After the Queen Anne’s War (1714), and the subsequent transition to peace recession, the self-sufficiency strategy nexus increasingly gave way to a more simply strategy that focused on economic growth, and in particular the approval and installation of institutions, such as debt, currency and paper money, infrastructure, some accommodation with the effects of population grown on the City of Pennsylvania (physical and community development) that compelled the provincial policy system to intermittently and inconsistently respond.
Public opinion, as we know it today, formless, expressed more in the Quaker meeting house than any place else. With an electoral franchise restricted to those holding moderate property assets, established residency, and tax payers, and faced with an appointed sub-state bureaucracy/court administration and local officials disgruntled residents avoided the lower levels of government and usually headed to make its appeal to an unsympathetic provincial government.
From the proprietor’s perspective, its policy tilt was toward a more aggressive settlement of its hinterland, while the legislator’s sustained determination was to institutionalize its own body, and better achieve its aspiration of being the legitimate representative of the people’s will. To be sure the political civil war mellowed a bit from the horrendous divisiveness it displayed previous to 1710. Warfare between the branches had evolved some procedures and parameters–and with Penn gone, his sons unable to secure the Pennsylvania sinecure until the late 1720’s, the legislature marinated itself in the values and priorities of an emerging political culture that was still in evolution. That evolution would really pick up steam after 1740.
One tenet of that culture, perhaps two or three, indisputably made their appearance: limited government and its bed companion, very, very low taxes and hence few public services. The Pennsylvania provincial policy system kept to its own lane, fighting London and its colonial trade policy, and with rare exceptions, unwilling to participate in sub-state governance unless drawn in by the interests of its members who from time to time were able to form a legislative majority sufficient to support an initiative or two. Sub-state political bodies were like buffers against political, social and economic change increasing making their presence known to whoever would listen.
The physical landscape of Philadelphia revealed a greater number, internal diversity and differentiation into neighborhoods with distinctive housing, demographics, and physical and social needs. Philadelphia and its two suburbs squabbled amongst themselves, and the Municipal Corporation of Philadelphia entered into a period of detachment and a pronounced hesitancy to govern, not unreasonably as it still was checked and usurped by the hinterland-dominated provincial legislature/counties and the Quaker Party.
What could not go unnoticed with the sustained flow of immigrants disembarking from its piers, creating markets as consumers, and workforce for both the urban trades and hinterland homesteading. There were profits to be had from either. But also discomfiture and side effects of grown, noise, pollution (in the broadest sense), and public safety (fire and disease, especially) prompted ever increasing anomic response, and much coffee house chatter.
Clusters and Agglomerations
Agglomerations-clusters are the building blocks for our regional economic base. These conceptual and physical terms house employment, GNP, and private actors that are involved, and they give to them a geographic expression. Economists have compiled a list of sectors (each with sub-sectors) into which the entire aggregated mess can be sub-divided. Self-sufficiency favored-required that certain sectors are primary, and others can wait.
In this module we shall see agriculture, home settlement, and export-import nexus meant that home and ship building were essential, agricultural settlement also, and the formation of a port city as well. From each of these macro “agglomerations”, sub-sectors, ranging from mining-ironmaking, timber cutting and processing, flour and grist mill, and finance and logistics with all their varying infrastructure had to be dealt with simultaneously, so interwoven were the necessitude of time and self-sufficiency. There were others, but these are dealt with in this module. These sectors are the arenas in which agglomerations and clusters played.
Having said all this contextual ballyhoo, I must stress that, in my mind at least, an agglomeration can be visually seen, experienced, if not touched; the operations of a cluster much less so–at least without a computer. I should also stress that if a cluster is more or less virtual, it is computer generated. The colonial era was not known for its computers, although no one has gone down Franklin’s cellar of recent. But cluster company interrelationships and their underlying geographic sector agglomerations are, as shall be demonstrated below, real life colonial abstractions with a strong visible geographic presence in a given economic base.
Cluster is an economic concept that while dominates may be too strong a word, permeates current economic development strategies, initiatives, organizational goals, and academic thinking. Clusters, one might suppose, are an evolution from the turn of the 20th century concept of agglomeration (a more simple aggregation of a single sector into a particular geographic region or district of a region). Clusters permit us to include individual companies, their strategies and production-workforce practices, and their leadership. It is the leadership that is most affected by their political culture, and hence more variation in cluster formation, than agglomeration which is usually thought of in economic and locational determinants, through a comparative advantage prism.
Clusters-agglomerations, this history insists, come with lifecycles. We are witnessing in this module the birth of agglomerations-clusters. My father always insisted the slap on the butt that comes with birth sets the kid off on their individual path through life. We shall see in this module and the next chapter on Massachusetts-New England, that the butt-slapping of agglomerations did vary enough to make my father’s observation valid–especially when impacted by other dynamics. Provinces, then states, and their cities would necessarily differ in the centuries that followed.
Agglomerations (as a concept) did not stress the sub-sectors within a sector, nor was it particularly sensitive, to the interplay and structural interrelations of companies in other sectors. Economic base-building requires us to be mindful of how agglomerations can affect other sectors (and the policy system), and we are very concerned with different populations (for example, slaves, immigrants) enter into/exit agglomeration-cluster formation. We may see agglomerations and clusters tilt toward Mainstream or Community ED.
The larger end goal, I might add, of cluster initiatives are usually job creation/retention, and regional revitalization or growth; agglomerations offer insight into specific place-based economic development strategy, and land use planning as well. Agglomerations, more place-specific, could involve land use and prescriptions, and logically involve placement of infrastructure. In any case, cluster or agglomeration, each sector (and even sub-sector) can, and does, differ in meaningful ways form other sectors and sub-sectors, not only among geographic regions, but across geography. Iron making is not agriculture, and making chemicals is not finance. Retail is not wholesale, and you usually don’t mine in cities (bitcoin not withstanding). The “style” of agglomeration-cluster formation will be affected by the characteristics, markets and technology of each sector. Economic developers may not be able to apply the lessons of one sector/cluster onto another gratuitously.
Cluster is much more sensitive, to the extent one sees ties among corporations outside the sector and the region–clusters are more company focused, and that offers opportunities to assist firms to take advantage of the more simple agglomeration–although agglomeration can do a reasonably good job at identifying sector spinoffs. Colonial America may not be the best time period to examine clusters, but we shall reach outside pure economic agglomeration to insert our sense of cluster formation dynamics.
If you focus on the economic base of a geographic area, an agglomeration is fine–and for the most part that is what we have in this module, although from time to time I make usually unsupported assertions that wander over into cluster formation. Mostly, I want to show to those focused on contemporary economic development, that all this colonial stuff does have some relevance to current economic development paradigms.
The Story Begins in Pennsylvania
When Penn left town in 1701, Philadelphia merchants had already developed inter-provincial coastal and West Indies trade. That is to say, for the twenty years since its founding Pennsylvania had pursued its self-sufficiency strategy in what was politically its darkest days. As argued previously the Free Society of Traders, after about five years of trying, faded gently into the good night, replaced by private initiative and aggressive risk-taking by its expanding and exceeding diverse Philadelphia commercial elite. As we shall see the incorporation of the City of Philadelphia Municipal Corporation only injected more confusion, and less coherence into any public role in economic base-building and the implementation of self-sufficiency.
Interestingly, and ironically, Philadelphia trade with England was a one-way street, with Philadelphia merchants lacking the hard currency that London merchants required, were unable to trade in volume with the Mother Country. In any event just after Penn left (1702) the Queen Anne War erupted; it lasted for more than a decade, and was highly disruptive of West Indies trade in which Philadelphia merchants and shippers had been expeditiously drawn by the success of New England and New York commercial predecessors.
But before Philadelphia commercial and export-inclined merchants could move into the West Indies, they had to address a more immediate self-sufficiency need: to eat. The simple numbers, if not a Maslowian hierarchy of needs, thrust Pennsylvania into its hinterland for agricultural settlement. Most of the early immigrants were agriculturalists in aspiration and experience. They came for homesteading and for the affluent, plantation agriculture. In future topics we shall deal with settlement, agricultural and hinterland development and politics more comprehensively.
Suffice it to say at this point, self-sufficient hinterland settlement will generate need for artisans, and most certainly manufacturing. “From the very beginning of settlement, it was clear that income and wealth could be extracted, more directly and immediately from the wilderness than by planting and harvesting crops. Indeed fishing, fur trapping and timbering not only preceded agriculture as major extractive industries, but also remained important through the entire colonial period” [99] John J. McCusker & Russell R, Menard, The Economy of British America, 1607-1789 ( University of North Carolina Press, 1991), p. 310. Congruent with our present trade and export focus, however, we shall commence our discussion with fishing–the first step to coastal and then export trade.
Fishing–
For their own reasons, Virginians were not much attracted to sea and fishing, but the New Englanders were. Accordingly, we shall discuss this early first step, fishing and early shipbuilding more fully in the next chapter. We can assume that by the time our Pennsylvania folk began tackling fishing as a self-sufficient strategy initiative, Boston and Salem fishermen (not to ignore Newfoundland and New York) had departed from agriculture and into an early artisan occupation. As we shall learn the province of Massachusetts (and even Virginia (license), p. 313) did encourage and provide assistance to the development of a fishing cluster, if only to encourage the trading of furs to Europe.
Fishing required constructing its own boat, with limited range and size sufficient to reach nearby fishing banks. Surprise! This required wood, i.e. timber, wood processing, and hemp (for ropes). At first this was a byproduct of homestead farmers who cleared their homestead and turned to homestead crafts during winter, but demand provided more commercial opportunity. British colonial policy, the “Naval Stores Act of 1705” set quotas for masts, pitch, and planking which were in short supply in England, and great demand in the Nine Years War (1688-97). Little known, colonists built ships to use for export, selling the ship itself in the export port to pay the debt of both export and shipbuilding (hence shipbuilding included a huge balance of payment bonus to the self-sufficing colonial economy, and also provided capital for the self-sufficiency infrastructure).
The colonists built ships both for local use and for the West Indian trade almost from the start of settlement. The industry received a major boost in the 1680’s and after when war-induced increases in demand for ships permitted penetration of the British market [minimized counterproductive regulation] Shipbuilding apparently slumped in the immediate postwar decade … but grew fairly steadily after 1730, with a significant quickening again in the period of the French and Indian War
The need of urban areas for firewood meant river shipping. New housing required furniture, shingles. The most expedient currency of a barter economy was rum–and so farmers developed their home brew and off it went to the piers. BTW, rum meant barrels or casks. Casks were absolutely essential to an export/import trade. In that it was hard to move a cask from hinterland to pier, wagons, sledges sleighs and then carriage production followed. Accordingly, homesteading, the housing, timber production shipbuilding, fur trading and fishing were joined at the hip, developing almost simultaneously in rather quick time frame. These are all artisan occupations.
In a very few years, as furs from wilderness trading with the Indians appeared at the piers awaiting their shipment abroad. Thus before foodstuffs, furs were the prod for larger ships because furs were not needed in the Americas, but were inherently an export product requiring shipment across oceans.
Fishermen also wasted little time in going after the most profitable fishing opportunity: whaling (oil for lamps, ambergris for perfume, whalebone for fasteners, and spermaceti for candles). This meant fishermen required sea-faring ships (not boats). By the time Philadelphia entered into the self-sufficiency fray, their regional predecessors had already developed their export-import clusters, and they were able to borrow their technology, innovation, and trade experiences in developing their own clusters.
The most glaring opportunity that first arose on the trading horizon was caused by the Queen Anne’s War, which opened up the West Indies. Easier to get to than England (if more volatile), it was the West Indies trade that fueled Pennsylvania’s first take-off economic growth. English victory expressed in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, opened up Nova Scotia, Gibraltar (entrance to the Mediterranean), but also the “Asiento”, monopoly rights to transport slaves.
The vacuum left by ravaged Massachusetts shipping was filled by boats from New York and Philadelphia. The rise of the English slave trade generated a series of routes for American merchants that yielded consistent profit, whichever colony pursued it. That was the compelling dynamic that underlay the formation of a powerful commercial-trading economic base in the thirteen colonies–and the rise of a increasingly robust commercial elite that would play no small role in the forthcoming Revolution–and yield enormous input, as argued by Beard, in the making of the American Constitution in 1789.
Flour-Making (Grist Mills), Wheat & Grains Agglomeration: the Lynchpin of Pennsylvania’s Export-Import Self-Sufficiency
The shipbuilding cluster that followed from fishing is usually credited with a foundational role in the economic growth of Pennsylvania (and the New England/Mid-Atlantic regions). It was. You simply could not export without ships in the seventeenth century–there were no major roads that early in North America. But easily pushed aside was the equally necessary requirement that something had to be laden onto the ships, and it was to be transported and sold in order to rectify the overriding need to financially balance one’s exports with one’s imports. Pennsylvania’s and Penn’s economic development plan always assumed it would be wheat and grains (yes, furs also) grown by Pennsylvania homesteaders and plantation owners. Because New England, Massachusetts in particular, pioneered this cluster–and it is core to its future economic base, we will defer our discussion on shipbuilding to the next chapter on Massachusetts.
Little appreciated was that Penn relied on wheat/grains not because he was prescient but because the wheat/grain agricultural nexus preexisted his founding of Pennsylvania. Before he ever stepped foot in Pennsylvania, his new province was already exporting grain. The Swedish/Dutch founded New Castle area was already shipping grain, and Pennsylvania Quakers wasted little time in setting up their own mills to grist the grain and prepare it for shipment.
Brandywine Village: a flour-grist mill cluster
Brandywine Village on the Brandywine and Delaware River Fall Line had its first known mill, owned by a Swede in 1687. Not unsurprisingly, Brandywine Village was Pennsylvania’s first commercial (not town) mill complex, founded by the Quaker Shipley family in the early 1730’s. Elizabeth Shipley was major player, among several Quaker investors, who built an eight building commercial mill complex that exported grain, labeled/branded as “Brandywine Superfine” directly to Europe and West Indies. That complex was greatly expanded in the 1760’s and took over during an after the American Revolution. Brandywine and the surrounding area developed into a major industrial center during that period–achieving its golden years in the first half of the 19th century.
As demand for Pennsylvania flour increased larger merchant mills [commercial mill complexes] appeared. Merchant mills differed from custom [town-centered] mills in that they purchased unprocessed wheat seeds from the farmers and sold the rendered flour at market themselves or through agents. The most famous of these merchant milling centers developed on the banks of the Brandywine River, where shallops (ships slightly smaller than sloops) were loaded directly at the mill with two hundred barrels of flour at a time for shipping to Philadelphia. By the 1770’s the Brandywine mills featured prominently in travel accounts as ‘must-see’ destinations. Their round-the-clock operation contributed to the growth of a symbiotic industrial town. Brandywine Village provided a ready supply of skilled workers such as coopers, millwrights, and ship captains [99] Jennifer Green, “Flour Milling”, https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/jennifer-l-green/.
The son of an original founder (Quaker Thomas Canby) converted an older mill into the area’s first textile mill, and then linked it to the outside world founding and serving as the first CEO of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad (1831) which is leased today by Amtrak. These early flour and textile mills justified, necessitated, the integration of the area into the developing national transportation system. Brandywine Village as it evolved from its original investment in 1731 to the time of the American Constitution (1790) is a wonderful example of one of America’s earliest manufacturing “clusters” as well as amassing a natural sector agglomeration of grist mills.
Colonial cluster development, which today is customarily directed by local-university- state governments, formed or resulted in the incorporation of the local government after having first established a powerful and robust economic base. The process of cluster development consumed over a half-century in colonial days before it achieved its break out glory days; Cluster break out seldom occurs in our contemporary era, and when it does it seldom starts from scratch but comprises a “district” within a world city such as New York, or a national “Silicon Valley” found in China, Israel, and European developed nations.
From such humble town beginnings, entrepreneurial town millers extended their geographic reach by setting up subsidiaries in other towns, and by the 1720’s-1730 establishing the first privately owned commercial mill complexes-such as the 1735 Elizabeth Shipley mill/complex in Brandywine Valley. In 1770’s similar mills were built on the north side of the stream, opposite the older ones (Joseph Tatnall, Delaware’s first great industrialist. Between 1770 and 1816 the Brandywine Mills … increased in number from eight to fourteen. “During this period Oliver Evans introduced the idea of automation to the flour mill industry, and subsequently the mills at Brandywine were mechanized” [99] Peter C. Welsh, the Brandywine Mills: a Chronicle of an Industry, 1762-1816 (Delaware History, March 1955, Vol VII, No. 1, pp17-35), p. 19
By the 1790’s in the vicinity of Wilmington, businessmen had set up along the Brandywine more than sixty gristmills, several fulling mills, a half-dozen saw mills, four paper mills, two snuff mills, a barley mill, a cotton mill, and iron-slitting mill, and a bolting-cloth ‘manufactory’ … The work of Oliver Evans ‘one of the earth’s most famous inventors’ [located in Brandywine Village] … had by 1787 fully automated the flour milling process, the first instance in history of a completely automated production facility [99] John J. McCusker & Russell R, Menard, The Economy of British America, 1607-1789 ( University of North Carolina Press, 1991), pp. 123-4
Our Brandywine Village tale is abbreviated in this module, but one additional fact significantly adds to its importance to us. Brandywine Village is a historic district of today’s Wilmington Delaware–which annexed that suburb in 1869. Thomas Penn previously incorporated Wilmington in 1731 as a borough and county seat of New Castle County, citing its confluence with the Brandywine Grist Mill cluster. The Mill area was then redesigned by Frederick Law Olmstead. In our discussion of Brandywine’s evolution from grist mill to commercial export mill-complexes we are talking about the initial economic base of the City of Wilmington Delaware–Delaware’s present day largest city. Wilmington’s own historical description ignores this period; it has bigger fish to fry: the DuPonts.
Grist Mill as Lynchpin in Export-Import Self-Sufficiency Strategy
I reassert the grist mill was the lynchpin linking the agricultural produce of the hinterland with the urban commercial shipping complex, and thus the key to Pennsylvania’s self-sufficiency strategy nexus. Its success in grain production and export created the foundation for the next leg in Philadelphia industrialization as a textile manufacturer, and then chemical producer. That is a heavy burden of serving as the entry level foundation for Pennsylvania’s future industrial revolution, which will be shared by Iron producers to be discussed shortly. As the reader who trucks on will realize that grist mill is the key artisan institution from which sprang the town centers of hinterland Pennsylvania, and the generator of one of Pennsylvania’s largest and widespread artisan occupations..
“Gristmills appeared in every colonial community almost as soon as the first harvest, they remained necessary as long as farmers were in the area” … bringing with them the lines of communication that linked every colonial farmer with the wider world. … The miller [an artisan occupation] made it his business to keep aware of the basic facts of the market economy … because the local farmers for who he ran his mill, usually paid him in kind. He might keep enough for his own needs, but he then hoped to trade the balance [99] John J. McCusker & Russell R, Menard, The Economy of British America, 1607-1789 ( University of North Carolina Press, 1991), pp. 321-2.
These town or two-story custom mills “serviced a geographic radius of five to ten miles–the distance a farmer could travel with a wagon in one day”. Pennsylvania grist mills were unique in North America. The grist stones and wheel was located within the mill and thus was able to operate during the winter [99] Jennifer L. Green, “Flour Milling”, https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/jennifer-l-green/. Innovation was no stranger to Pennsylvania’s grist mills and this one gave to the province a decided advantage in shipping in bulk through all seasons, key to the southern European trade route.
The town miller, himself became the hinterland’s key export agent, and from that he often pivoted it to enlarge his interests to found the town’s first merchant storeowner running the small town’s first department store–which meant in a barter economy he would purchase rum, farm handicrafts-furniture, niche homestead exports to Philadelphia markets. In a barter economy his ledge books were the source of agricultural investment capital, and his grist and then store was the equivalent of the Philadelphia coffee house–the place to go to find out what was going on.
Mills, including grist mills, were always a target for public regulation in each of the colonies. Partly this was based on the use of water power from rivers and streams which was deemed public by its nature, and partly because grist mills were central to agriculture and homesteading, and to the production of foodstuffs. The medieval and guild heritage also lent itself to an established set of customs that raised public expectations of fairness, honesty and quality–i.e. weights and measures as well as access by all farmers to the grist mill services. The reader will not lack for examples of grist mill public regulation. It was common throughout the states that regulations to protect consumers were pervasive, and a matter in which the public had high expectations.
More salient to our purposes were the efforts by public authorities to “inspect” or set quality standards for grist output that was meant for export. Caught in the Export-Import Self-Sufficiency ED strategy, grist mills “enjoyed” a good deal of “we’re from the government and we are here to help” during a time period where public regulation is often described as limited. Quality and inspections were an important provincial ED tool, one not used vigorously for Virginia tobacco, but elsewhere was commonly practiced. New York’s 1684 Bolting Act set the standard for such regulation. While this history tends to be less involved in the matter of colonial public regulation, the reader might be warned that manufactures of all types encountered serious regulatory practices and initiatives from the earliest days of colonial life straight through the Revolution. Taxes were indeed limited, but no political culture, save the Tidewater, seems to have hindered the imposition of guild-like regulations on manufactures and their businesses.
Thus flour was inspected in the middle colonies. In Pennsylvania laws for this object were recommended repeatedly in the governor’s messages to the assembly, and several such statutes were enacted.. Both New York and Pennsylvania introduced a standard system of grading, using the official term ‘superfine’ for four of the highest quality; each barrel was tested by boring … the size of barrels was likewise prescribed. Packages must bear both the colonial inspector’s brand and name of the maker. Ships’ bread [i.e. eaten onboard] … was subject to similar regulations [99] Vince Selden Clark, History of Manufactures in the United States, 1607-1860 (Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1912), p. 65.
However central to urban life, the sheer volume of grist mills in the hinterland means the cluster, if it is indeed a cluster, was diffused province -wide. Mill complexes, like Brandywine, were on the outskirts of developing cities, and most Philadelphia mills were close to the fields on its outskirts as well. River power was key, and that meant river locations were a prerequisite. “Newport was the only [large] town besides New York where much flour was milled. … Most Pennsylvania flour was milled outside of Philadelphia, brought into town to be bolted or baked, and then shipped away to the islands in the sloops of Quaker merchants. Urban artisans engaged in processing output of grist mills were, of course, diverse and plentiful, and was a central element of Philadelphia’s economic base. Bridenbaugh confirms that by 1717 the Corporation of Philadelphia approved 434 licenses (i.e. “freedoms”), eighty-eight of which were to persons directly connected with the preparation of food to market and export [99] Cities in the Wilderness, pp, 183-4
Core urban business areas, the market places, auctions … and even city fairs disproportionately were engaged in the flour-marketing, distribution and sale. Not fully appreciated was that the port of Philadelphia was from its start a “regional”, i.e. multi-provincial asset. Not only were western New Jersey towns shipping through, but also Maryland and Pennsylvania’s southeast three counties. Maryland, in fact, perceived itself victimized by this Philadelphia trade advantage trade and approved “discriminatory duties, and laws against export of specie to Pennsylvania in 1694, 1695, and 1704” [99] Cities in the Wilderness, p. 181. Pennsylvania’s road system, whatever its weaknesses, was adequate, and in 1695 the province formally made an effort to improve its “cartways” into the southeast, and ferries were in place as well.
Iron-Making: the Mother Lode of Future Industrialization
Pennsylvania, one of the later founded colonial provinces, was not the first by far to forge iron in colonial America. In fact, to some degree each colony developed its own “self-sufficient” cluster(s)–if only because an ordinary blacksmith forge could be used to produce small quantities of iron capable of being wrought into tools, nails, and basic fixtures. During the seventeenth century about a dozen true iron works were founded, and only one, the New Jersey iron mills (we discuss Triton Manor Iron Works) were the only ones that achieved productive operation outside of New England [99] https://www.tintonfalls.com/visitor/history by the end of the seventeenth century.
The iron and steel complex got off to a rough seventeenth century start, but the Great Northern War (1700-1721) challenged and then eliminated the importation of Swedish iron, and Britain focused on using colonial iron as its substitute for Swedish imports. For the first half of the eighteenth century this spurred the construction of “iron plantations”, chiefly in each province’s “hinterlands” where raw materials were accessible. After 1750, especially during and after the French and Indian War, iron forges/complex were in operation in Philadelphia, and an extensive artisan trade based on iron-derivatives (carriage, Franklin stoves, tools, construction and shipbuilding) flourished. Whatever the impact of the global competitive hierarchy, Pennsylvania and Philadelphia iron-related cluster development came out as a colonial winner.
Thus, with the possible exceptions of New Jersey and Massachusetts, iron cluster formation seriously commenced after 1710 and “skyrocketed” through 1750–when Britain clamped down and started to enforce colonial regulations which required shipment of iron to Britain, the processing of pig iron by British forges and refineries, and their sale to final end users. In this module, I concentrate on Pennsylvania’s earliest cluster development because it is clear to me there were two distinct phases in the formation of the Pennsylvania iron cluster: (1) the proof of concept phase, in which Pennsylvanians constructed iron forges and sophisticated iron plantations whose output could be depended upon; and (2) the infusion of capital by Philadelphia merchant capitalists that permitted the iron cluster to expand and develop considerable capacity relative to most other colonies of that period,
Technically, the first iron venture was from Virginia, probably at Falling Creek (near Richmond). Virginia iron ore had been shipped by John Smith to England for testing; the East India Company subsequently reviewed the tests and determined the ore was high quality. Accordingly the Company invested in the facility in 1619. The forge started producing in 1620, but an Indian raid in 1622 killed all twenty-five workers, and destroyed the forge. Other forges were opened in later years but most were little more than a blacksmith’s facility and served local needs at best–although Virginia did export iron to England in small quantities.
Establishing an iron plantation in Massachusetts was close to being a signature project for its first Governor, John Winthrop. He returned to England in 1641 specifically to successfully form a company (the “Company for the Undertakers for the Iron Workes (sic) in New England” ) with investors to finance the facility. The term “iron plantation” is of uncertain heritage but it is heuristic as a more precise description of the complex of functions, buildings, operations, management and workforce that were characteristic of an early colonial iron work in the seventeenth century to the Revolution, and the use continued into the early 19th century until technology and production innovations made the plantation obsolete and non-competitive.
The first Massachusetts facility in Braintree opened in 1645 after receiving from the General Court (the Massachusetts Legislature) a tax abatement and a twenty-one year monopoly. For anti-tax abatement diehards, this was by no means the first tax abatement in colonial America. Tax abatement, it should be understood, is as American as an apple pie, whose orchards, no doubt, were also tax abated. The due diligence for the facility, however, proved faulty as no iron ore was ever found in the riverbanks and swamps nearby (bog iron). (I never said tax abatement works all the time).
True to form, the Braintree facility failed almost immediately and was closed and a new manager was sent in from England by the Company’s Board of Directors. He quickly found a great source of bog iron around Lynn (Saugus was part of Lynn at the time). The Saugus Iron Works (The Hammersmith Works)were constructed and opened a years later in 1645-6. The Massachusetts facilities were extraordinarily elaborate, consisting of a blast furnace, forge, rolling mill, shear, slitter and a quarter-ton hammer, all propelled by seven large water wheels–with a wharf to load the output down the Saugus River t0 neighboring coastal Lynn. Accordingly, Saugus is rightly claimed to be America’s first colonial integrated iron facility. They closed however, because of labor shortages, outright mismanagement, if not corruption, in 1670.
We shall tell that tale of labor shortages in the next chapter, but in this module our attention turns to the Tinton Manor Iron Works that was founded in 1665 by an original patent-holder of New Jersey’s new colony, James Glover. Glover’s due diligence correctly determined that a facility not too far from Atlantic City, in Burlington County–which BTW stretched to the Delaware River not too far from where Philadelphia would be founded sixteen years later. Glover constructed an iron works, but needing more capital to operate it, sold half his company’s interest to yet a Lewis Morris.
The young Tinton Falls Iron Works that opened up in nearby New Jersey in 1674.. Iron-making flourished in southern New Jersey due to the abundance of necessary raw materials needed for both the fire to melt and the iron ore itself. Bog Iron was harvested from river beds and swamps, a no doubt delightful endeavor, and nearby forests of hardwood trees were converted into charcoal, and infused with coastal shells from which were extracted lime vital to the process. The self-same creeks that yield the bog iron could then be used to transport the finish product down river to the Delaware–on which, of course, Philadelphia was established. Which then raises the question of how does 1682 Pennsylvania founding fit into the development of iron-making in British North America?
As well as sufficient capital, Morris had solid political connections and he used them to secure a seven year tax abatement. With sufficient capital the works at Triton Manor, whose workforce was primarily 60 slaves (used for wood-cutting and bog gathering), and was a true example of what was called “an iron plantation”. The machinery used at the Iron Works were “made in America”, almost certainly the first to do so. On Lewis Morris’s death in 1691, his nephew of the same name took over. He was appointed in 1738 as New Jersey’s first royal governor. Another Lewis Morris descendant was a member of the Continental Congress and signer of the Declaration of Independence.
At some point in the 19th century which I could not definitively determine, the Iron Works were closed. It is possible that Tinton output did ship to Philadelphia for local consumption but the quantity was nowhere sufficient to be crucial to her development. In short despite serious initiatives in Virginia, Massachusetts, the other New England colonies, and New Jersey had not by the end of the seventeenth century established the foundation, at least, for the development of viable colonial iron clusters? Only Virginia and Maryland (whose Principio Works, founded only in 1715 by Virginia/Maryland investors, including George Washington’s father Augustine) exported small quantities of pig iron to England [99] Harry Schenawolf, “Iron Forge in Colonial America” Revolutionary War Journal, September 6, 2016 http://www.revolutionarywarjournal.com/iron-forge-in-colonial-america/. What about Pennsylvania when it became a colony in 1682?
Pennsylvania Iron Cluster
Little appreciated, Pennsylvania was the vanguard in American iron cluster development. As an aggregate, colonial America by the 1770’s produced almost one seventh of the total world production. “The colonial iron industry grew rapidly during the eighteenth century. In 1775, at least 82 charcoal-fueled furnaces were in operation, each capable of producing an annual average of 300 tons [and competitive with the technology and scale of English forges]. There were also 175 forges that produced the more ductile bar iron … by refining iron ore itself [refineries that could produce high quality iron to be refashioned into end products]. The industry, whether measured by number of forges and furnaces or by total output, was larger than England and Wales [combined] [99] John J. McCusker & Russell R, Menard, The Economy of British America, 1607-1789 ( University of North Carolina Press, 1991), p.326
It is no accident that Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh specifically, is considered the home base of 19th century iron-steel industrialization. It achieved post-revolution first advantage from the scale that Pennsylvania amassed during the colonial period. That advantage, based on its considerable iron ore deposits, vast forests (charcoal), and later coal beds, and the water power to operate the machinery allowed the state to “take off” in the period following the Revolution. “Pennsylvania led the colonies and the nation in iron production [previous to the Revolution].
“By the time of the Revolution Pennsylvania ironmasters “had erected more than seventy iron furnaces and forges, all fueled by charcoal, in the Schuylkill, Delaware, and Susquehanna River valleys. Iron furnaces smelted iron ore into iron, and forges reheated and hammered this iron into various wrought-iron products. By the early 1800’s ironmasters had followed settlers and demand for iron westward, and firmly established the industry in the Juniata River region and west of the Alleghenies” … After independence the nation’s output of iron grew enormously from 54,100 tons in 1810 to 286,000 tons in 1840. During [that] era Pennsylvania consistently produced half of the nation’s total. In 1870 Pennsylvania manufactured $123 million worth of iron, more than twice that of New York, the second-ranking state [99] https://explorepahistory.com/story.php?storyId=1-9-17. While New England, and later New York captured the commercial export and import sector sectors, Pennsylvania developed an iron-steel making nexus that overcame any deficiency caused by the relative decline of Philadelphia as the nation’s import-export center.
William Penn owned a forge back in England, and in the course of establishing his Proprietary, he made several attempts to jump start iron works to develop a profit-making venture for himself. His quest continued for a number of years, and James Logan was sent on several ventures, which in the end came to naught. The best that could be found were blacksmith fires using imported bloom or sponge iron could be fashioned into implements.
Accordingly, Pennsylvania, and most of the other colonies by 1700 lacked the forges, refineries and furnaces to create “cast or pig” iron from which more high-quality products could be made in volume with some efficiency and cheaper. They needed bloomeries to produce pig iron, and refineries to prepare it for further production necessary for wrought iron end products. That raises the question of how Pennsylvania blacksmiths got their pig iron previous to 1700. That pig iron had to be imported–but from where?
Look to the colonies global competitive hierarchy for an explanation.
Swedish Ore— Britain, whose iron needs were huge imported 80% of its iron in 1700: most of it from its mercantile ally Sweden. It was Swedish iron that the colonies imported. During the 1600’s Sweden was the Baltic Sea powerhouse empire that extended to the Gulf of Finland and into the coastal regions of today’s Germany, Russia and the three Baltic states. In 1700, however, Peter the Great, Denmark, Norway, Prussia and Poland allied and waged the Great Northern War until Sweden’s defeat in 1721. For most of this England/Britain was neutral and Sweden’s principal trading partner. In 1717, Britain entered the war against Sweden after Sweden, seeking allies, supported the Jacobite Scotland in their succession from the United Kingdom. Over the decade and half of that war Britain had to pivot from Sweden for its iron.
What Britain wanted was the colonies, which had sufficiently demonstrated that the resources needed to run full scale forges and blast furnaces could be found throughout the colonies were to be encouraged to establish the capacity to make cast and pig iron in volume sufficient to British needs, and then to ship it to England where British firms and workers/artisans would convert the pig iron into plates, nails, firearms, wagon wheels, steel, and a large variety of household products.–which would be sold to British and American consumers. The Iron Act of 1705 cemented this into official British colonial trade policy–over the loud objections of Americans who had an interest in developing their own comprehensive iron works enterprises.
The iron capacity that America had developed to that point was from “bloomeries” “the most primitive form of smelting [which] reduced the [iron] ore into a porous mass of iron slag called bloom or sponge iron”. The investment and technical barriers to entry to construct bloomeries were relatively low given the number of potential sites available to colonial entrepreneurs that had ready access to iron ore, and forests to feed the fires necessary to smelt it into sponge iron. Considerably more investment and technical expertise–plus a more sophisticated transportation system to move the product around–was much harder to get.
The British anticipated in providing those resources, but less than a decade after the Iron Act American entrepreneurs from the commercial and planter elites committed sufficient capital to colonial resident entrepreneurs so that the latter could built full scale refineries and blast furnaces that could assume the middle-man function in iron-making, and therefore control the sale of their output. The belief of these entrepreneurs is that once they satisfied the requirements of the Iron Act, they would be free to sell directly to American consumers.
While not exactly smuggling, the dodge used by the commercial elite, the sale of American iron to American end-users was at best in tension with British colonial trade policy–from its start to the Revolution. It seems the most common “dodge” was to divert production after it was forged into pig iron, but previous to its being “hammered” or rendered into a form suitable for shipping. The un-hammered iron was sent to local blacksmiths or merchants who had contracted for it. Diverted iron, never having been considered as final output, was not entered into official logs or inventory.
The 1714 Iron Plantation Land Grab Movement
In 1716 Pennsylvania’s first bloomery, and by 1720 its first forge/refinery were built by a founder of the Pennsylvania iron cluster, Thomas Rutter. Rutter has acquired much of the fame as an “Iron King”, the “team” he was part of is the real story. Four individuals (Rutter, Samuel Savage, Thomas Potts, and Samuel Nutts proved to key leaders of Pennsylvania’s pre-1750 first phase of cluster development.
Rutter, a Quaker who arrived in 1682 with Penn, a blacksmith, who quite likely along with his wife resided and was employed by William Penn on his personal estate, had longstanding interest in iron and the establishment of an iron works, is today regarded as sort of the founder of Pennsylvania’s iron industry. It is certainly evident that he, and the herd of merchant investors that secured part interest in his iron works, were watched by others. The success of his ventures resulted in a flurry of other iron works/plantation projects throughout and after the 1720 was completed. Most of these early projects were in hinterlands in very rural areas in Pennsylvania’s southeast, and in later periods it was necessary to construct road access to these sites when water transport need be supplemented. Nutt actually returned to England and came back with indentured workers possessing skills. Rutter was the iron master, and his son-in-law, Samuel Savage was his construction manager in the first projects.
To build and successfully run an iron works in a constantly fluctuating economy, ironmasters needed considerable funds, expertise and managerial talent. Before 1840 the great majority of ironmasters formed partnerships to generate capital and spread liability among several partners. They often relied on partnerships with relatives, friends and previous business associates. Thomas Potts and his son John, who established the largest ironmaking empire in colonial America, were masters of partnering with relatives to buy and build ironworks. Many ironmasters were also merchants who diversified their holdings and risks by branching into iron manufacturing [[99] “The Philadelphia Iron Industry: Furnace and Forge of America”, Chapter 2, Iron Plantations, and their Masters and Workers, 1716-1840, https:// explorepahistory.com/ story.php?storyId=1-9-17.99]
It should be little surprise then to find Rutter’s initial ventures (Rutter’s Bloomery and Colebrookdale Furnace were financed by partnerships in which Rutter was a minority partners (3/8), The next largest partner was Anthony Morris (I) who held a 1/8 interest. Morris, a Quaker, preachers, brewer, real estate speculator, judge, and former mayor of Philadelphia. Behind Morris with an equal 1/8 investment was Alexander Wooddrop who at the time was a businessman/merchant in St Kitts, and who moved to Philadelphia in 1721. Wooddrop formed a iron and nail business which built many a fine mansion in Philadelphia. He also served on the Municipal Corporation City Council [99]. http://www.amphilsoc.org/bulletin/20011/stief11.htm.
George Mifflin, yet another Philadelphia merchant who founded a family that made the highest levels of the Social Register; Samuel Preston (1/8), jurist, longstanding Pennsylvania provincial treasurer, merchant and mayor of Philadelphia, a Quaker and close associate of James Logan and a trustee of William Penn’s will; and William Attwood, a future mayor of Philadelphia. My reaction to the members of this partnership closely it is tied to Quakers, the Proprietary, and the Municipal Corporation of Philadelphia. My belief is no one from the Lloyd faction or its Quaker Party participated in these ventures. It is also of note that a second major initiative by former Governor William Keith–no friend of Lloyd or the Proprietary–formed his own partnership (Rutter, however, was) [99] Forges and Furnace’s in the Province of Pennsylvania, the Committee on Historical Research, National Society of the Colonial Dames of America, 1914, https://library.si.edu/digital-library/book/forgesfurnacesin00nati, p. 15
A reasonable review of the literature associated with these projects, certainly over the next decade and even more, reveals a legally sanctioned “land grab” (acquisition of considerable acreage in multiple parcels in backwater hinterland, by a number of individuals, such individuals usually participants in the Pennsylvania policy system). Rutter, a blacksmith by lifelong trade, for example when he purchased the land and built the bloomery was a sitting member of the Pennsylvania Legislature (1713-16) who took a “leave of absence” with legislative concurrence to conduct his iron-making activities. Rutter, the Bailiff of Germantown who succeeded Daniel Pastorius its founder, was a person with considerable local influence.
Samuel Nutt, his oft-times Philadelphia-based investment/ownership partner was the closed thing to the CEO and the principal “deal-maker”, and Thomas Potts an eventual son-in-law, were also a members of the Legislature at some point during this period, and the latter among several other offices included the Proprietary Council; William Keith, a former governor and powerful and disruptive political leader also developed several iron plantations during this period). Potts, a man of substantial interest was interestingly a subscriber to Benjamin Franklin’s Lending Library in 1732. Present day Pottstown PA is named after him. A flurry of other iron works soon followed. A friend, neighbor and fellow iron investors, Samuel Nutts and Thomas Potts combined to establish the first of many “iron plantations”, Coventry Forge in Chester County, 1732.
That several participants were devout and practicing Quakers–Rutter was a minister at one point in his life and a religious activist during the turbulent 1790’s, and an outspoken abolitionist as well–there is little sense that any participant felt conflicted by ethics or conflicts of interest–and amazingly both legislative and proprietary officials took part in investment, the boards of companies, and the sale and transfer of land titles (by William Penn to Rutter in 1714 for instance). I inject this aspect of the period into the history as descriptive of an economic development policy process that poorly fits into our present day sense of professional ethics and political conflict of interest.
The 17th century “art of the deal”, so critical to economic development today has certainly evolved since 1715. I repeat that I was not able to discern concern by anybody that any “red line” had been crossed. I had earlier noticed the rather loose nature of public private partnerships in Samuel Carpenter’s ownership/construction of the Philadelphia Long Wharf–complete with tax abatement and land use rights–during William Penn’s first tenure in Pennsylvania.
The reader is cautioned that this assessment is my own–it is found in no history or article I have read–all the information cited above is drawn from these conventional histories and is available for the reader’s evaluation [See in particular, “Forges and Furnaces in the Province of Pennsylvania“, the Committee on Historical Research, National Society of the Colonial Dames of America, 1914, https://library.si.edu/digital-library/book/forgesfurnacesin00nati; Daniel A. Graham, “Rutter’s Bloomery, 1716-1720 Berks County Pennsylvania’s First Iron Work, 2003; Melissa Pilar McValley, “Pine Forge Iron Plantation”, Masters Thesis University of Pennsylvania, 2002.
Once Established Investment in Iron Becomes Attractive–Finally, while the very earliest ironwork ventures were formed by partnerships, mostly composed of Quakers often with friends and associates developed during the bitter political years previous to 1720, it did not take very long for the cluster to “open up” to all manner of entrepreneurs.
While the first Pennsylvania ironmasters were Quakers, the group soon became a diverse one. Men of initiative and enterprise from various countries, often with little capital, ventured into the industry. Thomas Rutter, Samuel Nutt and John Taylor represented those from England, James Morgan, Thomas Potts, and James Old were of welsh origin. Henry William Stiegel [more on him shortly], John Probst, and Peter Schoenberger were German. Robert Grace, Robert Coleman and George Taylor were Scotch Irish descent”. Others were French, Scots. Certainly eighteenth century ironmasters were more native born [99] Arthur C. Bining, “Early Ironmasters of Pennsylvania“, Pennsylvania History, Vol. XVIII, No.2, April, 1951), p.96.
The key to Pennsylvania’s formidable development of an iron cluster before 1750 was the willingness of its Philadelphia merchant and Quaker plantation elite to invest in the partnerships formed to found iron plantations. The closeness of that community to the iron innovators and pioneers was quite remarkable. Indeed, Victor Selden Clark, the dean of colonial manufacturing states “It was the presence of capital, as well as natural resources that caused the iron industry to get so firm a foothold in Pennsylvania and New Jersey … [in Pennsylvania] were formed the first strictly local companies [i.e. partnerships] for undertaking ironworks on a scale large enough to give a capitalist character to this industry” [99] Victor Selden Clark, History of Manufactures in the United States, 1607-1860 (Carnegie Institution of Washington. 1916), digitized by the Microsoft Corporation by Internet Archive in Toronto, 2007, p. 173. The same can be said for investors. Investor-owned partnerships dominated the sector-cluster, and as diverse a motley crew as could be assembled, from Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Penn, invested in different partnerships.
The shift from early stage, startup iron cluster investment to the post-takeoff mature iron cluster is not necessarily dramatic, but seems to have been woven into the fabric of iron plantation life cycle. A goodly number of the ironworks established in the Rutter post 1721 wave had their ups and downs; Rutter’s furnaces closed down relatively early. Potts’s Reading Furnace was more successful but it too had its ebbs and flows.
Some assert the second major ironwork built after Rutter’s 1721 furnace was the Durham Ironworks in Bucks County. It opened in 1726-7 and its investment partnership was led by none other than our James Logan, with a 1/4 the interest. Like Rutter’s investment group, the partnership was drawn from Logan’s vast network of allies, friends, co-religionists, and a smattering of opportunists. Durham, unlike Rutter’s furnaces continued well into the 19th century–but herein we can see how different investment groups enter the picture, and the nature of these investment groups change subtlety.
Durham was sold several times during the 18th century, and during the Revolution it was confiscated from its loyalist-inclined owners. These periodic sales and full-scale modernization that accompanied them all required new injections of capital and new investment groups. In that Durham persisted into a period in the early 19th century, technological and logistical change meant huge injections of new capital. Surprisingly, investment in the very early furnaces was modest relative to the new furnaces built decades later.
The iron plantations expanded, and when the shift of fuel from charcoal to coke occurred, for instance, this required new furnaces, new fuel logistics, and even a new workforce. In order words the capital requirements for a iron and steel furnace changed considerably over time, and unsurprisingly so did the investment groups. The first major shift came after the 1750’s and picked up steam after the French and Indian War. This shift, within the time frame of this module and chapter, In the 1750’s we can see, as Doerflinger traces, the movement of Philadelphia merchants and particularly Philadelphia shippers into the iron cluster investment groups.
In that period before the Revolution, Doerflinger assets that over two dozen wealthy Philadelphia merchants. He considers that involvement in iron manufacturing a bit remarkable in that it cut against the grain of the business strategy and organization of these typical wealthy merchants. They usually ran small companies, with a few moving parts as needed, and with few employees, clerks and sea captains. Ironworks investment got them involved in enterprises that held thousands of acres of land, hundreds of employees, technology volatility (and Indian attack), and compared to a construction of a ship, furnaces were six times more expensive [99] For this section see Thomas M. Doerflinger, A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise: Merchants and Economic Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia (University of North Carolina Press, 1986), pp. 151-7
Doerflinger senses the motivation of these wealthy merchants was but a variant of that we see in the Boston merchants (the future cotton Whigs), who shifted at the same time into cotton-textile manufacturing as an investment for these mature wealthy individuals that promised a healthy return of the investment over a sustained period of time–in short the gazelle-like growth potential of an iron mill had made the investment in it attractive to investors with deeper pockets–and that was well because to be a gazelle meant sustained heavy investment–iron making was capital intensive by this point.
All this suggests that colonial clusters were not insensitive to time, environmental change, or transformations in technology and markets. The growth and the decline of iron plantation alerts us that “deindustrialization” (by which I mean the breakdown, even collapse, of a sector cluster) was not unheard of in colonial days. Seldom is noted when these occur (collapse of whale oil, for example, which brought New England’s whaling industry to a screeching halt). But as we shall see in this and other modules, this is all too common even in colonial America. That clusters have life cycles, can be seen less clearly through the mists of history, but the iron-making cluster in Pennsylvania certainly went through several major transformation, leaving a much reduced cluster in present-day Pennsylvania. My work, As Two Ships, devotes more than a few pages to this topic.
There was a second reason that was also attractive to these shipping merchants. To run a successful balance of payment, agricultural exports were not sufficient. For shipments to England to overcome the import deficit, Philadelphia shippers could not fill their ships with unwanted grain; rather lumber and iron proved to be what the British wanted. Since most Pennsylvania iron production served Pennsylvania (or American) consumption, Shipper ownership of ironworks could endure a cost-effective and secure access to iron for shipment to England. In the period before the Revolution, the timing of such investment was perfect, and at a critical juncture in the evolution of the iron culture, the investment capital so vital to its future–and to Pennsylvania’s future as the leader of American 19th century industrial development–fell into place.
Economic Development Implications of Pennsylvania Iron Plantations–The very earliest iron plantations of Rutter, Nutt, and Potts were less robust, smaller in footprint, and their management and ownership more fluid, their interlocking corporations, spread across a number of seemingly discrete plantations, created the mass volume needed to prove iron making could be profitable and technically competitive in the hinterlands of Pennsylvania. They evolved, became more complex and “institutionalized” their procedures, management and operation. Part of an iron cluster “movement” that followed the decade or so after 1720, it was this earliest vanguard that we credit most in settling Pennsylvania down on its industrial path.
Iron Plantations were found in each colony-province that constructed an Iron Works during this time period. At each of the “iron plantations” there were many buildings, ranging from various production sites, fire pits, refinery forges, and hammering building. Dorms for the workers, and iron master mansion were also on site. Associated buildings like a grist house and logistics focused infrastructure were common. Similar in function and internal agglomeration of facilities from various sectors relevant to the budding cluster to an agricultural plantation, they were in effect a small town almost, privately governed–i.e. a colonial era company town.
As they matured these iron plantations generated some literature that firmly suggests a sort of medieval or feudal society took root, with all its socio-economic warts and dysfunctions. Both types of plantations were located exclusively in rural areas, apart from villages or towns/counties although legally within their boundaries, they did little to prompt meaningful urbanization. [99] See Arthur Cecil Bining, “the Iron Planation of Early Pennsylvania”, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol 57, No. 2 (1933), pp. 117-37. Their glory days waned after 1840, and as modern iron and technology innovation transformed the industry sector, the cluster shifted to areas, like Pittsburgh west of the Alleghenies. Today they are historical districts, with ruins and recreations hopefully perpetuating the heritage and memory of a foundation economic cluster that formed our nation, and set the Middle Atlantic (and northern Midwest) states down a 19th century industrialization.
While iron was exported from Pennsylvania, in quantities that were meaningful to the province’s balance of trade, the great bulk of its pig iron and refined iron were used in local, province, and coastal trade to other colonies. Pennsylvania departed from other colonies who were unable to satisfy local demand for bloomery or pig iron, and whose local blacksmiths and iron-relevant artisans were left in need. Not surprisingly, Pennsylvania was able to satisfy some of that through intracoastal trade.
During the later colonial period iron and ironware were among the most important coastwise commodities ,,, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland shipped pig iron to Massachusetts where it was cast into pots and kettles, and refined into bars, and manufactured into nails and implements, part of which were reshipped to the central and southern colonies. New England manufacturers were also insistent buyers of nail rods from Philadelphia forgemen. Pennsylvania likewise exported manufactured iron. In 1752 more than 4600 tons of bar and iron were shipped from Philadelphia, mostly to other colonies and the West Indies, the greater part of which must have been manufactured in America as the imports of Pennsylvania and the neighboring provinces never exceeded a few hundred tons per annum. In the eighteenth century Pennsylvania stoves were advertised in Boston, Before the adoption of the Constitution [including the years of the Articles of Confederation] tools and agricultural implements made in Philadelphia were sold extensively in other colonies … [and the West Indies] [99] Victor Selden Clark, History of Manufactures in the United States, 1607-1860 (Carnegie Institution of Washington. 1916), digitized by the Microsoft Corporation by Internet Archive in Toronto, 2007, pp. 114-5
An important reason why pig iron export never took off in the colonial period was that it was exceedingly difficult to get it to Philadelphia. Accordingly, “Ironmasters frequently asked the colonial assembly to improve roads and transportation … Petitioners from Lancaster County noted in 1736 that they suffered from a ‘want of Passable Roads’, and appealed for a ‘Great Wagon Road from the Town of Lancaster to the Ironworks in Coventry and a t Reading Furnace” . [99] “The Philadelphia Iron Industry: Furnace and Forge of America”, Overview, https:// explorepahistory.com/ story.php?storyId=1-9-17. https://explorepahistory.com/story.php?storyId=1-9-17.
As we shall later see, building road infrastructure was not a priority for the provincial legislature. They built these highways only when majorities could be assembled in the legislature, and that was both infrequent and usually confined to the geography favored by the legislative majority, and not to the greater provincial welfare or economic interest. Even by the early nineteenth century, transportation to Philadelphia was still a problem. Accordingly, “ironmasters began to transport more products father afield, sending iron on horseback to Pittsburgh, or down the Juniata and Susquehanna Rivers to [– of all places–] Baltimore. Poor transportation deterred sales in wider markets, however, until the spread of canals and railroads” [99] “The Philadelphia Iron Industry: Furnace and Forge of America”, Overview, https:// explorepahistory.com/ story.php?storyId=1-9-17.
Until 1750, enforcement of the 1705 Iron Act was uneven to non-existent, and since local and provincial officials were often official or unofficial participants in the iron plantation or its ownership, there were incentives not to look too closely. In 1750 new legislation attempt to close the loopholes, and it generated considerable hostility among relevant interests. As such it was a small but congruent part of the resistance to the British colonial trade characteristic of the last decade or so previous to the Revolution. One wonders how this sector fared during the period of non-importation after 1770.
As the colonies moved towards rebellion [in 1775] [American] iron forges expanded their capacities beyond merely shipping smelted pig iron to England. Refineries were built. Blast furnaces made bar iron and steel that produced high quality products ranging from pots and pans to cannon and musket barrels. By the start of the American Revolution, the colonies had a highly developed iron industry. If the colonies were taken as one country, they were within the top five iron producers of the world, and third in terms of exports.[99] Harry Schenawolf, “Iron Forge in Colonial America” Revolutionary War Journal, September 6, 2016 http://www.revolutionarywarjournal.com/iron-forge-in-colonial-america/.
Glass-Making Cluster: Clusters don’t necessarily conform to political boundaries
A major reason we discuss the glass-making cluster is that it drew from German immigrants, and benefited immensely . They brought entrepreneurism and some expertise with them–and were recruited for that purpose. It does not appear that glass-making provided any material economic prosperity to the typical German immigrant, not did it offer employment in their neighborhoods and communities. Rather German immigration was important to the founding and sustenance of the cluster. The “style of that cluster-formation is likely to be different than that observed in either fishing or iron-making.
Glass-making required forges and furnaces similar to those of iron-making. Forests nearby were needed to fuel the furnaces and that was central to their original location. Glass-making, did not need iron ore, of course, but it did need sand and clay from which glass was made. Besides windows and mirrors, glass was used for bottles and high quality tableware. All were essentially personal and household products, which was biased toward urban households but to some degree desired by the hinterland population as well.
Glass-making is also a second stage consumer-led cluster that will come late in the transition from the export-import nexus to an economic base dominated by domestic concerns and priorities. That is a reason why the southern New Jersey cluster included Philadelphia and its immediate hinterland as the need was always to develop a sufficient market area to support the cluster. If present day cluster formation can benefit from colonial experience, we may see different styles of cluster development emerge from our discussion, and we may become more sophisticated in our cluster development strategies as they take into account new dynamics that affect their development.
From the get-go we can observe from the glassmaking cluster that in colonial America clusters did not necessarily require an urban economic base. The iron and now glass-making cluster required access to forests for charcoal production the fuel that fed its furnaces. These were hinterland-resident clusters that only later made their appearance in urban areas. With the glass-making cluster we can offer one more insight; clusters did not necessarily conform to political boundaries. This glass-making cluster overlapped two provinces. It began first, and persisted the longest in New Jersey. Philadelphia was its closest urban center, and export port. The eighteenth century glass-making cluster’s home base was southern New Jersey–but it extended to include Philadelphia and eastern Pennsylvania.
Seventeenth century colonial glassmaking did not fare very well–in any colony. It started and failed first in Virginia, and it did not enjoy commercial success in New England. So glass was imported mostly from Venice and from the Continent. The issue behind cluster stagnation was not the lack of basic resources necessary to production; rather it seemed to be a lack of technical glassmaking expertise, and not evident at the time, the lack of a sufficient market to purchase the output of a growing cluster–that inhibited entrepreneurship and possibly investment.
Glassmaking was no not doing well in Mother England during this period either–indicating that glass expertise was not yet firmly acquired by the English or their emigrants. If expertise was missing, the story below alerts us that the founder of America’s first glassmaking cluster had never been trained in glassmaking, but rather was a Philadelphia merchant and brass manufacturer. In this tale of cluster development, it was the entrepreneur, not the glassmaking master that started things off. There are cultural hints that his German approach to company management set him apart from American clusters such as our iron-management cluster. Wistar’s “glassmaking plantation” also different in important ways from the American iron plantation.
The first known Pennsylvania glassmaker was Lars Person Cock, a Swede, who lived in the Swedish settlement at today’s Kensington/Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia. He is known in 1680 to have written the King of Sweden to send masters of glassmaking to him [99] http://historical-american-glass.com/pennsylvania-early-glass.html. Technically, Pennsylvania’s glass-making experience started with its founding in 1682. Glassmaking, a target of Penn’s Free Society of Traders, was included in the Society’s 1683 ED provincial plan. Penn expressed at that time his desire for the enterprise–and later commented about its establishment.
Accordingly, the Traders recruited an English glassmaker, Joshua Tittery (who arrived in Philadelphia, September, 1683, as an employee of the Society. Tittery was tasked, according to James Claypoole his boss, “to set up a glass house for bottles, drinking glass, and window glass” for the Quaker colony. His glassworks location is not known for certain, probably along the Delaware near the village of Frankford, or perhaps near Kensington/Fishtown, more a Philadelphia suburb. It mattered little because the endeavor quickly ran afoul of the bad fortune enjoyed by the Society for Free Traders. By July, 1685, Society records indicate it was no longer able to pay Tittery’s salary. Whatever followed we know not, but by the 1690’s Tittery was a potter [99] Jack McCarthy, “Glassmakers and Glass Manufacturing“, 2019 https:// philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/ archive/category/jack-mccarthy/ . Strike One against government-planned cluster development.
There are hints that other Pennsylvania glassmaking ventures followed Tittery (over the next several decades), but they were evidently not successful either. It was not until 1738 that the first commercially successful glassmaking enterprise was founded–in Salem New Jersey by a resident-investor-entrepreneur of Philadelphia. Caspar Wistar, a Palatine German, born in 1696, who emigrated arrived in 1717 Philadelphia. He is going to be the father of the first successful North American glassmaking cluster.
Caspar Wistar–Wistar walked off the Philadelphia pier at age twenty-one. A German Palatine, whose family was forester by profession, a profession inherited by Wistar. A forester apprentice he was turned off by pay cuts from his noble employer, and by the incredible devastation of Palatine during a series of wars. So in 1717 he left behind his hereditary title and position and crossed the Atlantic. He arrived broke (supposedly with nine cents and a rifle), registered for naturalization under the name Wistar, and worked at various entry positions in soap and then brass button making. He became a citizen in 1724, converted to Quakerism in 1726, and in between married a wealthy Quaker, Catherine Jansen, and eventually fathered seven children.
Wistar’s breakthrough venture was opening a retail goods store in Philadelphia, near Franklin’s home. They became good friends, very good friends–which was quite an achievement as Franklin was no Germanophile. In a relatively short time Wistar became somewhat wealthy, probably from his real estate speculations, and his purchase of a button and brass making furnace-facility. On a sales trip to sell his brass buttons, Wistar discovered that in nearby Salem County New Jersey the township of Alloway had easy access to the necessary resources for glassmaking. Why glassmaking? I don’t know–he had no expertise or training in it, but I suspect, as an owner of a brass works, he was aware that facility and its technology overlapped with that of glassmaking, and his strong retail background no doubt made him sensitive of potential market demand.
His glassmaking venture began in 1737 by buying 2,000 acres in Salem County, NJ, and starting construction of a glassmaking facility from scratch. In 1738, he leased fifty acres of land for wood, and then contacted experienced glassmakers from his former home in Palatine. The German artisans contacted were interested and Wistar made them a deal they could not refuse.
He offered to share profits from the facility with them, and formalized it into a legal joint venture. Four interested German glassmakers moved to the New World each believing they would manage their own glassmaking syndicate within Wistar’s glassmaking conglomerate. From my research I have found this to be an extraordinary form of business organization for that time period, and I suggest Wistar’s openness to it may be a derivative of his German values that included a greater respect for artisans, and a willingness to decentralize management and production in his company. Part of the deal was these masters would teach Wistar the skills and technology of glassmaking–but they would not teach anyone else.
The four artisans arrived from Rotterdam in September 1738. Wistar then evolved a corporate structure for the facility in which each master had a significant ownership interest, and a specific subsidiary firm to conduct their own approach to glassmaking. Wistar also recruited his brother, and set him up in a retail store in New York City–while he would sell the facility output in Philadelphia. Again this was a departure in that the typical retail business of the time did not compete in other provincial markets (Franklin, it must be said, also devised his personal method to do the same for printing/newspapers–both were departures. Wistar never moved to New Jersey, rather he continued to reside in Philadelphia and operate out of his retail shop. His sons did the same. The facility complex in Salem County New Jersey was left to the oversight of his artisan joint venture partners.
In Salem County, Wistar built up what we could call a glass-making plantation. The German joint ventures hired other artisans to supplement their operation. Indentured servants were brought in to operate production, dorms and other housing followed. A mansion for the factory foreman, which Wistar used when he wandered by, was built. A company store for the workers and township residents suggested a different approach to worker management and town relations than the typical iron plantation.
There seems to have developed a local identity with glassmaking and the township of Alloway. Apparently it takes a village to start a glassmaking facility. The heart, if not the soul of the Pennsylvania glassmaking culture was always based in a home in southern New Jersey. When the time came, spin offs and new glassmaking-associated ventures agglomerated in that area. When the village was formally incorporated as a township in 1878–nearly a hundred years after the Wistar facility had closed up shop–they adopted the name Glassboro.
With organization such as this, the venture was successful. The venture and all its subsidiaries began trading at the Philadelphia proto-stock market, under the name of “United Glass Company. Wistar’s facility produced about 15,000 glass bottles per year. Inexpensive, with low-cost raw materials nearby, the factory also produced window glass, rum flasks and tableware. Interestingly, revealing Wistar’s sound retail skills, from the start the Wistar glass brand imported Bristol glass from England. His customer base seems to have always been drawn to the English brand, and Wistar balanced his domestic production with foreign. He also developed his own brand based on the color and style, as well as differences in production of his own glassware. Wistar bottles are identifiable today and are collectors’ items.
It is claimed that the Wistar Salem County facility was the first successful glassmaking company in all the thirteen colonies. Franklin was a client, he designed and Wistar made his experimental tubes and glass globes, and they worked together in his study of electricity–Franklin is alleged to have conducted his first kite experiment at Wistar’s house. Other Philadelphia scientists (David Rittenhouse for one) also used his experimental glass products. Wistar died in 1752, and his son Richard continued his management of the facility and company.
Like a chip off the old block, Richard continued the traditions of progressive and enlightened management. With sales good, several of his artisans spun off a production facility in a nearby locations, becoming the cornerstone economic base that attracted a nexus of other facilities and businesses to support the budding cluster. The history of this cluster strongly supports an assertion that artisans developed working for the Wistar Company, and spun off to other glassmaking companies, if not to ownership than to advance their careers. The half-century dominance of Wistar facility in the proto-cluster literally meant it was the “womb” of the larger cluster that followed.
As we shall see other major glassmaking companies entered into competition around the Revolution. While not discussed in this module, the glassmaking cluster really set down its two-province roots during the early nineteenth century, and the Philadelphia metro area developed its own sub-cluster in the Kensington/Fishtown district. The mother facility, however, entered into tough times during and after the Revolution. A major problem for Wistar’s adjacent township was the area suffered from deforestation, and Wistar’s glass works did not survive Richard’s personal troubles, his remote management, the turbulence of the Revolutionary War, and presumably the competition from other firms. After 1781 it declined significantly, and was sold in parts to members of the Wistar family–the facility itself ceased functioning in 1793. The center for the cluster shifted a few miles up the road to present day Glassboro.
Leaving behind Glassboro and the southern New Jersey sub-cluster for another day, the next known Pennsylvania major glassmaking facility was the Hilltown Glass Works in (Perkasie) Bucks County. Today this is outside the boundaries of the Philadelphia metro area, and that suggests its development might have been inspired by its own dynamics. That is supported by land sales which indicates the area was owned by our James Logan and was sold by him and others to English and Welsh Baptists.
In later years, German immigrants also established residence in the area after the turn of the eighteenth century. Of certain is that on August 31, 1750, the ship Nancy arrived from Rotterdam with passengers, two of which played an important role in subsequent Pennsylvania glassmaking: Johann Georg Musse, and Heinrich Wilhelm Stiegel. It is asserted that German residents in the Perkasie area recruited (somehow) Musse to construct a glass works for the benefit of the local German population–employment and bottles. Musse opened his glassworks in 1752, and from 1753 it produced glassware of distinctive style for purchase.
Musse died in 1760, but glassware production continued to the Revolutionary War when production seems to have stopped.–the area did suffer from intermittent raids and minor battles. The glassworks were acquired by a new ownership (Peter Maurer aka Mason, a German). A second facility was built (whether it substituted for the first or was an addition is not known). At some point in the eighteenth century it failed as well. The inclusion of this works in this history is partially motivated to its apparent role as a likely German community development initiative that in its way may have followed a Wistar model.
Our final example of Pennsylvania’s glassmaking cluster is Mannheim the obsession of the charismatic celebrity, Henry William Stiegel. The other glassmaker on board the 1850 Rotterdam ship Nancy was Henry William Stiegel. From Cologne, Stiegel upon arrival from Germany, assumed a position, probably clerks, with the firm that owned the “Nancy”. Whether there was a prior relationship with the Stedman brothers (owners of the firm), or he developed a relationship from employment, the Stedman Brothers were to be Stiegel’s go-to financing sources for at least three decades.
After two years, in 1752, Stiegel took a position in a Lancaster iron works owned by Jacob Huber, a Mennonite German. Huber had founded his own ironworks, probably funded by his father who had also moved to Lancaster County sometime in 1730. The foundry was founded around 1750. Stiegel married Huber’s daughter, Elizabeth, and Huber seemingly educated Stiegel in ironmaking. It seems he sold at least one portion of his complex to Stiegel in 1757. Huber died in 1759, and his daughter Elizabeth died in giving Stiegel his second child in 1758.
Enter the Stedman Brothers who together with Stiegel purchased a iron forge in Berks County, which he called “Elizabeth”, and shortly after purchased a second iron plantation, Charming Forge near Lancaster. Stiegel at this point was one-third owner of the two iron works, and the general manager. Through hard work, the Elizabeth works in particular flourished. The volume of output was high and exceptionally diversified. Within two years after acquiring ownership, Stiegel employed about seventy-five works, many of which were German Redemptionist transported by the Stedman Brother ships.
His market was principally local, Reading to Philadelphia (stoves, pans, pots, kettles,, and sugar refining utensils for sale in the West Indies, and he improved upon Franklin’s stove and evolved a competing brand bearing his name–which seemingly was quite effective and successful. Stiegel like Wistar created opportunities for residents in his surrounding area, and through the Stedman Brothers opened up a frontier trading store with imports from their ships. In particular, he developed extensive contracts with homestead farmers for both cut wood and wood for his furnaces–the area, to be sure dependent upon his iron plantation, also entered into prosperous times. By the early 1760’s (during the French and Indian War) employment at his facilities reached over two hundred–a very sizeable employment base for that period.
Stiegel was a devout Lutheran, with a close working and personal association with Henry Melchior Muhlenberg who was to become the Lutheran Bishop of Pennsylvania–and arguably the major leader of the German Pennsylvanian population–and the formal head of Pennsylvania’s Lutheran congregation. Stiegel donated land in Mannheim Pennsylvania for Muhlenberg to build a church, and Stiegel was to be a founding member of the German Society of Pennsylvania organized in 1764; he also led the fundraising for to construct the Society’s first building.
So far no glassmaking. Stiegel was an iron lord through the early 1760s. At that time, however, he sold his interest in Charming Forge back to his Stedman Brothers partners, and they sold one-third interests in their Mannheim problem to him. At the war’s conclusion between 1763 and 1764 Stiegel built up a complex of facilities and forges at Mannheim, including a Lutheran chapel in which he preached–and a concern facility at which he formed an instrumental orchestra. He used the facility to make glass, a commercial idea which soon became Stiegel’s personal obsession–and obsession was what it was.
As the reader will discover in a future module, the period after the French and Indian war was a turbulent one, both politically and economically. If the war years had been profitable, the post war was challenging. Stiegel’s earlier fortune was from iron making, but in the post war he sold off his ironmaking and poured the proceeds into his glassmaking venture at Mannheim. The quality and style of his glass was exceptional for the time period; its gentle imperfections giving it character and attractiveness (like ripped and varying colored jeans) are highly collectable in today’s markets.
At this point, the reader might be made aware of Stiegel’s charismatic, but equally erratic or quirk some personality. He called himself a “Baron”–which he was not–spent money in a very elaborate and materialistic lifestyle that included a castle resident in Mannheim. His larger-than-life personality made him attractive to many, a hero to his Lancaster county fellow residents, and a very difficult businessman, employer and partner. For nearly a century after, the local communities celebrated his annual Festival of the Red Rose, which is still held in the local Zion Lutheran Church originally built on land donated by Baron Stiegel whose only payment was to be a “solitary red rose”.
In that his glassmaking venture-obsession (almost like space travel today) was a venture capital endeavor floated on other people’s money and an image of innovation and creativity, the reader might consider today’s batch of colorful investors and innovators could also be found in colonial America, even without mass/social media. The Russian immigrant Musk stands on the shoulder of the German immigrant Baron Stiegel.
His longstanding partners, the Stedman’s, were outraged at his new obsession, and his growing lack of interest in managing their profitable iron making facilities. Their partnership broke apart, and in response, Stiegel double down and borrowed huge sums with Mannheim as collateral, to expand his glassmaking production. His constant expansion plans interfered greatly with the efficiency of his glass and iron facilities and profitability suffered, From his most profitable year in 1772, he went into bankruptcy in 1774.
To make matters worse, the Sugar/Stamp Acts generated such an uproar, to which English reaction resulted in great instability in the capital and export-import markets. Stiegel could not find any buyers for the remaining iron interests and so, lacking financial liquidity, he wound up defaulting on the loans and was sent to debtor’s prison. Bailed out by friends and family–and an act of pardon by the Pennsylvania General Assembly–he remained in poverty, moving residences constantly, until he died in 1785. He was 56, and to this day his grave site is unknown.
From this the reader might conclude that glassmaking was not successful in Pennsylvania. This is simply untrue. Glassmaking had a difficult start, beginning as it did in the half-century previous to the Revolution and the Constitution– a period characterized by drift to wars, wars, and the transition from wars. Pennsylvania was a major ground-zero in both the French and Indian and Revolutionary Wars–and lest it be forgotten, battleground for the longest and most brutal of Indian wars. That the fledgling industry was dependent on German immigrant entrepreneurs, their fragile capital sources, and the growing, yet erratic nature of their political and economic cohesion as a market and owner of skills and expertise also presented early challenges to its rise.
After the Revolution, glassmaking took over and did quite well in Pennsylvania and its suburbs and hinterland. The nineteenth century glassmaking cluster, considerably smaller in scale than its ironmaking cluster, still played a notable role in the Pennsylvania economic base. The Pennsylvania-south New Jersey glassmaking cluster was an important one for the early United States, and while it has had its share of troubles and downsizing in the twentieth century, that cluster remains in muted strength today.
Last Thoughts on Pennsylvania cluster-development
— First let’s state the obvious but still rather fundamental lesson from our first venture into colonial clusters: the British North American colonies were too distant to be closely integrated into Britain’s economy or its budding clusters. From day one American colonies had to start their own clusters from scratch or simply import. Of more interest to me was British companies did not often seek to establish a branch or subsidiary in the thirteen colonies. Moreover, there was a strong element of protectionism that inhibited the exportation of skills and technology. Mercantilism of the seventeenth century meant American settlers and their settlements had to fend for themselves to fill any gaps that were created by the dangers, timeliness, and logistical encumbrances of 3,000 miles of water.
Whatever else that meant, it did shape the perspective, and mentality, of the American entrepreneur–and it came at the birth of the economic base of each province-colony. The mercantilist slap on the butt of colonial economic bases and their agglomerations and clusters at their founding created a new batch of companies, artisans, and entrepreneurs who had to beg, borrow and steal (literally) what they needed to start an agglomeration-cluster. The economic class that these folks lodged themselves in were leavened with a stiff-necked, autonomous, on-my-own independence that will ill-suited to British colonial policy as it evolved. When one thinks about a “drift to independence” that supposedly started after 1763, I argue independence was “seeded” into colonial economic base-building from the start of the colony by English mercantilism. It was felt most keenly among entrepreneurs and artisans who were daily affected by its tensions–and was reflected in the colonial legislatures in which many of that sat.
Instead of one or a few British companies setting up an iron forge complex or ship-builder in one or several suitable colonies, each colony had to establish its own–all thirteen of them over different time periods. While such duplication might have been necessary during much of the seventeenth century, one can question its continuation into the eighteenth. The effect was to sharpen the differences, the varying capabilities and economic capacities of each colony. Coastal trade developed from this, but so did thirteen separate colonies with little interlocking economic bases built around comparative advantage. Each colony’s agglomeration tilted toward vertical integration, and conglomerate business entities, and scale and inequality was fostered within thirteen distinct groups of colonial elites. Whatever Britain was doing in colonial economic base-building, it was not nation-building. It was province-building. It is no accident the 1789 Constitution was saturated with and build on “federalism”. Now we have 250 years of it.
These are simple observations, to be sure, but they are fundamental to the colonial approach to economic base-building. The British East India Company handled this matter differently. More on the Hudson Bay Company in later chapters. Perhaps now we can see the heritage left behind by pre-1689 proprietary colonies.
It think it apparent from our agglomeration/cluster examples that each developed somewhat distinctively, at different time periods, and for all too obvious reasons concentrated (agglomerated) in different locations in Pennsylvania. Interestingly grist mills were distinctive from iron forges and glassmaking developed after ironmaking. Neither were urban, and for the most part shipbuilding was suburban and river-bound hinterlands. Finance and logistics, however were naturally urban and as it matured it extended itself in the countryside. Retail also followed that path. Agglomerations and political boundaries are quite distinct and non-related in the sense that economic base building does not respect political boundaries–and just the opposite may utilize them for profit-making advantage. Agglomerations in colonial America are more likely to create political subdivisions that follow them. It was only later than mature agglomerations overlapped political boundaries–and that was not always to their detriment. Today as we co-link clusters/planning with regionalism or metropolitanization we might be sensitive that things are as they are for reasons.
In each of the agglomerations we can see the impact of business organization, entrepreneurial strategies and competition, and even personalities. We can see how each agglomeration was incorporated into a larger commercial/manufacturing elite–and how hinterland and urban played into both settlement and immigration dynamics. Capital investment was critical, and we see that Pennsylvania capital, if not resident in Philadelphia was the core “office” for capital investment. Critically, we can see Philadelphia business elites were remarkably open to what was venture capital equity positions–and different groups of them formed and fostered different companies and projects. The path to merchant conglomerations was a natural outcome. We can also see that Quakers played a very significant role in investment–alongside Anglicans and Barbadian investors. Not all colonies had such access to capital–Massachusetts had to go to Britain for investment for its Saugus Iron Works. Rutter did not. Nor did Wistar or our Brandywine grist mills. Shipbuilding was a bit more complicated–but not timber cutting, nor those sectors involved in housing and homesteading.
We were able to explain much of these agglomerations without having to include the public sector. Today we have come full swing and cannot conceive agglomeration-cluster development without government–and sometimes in some clusters we tend to be on the verge of state capitalism, and if micro-management is the right word, we often target the correct technologies for investment. Where agglomeration meant some cities and regions had less or even none of the agglomeration development, today we seemingly strip away geographic agglomeration and instead substitute a cluster decentralized to virtually every economic base in every state (think shift-share).
Nothing could be more apparent than to contrast this with colonial America and see the former wanting or irrelevant. One wonders, wildly I suppose, if we lose the advantages that come with geographic concentration–or if in decentralizing it to the point everybody has some that we may impede cluster-agglomeration development. As we shall see, however, economic base building in America has been privately led and managed. Today’s conventions are a departure. If nothing else entrepreneurism is being redefined, and past entrepreneurialism and the patterns associated with it pushed off to the margins. Just an observation! There are a lot of similarities to venture capital, entrepreneurial problems and personalities drawn from colonial experience. I think Sam Adams would agree.
Glassmaking cluster jelled and grew from the success of a single commercial venture: Wistar’s United Glass Company. While it could be said that Rutter’s two forges were the starting gun for Pennsylvania’s ironmaking agglomeration, they did not play the sale role as Wistar’s, or even Brandywine Mill complex. Literally within several years of Rutter all sort of forge projects went into development. Wistar’s company for nearly a half-century was the mother-house of the Pennsylvania-New Jersey Cluster, and the model of German entrepreneurism that dominated the culture. It is worth a thought this compares with William Shockley’s Fairchild Semiconductor’s path to spinning off the famous Silicon Valley semiconductor cluster of the 1970’s?
Annalee Saxenian’s tale of Shockley answers that the cultures were so different-diametrically the opposite. Shockley’s Fairchild did not “spin off” Intel, or the other nine semiconductor companies over an eight year period, as much as he drove them out of Fairchild. Shockley was no Wistar. “Thirty-one semiconductor firms were started in Silicon Valley during the 1960’s, and the majority traced their lineage to Fairchild. Only five of the forty-five independent semiconductor firms in the United States between 1959 and 1976 were located outside Silicon Valley. An emerging infrastructure of suppliers provided an important advantage to the startups of the region … in a spin off process that was increasingly common in the region, engineers left more established companies to start new ventures that produced the capital goods and materials needed for semiconductor design and fabrication” (pp. 25-6). [99] Annalee Saxenian, Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 (Harvard University Press, 1996), see pp. 25-7, and see Ann Markusen, Profit Cycles, Oligopoly, and Regional Development (the MIT Press, 1985), pp. 109, 115-117
Despite a totally opposite business culture, the same could be said for Wistar’s United Glass Company. The Brandywine grist complex, not championed by a single company, still was able to produce a commercial flour processing export behemoth similar to Silicon Valley (in the context of the time period). By 1790, the multitude of ironmaking plantations, forges, and refineries located east of the Pennsylvania Alleghenies spun off a mighty trans-Allegheny industrial sector resident in and adjacent to Pittsburgh. If Pennsylvania was not the mother of American democracy (and I’m not saying that), it certainly was the mother of critically important industrial sector agglomerations, agglomerations that led America to industrialization in the nineteenth century.
The infusion of a German entrepreneurial culture into the developing glassmaking cluster yielded a mixed profit-making enterprise tempered with strong links to a decentralized management structure, to reasonably well-treated workforce, its surrounding community and a larger budding national independence movement–tilting noticeably to CD objectives and values. Not so the more magnificent, gazelle-like iron making cluster whose iron plantations and slow innovation but strong ties with local capital and fluid ownership structure possessed a single-minded drive for profit and expansion.
Artisans: Who are they?
Ron W. Coan 