This book documents the growth of industrial technology in these "little hamlets," covering the social, labor, economic, and technical aspects of this fascinating chapter in the development of American enterprise.

This study of antebellum industrialisation in several communities in rural Massachusetts illuminates what industrialisation meant in the early to mid nineteenth-century. Jonathan Prude probes the tensions produced by the conflict between innovation and the received attitudes and institutions that still shaped daily existence. Two connected but discrete areas of tension emerged: that between workers and managers within certain manufacturing establishments (especially textiles), and between manufacturers and the communities in which they were located. The book demonstrates that antebellum industrialisation had a rural as well as an urban dimension and that, far from being the untroubled process described by some historians, it was a phenomenon characterised by deep conflict.

Of the growth of manufacturing in early nineteenth century New England.--The growth of cotton textile production after 1815.--The use of a "long run" learning function, with application to a Massachusetts cotton textile firm, 1823-1860.

A lavishly-illustrated social history of the manufacture that did most to transform the character of New England and of America.

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