Lives of the Philadelphia Engineers: Capital, Class and Revolution, 1830?1890

by Andrew Dawson

Overview

Lives of the Philadelphia Engineers examines the emergence of a new class of industrial entrepreneur and the world it confronted and shaped. Historians are reluctant to examine nineteenth-century American business leaders as a social group and this study helps remedy the defect. This book interweaves a history of the social and economic development of the largest centre of machine building in nineteenth-century America with the dramatic political narrative of sectional conflict, Civil War and Reconstruction. Crossing and re-crossing the boundary between industrial and political history, it throws new light on the process of industrialisation, the Civil War conflict, and the contested governance of nineteenth-century cities. While this study is firmly rooted in the experience of Philadelphia's machine builders, its historiographic significance extends to many of the important themes of mid-century American history. By rejecting the conventional viewpoint that timid manufacturers were conservative supporters of the plantation South and insisting that workshop owners rejected slavery, this study reinvigorates one of the Civil War's enduring interpretative battles. Of interest to scholars of business, economic, social, labour, education, urban and Civil War history, it will no doubt stimulate further debate and add a new angle to our understanding of nineteenth-century America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367593865
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	08/14/2020
Pages:	316
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Andrew Dawson

Table of Contents

General Editors Preface vii

List of Figures viii

List of Tables and Charts x

Preface xi

List of Abbreviations xiii

Introduction 1

1 Philadelphia Style 12

2 Inside the Workshop: Production, Authority and Resistance 51

3 Industrial Biography 79

4 A Subaltern Class, 1830-62 117

5 Reconstructing the City 157

6 Apprenticeship, the Habits of Industry and the Public Schools 193

7 The Decline of Philadelphia Engineering and the Origin of Scientific Management 226

Conclusion: Building Machines, Changing Worlds 247

Appendix 1 Leading Machine Building Cities in the United States, 1840, 1860-1910 265

Appendix 2 Major Branches of Philadelphia Machine Building, 1850-80 267

Select Bibliography 269

Index 289