Entrepreneurial Invention and Innovation in the Miami Valley during

EAGLE IRON
M. GREENWOOD, PROPRIETOR,
Nos. 383, 384, 385, 386 & 396, Corner Walnut and Canal Streets,
THE EAGLE IRON WORKS was established in 1832, by the present proprietor, in connection with
Mr. Joseph Webb, for the purpose of a general Foundry business, although in a limited way, as the
means of the proprietors would not admit of an extended business; and the articles of manufacture
relied upon principally, were Stoves, Hollow Ware, Sad Irons, Dog Irons, Wagon Boxes, Plow Moulds,
and some other ordinary articles in every day use; to which additions were made from time to time,
of such things as were generally wanted, or made for special purposes.
The business was continued in this manner, and extended as the demands increased, for eight years',
when Mr. Webb withdrew from the,firm. The same year, 1840, it was determined to commence the
manufacture of
"'•••',•'.•••.
This undertaking, for a time, met with but'tftj^ Jra^qr from dealers, from whom it was but reasonable to expect a liberal patronage; but builders becbming^ware of the superior quality of the Hinges
made at this establishment, soon created a demand for them, which placed the manufacture and sales
on a substantial basis, and has brought them into general use throughout the country.
A f c iff/faJ^
/? £
£
/
a
^
One of the great foundries of the mid-west
during the 19th century
C
Society picture file
Gift of Walter P. Closson
BULLETIN
of
The Cincinnati Historical Society
January 1964
CINCINNATI
Vol. 22 No. 1
Entrepreneurial Invention and
Innovation in the Miami Valley
during the Civil War
by CARL M. BECKER
In its mammoth demand for materials, the Civil War invested
American technological efforts with a sense of urgency new to the
national experience. While the South lingered, the industriallyoriented North, it is generally agreed, responded with patriotic —
and profitable — zeal.1 Participating in the Northern effort were
numerous Miami Valley inventor-entrepreneurs. Like other Northerners, they were children of an age of technological change. Indeed,
various forces — the gradual accumulation of scientific knowledge,
a growing population, the availability of raw materials, to name a
ir
The most vigorous contemporary observer and promoter of inventive effort
was, of course, Scientific American. Once fearing war's retarding effects, the
journal exulted late in the war that "inventive activity" in the North had produced "machines . . . for every conceivable and inconceivable purpose." Scientific American, Jan. 11,1862; May 21,1864. The "abnormally active production"
and scarcity of labor generated by the war, according to E. D. Fite, "stimulated
inventiveness to the highest pitch." E. D. Fite, Social and Industrial Conditions
in the North during the Civil War (New York, 1910), 99. A prominent historian
of American technology, citing Northern examples, has asserted that the Civil
War was the first major war in which "technological innovations and improvements were applied on a large scale." John W. Oliver, History of American
Technology (New York, 1956), 276.
6
The Bulletin
few — were inevitably producing "heroic inventors" and fanning
gales of "creative destruction" in America, as old techniques and
tools of production were discarded in the 1840's and 1850's. But for
many Americans, probably the most dramatic and understandable
aspects of technological advance were invention, innovation, and
imitation.2 Unlike secular impulses, they were specific and definable.
In their classic progression, moreover, they validated the individual
ethic so long woven into the American fabric: the first act saw an
energetic American — a McCormick or Howe — giving his every
fiber to the discovery of a new or improved production tool or consumer good; then an entrepreneur — a Seth Bryant or the inventor
himself — took the financial risk of initial introduction of the invention to the productive processes; and, finally, a legion of less venturesome men imitated the successful innovator. It is largely in this
personalized, entrepreneurial context that this paper describes some
of the inventive and innovative activity that occurred in the Miami
Valley during the Civil War; it also accords attention, though only
peripherally, to imitative acts derived from primary invention and
innovation. As its main theme, it seeks to suggest the ways in
which the war affected such activity in an industrial environment
containing elements of both a self-sufficient technology and an interdependent technology.
Its configuration shaped by the Little and Great Miami rivers
and their tributaries, the Miami Valley before the Civil War had
taken on a kind of economic integrity and various qualities conducive
to technological growth. Transportation lines, particularly the
Miami-Erie canal after 1828, had brought the area within the economic domain of Cincinnati, the entrepot of the Ohio and the
Mississippi valleys.3 Manufacturing, with its built-in tendency to
innovate, had been on-going since before the War of 1812; and the
valley had bred a generation of men attuned to the industrial ways
of the world — men who had been introduced to production Hoe
presses, Fourdrinier machines and other emblems of the machine age.
Cincinnati, of course, had long been the industrial showcase of the
West. Hamilton, Dayton, and Springfield all had been rapidly
expanding their manufacturing facilities in the 1850's. Though
having but 14% of the state's population, these cities and their
2
For a detailed economic analysis of invention, innovation, and imitation,
see Yale Brozen, "Invention, Innovation, and Imitation," American Economic
Review, XLI (May, 1951), 239-257.
3
The unity of the valley is suggested in Alfred J. Wright, Economic Geography
of Ohio (2nd ed., Columbus, 1957), 104ff. The counties in the valley, as listed by
Wright, are Hamilton, Clermont, Clinton, Warren, Butler, Preble, Montgomery,
Greene, Clark, Miami, Darke, Shelby, Champaign and Logan.
Entrepreneurial Invention
7
immediate environs accounted for 45% of the total value of industrial production in the state in I860.4 Goods produced ranged a
spectrum of human wants: shoes, shirts, iron building fronts, trusses,
caskets, candles, and so on.5 The existence of numerous firms in
many industries served as a disciplinary force for technological
advance, as the resulting competition compelled entrepreneurs to
turn to invention as a means of stressing product differentiation.
Militating somewhat against innovation, particularly in Cincinnati,
was the customer risk occasioned by the loss of Southern markets
during the war; but rescuing many firms were the military markets
that opened by 1862.
The level of technological activity during the war varied, of
course, from industry to industry. In some instances, invention and
innovation were persistent and were systematically joined by valley
inventor-entrepreneurs; in others, innovation alone was typical, its
frequency dependent on initiatory inventions in the East; and in yet
others, both acts were but desultory in appearance. More specifically,
entrepreneurial invention or innovation, so the sparse sources indicate, was substantial in mechanical power elaboration, the publishing
business, the agricultural implement and machine industry, stove
manufacturing, and durable consumer goods production.6 Of lesser
note were the efforts in weapons development, railroad car construction, the meat packing industry, the ready-made clothing business,
and the boot and shoe industry. These entrepreneurial activities
obviously do not include all the important industries that flourished
in the Miami Valley {e.g. the soap and furniture industries). But
they do represent industries which were reasonably subject to
mechanical change. And they do show two facets of the technological
setting in the Miami Valley: one, as revealed in the development of
power devices, the agricultural implement industry, stove manufacturing, and durable consumer goods production — all of which used
fairly simple cast iron technology — was largely independent of
Eastern sources for improved producers' goods and new product
design; the other, as seen particularly in the clothing business and
4
These percentages are based on the Census of Manufacturing of 1860.
Manufactures of the United States in 1860 (Washington, 1865), 442ff. Value of
annual production in Ohio in 1860 was $121,691,148; the value for the four
counties in which Cincinnati, Hamilton, Dayton, and Springfield are located
was $55,292,639.
6
Charles Cist, Sketches and Statistics of Cincinnati in 1859 (Cincinnati, 1859),
241ff.
6
Original business records bearing on the subject are virtually non-extant.
A survey of fifty Cincinnati firms conducted by the writer revealed that only
four had materials relating to technological change during the war. Newspapers,
as the reader of the citations will note, are the main contemporary source.
8
The Bulletin
the boot and shoe industry, was beholden to the East for improved
and rather sophisticated producers' goods.
In the development of power devices during the war, especially
turbine water wheels,7 several Miami Valley inventors achieved
distinctive triumphs, as they commingled a bit of scientific theory,
some practical experience, and occasional intuitive guesses. Their
inventions, however, were not war-bred fruits. In the Miami Valley,
as in many parts of the nation, water was yet important to industry.
Clustered around the Miami-Erie canal were numerous factories;
about 82% of Dayton factories from 1830 to 1880, for instance, were
located near the canal to utilize its power. To develop mechanical
power more efficiently from water — though it was still appreciably
cheaper than the use of steam power — many foundry entrepreneurs
in the valley were seeking to improve the turbine wheel. Their
exertions were not a localized episode, interest in the turbine being
high throughout the nation. Indeed, to read Scientific American of
the period is to read a virtual lexicon of the wheel turbines.
Pre-eminent among turbine inventor-entrepreneurs in the Miami
Valley was James Leffel, a pioneer industrialist of Springfield. War
or halycon days, Leffel had to invent a turbine wheel; when he
received a patent for a double turbine in 1862, he had already been
at work on it for seventeen years.8 The wheel, using the combination
of an upper and lower set of buckets, was a reaction turbine. It
received widespread notice in 1862 when men from all over Ohio
gathered at the Methodist Protestant Publishing House in Springfield to watch it in a trial run against the wheel developed by Dr.
Tobias Kindelberger, also of Springfield. The Springfield News reported that "with a sort of ingenious brake attached to the shaft,
the Leffel wheel made 125 revolutions per minute, & exerted a force
of 21 pounds." 9 Kindelberger's wheel made only one hundred
revolutions per minute and exerted a force of but sixteen pounds.
Why Leffel's wheel worked so well, even Leffel himself — it was
said — did not know.10 Work it did, though. Leffel asserted that
7
Unlike conventional waterwheels, the turbine wheel relies upon kinetic
energy which is developed as water changes direction in its passage through the
vanes of the turbine.
&
Index of Patents for Inventions, 1790-1873 (3 vols., Washington, 1874),
III: 1, 679; Scientific American, Feb. 1, 1862; James E. Frankart, "The Industrial Rise of Springfield, Ohio," Seminar paper in Ohio history, Miami University, 1961.
9
Springfield News, May 3, 1862. For specific details on the performance of
the wheel, see James Leffel's Hydraulic Note Book, in Leffel Manuscripts Collection, Ohio Historical Society.
10
Ralph H. Gabriel, The Epic of Industry (New Haven, 1926), 121. Before
securing his turbine patent, Leffel had received at least three patents for various
inventions, including an improved cooking stove.
Entrepreneurial Invention
9
the wheel was "capable of yielding from ninety-two to ninety-five
per cent, of the power of the water and a greater per cent, than any
other wheel heretofore constructed."11 Even before the trial, the
News had been using the wheel to run its presses. The honor of
innovation, however, rested with the Methodist Publishing House.
Thus, the invention had Godly approbation. It also won approval
in the market place. Sending his son to the east and the west to find
customers, Leffel soon had orders coming from Rochester, Buffalo,
and Cincinnati, and from points in California, Oregon, and Canada.12
To meet the demand, he expanded his old machine shop and acquired
new facilities for the fabrication of machines for manufacturing the
wheel.13 His labor force, numbering at least 50 men, worked night
and day and yet in 1865 was still unable to keep up with orders.14
It was not mere provincialism which moved the News to praise the
wheel as "the best in the known world."
The Kindelberger wheel was not without merit or success.
Kindelberger, a homeopath and many-sided inventor who operated
a machine shop in Springfield,15 incorporated reaction principles in
his center vent wheel, tangentially positioning the wheel buckets for
the discharge of water.16 At the state fair of 1864, as the "Buckeye
Turbine," it received a "recommended" rating from the committee
on machinery and engines.17 It was manufactured for several years
by the Niles Iron Works of Cincinnati. Competing with the Buckeye
and other wheels at the fair and winning the first premium was the
"American Turbine," a wheel manufactured by the firm of Stout,
Mills, and Temple.18 After patenting an improvement in the wheel
in 1863,19 the firm, already operating a machine shop in Middletown,
erected a new facility in Dayton. According to the Dayton Journal,
the shop was manufacturing the "celebrated" wheel for firms in
California, Colorado, Kansas, Pennsylvania and every point where
the rebellion had not struck; the wheel, exulted the Journal, was
"the most important invention of the kind ever perfected."20
"Letters
Patent, No. 34,150, Jan. 14, 1862.
12
Springfield News, July 14, 1862; March 19, 1863; Jan. 24, 1865. James
Leffel Order Book, The James Leffel and Company Historical File.
"Springfield News, Dec. 27, 1862; March 3, 1863; Dec. 24, 1863.
u
Ibid., July 14, 1862; March 3, 1863; Jan. 24, 1865.
15
Y ester years in Clark County (Springfield, 1948), 23.
w
Index of Patents, III: 1,679; Scientific American, Nov. 22, 1862.
17
Ohio State Board of Agriculture, Nineteenth Annual Report (Columbus,
1865), 107.
ls
Ibid.
19
Index of Patents, III: 1,682; Scientific American, Feb. 28, 1863.
20
Dayton Daily Journal, Sept. 9, 1864.
10
The Bulletin
The circuitous route that invention and innovation could take in
an entrepreneurial economy may be seen in the history of the Bradley
Compound Steam Engine. Invented in 1861 by Jacob Bradley of
Dayton, the engine employed the principle that steam power may be
more efficiently utilized by allowing it to expand to lower pressures
in an auxiliary cylinder.21 It was apparently first manufactured by a
small machine shop in Dayton and first used by the Dayton Empire.22
So efficient was its performance that even the Empire's great adversary, the Journal, urged local mechanics to visit the Empire press
rooms to view the engine in operation. The Journal description was
typical of an age that still regarded invention as heroic: "It is but a
toyish looking thing, but it does its work nobly, and requires about
the steam that could be generated in a wash boiler to run a cylinder
press at full speed."23 Beholding it in use at the United Brethren
Publishing House in 1864 and noting that its use of high and low
pressure pistons realized half again as much pressure as a conventional engine, the Journal yet wondered at the efficiency of the
"compact" engine.24 By 1864, the cycle of invention, innovation,
and imitation had been achieved, for a number of firms in the valley
were using Bradley's engine. The Bradley engine and the turbine
wheels, stemming from a self-sufficient technology, were inventions
of some moment to economic growth in the Miami Valley; but they
were hardly reflections of a war-induced enterprise. They were
simply coincidental with war.
Much more than coincidental was technological change in the
publishing business. The Civil War presented to Miami Valley
publishing firms, particularly newspapers, opportunities and problems that evoked considerable innovation and imitation. Valley
residents, like other Americans, demanded columns and columns of
war news. But the derived demand for rags — which were in short
supply — shot paper prices up in every part of the nation.25 Though
2l
Index of Patents, III: 1,427; Scientific American, Sept. 21, 1861.
Dayton Daily Empire, Nov. 29, 1862.
23
Dayton Daily Journal, Dec. 1, 1862.
2i
Ibid., June 30, 1864.
25
Early in the war, prices in the East moved from 7}4 cents a pound to 22
cents. Frank L. Mott, American Journalism (New York, 1941), 401. In late
1862, Scientific American, which also pointed out the effect of federal taxes on
white paper, estimated that paper prices had increased 50% since the beginning
of the war. Scientific American, Nov. 22, 1862. In one nine-month period in the
Miami Valley, prices rose 8 cents on the pound. Dayton Daily Journal, July 23,
1864.
22
Entrepreneurial Invention
11
well-established in the valley, paper manufacturers were not technically able in the short-run to offer respite to publishers.26
To compensate for mounting production costs, publishing firms
evidently hastened to innovation and less dramatic acts of imitation.
Entrepreneurs of secular and spiritual news were among the first
men to adopt new power devices. As noted above, the Springfield
News and the Methodist Protestant Publishing House were the first
users of the Leffel wheel, while the Dayton Empire and the United
Brethren Publishing House early introduced the Bradley engine to
their rooms. Interest in presses was naturally high. Its circulation
increasing among Republicans, the Hamilton Telegraph purchased a
Wells' cylinder press in 1864.27 Its facilities destroyed by Copperheads, the Dayton Journal acquired a new Hoe press in 1863.28
These presses had been in general usage for a decade or so, and their
purchase entailed no innovative risk. More nearly innovative was
regional adoption of Gordon's "Franklin" press. This rapid-speed
job press was the creation of George P. Gordon, a New Yorker,
whose decade of efforts to improve it culminated in a notable safety
improvement in 1862 that won it acclaim from printers.29 Already
popular in Europe by 1863, it was first employed in the West in 1864
by the Cincinnati Commercial, the Cincinnati Enquirer, and the
Dayton Journal.30 Until then monopolized by the government for
the printing of Greenbacks, it was capable of printing in color and
thus must have appealed to handbill politicians. It was, said the
Journal, the "most perfect and elegant specimen of printing machinery ever introduced in Dayton." The age of crafts was not so
far past that beauty could not be imputed to mechanical tools.
Unlike Gordon's press, the job press invented by Charles Wells of
the Cincinnati Type and Press Foundry represented technological
26
According to one study, the Fourdrinier machine did not come into general
use in the valley until 1875. Ruth F. Rosell, "The Development of Paper
Manufactures in the Miami Valley," Master's Thesis, Miami University, 1941.
Invariably, newspaper editors applauded the establishment of new paper mills
or expansion of existing mills. In 1862, the Dayton Journal, for example, elatedly
reported that the Weston and Mead mill was refitting its facilities with machinery of the "best character." Dayton Daily Journal, Dec. 6,1862. One newspaper publisher with a high regard for the sanctity of contract did compel the
Beckett Paper Company of Hamilton to achieve technical progress. Alarmed
as the cost of rags rose to equal its contracted selling price of paper to the Cincinnati Gazette, the company sought to adjust the price upward. The Gazette
refused, and the firm saved itself by developing a process of de-inking and
pulping old newspapers for basic stock. Rosell, "The Development of Paper
Manufactures in the Miami Valley."
"Hamilton Telegraph, Feb. 4, 1864.
28
Springfield News, June 27, 1863.
29
Scientific American, Nov. 22, 1862; Charles Singer, ed., et. ah, A History
of Technology (5 vols., Oxford, 1958), V, 710-711
30
Dayton Daily Journal, Feb. 1, 1865.
12
The Bulletin
advance indigenous to the Miami Valley. Designed to print in two
colors with but one run, it was manufactured in Cincinnati and was
adopted by many valley printers in the 1860's. Its complexity left
the Cincinnati Commercial nearly speechless. "It requires," admitted
the Commercial, "a talk of cams, and springs, and levers, &c, that
we are hardly up to." 31 Also eliciting praise and usage from valley
publishers was the marking machine invented by Samuel Soule in
Cincinnati in 1860 for addressing names to newspapers.32 Soule later
shared in the invention of the typewriter.
Lincoln, Vallandigham, and the fields of battle were all pushed
aside by the Commercial when it editorially announced its initial use
of stereotyping.33 Invented in 1861 by an Easterner, Charles Craske,
and manufactured by the Hoe Company in New York, the stereotype
plate obviated direct printing from type. Type was used only to
obtain an impression on a paper mold from which a plate the size of
a page was cast. Since the plate was curved to fit the surface cylinder
of the press, it was no longer necessary to hold type by column rules
to the cylinder. Type was not worn rapidly, and a bright impression
was maintained on printed paper. As in the case of stereotyping,
valley entrepreneurs were often dependent on Eastern sources for
inventive progress; consequently, they were unable to achieve the
controlled, almost rhythmic, advance found, for instance, in the
agricultural implement and machine industry.
Without question, the largest flow of invention and innovation
in the valley sprang from firms manufacturing farm machinery. It
was inevitably so. Enlarged European and military markets conjoined with the war-bred shortage of agricultural labor quickened
the impulse of farmers — particularly those in the Northwest — to
mechanize their labor.34 Dayton, Springfield, and Hamilton were
all well prepared to deliver technological succor to the agricultural
community. In 1860, twenty-two firms in these cities reported a
total value of $531,575 for all kinds of farm tools and machines
manufactured, or about 60% of total valley production; in mower
and reaper production, five firms in this triad accounted for 95% of
annual value of product.35 Entrepreneurial experience there in the
technology of farm machinery had been rapidly accumulating in the
"Cincinnati Commercial, Dec. 5, 1861.
32
Dayton Daily Empire, Nov. 26, 1862.
33
Cincinnati Commercial, Oct. 22, 1864.
34
Fred A. Shannon, The Farmer's Last Frontier, 1860-1897 (New York, 1945),
126-127; Fite, Social and Industrial Conditions, 7. For the Ohio scene, see
Robert L. Jones, Ohio Agriculture during the Civil War (Ohio Civil War Centennial Commission Publication No. 7, 1962), 6.
^Manufactures of the United States in 1860, 439ff.
80
WILLIAMS' CINCINNATI DIRECTORY.
c?jR.^L:Mr:B]9
«e e « . ,
I I I I G K U
MANUFACTURERS OF
BURIAL GASES AND GASKETS, AND HEARSES,
OFFICE AND
MANUFACTORY,
Eighth Street, West of Freeman Street. Cincinnati, Ohio.
Under their present Improvements these Burial Cases are entirely free from those revolting suggestions which have heretofore been connected with their name.
THE METALLIC BURIAL CASKET
Is entirely devoid of those unpleasant associations which usually accompany the form of a Cof"
fln. Heavy Polished Plate Glass extends nearly its whole length. With the elaborate Silverplated Mountings, as represented in the above Engraving, it surpasses in elegance anything of the
kind which has ever before been offered to the Public.
These Burial Cases and Caskets are beautifully finished in imitation of the finest rosewood.
Their invaluable qualities for ordinary interrment, for transportation, and for preservation, are
now universally acknowledged. They protect the remains of the departed from water, vermin, or
other intrusion. Future removal, should it ever be desired, may be accomplised without inconvenience. A delay of days or weeks, awaiting the arrival of absent friends, Is entirely practicable.
When due attention is given to sealing, which may, with care, be accomplished by any one,
(printed instructions accompanying each Case and Casket,) bodies may be carried to any part of
the Globe at any season of the year, with perfect safety. They are moreover, a sure safeguard
against contagious diseases. These advantages render them unequalled by anything which either
in ancient or modern times has been invented for the reception of the human body after death.
Our facilities for the Manufacture of HEARSES, of every style, and of the best
qualities, are unequalled by any establishment in the country.
Williams' Cincinnati Directory, p. 80
The "American Way of Death," 1864
14
The Bulletin
1850's. At Springfield, for instance, the firm of Warder and Mitchell
had been manufacturing a wide variety of reapers and mowers,
including the Ketchum Mower, the New York Reaper, the Ohio
Harvester, the Marsh Harvester, and the Densmore Self-Raker.
Spurred by the mechanical genius of William N. Whiteley, Whiteley,
Fassler, and Kelly, another Springfield firm, had been producing the
increasingly popular Champion Reaper since 1855. A leader in Dayton
was Pritz and Kuhn, which had been sending forth the Dorsey SelfRaking Reaper to relieve agrarian backs.36
The war saw these and other firms performing numerous acts of
the inventive-innovative ritual. Patents issued to entrepreneurs in
the valley for new or improved machinery rose from four in 1861 to
nineteen in 1862, then dipped to twelve in 1863, increased to twentyone in 1864, and numbered sixteen in the first three months of 1865.37
Since they called for intensive improvements and had an entrepreneurial genesis, they were usually translated into innovation. Firms
specializing in the manufacture of reapers and mowers certainly
moved in this kind of institutionalized pattern. Besides improvement
of their self-binding devices and their adaption to fuel power, reapers
awaited in the 1860's only a series of technical refinements,38 though
it is doubtful that they had been improved to the point where, as one
observer put it, "there is little to ask."39 Production resulted in but
slightly improved machines, thus reducing the element of customer
risk. The patents issued to the Whiteley firm, for example, brought
but minor changes to the Champion line. For Warder and Mitchell,
William F. Cochrane, an enterprising engineer, received six patents
for slight improvements in that firm's reaper line.40 Adam Pritz of
Pritz and Kuhn developed a crank for better utilization of the raking
36
Dayton Daily Journal,~Nov. 17,1863. Though Cincinnati had but one small
firm producing reapers, numerous small implement firms there had been active
for several decades. Cist, Sketches, 241. In 1860, seven plow and cultivator
manufacturers reported total value of production to be $182,500. Manufactures
of the United States in 1860, 453.
37
Based on a survey of Scientific American and the Index of Patents, these
figures reflect the general interest in agricultural invention. Nationally, agricultural patents easily outstripped military patents. In 1863, for example,
490 agricultural patents and 240 military patents were issued. Fite, Social and
Industrial Conditions, 98-99. In the Miami Valley during the war, agricultural
patents outnumbered military patents 72 to 16. So numerous were agricultural
patents that some farmers felt that they impeded progress; they argued that
inventive effort ought to be concentrated among three or four firms so as to
combine effectively new ideas. Scientific American, Sept. 10, 1864.
38
Shannon, The Farmer's Last Frontier, 125; Charles Flint, Eighty Years'
Progress of the United States (Hartford, 1867), 35.
39
Ohio State Board of Agriculture, Sixteenth Annual Report (Columbus,
1862), lvii.
40
Index of Patents, II: 666; Scientific American, Feb. 11, 1865.
Entrepreneurial Invention
15
device on the Dorsey Reaper; it probably helped the firm win the
first award for self-raking reapers at the Ohio State Fair of 1863.41
Threshing machines and separators, though not as well-elaborated
in their evolution as reapers, were also usually the subject of intensive improvement in the 1860's. And entrepreneurial progress in
their development was predictably persistent but gradual in the
Miami Valley. Noticeably active in a routinized way was Warder
and Mitchell. Its assigner, Cochrane, obtained eleven patents in
1862 for improvements in the firm's threshing machines. His most
important invention was an adjustable frame which permitted free
vertical movement of the threshing mechanism.42 Owen, Lane, and
Dyer, a Hamilton firm, was periodically improving its line.43 In
Dayton, a Pitts Company factory was showing some of the inventive
spirit that had enabled its founders, John and Hiram Pitts, to develop the first practical mechanized thresher in the 1830's. Attracted
by Dayton's good rail connections to the West, John Pitts, Jr.
established a facility in the city in 1863.44 It was hardly a "mammoth
manufactory," as the Journal reporter saw it; but it was capable of
complex production.45 The new "double-pinion horsepower" machine
manufactured there was judged the best threshing machine at the
Ohio State Fair of 1864.46 Gaining favorable public notice, too, was
the threshing machine manufactured by K. MacClennon and Brothers of Springfield. Calling attention to the light construction of the
machine, the firm emphasized that the speed of the separator was
thus more easily adjusted.47
Entrepreneurial effort in the invention of seed drills was substantial throughout the war. Two expansive Springfield proprietors
were John H. Thomas and Phineas P. Mast, whose Buckeye Drill
was reaching both national and foreign markets and whose inventive
drive yielded several patents for its improvement during the war.48
^Scientific American, May 4, 1861; Ohio State Board of Agriculture, Eighteenth Annual Report (Columbus, 1864), 69.
i2
Index of Patents, III: 1,531-1,532; Scientific American, Feb. 1, 1862 and
Dec. 27, 1862.
^Scientific American, July 5, 1862; May 28, 1864.
44
Dayton Daily Journal, Aug. 1, 1863.
i5
Ibid., April 28, 1864. The Journal was impressed by the organization of
the factory into various departments which were arranged "with especial regard
to the peculiar work to be performed and [were] supplied with the best facilities
known in manufacturing Agricultural Machinery." The "most thorough system," said the Journal, "brings the mammoth manufactory under perfect
control." The factory employed about fifty men and occupied about two and a
half acres.
46
Ohio State Board of Agriculture, Nineteenth Annual Report, 107.
47
Springfield News, May 21, 1863; Oct. 25, 1864.
™Ibid., Nov. 4, 1861; Feb. 5, 1862. Index of Patents, I: 406; III: 1,292.
Scientific American, May 7, 1861; July 5, 1862; April 8, 1865.
16
The Bulletin
The Dayton entrepreneur, Daniel McSherry, won praise for his new
drills and the excellent machinery he brought to their production.49
James Dane in Springfield earned the compliments of John Pitts
for his "Great Western Grain Drill and Broadcast Sower." Dane
designed the machine specifically for prairie use for a P. West of
Wisconsin. Drilling and covering seed for a width of ten feet, it was
capable of working three acres an hour.50 That the Miami Valley was
still a great corn-producing area was evidenced by the work of a
Dayton firm, Bomberger and Wright, in improving corn planters.61
For the man behind the plow, the Springfield firm of Rice, French
and Company was devoting its technical skills to the improvement
of a variety of stubble, one-horse, and double-shovel plows.52 Both
Dane and Warder and Mitchell won medals for their steel plows in
international exhibitions in London during the war years.53
In the development of hay presses, relatively primitive devices
in the 1860's, the Springfield firm of Ridenour and Bizer displayed
some real inventive and innovative acumen. Under a new patent,
the firm began to manufacture in 1862 a double hay packing machine
supposedly capable of putting up two bales of hay in the time it took
for a conventional press to put up one.54 Working on a "toggle"
joint principle, it pressed hay much tighter than did other presses.
So impressive was the machine that it earned the best hay press
award at the Ohio State Fair of 1864.55 Also receiving attention in the
period were such small implements as cider mills, sorghum mills,
corn shellers, and tobacco cutters. Too numerous to note here in any
detail, they were undergoing intensive refinements that were the
results of a disciplined technological advance.
Though employing a different kind of technology, stove manufacturers displayed inventive-innovative drive not unlike that of
agricultural implement manufacturers. Of the twenty-eight iron
casting firms in the valley in 1860, fourteen were producing cooking
and heating stoves.56 The industry was largely concentrated in
Cincinnati, manufacturers there supplying 50,000 units annually for
i9
Index of Patents, I I I : 1,296; Scientific American, Dec. 24, 1864. Dayton
Daily Journal, March 22, 1864.
50
Springfield News, Aug. 9, 1861.
^Scientific American, Nov. 8, 1862; Ohio State Board of Agriculture, Sixteenth Annual Report, 48.
52
Ohio State Board of Agriculture, Eighteenth Annual Report, 85; Nineteenth
Annual Report, 110.
53
Springfield News, Dec. 19, 1861; Aug. 1, 1862; Oct. 11, 1862.
M
Ibid., May 23, 1862; Nov. 29, 1862; Index of Patents, I I : 697: 705.
56
Ohio State Board of Agriculture, Nineteenth Annual Report, 107.
^Manufactures of the United States in 1860, 439ff.
HARRISON'S IPlTliT KITCHENER.
MANUFACTURED BY WILLIAM RESOR & €0.
13 AND 15 MAIN STREET, CINCINNATI.
HATING secured the services of experienced and skillful workmen, we have commenced the manufacture
of this SUPERIOR KITCHEN RANGE, and are now prepared to fill all orders for any size, suitable for
either Families or Hotels, and of any length from 4 to 20 feet, and with two, four or siz ovens or roasters.
A broiler to use charcoal may be attached at one or both ends, and the fumes of boiling, broiling or roasting
are carried off into the flues. The hot water boiler forms the back of the fire box, with a flue under it and
into the main flue, thereby securing an ample supply of hot water, which may be increased at pleasure. A
stream of rarified air is kept constantly passing through the ovens, carrying into the main flue all impurities.
They are provided with racks, hot closets, plate warmers, and every possible convenience, and are fitted up in
the most substantial manner. The whole top, or hot plate, is made very heavy, and in sections so as to lift off
for the purpose of cleaning or repair. The cleaning flues are large and easy of access ; and for style of finish,
convenience, durability, and economy of fuel and labor, we think it superior to anything of the kind in this or
any country. The Range is constructed expressly for burning bituminous coal, but can easily be adapted to
burning anthracite or wood.
We have numerous testimonials of their superiority from persons using them in this city, and throughout
England and Scotland, which we will exhibit or furnish upon application.
One of the famous Resor Ranges
Society picture file
Gift of Walter P. Closson
18
The Bulletin
local and regional markets in the 1850's.57 Their brand name advertising freely punctuated newspaper columns, where one could read
of the magnificence of the "Alligator," the "Southern Planter," the
"Salamander," and many others. At least eight patents for improvements to cooking stoves were issued to Cincinnati manufacturers
during the war; intended for application to stoves for military use,
as well as for civilian use, these proposed improvements were invariably translated into production. The fledgling manufacturer, John
Van, for instance, incurred little risk in testing his invention in
production.58 His stove, patented in 1863 and eventually known as
#5 Army Range, was the first all-steel portable stove used in the field
for hot rations; in a modified form, it is still used by the Army.59
Doerter and Ryan, a small Cincinnati firm, advertised that men who
purchased its improved bake oven could go "forward . . . to bake for
the Army, [at] $100 per day!" 60 In 1861, the William Resor Company
presented to civilians a new cooking stove in which heated currents
distributed heat equally through the oven. Possibly it was the
"Empire" stove later commended by the Dayton Daily Journal
for its "first class workmanship" and its "extra large" fire door
and fire chamber. In the announcement of the name of the agency
to distribute the stove in Dayton, the Journal lauded the Resor
firm as "manufacturers... celebrated for the smoothness and excellence of their castings."61 The A. Lotze Company developed
an unusual stove that reached national markets in the war years;
attached to the rear of the stove were water pipes that could carry
hot water throughout a house.62 Competition in invention, as these
few examples suggest, was nothing if not characteristic of stove
entrepreneurs. It was not the war, however, that somehow magically
called progress into being; invention and innovation, whether for
civilian or military purposes, rested rather on the structural and
experiential base of the industry.
It appears that similar inventive interest marked the activity of
the numerous entrepreneurs producing other durable consumer
"Victor S. Clark, History of Manufactures in the United States, 1607-1860
(Washington, 1916), 538; Richard S. Brown, "A History of the Machine Tool
Industry of Cincinnati," Thesis, University of Cincinnati, 1927.
58
Van was a son of Nicholas Chauvin from whom the term "chauvinism"
was derived. Van History Folder, Associated Advertising Agency, Inc., Cincinnati, Ohio.
&9
Index of Patents, III: 1,473; Van History Folder. See also D. J. Kenny,
Illustrated Cincinnati (Cincinnati, 1875), 140.
60
Cincinnati Commercial, Sept. 15, 1863.
61
Scientific American, May 4, 1861; Dayton Daily Journal, June 4, 1862.
^Cincinnati Gazette, April 4, 1863; Dayton Daily Journal, April 13, 1863;
Cincinnati Commercial, July 11, 1863; Williams' Cincinnati Directory, 186b
(Cincinnati, 1864), i.
Entrepreneurial Invention
19
goods. The general wartime prosperity, though not benefitting all
segments of society, and the high propensity to consume attendant
to inflation provided favorable demand for such goods throughout
the nation. Absorbing some of the demand in the Miami Valley was
a multitude of new and improved products locally invented and
manufactured. Indeed, the variety of the seventy-some patents
issued to valley entrepreneurs may be but briefly suggested here.
Life and death alike were made more pleasant by this inventive
spirit. E. Y. Robbins, a proprietor of Nixon and Robbins, a Cincinnati firm specializing in the manufacture of warming, ventilating, and
drying equipment, invented and marketed with some success an
unusual hot air chamber for warming floors with fresh air.63 Entrepreneurs regularly presented improved washing machines and ventilated refrigerators to busy matrons.64 Besides some military successes, the Union general, William Rosecrans, along with Dr. A. H.
Platt of Yellow Springs, offered to the public a lamp that burned
coal oil without creating smoke or odor.65 Martin Crane, a partner
in Crane, Reed, and Company, received a patent for a burial case
which had the surpassing value of being easily transported; both
upper and lower shells were composed of two parts which could be
joined and taken apart.66 One wonders how often a grieving father
sent this case to Shiloh or Chickamauga for a son who had rallied
around the flag. Less morbid but nonetheless an unpleasant reminder of war were the artificial legs invented in the 1860's.67 Legs
or not, the living found it de rigueur to perpetuate themselves in
front of the Wing Multiplying Camera and other photographic
devices of local origin.68
In contrast with their inventive interest in consumer goods, valley
entrepreneurs gave little attention to military implements. Whether
enjoying a normal or war-sustained demand for their production,
they were not likely to give over their resources to an effort which
might require new technology or involve economic risk. Proprietors
of iron foundries and machine shops, the best-suited establishments
for military innovation, were almost oblivious to the tools of carnage.
63
Index
64
to Patents, III: 1,615; Dayton Daily Journal, April 5, 1864.
For typical examples, see the advertising in the Springfield News, Sept. 23,
1861 and the Dayton Daily Journal, July 28, 1864; Feb. 21, 1865.
^Scientific American, Jan. 11, 1862. Platt and Rosecrans also invented scales
during the war. Index of Patents, III: 1,277.
66
Index of Patents, I: 175; Scientific American, May 23, 1863.
67
See, for instance, the advertisement of Dr. Douglas Bly, Cincinnati Commercial, June 28, 1862.
68
Dayton Daily Empire, Nov. 7, 1863; Dayton Daily Journal, Jan. 1, 1862,
April 2, 1862.
20
The Bulletin
Of approximately sixteen patents for military inventions issued to
Miami Valley residents during the war, only a few were genuinely
entrepreneurial in origin. Gabriel Natcher of Sidney, who invented a
"many-barrelled" cannon in 1865, apparently was an inventor in
the stereotyped garret or cellar tradition.69 Warner Hatch, whose
Rotary-Breech Loading gun exercised Springfield in 1861 and evoked
the praise of Dr. Gatling, was a pattern maker working essentially
in support of manufacturers.70 Neither Natcher's nor Hatch's
invention went beyond prototypal stage. A Cincinnati lawyer,
Walter G. Sherwin, first advanced the Cincinnati Breech Loading
cannon, which finally came to Lincoln's personal attention through
the efforts of the Cincinnati wagon manufacturer, James C. C.
Holenshade.71 It satisfied neither Lincoln nor the Ordnance Department. Securing two patents for armament design of naval craft was
Peter Andrews, a Cincinnati commission merchant of diverse inventive talent.72
Undoubtedly the most persistent entrepreneurial effort in military
innovation was that of Miles Greenwood of Cincinnati. Employing
more than five hundred men, his Eagle Iron Works before the war
was pouring forth an array of products: machine castings, iron house
fronts, stoves, butt hinges, steam pipes and radiators, gas fittings,
valves, cocks, locks, door bolts, etc.™ When war came, he took the
main chance and more besides. Flourishing on war contracts, the
protean Greenwood might have safely refrained from innovation but
often chose the experimenter's path.74 Under federal contract, his
firm manufactured a large number of bronze cannon — mostly
Napoleons — gun carriages, iron-clad vessels and many other items.75
For the state of Ohio, he fitted machinery for the rifling and sighting
of United States regulation muskets, with reportedly good results.76
69
Index of Patents, I: 200. Local sources fail to reveal Natcher's occupation;
but it seems clear that he was not operating any manufacturing facility when he
received
his patent.
70
Springfield News, Nov. 12, 1861.
"Robert V. Bruce, Lincoln and the Tools of War (Indianapolis, 1956), 126-128,
184-186,
201-202; Scientific American, April 25, 1863.
72
Index of Patents, III: 1,618; Scientific American, Sept. 26, 1863 and Nov.
21, 73
1863.
Cist, Sketches, 278ff.
74
Throughout the war, his shops were plagued by fires, but, as the Gazette
noted, he seemed "invincible" and proceeded with his business. Cincinnati
Gazette, May 23, 1864. Rumors had it that the fires were started by Southern
sympathizers.
"Cincinnati Gazette, Dec. 15, 1862. This issue presents a detailed account
of Greenwood's war business. See also Louis L. Tucker, Cincinnati during the
Civil War (Ohio Civil War Centennial Commission Publication No. 9, 1962),
20-21.
^Scientific American, July 6, 1861; Cincinnati Commercial, June 12, 1861;
Aug. 9, 1861.
Entrepreneurial Invention
21
To James Ripley, Chief of Army Ordnance, he proposed that wrought
or cast iron be substituted for timber in the construction of gun
carriages.77 He experimented in the production of steel guns and was
Society engraving
MILES GREENWOOD
One of 19th century Cincinnati's most dynamic industrial leaders
an early manufacturer of the Gatling gun.78 Possibly, too, he was
the "extensive founder" who, reported Cincinnati newspapers,
developed a new technique for casting cannon balls so that the iron
would be uniformly distributed throughout the ball.79
"Greenwood to Ripley, Feb. 11,1862, in Historical and Philosophical Society
of Ohio Library, Miles Greenwood Papers.
78
Cincinnati Gazette, Sept. 15, 1862; Dec. 15, 1862. The Cincinnati Type
Foundry was also manufacturing the Gatling gun. Dayton Daily Empire,
March 4, 1863.
"Cincinnati Commercial, May 24, 1861; Cincinnati Gazette, May 25, 1861.
22
The Bulletin
Not unlike Greenwood was Holenshade, one of the proprietors of
Holenshade, Morris, and Company in Cincinnati. Staffed by about
six hundred men, the firm manufactured as many as 6,000 army
wagons a year during the war, as well as thousands of camp kettles,
mess pans, tin cups, and bolts.80 Unwilling to relax in affluence,
Holenshade experimented with the Cincinnati Breech Cannon and
was instrumental in developing several new wagons for army use.
One, designed to haul cotton in the Gulf states, was "simply a platform . . . with heavily ironed running gear."81 Another was specially
intended for use on the mountainous roads of western Virginia,
where it performed well.82 Though activism was their way, neither
Holenshade nor Greenwood was under any great economic compulsion to invent or innovate. Before ascribing unalloyed patriotism to
them, however, one should note their scale of operations and war
riches enabling them to indulge in experimentation that smaller
entrepreneurs might not risk.
Size and financial success in the case of the Barney and Parker
Car Company of Dayton, one of the two railroad car manufacturers
in the valley, yielded little progress in railroad technology, much less
an entrepreneurial diversion in military innovation. Founded in
1849 by Eliam Barney and Ebenezer Thresher even before rail lines
reached Dayton, the firm soon became one of the leading car manufacturers in the West. Before the war, it supplied three quarters of
the rolling stock in the South and enjoyed a substantial market in the
Northwest.83 On the eve of the war, its capital investment of $150,000
was one of the highest in the valley for all kinds of firms.84 Default
of Southern debtors and loss of Southern customers brought it to
near-ruin in 1861, but by mid-1862 the war had given it a deluge of
equipment orders.85 For a strolling observer, the company's facilities
presented a panorama of capitalism triumphant. Nearly two hundred men were at work in the various shops and departments. In the
freight department, the "stroke" of the hammer was "almost deafening"; in the foundry, car wheels were poured in a "trice"; and in
the machine shop, all kinds of machinery, including an "ingenious
80
sl
Cincinnati Gazette, Dec. 15, 1862.
Ibid.
82
Cincinnati
83
Commercial, Nov. 1, 1862; Cincinnati Times, Jan. 14, 1863.
Dayton Daily Journal, March 19, 1864. During the war, Dayton soldiers
often reported that they had seen the firm's name on wrecked cars in the South.
^Manufactures of the United States in 1860, 453. The firm's only competitor
in the valley had a capital investment of but $12,000.
85
Warren H. Deem, "The Barney & Smith Car Company, A Study in Business
Growth and Decline," Term paper in American Economic History, Harvard
University, April, 1953; in Dayton, Ohio Public Library.
Entrepreneurial Invention
23
machine for planing eccentric surfaces," were performing wondrous
tasks.86 Despite its evident high level of production technology, the
firm was not noticeably progressive in product design. Not one
patent for improved cars was issued to its proprietors during the war.
It did build an improved stock box car in 1864.87 And its sumptuously
decorated cars often excited viewers.88 But the company was no
pace-setter in car technology; it was content to be a money-maker.
Inventive and innovative activity was also low in the meat
packing industry, the ready-made clothing business, and the boot
and shoe industry, three of Cincinnati's most important industries.
Special circumstances in each case may have dulled entrepreneurial
inclinations to progress. In the meat packing industry, general
economic conditions were not favorable for experiment. With new
rail lines serving them, Chicago packers had increasingly appropriated
Cincinnati's markets in the 1850's; facing this tide, entrepreneurs
were not likely to be exemplars of Schumpeter's derring-do innovators, even though they found some relief in the rising European
demand for provisions in the early 1860's. Only a few of the city's
thirty-odd firms seem to have risked change worthy of note. The
James Morrison Company and the Wilson and Eggleston Company
reduced labor costs by bringing their killing and packing processes
intensively together under one roof,89 a kind of physical integration
that had been going on in the industry since the 1840's. And the
Wilson firm achieved a significant, albeit simple, mechanical evolution in its disassembly line. As late as 1861 in disassembly lines in
the city, the carcasses of hogs coming off the cleaning tables were
hung by hand for degutting from a hook on the rim of a horizontally
fixed wheel above the floor and then were lifted by hand and carried
to a storage room.90 According to John Kouwenhoven, "sometime"
in the early 1860's the horizontal wheel was replaced by an overhead
railway loop, the loop accommodating hooks travelling on pulleys
which conveyed the degutted carcasses to the cooling rooms.91 The
first widespread notice of the innovation came in an 1862 Cincinnati
Gazette account of the Wilson line. "The hogs," wrote an ungrammatical reporter, "under the new plan, when they reach the end of
86
"An Hour at the Car Factory," Dayton Daily Journal, June 24, 1862.
Cincinnati Gazette, March 25, 1864.
S8
Dayton Daily Empire, Jan. 15, 1863; Dayton Daily Journal, March 19,
1864; Cincinnati Gazette, March 25, 1864.
89
Cincinnati Gazette, Nov. 25, 1862; Cincinnati Commercial, Nov. 18, 1863.
90
Flint, Eighty Years' Progress, 65-66.
91
John A. Kouwenhoven, Made in America (Newton Centre, 1957), 47.
87
COOLING AND DRYING.
A familiar scene in "Porkopolis"
Harper's Weekly, Feb. 4, 1860
Entrepreneurial Invention
25
the scraping table are swung off on a swivel hook, which works on an
iron wheel, when the entrails are taken out and the hog is easily
moved along to the cooling room."92 Only coincidental with war,
this innovation was even inevitable in an industry whose entrepreneurs lay largely in technological quiescence, marking time as their
glory faded.
Competitive innovation was not characteristic, either, of the
hundreds of clothing and boot and shoe entrepreneurs in the Cincinnati area.93 To a large extent, they were dependent on Eastern
manufacturers for improved producers' goods. Sewing machines
manufactured by Singer, Wheeler, and Wilson, Grover and Baker,
and Willcox and Gibbs, all Eastern firms, had growingly tied clothing
producers to Eastern technology in the 1850's.94 Over a thousand
machines from these firms were in Cincinnati clothing factories in
1859. About one thousand Singer machines alone were scattered
among saddle and harness makers, hat and cap producers, and boot
and shoe manufacturers.95 Though dominant in the Eastern technology that yielded nearly 130 patents for improved sewing machines
and sewing machine attachments during the war, these same firms
offered no revolutionary devices to clothing entrepreneurs for innovative testing. The fourteen or fifteen local machine producers no
doubt also had customers in the city, but they were not bearing
original technological gifts to the community, receiving at the most
two patents for improved machines during the war. An undetermined
number of these producers, moreover, were manufacturing machines
under license from Eastern manufacturers. The war probably did
hasten purchase of machines in the city, where, after the loss of
Southern markets, large military contracts revived the clothing
92
Cincinnati Gazette, Nov. 25, 1862.
"According to the Census of 1860, there were 274 clothing manufacturers in
the fourteen-county area; of these 232 were in Cincinnati. There were 425 boot
and shoe manufacturers in the area, with 285 in Cincinnati and its environs.
Manufactures of the United States in 1860, 442ff.
94
Sewing machine advertising of Eastern firms was prominent in the area
newspapers, and nearly all companies had agents in Cincinnati, Hamilton,
Dayton and Springfield selling to manufacturers and domestic users alike. In
the Singer Company historical file, two interesting letters from Cincinnati
manufacturers may be found. One, dated August 31, 1857, was from G. W.
Taft, who wrote, "I have used Singer machines for five years in the manufacture
of vests. . . . I have now seventeen machines and 170 hands employed on this
kind of work. . . . My operators are nearly all between the ages of twelve and
fourteen." Ernst Sattler wrote on September 2, 1857, "I am using Singer sewing
machines in the manufacture of ladies dresses, shirts and all kinds of thin goods."
95
Cist, Sketches, 367.
26
The Bulletin
business.96 In fact, the contracts must have been a surfeit. For
entrepreneurs offered little opposition to government ownership and
operation of several clothing factories in Cincinnati. Giving employment to as many as 4,000 men and women at times, the government
facilities were held to be quite efficient.97 But neither the government
nor private contractors made any distinctive technical advance in
production methods or product design.98 Entrepreneurs, it would
seem, were restricted to imitative investment, which must have been
accelerated by military spending, the relatively low price of machines
— from $50 to $200 a unit — and the aggressive sales efforts of sewing machine manufacturers. And the average capital investment of
about $10,000 for each firm in the industry also provided a favorable
financial base for such imitative mechanization.99
Like the clothing business, the boot and shoe industry thrived in
the wake of military contracts and general prosperity. Similarly, its
entrepreneurs looked to Eastern technology for advances in shoe
machine design. Holding the scepter of shoe machinery invention
in the East were Benjamin Sturtevant and Lyman Blake. Blake's
machine nonpareil, successfully promoted during the war by Gordon
McKay and known as the McKay Sewer, was capable of rapid sewing
of uppers to soles. The first valley entrepreneur to adopt it was
George Stribley of Cincinnati, who received No. 2 of the first lot of
eleven machines manufactured.100 A large producer of women's and
children's shoes, this son of Crispin probably was easily able to absorb
the $500 charge for leasing the machine. Smaller entrepreneurs in
an industry where average capital investment was but $1,400 may
have found the charge a formidable barrier to imitation. Regardless
96
Within a few months after Fort Sumter's fall, the clothing business had
fallen off by 25%. Annual Review of the Commerce of Cincinnati for 1861 (Cincinnati, 1861), 21. Four government contracts for production of army shirts,
jackets, pants and coats provided employment for at least 6,600 workers in
1862. Cincinnati Gazette, Dec. 15, 1862. By Sept. of 1862, Cincinnati firms had
received contracts for 6,000,000 uniforms. Annual Review for 1862, 11.
"Cincinnati Times, Nov. 7, 1862; Nov. 8, 1862; Dec. 30, 1862. Cincinnati
Gazette, Sept. 20, 1862; Oct. 29, 1862; Feb. 8, 1864.
98
In its tent-making establishments, which employed about 1,250 workers,
the government did become a party to improved production techniques. One
of its employees, William Merritt, perfected a simple but effective device for
speeding tent production. Under the old method, each tent was marked separately for the cutting of loopholes. Merritt constructed a platform on a miniature railway, upon which one hundred shelter tents could be placed. The
platform was then moved under a massive frame of knives working in capstan
fashion to perforate all the tents in one operation. Cincinnati Times, Feb. 16,
1864
^Manufactures of the United States in 1860, 454.
100
Charles H. McDermott, A History of the Shoe and Leather Industries in
the United States (2 vols., Boston, 1920), I, 75; The City of Cincinnati and Its
Resources (Cincinnati, 1891), 102-103.
Entrepreneurial Invention
27
of the intensity of imitation during the war, it is apparent that entrepreneurs could act but reflexively in a technological milieu shaped by
Eastern forces.10L
The entrepreneurial efforts in technological change described
here represented several responses to the Civil War economy. Agricultural implement and machine manufacturers, buoyed by increasing product demand but too numerous to escape competition in
product differentiation, produced a wave of minor invention that —
considering the gathering body of entrepreneurial experience — was
quite predictable. Producers of durable consumer goods worked
against a similar background with similar results. Publishers flailingly
sought innovative opportunities to reduce production costs. Clothing
and boot and shoe entrepreneurs, partially insulated from competition by war contracts and beholden to Eastern technology, were
limited to reflexive imitation. Entrepreneurs who might have experi101
While clothing and shoe manufacturers acted reflexively but practically
in their technological milieu, a few Miami Valley entrepreneurs were sharing in
some quixotic experiments to make flax the national fiber. As cotton supplies
dwindled in the North, many cotton mill operators converted their facilities to
woolen production — and sensibly so. Fite, Social and Industrial Conditions in
the North, 83ff. Entrepreneurial interest in flax was another matter. Flax
production, of course, could be increased. The problem, as Scientific American
cautioned its readers, was to produce linen as cheaply as cotton cloth. Dressing
flax — rippling, retting, drying, and skutching it — was laborious and thus
costly; and spinning the fiber on cotton jennies was hardly feasible. If "cottonized" by reducing it to short lengths, the fiber might be used with cotton machinery, conceded Scientific American; but the most valuable quality of the
fiber — its strength — would be proportionately lessened. Scientific American,
April 20, 1861; June 22, 1861; Aug. 31, 1861; April 19, 1862; Oct. 4, 1862. Despite or because of these technical barriers, "tinkerers" and entrepreneurs in
all parts of the North worked for dramatic inventive "breakthroughs" in the
development of flax dressing and spinning machines. In the Miami Valley, J.
P. Comley, an editor of the Dayton Daily Journal, sought and received a patent
for dressing flax for spinning on cotton machinery. Index of Patents, I, 551. At
least two Clark County flax dressers tested new braking machines invented and
manufactured by the New York firm of Sanford and Mallory. Nothing of consequence seems to have resulted from these efforts
Perhaps of some import were the endeavors of George C. Davies, a Cincinnati manufacturer of cotton presses. For nearly ten years before the war, he
had tried to develop flax as a fiber that might be spun economically on cotton
machinery. Manufacturers of the United States in 1860, cix. The war saw him
intensifying his efforts. In 1864, he and his brother, James, began to produce
in a Dayton facility a flax called Er-o-lin. According to a New York Evening
Post report, the "wool flax" could be used by spinners of wool in the proportion
of 25% to 30% with wool without any alteration of machinery. New York
Evening Post, July 21, 1864; quoted in Dayton Daily Journal, July 28, 1864.
It could take the place of cotton, said the report, "in all mixed fabrics in which
cotton and wool form the component parts." The brothers were supposedly
working up several tons a day for shipment to wool spinners. What success
they had in marketing Er-q-lin cannot be determined; by 1866, in any case, they
had put flax production aside for the manufacture of cotton presses.
28
The Bulletin
merited in weapons development were probably deterred by the more
certain rewards to be realized in the use of conventional technologies.
And inventor-entrepreneurs of power devices continued in their
usual patterns.
Whatever the extent of inventive-innovative activity in these
industrial areas, the Civil War served but catalytically in bringing
it forth; the war was not a magic generative cause of progress in the
Miami Valley. Meaningful progress in the short run, so it seems,
arose from industries whose experiential and competitive structural
bases made inventive and innovative emanations inevitable — war
or no war. Apparently the Civil War added no new dimensions to
these bases. It did not divert inventive skills to new fields. And in
no significant way did it retard or distort inventive endeavors.
Where a largely self-sufficient technology existed before 1861, the
war did not derange it; where an interdependent technology existed,
war supported and confirmed interdependency. Entrepreneurial
invention and innovation in the Miami Valley, in brief, moved within
boundaries that were not noticeably altered by the Civil War.