Forsaken paths: The organization of the American textile industry in the nineteenth century.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This dissertation examines three competing forms of organizing textiles in nineteenth century America: the Lowell, Slater and Philadelphia systems. I focus on the crucial role of capital formation, a neglected variable in organizational history, and argue that the way capital formation varied in these three systems accounts for the striking differences in their organization and societal impact. In Chapter 1, I examine the comparative development of the Slater and the Lowell systems. I do so to challenge the pervasive belief in the superiority of the mass production of textiles in the Lowell system by demonstrating the system's organizational rigidities, inefficiencies and undesirable social consequences in comparison with the Slater system. In Chapter II, I investigate the factors that contributed to the regional variations in the organization of textiles in the Lowell and the Philadelphia systems. I argue that regional differences in the pattern of capital accumulation rather than differences in the culture of textile entrepreneurs explain the regional variation in the organization of textiles in the Lowell and the Philadelphia systems. I demonstrate that under conditions of chronic capital shortage, the specialized, flexible production networks of the Philadelphia system constituted a viable alternative to the capital-intensive organization of the Lowell system by fostering complementarity and cooperation among textile entrepreneurs. In Chapter III, I make a stronger case for the general effectiveness of Philadelphia-type production networks under conditions of capital scarcity by focusing on Fall River. Most scholars in the textile literature treated Fall River as yet another Lowell-type textile center, and, thus, interpreted the rapid expansion of Fall River textile industry in the post-Civil War period as a sign of the continuing superiority of Lowell-type mass production techniques within the industry. In this chapter, I challenge this interpretation by documenting the presence, in ante-bellum Fall River, of a production network that resembled the industrial districts of the Philadelphia system. I suggest that without the flexibility, diversity and the resilience of this production network that ensured the slow but continuous accumulation of capital during the ante-bellum period, textile industry in Fall River could not have experienced its rapid post-Civil War expansion.