Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-qxdb6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T06:29:04.067Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Product Quality and Vertical Integration in the Early Cotton Textile Industry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Peter Temin
Affiliation:
Massachussetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139.

Abstract

This article explores differences between the cotton industries in England and America in the early nineteenth century. I show that the two countries produced almost entirely different products: the Enlish made fine fabrics; the Americans, coarse. The cause of this disjunction is found in the American tariff policy, whichwas influenced by the Massachusetts cotton manufacturers. Since coarse spinning promoted vertical integration, the American product structure favored integration. This argument reveals that the variables analyzed were jointly determined, since the Massachusetts firms with the political clout to affect the tariff were vertically integrated.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Jeremy, David J., Transatlantic Industrial Revolution: The Diffusion of Textile Technologies Between Britain and America, 1790–1830s (Cambridge, MA, 1981), pp. 6267.Google Scholar

2 Von Tunzelmann, G. N., Steam Power and British Industrialization to 1860 (Oxford, 1978), chap. 7;Google ScholarFarnie, Douglas A., The English Cotton Industry and the World Market, 1815–1896 (Oxford, 1979);Google ScholarLyons, John S., “Powerloom Profitability and Steam Power Costs: Britain in the 1830s,” Explorations in Economic History, 24 (10 1987), pp. 392408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Farnie, the English Cotton Industry, p. 281; Von Tunzelmann, Steam Power, pp. 200–1. (All of the quality added in the finishing and dyeing stages is ignored as well.)Google Scholar

4 Cowell, John W., “Explanatory Preface to the Tables Relative to Cotton and Silk Mills in the Lancashire District,” Parliamentary Papers, vol. 22 (1834), p. 377ff.Google Scholar

5 Ure, Andrew, The Cotton Manufacture of Great Britian (London, 1836), vol. 1, pp. 334–42;Google ScholarStanway, S., “Tables Extracted from the Returns to the Lancashire Forms,” Parliamentary Papers, vol. 19 (1834), p. 415ff.Google Scholar

6 Gatrell, V. A. C., “Labour, Power, and the Size of Firms in Lancashire Cotton in the Second Quarter of the Nineteenth Century,” Economic History Review, 30 (02 1977), p. 99ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 This is an unweighted average of counts spun by firms. If firms are weighted by employment, then the average count rises to 69.Google Scholar

8 Jeremy, Transatlantic Industrial Revolution, pp. 99–101.Google Scholar

9 Appleton, Nathan, “Introduction of the Power Loom and Origin of Lowell,” Kress Collection, Harvard Business School (Lowell, MA, 1858).Google ScholarThe number of the yarn is its count, which is defined to be the number of banks of yarn (840 yards) in a pound. Number 40 yarn therefore is twice as fine (weighs half as much) as number 20yarn. Picks are the number of wefts, and the weight is reported inversely as yards per pound in the fashion of the cotton industry.Google Scholar

10 Bagnall, William R., Sketches of Manufacturing Establishments in New York City and of the textile Establishments in the Eastern States, Baker Library manuscript collection, Harvard Business School (vol. 3, typescript, ca. 1890), pp. 2219–22.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., pp. 2236–37.

12 Ibid., pp. 2278, 2287.

13 Montgomery, James, The Cotton Manufacture of the United States Contrasted and Compared with that of Great Britain (Glascow, 1840), pp. 6982.Google Scholar

14 Ware, Caroline F., The Early New England Cotton Manufacture (Boston, 1931), p. 86;Google ScholarJeremy, Transtlantic Industrial Revolution, p. 205.Google Scholar

15 Appleton, “Introduction of the Power Loom and Origin of lowell,” p. 12. This is the reason, most likely, for the 37-inch width of the Waltha, output.Google Scholar

16 One estimate places the rate on Indian imports as 83.5 percent, implying that their price without the tariff was 7.5 cents a yard. (Josephson, Hannah, The Golden Threads: New England Mill Girls and Magnates [New York, 1949], p. 30.) This is probably an exaggeration; it makes the price with the tariff to be 14 cents, still less than the 25cent price of Waltham cloth.Google Scholar

17 The memorial was anonymous to be sure. The context and Appleton's description of Lowell's argument permit the identification.Google Scholar

18 Frieds of Domestic Industry, Reports of the Committees of the Friends of Domestic Industry, assembled at New York, 10 1831 (1831).Google Scholar

19 Ware, The Early New England Cotton Manufacture, pp. 86, 315;Google ScholarJeremy, David J., “Cotton Mills in Developing Regions, 1820–1840,” in Chase, Jeanne, ed., Géographie du capital marchandaux Amériques, 1760–1860 (Paris, 1987).Google Scholar

20 Chandler, Alfred D. Jr, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, MA, 1977), p. 59.Google Scholar

21 Saxonhouse, Gary R. and Wright, Gavin, “Stubborn Mules and Vertical Integration: The Disappearing Constraint?Economic History Review, 40 (02. 1987), pp. 8794.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Bils, Mark, “Tariff Protection and Production in the Early U. S. Cotton Textile Industry,” this Journal, 44 (12. 1984), pp. 1033–46.Google Scholar

23 The major steps in making cotton are spinning, weaving, and finishing, each of which is composed of several operations. See Sandberg, Lars G., Lancashire in Decline: A Study in Entrepreneurship, Technology, and International Trade (Columbus, 1974), pp. 1518.Google Scholar

24 Perry, Martin K., “Vertical Integration: Determinants and Effects,” Handbook of Industrial Organization, Schmalensee, Richard and Willig, Robert, eds. (forthcoming).Google Scholar

25 Tucker, Barbara M., Samuel Slater and the Origins of the American Textile Industry, 1790–1860 (Ithaca, 1984), pp. 5354.Google Scholar

26 Josephson, The Golden Threads, p. 68.Google Scholar

27 Tucker, Samuel Slater, esp. chaps. 3, 6, 9.Google Scholar

28 Goldin, Claudia and Sokoloff, Kenneth, “Women, Children, and Industrialization in the Early Republic: Evidence from the Manufacturing Census,” this Journal, 42 (12. 1982), pp. 741–74.Google Scholar

29 Ware, The Early New England Cotton Manufacture, p. 203;Google ScholarDublin, Thomas, Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826–1860 (New York, 1979), p. 77.Google Scholar

30 This analysis resembles that in Williamson, Oliver E., The Economic Institutions of Capitalism (New York, 1985), pp. 3538.Google ScholarWilliamson, however, keys his analysis to the inaccessibility of the site and the skills of the workers; the issue here is morality. When immigrants replaced Yankeemaidens in the 1840s, the Locks and Canals Company leased land to private boarding houses which housed over half the workers by mid-century (see Dublin, Women at Work, p. 143).Google Scholar

31 Davis, Lance E. and Stettler, H. Louis III, “The New England Textile Industry, 1825–60: Trends and Fluctuations,” Output, Employment, and Productivity in the United States After 1800 (New York, 1966), pp. 213–38.Google Scholar

32 Scranton, Philip, Proprietary Capitalism: The Textile Manufacture at Philadelphia, 1800–1885 (Cambridge, 1983).Google Scholar

33 United States, Department of the Treasury, Documents Relative to the Manufactures in the United States (collected by the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Louis McLane), House ExecutiveDocument 308, 22nd Congress, 1st Session (Washington, 1833), II, pp. 4859.Google Scholar

34 Taylor, A. J., “Concentration and Specialization in the Lancashire Cotton Industry,” Economic History Review, 2nd series, 1 (1949), pp. 114–22;Google ScholarFarnie, The English Cotton Industry, pp. 313–18.Google Scholar

35 Lyons, John S., “Vertical Integration in the British Cotton Industry, 1825–1850: A Revision,” this Journal, 45 (06 1985), pp. 419–26, table I;Google ScholarBaines, Edward, History, Directory andGazetteer of the County Palatine of Lancaster (Liverpool, 18241825).Google Scholar

36 Mohanty, G. F., “Experimentation in Textile Technology, 1788–90, and Its Impact on Handloom Weaving and Weavers in Rhode Island,” Technology and Culture, 29 (01. 1988), pp. 131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 Farnie, Douglas A., “An Index of Commercial Activity: The Membership of the Manchester Royal Exchange, 1809–1948,” Business History, 21 (01. 1979), pp. 97106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Honeyman, Katrina, The Origins of Enterprise: Business Leadership in the Industrial Revolution (New York, 1983), chaps. 56.Google Scholar

39 This is not an appeal to capital market failure. The typical cotton mill was a small, family-operated business. Smaller and less well-known firms represented higher risks to lenders and would have had to pay a higher interest rate as a result.Google Scholar

40 I classified a firm as integrated when the number of weavers was equal to or greater than 10 to exclude spinning firms with two or three weavers attached. These weavers most probably were only weaving samples, and the results are essentially unchanged if firms are considered integrated whenever there were any weavers at all. The chi-square equals 24.9. Comparison of the chi-square for other divisions between coarse and fine spinning suggests that the most likely boundary between coarse firms who had the option of combining spinning and power weaving and fine firms who did not is at a count of 50.Google Scholar

41 Crouzet, Francois, The First Industrialists: The Problem of Origins (Cambridge, 1985), p. 108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42 Lyons, “Vertical Integration,” table 2.Google Scholar

43 For a given variance, a lower mean would have brought a greater proportion of the yarn below the threshold for profitable use of power looms.Google Scholar

44 In a regression of SPINNERS on COUNT, the t-statistic for the coefficient of COUNT is 5.1, while the R 2 is 0.13.Google Scholar

45 Prince, Carl E. and Taylor, Seth, “Daniel Webster, The Boston Associates, and the U.S. Government's Role in the Industrializing Process, 1815–1830,” Essays from the Lowell Conference on Industrial History, 1980 and 1981, Weible, Robert, Ford, Oliver, and Marion, Paul, eds. (Lowell, MA, 1981).Google Scholar

46 Jeremy, Transatlantic Industrial Revolution, chap. 10.Google Scholar