Most Wonderful Machine : : Mechanization and Social Change in Berkshire Paper Making, 1801-1885 / / Judith A. McGaw.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Archive 1927-1999
• VerfasserIn: McGaw, Judith A.,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2019]; ©1987
• Year of Publication: 2019
• Language: English
• Series: Princeton Legacy Library ; 5283
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (464 p.)

On a visit to a Berkshire paper mill, the narrator of Herman Melville's "The Tartarus of Maids" views the "wonderful" papermaking machine with awe and calls it a "miracle of inscrutable intricacy." Manifesting in their factories and towns such nineteenth-century fascination with machinery, paper mill owners and workers made an industrial revolution in Berkshrie County, Massachusetts. This book examines their experiences from the era of craft production through several generations of sustained technological change to answer two major questions: What accounts for the widespread and rapid adoption of machines in nineteenth-century America? And how did the new technology help to transform America socially and culturally? Rejecting technological determinism, Judith McGaw effectively integrates labor, business, social, and women's history with technological history to bring to life the human decisions that made mechanization possible. In compelling detail the author offers new explanations of how change in the craft era paved the way for industrialization and how paternalism worked in small-scale industry. She also provides a thoughtful discussion of the interaction between evangelical culture and the emerging industrial order, and a close analysis of how nineteenth-century gender distinctions fostered mechanization.Judith A. McGaw is Assistant Professor of History of Technology at the University of Pennsylvania.Originally published in 1987.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ILLUSTRATIONS -- TABLES -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- ABBREVIATIONS -- INTRODUCTION -- PART I: BEFORE THE MACHINE -- CHAPTER 1. A FINE PLACE FOR PAPER MAKING: BERKSHIRE COUNTY, 1799-1801 -- CHAPTER 2. ZENAS CRANE'S BAGGAGE: THE PAPER-MAKING TRADITION, 1801-1820 -- CHAPTER 3. A DECADE OF PREPARATION: THE 1820s -- PART II: THE MACHINE -- CHAPTER 4. MECHANICAL PAPER MAKERS: THE EVOLUTION OF PAPER MACHINERY, 1799-1885 -- CHAPTER 5. THE COMMUNITY OF MECHANIZERS: BERKSHIRE PAPER MILL OWNERS, 1827-1857 -- CHAPTER 6. LOCAL CONDITIONS AND MECHANIZATION: MACHINES IN THE BERKSHIRES, 1827-1885 -- PART III. AFTER THE MACHINE -- CHAPTER 7. THE MILL TOWNS TRANSFORMED: TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE AFTER MECHANIZATION, 1857-1885 -- CHAPTER 8. MEN OF SUBSTANCE , ORDER, AND POWER: OWNERS OF MECHANIZED PAPER MILLS , 1858-1885 -- CHAPTER 9. MACHINES AND THE WORKING CLASSES: MALE PAPER MILL EMPLOYEES, 1827-1885 -- CHAPTER 10. "MERE COGS TO THE WHEELS": FEMALE PAPER WORKERS AND THE "SEP ARA TE SPHERE," 1827-1885 -- EPILOGUE AND CONCLUSION -- APPENDIX A. CHRONOLOGY OF BERKSHIRE COUNTY PAPER MILLS AND MILL OWNERSHIP, 1801-1885 -- APPENDIX B. MILL OWNERS, SUCCESS, AND FAILURE: FURTHER DATA -- APPENDIX C. MILLS, MACHINES, OUTPUT, AND CAP IT AL: LOCAL DATA -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX