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.