventy-five foot high water tank, and by June 27, that tank became the first operating municipal water system in the thirteen colonies [99] Carl Bridenbaugh, the Colonial Craftsman (Dover Publications, 1990; first published 1950 New University Press), p. 56.
The kingpin in Pennsylvania’s hinterland was York, founded in 1741 held about 2,500 residents, mostly German, by 1774. It presided over an agricultural hinterland, and was a launching point for those who set out down the Great Wagon Road to points south and west. In 1779, there were thirty-nine trades that employed fully half of the borough’s taxpayers. “Seventeen shoemakers, as many tailors, eleven blacksmiths, nine hatters, nine weavers, and seven hosiers [99] Carl Bridenbaugh, the Colonial Craftsman (Dover Publications, 1990; first published 1950 New University Press), p. 57.
The point of all this detail is the amazing ubiquitous of Pennsylvania’s artisan class, and to dispel any notion that non-agricultural sectors, occupations, and clusters were an urban phenomena. “Rural artisans … undertook the trades ‘in all their branches’. In a village a man [or woman] was not called upon to subdivide a craft [i.e. specialize], or to develop minute, specialized skills. A carpenter could perform all operations involved in woodworking” [99] Carl Bridenbaugh, the Colonial Craftsman (Dover Publications, 1990; first published 1950 New University Press), p. 65. That distinction was a major driver of the evolution of the artisan class–and it resulted from the density of population resident or accessible, the prominence of export-import, and the discretionary wealth of the top sectors of Pennsylvania.
the Urban Artisan — the typical American, to the extent he/she is aware of their colonial past, see it through an urban prism. Historians also focus on the urban artisan. So there is no lack of literature on famous urban artisans, for example Benjamin Franklin or Sam Adams. John Adams was a lawyer, a professional which tend to be lumped in with artisans, although professionals (not Adams) possess strong links to offspring of an emerging aristocratic class (for example Benjamin Rush or Trench Coxe). The port city markets were a great place to sell hinterland handicrafts, and fair days and specialized market districts were a customary place for hinterland artisans to sell their products.
Still the port cities of colonial America are the prism by which we understand colonial artisans, despite their oversized presence in hinterland towns. The most obvious reason is their sheer number. Without giving anything away, in 1774 the tax assessor’s list for Philadelphia and its two suburbs, Northern Liberties and Southwark contained over 3400 names in a city of about 40,000. These were the eligible voting population of the city corporation [one can see at the eve of the Revolution most of the city residents were disenfranchised]. But of this rather concentrated electorate almost 1,000 were craftsmen (about 30% of the voting population). Although the huge number of indentured, apprenticed, slaves, and even most journeymen were not property-owners, they were somewhere between 30 to 50 percent of the city population. [99] Carl Bridenbaugh, the Colonial Craftsman (Dover Publications, 1990; first published 1950 New University Press), pp. 95-6. As we shall see by the end of this chapter, artisans are going to be the vanguard of the American Revolution in Philadelphia. It is they who will launch a coup that will replace the provincial state government, and write (along with hinterland homesteaders) Pennsylvania’s first Constitution.
Pennsylvania’s Constitution of 1776 was the sole instrument of the Revolutionary era to translate the hopes and aspirations of the craftsmen into fundamental law, for it was in that state alone that the old ruling class was completely divested of power. This document was drawn up by Benjamin Franklin, David Cannon, George Bryan, David Rittenhouse, and Dr. Thomas Young–representatives of the middle class, who fully understood what the craftsmen and their farmer allies wanted [99] Carl Bridenbaugh, the Colonial Craftsman (Dover Publications, 1990; first published 1950 New University Press), pp. 180-1.
No wonder then historians have focused on Philadelphia’s artisans! There are, however, several less obvious reasons for why historians and Americans in general appreciate urban artisans over their hinterland comrades.
First the concentration of population, i.e. density, in port cities combined with the centrality of the export-import strategy in the port city meant that artisans were able to specialize in their trades, acquiring more specific expertise in a narrow range of products/aspects of a larger trade. Hinterland artisans were generalists; urban artisans could establish a market presence–a brand-over production of specific products (furniture, home construction, household products (clocks and watches), gendered markets for apparel sale. We will discuss this aspect more in the Massachusetts chapter where we shall introduce the reader to Lynn Massachusetts. In 1774, the Philadelphia tax rolls demarcate 334 master shoemakers in Philadelphia [99] Carl Bridenbaugh, the Colonial Craftsman (Dover Publications, 1990; first published 1950 New University Press), pp. 74-5.
The export/import function in waterfront-logistics provided first advantage to cask makers, rope makers and sail riggers, anchors, foodstuffs for maritime use and export, ship repair, wagons, and a host of more sector-specific artisan expertise. Being a port city, urban artisans were able to cull the cream of the indentured immigrant crop and attract apprentices from other artisan families (Franklin, for example). The fur trade was particularly impactful on urban “hatters”.
By 1732, New York and Boston alone made 10,000 hats annually–prompting Parliament when informed of this competition, passed the 1732 Hat Act, which restricted American hatters to only two apprentices per company, and which prohibited the export of American hats period. No fear, Americans ignored the ill-enforced Act and in every city, including Philadelphia the hat industry did well [99] Carl Bridenbaugh, the Colonial Craftsman (Dover Publications, 1990; first published 1950 New University Press), p. 72-3.
Some ethnic immigrants, Huguenots for example fled from European cities and were disposed to establishing an urban residence. Paul Revere was of Huguenot extraction); surprisingly silversmiths were well-represented in Huguenot immigrants and they settled in all port cities. When Quebec fell, its wigmakers and hair dressers moved out to other American port cities. Tench Coxe observed in his 1794 book, “View of the United States of America” that … a large proportion of the most successful manufacturers in the United States consists of persons that were journeymen, and in a few instances were foremen in the workshops and manufactories of Europe; who having been skillful, sober, frugal, and having saved a little money have set up for themselves with great advantage in America” [99] Carl Bridenbaugh, the Colonial Craftsman (Dover Publications, 1990; first published 1950 New University Press), p. 69.
The second major reason why artisans did well in urban areas was these areas concentrated the more wealthy-affluent elements of the colonial population. With their enhanced personal discretionary income they could purchase newspapers (and need to read them), jewelry (silversmiths and clock makers, fine furniture and household goods, and of course all forms of shoes and apparel (tailors), were a particular example).
Tailors found that starting up a business in Philadelphia was a gold mine (and New York City as well). By the time of the Revolution there were at least 121 masters of the profession and tailors comprised 14% of the city’s artisans. “In 1771 over forty master tailors met at Carpenter’s Hall to form the Taylor’s Company of Philadelphia, an employers’ organization designed to fix prices and limit wages paid to journeymen”. Along with tailors came cleaners and dyeing [99] Carl Bridenbaugh, the Colonial Craftsman (Dover Publications, 1990; first published 1950 New University Press), pp. 70-1.
Philadelphia, because it was the largest port city of America, had a constant influx of new residents that needed a place to live. “The growth of colonial cities and towns stimulated the building trades in which carpenters and housewrights joined with masons, bricklayers, plasterers, painters and allied artisans in raising and decorating mansions for merchant aristocrats”. Carpenters in particular, constantly employed in building working and artisan housing were in steady employment, and from them evolved master carpenter architects who assumed leadership of the larger building trades–remember Philadelphia’s Carpenters Hall [99] Carl Bridenbaugh, the Colonial Craftsman (Dover Publications, 1990; first published 1950 New University Press), pp. 75-6.
Artisans Interact with Commercial Merchants and Share in the Lot of the Working Poor
Bridenbaugh observes that:
Side by side with shops of those who bought to sell again {i.e. retailers] were the establishments of those who offered for sale the results of their own labor, or the product of their particular craft. [A watch maker would manufacture, design, repair and upgrade, and sell an assembled watch]. A very large part of the population of each town consisted of artisans and tradesmen, many of whom possessed ‘Land and Some Estate’ [i.e. potentially eligible to become freeholders and eligible for the electoral franchise]. This class naturally fell into two groups: tradesmen occupied in the food and provision business, and craftsmen or artisans who worked all other trades [and specialized niches] [99] Bridenbaugh, Vol I, p. 190
In the old world economy these groupings were common, often tied into the guild system, and for whom workforce institutions such as apprenticeship and indenture were the customary route to certification by guilds for inclusion in their membership and once standards and qualifications were met and satisfied were eligible to set up their own shop. Absence the guild in America, these folk were grafted onto an now independent private merchant commercial community populated by individual entrepreneur merchants of trade, logistics, wholesale and retail.. We know from Benjamin Franklin’s biography that he was a “leather stocking” apprenticed” artisan-printer, who eventually bought a newspaper.
In later years, historians tend to concentrate (because of their political role] on artisans who worked in the manufacturing-iron working sector, and/or conflate them with working class (sailors=marine sector and laborers) artisans are today’s equivalent to small business, composed of a great number of sectors, occupations, products and services. The reader is not encouraged to think of this grouping as a straight line evolution from any one place–black slaves were a serious element [probably a majority] of Charleston’s artisan community, and a surprising role of women in managing retail stores/taverns/inns, catering from which a specialization in funerals developed, and their role in the early rise of the textile industry challenges us to the danger of ignoring the almost inevitable inclusion of all groupings into a hardscrabble and incremental building of our economic bases to achieve regional self-sufficiency.
In one sense, aspirations and pretensions of artisans [to rise to wealth and status] combined with the means to attain land and some estate marks artisans as members of the emerging lower middle class. In other sense their gradual and hardscrabble rise in their chosen field and specialization meant they were subjects to the whims of a volatile economy and buffeted by those whose wealth and economic/political concentration.
Wealth did not inevitably flow into the artisan community; one could set type for lifetime and never own a newspaper. Indenture and apprenticeship left their mark on the finances of their early years, and the reality was artisans, especially younger ones, as far as income and wealth goes, were working class on the edge of poverty if displaced injured, widowed or bankrupted. That means artisans overlapped emerging socio-economic classes, potentially members of both during their lifetime.
As such artisans have been grist for many a community development author asserting their bona fides for inclusion into the downtrodden and deserving of help. This may be an insight into contemporary community development which still displays an ambivalence to small business as not quite capitalism, and not quire worker–the plight of the Uber driver, the Mexican-American landscaping company whose workers are picked up daily on designated street corners, the minority-owned small business, physical trainers in gyms, and the franchised MacDonald hamburger maker. The list goes on and on–as it did centuries ago as David Copperfield confirms.
Artisans historically were/are neither fish nor fowl, both CD and MED in their needs and demands. Accordingly, we can, and will, find strategies and initiatives within each approach. Artisan occupations have always been a path, an imperfect path, to personal independence that promised social and economic success. The artisan path was chosen by a majority of colonial urban residents and their succeeding generations whatever ethnic, immigrant, religious and, when possible, racial background.
The obstacles encountered by the artisan engaged in his/her personal path could be painted as a “rags to riches” tale if successful, or yet one more instance of structural impediments leading almost inevitably to systemic inequality if success eludes the seeker. Not much, it seems, has changed since colonial times, as contemporary artisans engender the same bipolar discussion. Why?
To me it is an embedded characteristic of a career path that overlaps sectors of the economy, a path in which a key element involves skill at retailing one’s product, service, or good, and which the mastery of skills is achieved by workforce skill transfer EDOs-institutions like apprenticeship, mentoring, compulsory employment as condition of skill transfer (indenture is the colonial example). Geography becomes a salient factor in that low population densities cannot usually support many artisan opportunities, hence urban centers occupy a prominent advantage is attracting artisans–concentrating them in hyper-competition with each other.
Given individual variation in time and skill level, the variety of individual personality and decision-making dynamics (ambition after all, seldom reflects one’s perceived capacity), and the inability to predict-link demand for the artisan’s output with the level of output required for self-sufficiency. The low barriers to entry typical of artisan occupations also can supply too many artisans at any one time, driving wages lower. So an artisan can be a worker on his or her way into the future–or headed for or mired in structural poverty that could not be escaped. That offers historians some flexibility on which outcome to comment upon.
In colonial times artisans could be an indentured ‘servant’, a single person business while engaged as a day laborer (colonial gig economy), an independent entrepreneur with their own stall in the marketplace, an apprentice residing inside a family partnership and housed with the family. Oh for the simplicity of being an agricultural homesteader.
Even in colonial times artisans could be an indentured ‘servant’, a single person business while engaged as a day laborer (colonial gig economy), an independent entrepreneur with their own stall in the marketplace, an apprentice residing inside a family partnership and housed with the family. Oh for the simplicity of being an agricultural homesteader. Gary B. Nash dwells on the former in his [99]”the Urban Crucible: Northern Seaports and the Origins of the American Revolution” (Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 161-6. Over several pages he gives fascinating examples of artisans, their work and residence option, standard of living, and the volatility caused by the city’s economic environment–which, of course, was none of the artisan’s responsibility.
He offers a tantalizing insight the artisans breaking away from residences provided by employers as a component of their payment, as a significant transition movement to a free labor force employable for currency salary as setting the foundation for the future factory workforce, and American citizen. His concentration is upon those artisans who were in rags or engaged as laborers–they are for him a future working class that if sufficiently stressed could achieve some level of class consciousness that sustained a masses against the luxury elite mobilization–such as the 1775 American Revolution offered.
Perhaps not surprisingly we shall see this in the behavior of Philadelphia (and her urban suburbs) leading up to the Declaration of Independence. Artisans could be a bourgeoisie in aspiration, and a lumpenproletariat in frustration. One wonders if the hollowed out American economy of 2021 presents similar opportunities and threats as the fluid, mobile and buffeted “deplorable” and Bernie/Black Lives Matter young activists find little fit for achieving their aspirations. On the other hand, as cited by Bridenbaugh (Vol II), p. 283 [99] “events and conditions that were causing mutations among the mercantile gentry [and the stagnating artisans] were also elevating the middle class to a prominence and influence which ultimately led to a thrust for political power, the most portentous development in the urban life of this era. The largest segment of the city population, artisans, shopkeepers, and tradesmen and their families, composed of two-thirds of the inhabitants of each Northern community … contemptuously branded ‘Mechanicks and Tradesmen’ by the upper classes, as though they were somehow really of ‘the inferior sort’; their best label … [however, considering future events was] citizens.
What this concentration ignores is important–but for some, a number fewer than those who were unable to achieve success, became winners on the artisan path, achieving at least middle class and for others a solid entry into the commercial or manufacturing sector elites. What he also misses is the practical flexibility of an artisan path which embraced the smallest of niches, from silver smiths, to wigmakers, to clock repair, tailors, bricklayers, barbers, painters, gardeners, seamstress, and a spectacle maker. That list is also endless–and equally fascinating. Occupying some limbo among sectors, artisans could seize on opportunities and skills acquired by chance, interest or skill and achieve a living of some independence and comfort, but unlikely security.
Conclusion:
American colonial artisans, found in varying degrees and types in each of the thirteen colonies, were the vanguard of a emerging mercantile-capitalism, and a new social economic class structure that was replacing the one in seventeenth century England, carried to America in the hearts, minds, and experience of the various ethnic and colony settlements. In essence, then American artisans, certainly during the seventeenth century were transplanted English artisans. who evolved in England, in part from the rise of hinterland handicraft industry, and from the interplay of several English economic dynamics that, among other features, fostered increased urbanism, and the formation of English agglomerations-clusters.
Ron W. Coan 