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Civilizing the Machine: Technology and Republican Values in America, 1776-1900
In Civilizing the Machine , John F. Kasson asks how new technologies have affected this drive for a republican civilization-and the question is as vital now as ever. A major theme of American history has always been the desire to achieve a genuinely republican way of life that values liberty, order, and virtue. Civilizing the Machine was an innovative and compelling work when it first appeared two decades ago: Kasson's analysis of the technical developments in transportation, communication, and manufacture from the Revolution to the of the nineteenth century showed how technologies were dealt with in sources as diverse as the debates of Hamilton and Jefferson; the factories of Lowell, Massachusetts; the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson; the prints of Currier & Ives; and the utopian and dystopian novels of Howells and Twain. Kasson's profound, wide-ranging inquiry into this central issue in American history is now available again with a new Introduction by the author.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
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About the author
John F. Kasson
10 books10 followersJohn F. Kasson is a professor of history and American studies at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill and the author of Amusing the Million, among many other seminal works of cultural history. He lives in Chapel Hill.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 12, 2013
In this classic work, which Kasson intends as a “history of America’s own response to technology” (vii), he asserts that during the period in question technology was fundamental to Americans’ understanding of their own republican possibilities. Beginning in the late colonial period, Kasson examines American response as the twin revolutions—political and industrial—impacted the colonies almost simultaneously. Technology was embraced as a means of self-sufficiency in support of the boycott of British goods and then as a military necessity in the face of a war that cut off access to imports; success in the revolution validated the embrace of technology and could be made to fit the Puritan work ethic stressing the importance of diligent labor that is useful to society. Even Thomas Jefferson, who enunciated the American agrarian ideal and initially argued for the leaving of manufacture to Europe on moral grounds, was impressed enough by the possibilities of England’s earliest factories to imagine technology as a means to allow the American farmer to be self-sufficient, with small-scale, decentralized manufacture—such as he set up on his own plantation using slave labor—to which women, children, the old, and the infirm could contribute, saving them from hard field work. Indeed, this most fascinating picture of Jefferson, which is perhaps of special interest in the early twenty-first century, when a more nuanced picture of him not just as philosopher and Founding Father but as slaveowner and plantation capitalist has lately emerged, leaves the reader wanting more.
As Kasson explores in his second chapter, American capitalists who saw technology’s potential on a larger scale than Jefferson’s ideal were still sensitive to the American condemnation of Manchester and other English industrial sites, but the social woes they so vividly displayed seemed a special English problem, or rather, one which American republicanism was especially suited to avoid. Kasson examines Lowell, Massachusetts, as an exercise in balancing technology and republicanism, noting Lowell’s and his fellow entrepreneurs’ attempts to build controls that would simultaneously prevent the formation of a degraded proletariat, and, perhaps not coincidently, discourage the formation of a organized labor force that might challenge the capitalist. Providing some of the few working class voices heard in the book, this section engages a theme that could have used more exploration throughout—that of the competing definitions of “republicanism” that existed from the nation’s earliest days.
In his remaining three chapters, Kasson surveys the literary and visual explorations of technology and republicanism through the latter two thirds of the nineteenth century, examining in turn the progression of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s representation of technology over the course of his career, the American tendency towards decorative machinery and celebratory—even mythic—visual images of technology in paintings and prints, and the late-century wrestling with the growing tension between a fading sense of republican promise and a series of woes brought on by technological capitalism, as explored in four utopian/dystopian novels of the 1890s.
As episodic and varied as these examinations are in both subject and time, this book might best be seen as a collection of essays on the theme of technology and republicanism. As such, it succeeds nicely; each of them is strong, thoughtful, and rewarding to the reader, and certainly they challenge quite convincingly any allegation that the republican ideal, as elaborated by Jefferson, was somehow incompatible with technology. As a united whole, however, the book does not quite form a complete picture of these ideals over the period 1776 to 1900 in America. For one thing, the very silence of numerous missing voices clamors for the reader’s attention. Early in the period, perhaps, “Americans” are an arguably more homogenous group, and certainly once we reach Lowell we hear from factory girls on both sides of the labor issue (those who supported and those who complained about management) and from radical labor organizers more broadly. Beyond that point, though, these voices are gone. The Americans who gaze at the decorative machines at the World’s Fair or at John Ferguson Weir’s painting The Gun Foundry, at least the Americans Kasson depicts, are the privileged, or at least the comfortable. Emerson may have been the “Philosopher of Democracy,” but he was a well-educated product of Boston, not a factory worker. Kasson relates an exchange between two of his utopian writers that epitomizes their position, when William Dean Howells said to Mark Twain, “We are theoretical socialists, and practical aristocrats.” (224) Theoretical socialists, writing to make a middle- and upper-class audience uncomfortable with their acceptance of “the course of American Technological development as a grand, progressive pageant” reflect a fascinating aspect of late-nineteenth century society and literature. (233) Kasson uses the word proletariat to express societal fears of technology’s dark potential from the earliest days of the republic, though the modern use of the word in English dates only from the mid-nineteenth century; the actual proletariat remain off-stage. Missing too are the immigrants who formed a broad portion of the working population by the end of the century. They appear in the chapter on Lowell as a faceless, voiceless mass, arriving only to signal the end of the experiment. They do not return.
With this circumscription of who is included among “Americans” comes a similarly circumscribed view of American geography. Aside from Jefferson’s Virginia plantation (which is arguably mid-Atlantic) no further portion of the South, nor any voices from it, appear. Whether or not this is directly attributable to the stereotype that would consider contradictory the placement of “South” and “technology”—or perhaps “South” and “republic”—in the same sentence, the effect is to reinforce it. For that matter, though Americans fought a terrible and highly technological war over the very definition of the republic in the middle of the period under consideration, the reader will not find it here. The West and its tremendous effect on Americans’ self-definition and vision of their nation are similarly missing, except perhaps as the vague horizon in a Currier and Ives print. Neither does Kasson engage the changes in public education during the period, aside from a mention in the context of Lowell factory girls’ self-improvement, nor the professionalization of engineering and technical professions, though all of tthese changes were intimately tied to questions of both technology and republicanism. The result is perhaps not an examination of Americans’ own response to technology, but of educated, white, largely male, New Englanders’ response.
That said, as a series of thoughtful and engaging essays, this book deserves consideration and invites contemplation, and it would be approachable for the general reader with historical interests as well as for students and historians. Certainly those interested in nineteenth-century American cultural, literary, or art history will find something of interest and value, and the historian of technology will find a thought-provoking consideration of the symbolic role technology has played in American society. And perhaps the book will spur readers to seek out the missing pieces that keep it from forming a fuller picture of America’s response to technology in the nineteenth century.
As Kasson explores in his second chapter, American capitalists who saw technology’s potential on a larger scale than Jefferson’s ideal were still sensitive to the American condemnation of Manchester and other English industrial sites, but the social woes they so vividly displayed seemed a special English problem, or rather, one which American republicanism was especially suited to avoid. Kasson examines Lowell, Massachusetts, as an exercise in balancing technology and republicanism, noting Lowell’s and his fellow entrepreneurs’ attempts to build controls that would simultaneously prevent the formation of a degraded proletariat, and, perhaps not coincidently, discourage the formation of a organized labor force that might challenge the capitalist. Providing some of the few working class voices heard in the book, this section engages a theme that could have used more exploration throughout—that of the competing definitions of “republicanism” that existed from the nation’s earliest days.
In his remaining three chapters, Kasson surveys the literary and visual explorations of technology and republicanism through the latter two thirds of the nineteenth century, examining in turn the progression of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s representation of technology over the course of his career, the American tendency towards decorative machinery and celebratory—even mythic—visual images of technology in paintings and prints, and the late-century wrestling with the growing tension between a fading sense of republican promise and a series of woes brought on by technological capitalism, as explored in four utopian/dystopian novels of the 1890s.
As episodic and varied as these examinations are in both subject and time, this book might best be seen as a collection of essays on the theme of technology and republicanism. As such, it succeeds nicely; each of them is strong, thoughtful, and rewarding to the reader, and certainly they challenge quite convincingly any allegation that the republican ideal, as elaborated by Jefferson, was somehow incompatible with technology. As a united whole, however, the book does not quite form a complete picture of these ideals over the period 1776 to 1900 in America. For one thing, the very silence of numerous missing voices clamors for the reader’s attention. Early in the period, perhaps, “Americans” are an arguably more homogenous group, and certainly once we reach Lowell we hear from factory girls on both sides of the labor issue (those who supported and those who complained about management) and from radical labor organizers more broadly. Beyond that point, though, these voices are gone. The Americans who gaze at the decorative machines at the World’s Fair or at John Ferguson Weir’s painting The Gun Foundry, at least the Americans Kasson depicts, are the privileged, or at least the comfortable. Emerson may have been the “Philosopher of Democracy,” but he was a well-educated product of Boston, not a factory worker. Kasson relates an exchange between two of his utopian writers that epitomizes their position, when William Dean Howells said to Mark Twain, “We are theoretical socialists, and practical aristocrats.” (224) Theoretical socialists, writing to make a middle- and upper-class audience uncomfortable with their acceptance of “the course of American Technological development as a grand, progressive pageant” reflect a fascinating aspect of late-nineteenth century society and literature. (233) Kasson uses the word proletariat to express societal fears of technology’s dark potential from the earliest days of the republic, though the modern use of the word in English dates only from the mid-nineteenth century; the actual proletariat remain off-stage. Missing too are the immigrants who formed a broad portion of the working population by the end of the century. They appear in the chapter on Lowell as a faceless, voiceless mass, arriving only to signal the end of the experiment. They do not return.
With this circumscription of who is included among “Americans” comes a similarly circumscribed view of American geography. Aside from Jefferson’s Virginia plantation (which is arguably mid-Atlantic) no further portion of the South, nor any voices from it, appear. Whether or not this is directly attributable to the stereotype that would consider contradictory the placement of “South” and “technology”—or perhaps “South” and “republic”—in the same sentence, the effect is to reinforce it. For that matter, though Americans fought a terrible and highly technological war over the very definition of the republic in the middle of the period under consideration, the reader will not find it here. The West and its tremendous effect on Americans’ self-definition and vision of their nation are similarly missing, except perhaps as the vague horizon in a Currier and Ives print. Neither does Kasson engage the changes in public education during the period, aside from a mention in the context of Lowell factory girls’ self-improvement, nor the professionalization of engineering and technical professions, though all of tthese changes were intimately tied to questions of both technology and republicanism. The result is perhaps not an examination of Americans’ own response to technology, but of educated, white, largely male, New Englanders’ response.
That said, as a series of thoughtful and engaging essays, this book deserves consideration and invites contemplation, and it would be approachable for the general reader with historical interests as well as for students and historians. Certainly those interested in nineteenth-century American cultural, literary, or art history will find something of interest and value, and the historian of technology will find a thought-provoking consideration of the symbolic role technology has played in American society. And perhaps the book will spur readers to seek out the missing pieces that keep it from forming a fuller picture of America’s response to technology in the nineteenth century.
August 23, 2007
I read this book after Amazon suggested it to me, and because it could be had for cheap. Amazon suggested I might like this book because I had recently purchased Leo Marx's "The Machine in the Garden" and Henry Nash Smith's "Virgin Land". I had to read no further then the author's preface to see reference to those two authors, and the book often cited to their work in those two books.
Undoubtably, Chapter Two, called "The Factory as Republican Community" is a must-read. Using Goffman's concept of the "Total Insitituion", Kasson uses primary and secondary source material to discuss how the establishment of the Lowell-model factories in New England represented the culmination of a certain kind of american ideology. Kasson situates the discussion in terms of American reaction to English factory life (see Dickens, Hard Times) and how American factory owners wanted their factories to be "different".
For me, the most illuminating part of this book came when Kasson explained how the reaction to English factory life was primarily shock and horror at the lack of social control exercised by the British over their factory workers. The Lowell owners were just as concerned with the social control of their workers as they were with making economic profit (Kasson points out that their was a substantial issue as to whether the factories would, in fact, be profitable). For me, the point was to illustrate the profoundly undemocratic roots of American Republicanism. Although Kasson is far from an ideologue, I can see why this chapter is often required reading in college history courses.
As for the rest of the book. Meh. Chapter one sets up the background for Chapter two, so you have to read that. I thought his chapter on Emerson ("Technology and Imaginative Freedom") was a bit derivative of his influences. His chapter on "The Aesthetics of Machinery" is mildly interesting (Did you know that Americans used to paint their machines with flowers?). His final chapter on "Technology and Utopia" is, in my opinion, the weakest, although I was engaged by his exegesis of Twain's "A Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court".
I'd recommend this book for students of early america history, american studies types and people interested in the the subject of social control.
Undoubtably, Chapter Two, called "The Factory as Republican Community" is a must-read. Using Goffman's concept of the "Total Insitituion", Kasson uses primary and secondary source material to discuss how the establishment of the Lowell-model factories in New England represented the culmination of a certain kind of american ideology. Kasson situates the discussion in terms of American reaction to English factory life (see Dickens, Hard Times) and how American factory owners wanted their factories to be "different".
For me, the most illuminating part of this book came when Kasson explained how the reaction to English factory life was primarily shock and horror at the lack of social control exercised by the British over their factory workers. The Lowell owners were just as concerned with the social control of their workers as they were with making economic profit (Kasson points out that their was a substantial issue as to whether the factories would, in fact, be profitable). For me, the point was to illustrate the profoundly undemocratic roots of American Republicanism. Although Kasson is far from an ideologue, I can see why this chapter is often required reading in college history courses.
As for the rest of the book. Meh. Chapter one sets up the background for Chapter two, so you have to read that. I thought his chapter on Emerson ("Technology and Imaginative Freedom") was a bit derivative of his influences. His chapter on "The Aesthetics of Machinery" is mildly interesting (Did you know that Americans used to paint their machines with flowers?). His final chapter on "Technology and Utopia" is, in my opinion, the weakest, although I was engaged by his exegesis of Twain's "A Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court".
I'd recommend this book for students of early america history, american studies types and people interested in the the subject of social control.
May 15, 2008
Something that's been sitting on my shelf for a while. . .
I had a class with Kasson in NC, but this is one of his earlier books. Really found it fascinating--wonderful exploration of how we as a nation think about technology and progress. And how those thoughts connect to our republican (small r) ideals--and how that might have seriously messed us up today. This is less about the extraordinary technologial advances of the 19th century (factories! steamships! railroads!) than how we thought about those advances.
Quite useful for one of our upcoming themes at the museum. Great for anyone interested in the intersection of the ideas and ideals of technology and society--but in all honestly, probably only for the history nerd.
I had a class with Kasson in NC, but this is one of his earlier books. Really found it fascinating--wonderful exploration of how we as a nation think about technology and progress. And how those thoughts connect to our republican (small r) ideals--and how that might have seriously messed us up today. This is less about the extraordinary technologial advances of the 19th century (factories! steamships! railroads!) than how we thought about those advances.
Quite useful for one of our upcoming themes at the museum. Great for anyone interested in the intersection of the ideas and ideals of technology and society--but in all honestly, probably only for the history nerd.
January 15, 2018
Excerpted as "Republican Values as a Democratic Factor" in Gary Kornblith, ed., The Industrial Revolution in America (1998)
How does the nation go from debates over domestic manufactures to a celebration of republican technology 50 years later? How is republicanism transformed to include a vision of machine-based manufacture?
Rural economy of the 18th century provided the context in which the yeoman farmer was mythologized as the classical republican hero. "A republican society was a society of freeholders, and praise of husbandry amounted to a national faith." (p. 6) But this freeholder ethic was not necessarily diametrically opposed to technological innovation. Yet, Kasson argues that the yeoman farmer ideal is not incompatible with technological inventiveness. Indeed, the term "technology" meant something entirely different to the 18th century mind. "In eighteenth century usage 'technology' denoted a treatise on an art of the scientific study of the practical or industrial arts (my emphasis), but not the practical arts collectively." (p.6) Within the context of Enlightenment thought, technology meant practical inventiveness. The seeds of a technology-driven American nation were there even at the founding.
The debates over domestic manufactures provide a taking off point for the republicanising of technology or "civilizing of the machine". During the American Revolution, patriots had encouraged the wearing of homespun etc. to free the American colonists from dependence on British goods. After the revolution, where was the new American nation to get its manufactures? From Europe? Thomas Jefferson weighed in with his Notes on the State of Virginia," urging Americans to let their factories remain in Europe. Ranged against Thomas Jefferson and the agrarians were the advocates of domestic manufactures. As Jefferson pointed out, factories could bring dependency and degradation for those working in them. Yet, reliance on European manufactures too was fraught with the dangers of dependency as well. By building American manufactures, the new nation could avoid the pitfalls of reliance on Europe. The rally cry was for a balanced economy of both agriculture and manufactures.
When Tench Coxe spoke to the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts in the summer of 1787, the Constitutional Convention was was meeting. It was precisely because America had such a shortage of laborers that the labor saving technology was well-suited to the American nation. Rather than devices threatening to undermine the yeoman farmer, labor-saving machinery was perfectly suited to the American conditions where natural resources were plentiful and human labor scare. Indeed, because American factories would produce simple American products, "machine-powered factories would serve in effect as republican institutions and provide a strong antidote to elements of dissipation and corruption" (p. 11) which were part and parcel of the goods imported from Europe.
As the Constitution was being debated, Tech Coxe's speech shows that advocates of domestic manufactures were already lobbying in a very public way for their position. When Alexander Hamilton published his Report on Manufactures in 1791, the debate over domestic manufactures had been conducted for more than a quarter of a century already. Advocates of a balanced economy had been making their case since before the revolution. Hamilton's report on American manufactures came at a time when manufactures had already become an established element of American ideology under the banner of republicanism.
How does the nation go from debates over domestic manufactures to a celebration of republican technology 50 years later? How is republicanism transformed to include a vision of machine-based manufacture?
Rural economy of the 18th century provided the context in which the yeoman farmer was mythologized as the classical republican hero. "A republican society was a society of freeholders, and praise of husbandry amounted to a national faith." (p. 6) But this freeholder ethic was not necessarily diametrically opposed to technological innovation. Yet, Kasson argues that the yeoman farmer ideal is not incompatible with technological inventiveness. Indeed, the term "technology" meant something entirely different to the 18th century mind. "In eighteenth century usage 'technology' denoted a treatise on an art of the scientific study of the practical or industrial arts (my emphasis), but not the practical arts collectively." (p.6) Within the context of Enlightenment thought, technology meant practical inventiveness. The seeds of a technology-driven American nation were there even at the founding.
The debates over domestic manufactures provide a taking off point for the republicanising of technology or "civilizing of the machine". During the American Revolution, patriots had encouraged the wearing of homespun etc. to free the American colonists from dependence on British goods. After the revolution, where was the new American nation to get its manufactures? From Europe? Thomas Jefferson weighed in with his Notes on the State of Virginia," urging Americans to let their factories remain in Europe. Ranged against Thomas Jefferson and the agrarians were the advocates of domestic manufactures. As Jefferson pointed out, factories could bring dependency and degradation for those working in them. Yet, reliance on European manufactures too was fraught with the dangers of dependency as well. By building American manufactures, the new nation could avoid the pitfalls of reliance on Europe. The rally cry was for a balanced economy of both agriculture and manufactures.
When Tench Coxe spoke to the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts in the summer of 1787, the Constitutional Convention was was meeting. It was precisely because America had such a shortage of laborers that the labor saving technology was well-suited to the American nation. Rather than devices threatening to undermine the yeoman farmer, labor-saving machinery was perfectly suited to the American conditions where natural resources were plentiful and human labor scare. Indeed, because American factories would produce simple American products, "machine-powered factories would serve in effect as republican institutions and provide a strong antidote to elements of dissipation and corruption" (p. 11) which were part and parcel of the goods imported from Europe.
As the Constitution was being debated, Tech Coxe's speech shows that advocates of domestic manufactures were already lobbying in a very public way for their position. When Alexander Hamilton published his Report on Manufactures in 1791, the debate over domestic manufactures had been conducted for more than a quarter of a century already. Advocates of a balanced economy had been making their case since before the revolution. Hamilton's report on American manufactures came at a time when manufactures had already become an established element of American ideology under the banner of republicanism.
January 9, 2025
A fascinating look at the way Americans engaged the ideas of technology. Would developments in train engines and phonographs prove to the world the virtues of republicanism or ... undermine the entire American project?
One major criticism—and this is partly and issue of changing academic style—is that Kasson mainly focuses on leading intellectuals (and many of them literary figures). He doesn't really figure out how to ask whether Emerson, say, is representative of how America thought and felt about the aesthetics of machinery, leading people to think a certain way, or perhaps thinking off on his own. A perennial challenge for cultural history, but I at least want to see you wrestle with it.
One major criticism—and this is partly and issue of changing academic style—is that Kasson mainly focuses on leading intellectuals (and many of them literary figures). He doesn't really figure out how to ask whether Emerson, say, is representative of how America thought and felt about the aesthetics of machinery, leading people to think a certain way, or perhaps thinking off on his own. A perennial challenge for cultural history, but I at least want to see you wrestle with it.
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