Winter 2004

PDF version

The name “Abraham Charles” probably doesn’t ring a bell. There’s really no reason it should. Mr. Charles came into the world in 1716, spent most of his years working the land in central Massachusetts, and died in 1804.

The world he left behind was not so very different from the one he had entered 88 years earlier. Early 19th century New England was still a mostly rural place where change came slowly, and tending to the basic necessities of life took all the time and strength a body could muster.

Two things set Mr. Charles apart from most of his neighbors: He survived to the age of 88, and he attained a modest level of prosperity. But prosperity is a relative condition. Like almost everyone else in the early 1800s, Abraham Charles led an austere existence. The inventory of his estate reads like a list of yard sale remainders: “3 junk bottles,” “1 Iron ring,” and a “half pint tin cup.” The adjective “old” — as in 1 old hand saw, 1 old brass kettle, 6 old chairs, and 15 old casks — appears often.

But the most instructive part of the inventory is the section that catalogs his wardrobe. Here it is — complete with archaic spelling and a monetary value for each item:

In terms of quantity and selection, the word “meager” comes to mind. And if you think $16.53 was a lot of money in 1804, well . . . think again. It had roughly the same purchasing power that $250 has today.

Quick Change
The paradox of pre-industrial life — in New England and elsewhere — was that people toiled endlessly but seldom had much to show for their efforts. Intense physical exertion yielded relatively little output. Basic hand tools and muscle power defined the limits of production.

Clothing provides a good example. Anyone who’s ever tried to make clothes knows how time-consuming the process can be. Today it’s more often a labor of love than a matter of economic necessity.

But in the early 1800s, cash was scarce and store-bought goods were expensive, so if you wanted clothes, you almost always had to make them yourself. Not only would you have to stitch them by hand — sewing machines weren’t commercially available until the 1850s — you’d often have to weave the fabric as well.

Even in good years, when there was enough extra cash to spend on clothes, shopping options were limited. You could:

a) wait for a traveling peddler to stop at your door,

b) buy clothes from a neighbor who could make them better and faster than you could, or

c) inch your way to town on roads that ranged from poor to impassable.

But no matter which option you chose, the drawbacks were the same: high prices and a small selection.

Then came the Industrial Revolution, and within a generation, life changed forever.

What exactly was the Industrial Revolution? Short answer: a series of events and improvements that led to an extraordinary change in the way people produced things. It started in Europe during the mid- to late- 1700s and spread to North America in the early 1790s with the opening of Slater Mill, a Rhode Island textile mill that used water-powered machinery to spin cotton into yarn in quantities unmatched by individual spinners working at home or in small workshops. But Slater Mill was only a first step. Most finished cloth still had to be woven on household hand looms — a painstaking process that yielded relatively little output.

The next major advance came in 1814 when a group of investors opened America’s first integrated textile mill in Waltham, Massachusetts — a mill that had the capacity to spin yarn and weave cloth. Seven years later, in 1821, another large-scale mill began operation in Lowell, Massachusetts, and by mid-century the New England textile industry was producing cloth in quantities that would have seemed unimaginable 50 years earlier. (See table: New England Cloth Production.)

But increased production isn’t the same as increased productivity. It’s possible to boost production without raising productivity. Take the example of a textile mill owner who hopes to produce more cloth by hiring more workers. With the right tools and efficient organization, the additional workers might help to increase the mill’s total output, but labor costs would go up, too, and the money to pay for those added worker- hours would have to come from somebody’s pocket, either the mill owner’s or the consumer’s. The mill’s productivity won’t improve unless the increase in cloth production is more than enough to offset the rise in labor costs.

What mill owners really want is to produce more cloth per workerhour; more cloth for each hour of labor they’re paying for. That helps to reduce the mill’s per-unit costs — the cost of producing a yard of cloth — and lower per-unit costs create the potential for more good things to happen: 1) higher profits, which can be shared with workers in the form of higher wages or reinvested in the mill, and 2) lower prices for consumers.

And that, more or less, is what happened during and after the Industrial Revolution. Productivity soared, and prices fell. (See tables: Higher Productivity and Lower Prices.)

More cloth at lower prices ultimately translated into more clothes at lower prices. At first, that meant more and better homemade clothes, especially after home sewing machines became more widely available. But by the early 1900s, American factories were doing their best to meet a growing demand for ready-made clothing. Department stores offered city dwellers a dizzying selection. And the Sears Catalog enticed farm families with page after page of fabrics and fashions — everything from denim overalls to silk underwear.

Productivity gains also had an effect on wages, but in a less straightforward way. During the second half of the 19th century, the average “money wage” for American workers actually fell. (See box: What Is Real?) But in “real” terms, workers had more buying power. They were able to buy more with the money they earned — more food, more clothes, more consumer goods.

Why did real wages go up? In large part, because productivity increased. Labor-saving machinery, standardized parts, better organization, improved transportation, and more efficient capital markets all made it possible for factories and farms to reduce their per-unit costs. Farmers were able to produce more bushels of wheat per acre at a lower cost per bushel and more bales of cotton at a lower cost per bale. Mills and factories were able to produce more cloth at a lower cost per yard and more stockings and pants at a lower cost per pair.

By the end of the 20th century, Americans had reached the point where clothing accounted for less than five percent of personal consumption expenditures, yet the quantity and selection of clothes in most closets was greater than ever. In fact, if Abraham Charles had died in 2003 instead of 1804, the inventory of his wardrobe would have been at least two pages long and his surviving family members probably would have been scratching their heads, wondering what to do with all his clothes.