Eli Whitney William Hoogland

Eli Whitney, William Hoogland

Whitney grasped that the way to produce machinery or products in vast quantities at low prices was to achieve interchangeability of parts, uniformity, standardization, on a scale never before imagined. He called this the 'American System.' His firearms factory was the first realization of it.

Whitney's determination to introduce this system was adamantine and was laughed at by the British and French ordnance officers to whom he explained it. They said it denied the craftsman's individuality. Well, of course it did. But labor costs in America were so high that the craftsman was a luxury. Whitney realized that for America to overtake Britain in manufactures it was necessary to bypass the craftsman with a workforce of easily trained, semi-skilled men recruited from the waves of immigrants. America was a place where an industrial worker could save up enough in three years to buy a farm, and no immigrant would stay in the city in manufacturing industry if he could become an independent, landowning farmer. So the thrust to reduce the industrial headcount was enormous, and Whitney showed the way ahead. His 'American System' caught on in the earliest stages of the American Industrial Revolution. As early as 1835, the British politician and industrialist Richard Cobden, visiting America, said that its labor saving machinery was superior to anything in Britain. By the 1850s, British experts marveled at what they found in the United States - standardized products mass produced by machine methods including doors, furniture, and other woodwork, boots, shoes, plows, mowing machines, wood screws, files, nails, locks, clocks, small arms, nuts, bolts - the list was endless. Virtually all this industry was located north of the slave line. So if Whitney's cotton gin enable the slave system to survive and thrive, his 'American System' also gave the North the industrial muscle to crush the defenders of slavery in due course.

Eli Whitney spent time and energy promoting the american system of manufacturing. The idea migrated from the armories to industry as machinists trained in the armory system were hired by other manufacturers. Manufacturers thus influenced included American clockmakers, the Singer Corporation sewing machine manufacturer, and McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, as well as locomotive and bicycle makers. The idea would also help lead to the American 'Golden Age' of manufacturing when Henry Ford mass produced the automobile. Mastering true interchangeability on the assembly line, the Ford plant produced standard model cars. These efficient production strategies allowed these automobiles to be affordable for the middle class.

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