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Inventing the U.S. Stove Industry, c.1815–1875: Making and Selling the First Universal Consumer Durable

Part of: Henrietta Larson Award Winner

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

Howell J. Harris
Howell J. Harris
Affiliation:
HOWELL J. HARRIS is professor of history atDurham University, England.
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Abstract

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This article examines the emergence of the American stove industry, detailing the complex interactions among changes in the product, the organization of production, and the methods of selling cast-iron heating and cooking equipment to consumers nationwide, particularly in the antebellum years. This highly competitive industry, composed of hundreds of proprietary firms, became a site of considerable innovation in marketing. Manufacturers integrated forward, controlling the sale and distribution of their goods through networks of small retailers nationwide. The article explains how and why.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 82 , Issue 4: A Special Issue on Salesmanship , Winter 2008 , pp. 701 - 733
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2008

References

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5 Editorial, “The Stove Manufacturers,” The Metal Worker 5 (22 Jan. 1876): 6.

6 Report of the Proceedings of the 29th Annual Meeting of the NASM, 9 May 1900, 86 [emphasis added].

7 Standard works—notably Strasser, Susan, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market (New York, 1989)Google Scholar and Tedlow, Richard S., New and Improved: The Story of Mass Marketing in America (New York, 1990)Google Scholar—provide little context for this article, because they concentrate on a later period and on low-unit-cost perishable and/or immediate-consumption items. Church, Roy, “New Perspectives on the History of Products, Firms, Marketing, and Consumers in Britain and the United States since the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” Economic History Review 52, no. 3 (1999): 405–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is the best literature review. Fullerton, Ronald A., “How Modern Is Modern Marketing? Marketing's Evolution and the Myth of the ‘Production Era,’” Journal of Marketing 52, no. 1 (1988): 108–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar, adopts a corrective approach that is in accord with my views on the subject.

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13 According to Tench Coxe's A Statement of the Arts and Manufactures of the United States of America, for the Year 1810 (Philadelphia, 1814), 23–24, these two states were responsible for 61 percent of total iron furnace output. See also Pierce, Arthur D., Iron in the Pines: The Story of New Jersey's Ghost Towns and Bog Iron (New Brunswick, N.J., 1984).Google Scholar

14 Manufacturers were usually dealers too, i.e. they manufactured in order to trade, as retailers and jobbers combined; and dealers also had to engage in manufacturing unless they contracted it out or bought their finished stock from manufacturers. When manufacturer-dealers also took control of design and pattern-making, as they commonly had by the 1830s, then they, not furnacemen, became responsible for most of the value added in stovemaking, even before they became foundrymen too.

15 Philadelphia in 1824 (Philadelphia, 1824), 38; Commercial Directory (Philadelphia, 1823), 177–79.

16 Summarized from the Wright papers and the David C. Wood papers, Accession 1772, Hagley Museum and Library, Greenville, Del. Wright's span the years 1820–1837; Wood's, 1819–1846. Records of other similar mid-Atlantic furnaces also survive; see Walker, Joseph E., Hopewell Village: A Social and Economic History of an Iron-Making Community (Philadelphia, 1966), 153–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Crownover, Donald A., Manufacturing and Marketing of Iron Stoves at Hopewell Furnace 1835–1844 (Washington, D.C., 1970), 94, 105–7, 109.Google ScholarBezis-Selfa, John, Forging America: Ironworkers, Adventurers, and the Industrious Revolution (Ithaca, N.Y., 2003)Google Scholar, has made extensive use of the Wright papers, among others, but his book is marred by his desire to see conflict rather than sheer intractability in the employment relationship. Doerflinger, Thomas M., “Rural Capitalism in Iron Country: Staffing a Forest Factory, 1808–1815,” William and Mary Quarterly 59, no. 1 (2002): 3–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on New Jersey's Martha Furnace, is a less tendentious and more trustworthy guide.

17 U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Documents Relative to the Manufactures in the United States, Collected and Transmitted to the House of Representatives in Compliance with a Resolution of Jan. 19, 1832 (Washington, D.C., 1833), 1: 750, 760Google Scholar; 2: 101–2, 105–7, 267–8, 374, 668–71, 812–14.

18 Charles Miner, letter to State Senator Packer, S. J., 17 Nov. 1833, Doc. 17 in Report of the Committee of the Senate of Pennsylvania, Upon the Subject of the Coal Trade (Harrisburg, 1834), 94, 96.Google Scholar

19 Dwyer, “Stoves and Heating Apparatus,” 361, offers figures for the 1840s and 1850s consistent with those cited in Clark, Victor S., History of Manufactures in the United States, vol. 1, 1607–1860 (Washington, D.C., 1929), 503–4.Google Scholar

20 Lossing, Benson J., History of New York City (New York, 1884), 2: 707Google Scholar; Mott, Jordan L., Description and Design of Mott's Patented Articles, Secured by 27 Patent (New York, 1841).Google Scholar

21 Jordan Mott to James R. Smith, 26 Nov. 1851, in New York State Legislature, Documents of the Assembly of the State of New-York, 75th Session, 1852 (Albany, 1852), 7: 142, 145; Lossing, History of New York City, 2: 707.

22 Bishop, J.Leander, History of American Manufactures from 1608 to 1860 (Philadelphia, 1868), 2: 576–78Google Scholar; Lossing, History of New York City, 2: 707; “Jordan L. Mott Dies in 86th Year,” New York Times, 27 July 1915, 9.

23 See Freedley, Edwin T., Philadelphia and Its Manufactures: A Hand-Book Exhibiting the Development, Variety, and Statistics of the Manufacturing Industry of Philadelphia in 1857 (Philadelphia, 1859), 97, 290–1Google Scholar; “Stove Trade Notes: William L. McDowell,” The Metal Worker 47 (6 Mar. 1897): 41; Bishop, , History of American Manufactures, 3: 290–92Google Scholar; Meyer, David R., Networked Machinists: High-Technology Industries in Antebellum America (Baltimore, 2006), 131–32.Google Scholar Meyer's recognition of the stove industry's importance is as welcome as it is unusual.

24 Tyler, John D., “Technological Development: Agent of Change in Style and Form of Domestic Iron Castings,” in Technological Innovation and the Decorative Arts, ed. Quimby, Ian M. G. and Earl, Polly Anne (Charlottesville, 1974), 151, 157, 158, 161.Google Scholar

25 Taylor, George Rogers, The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860 (New York, 1951)Google Scholar; Chandler, Alfred D. Jr, “Anthracite Coal and the Beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in the United States,” Business History Review 46 (Summer 1972): 159, 165CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Johnson, Walter R., Notes on the Use of Anthracite in the Manufacture of Iron (Boston, 1841), 3.Google Scholar

26 Howell, George R. and Tenney, Jonathan, eds., Bi-Centennial History of Albany: History of the County of Albany, N.Y., from 1609 to 1886 (New York, 1886), 566–67.Google Scholar A.P., “Our State Institutions, XIV: The Albany Iron Foundries,” New York Times 2 Jan. 1872, 5, says that Rathbone began to get his plates cast at an Albany air furnace in 1828, but S. H. Ransom & Co., Manufacturers of Heating and Cooking Stoves, Portable Ranges, etc. (Albany, 1874), broadside, gives 1838 as the crucial date when he erected his own foundry, “recognizing the necessity of an entire change in the method of manufacture,” thereby agreeing with Bishop's A History of American Manufactures, 3: 241–42. Bolles, Albert S., Industrial History of the United States: From the Earliest Settlements to the Present Time (Norwich, Conn., 1881 ed.), 277Google Scholar, offers a slightly different chronology, and is explicit, though not necessarily correct, that Mott's success was Rathbone's inspiration.

27 Cist, Charles, Cincinnati in 1841: Its Early Annals and Future Prospects (Cincinnati, 1841), 245–47Google Scholar and unpaginated advertisements; Chamberlain, “Death of William Resor” and “Obituary,” in NASM, Convention Proceedings (24 June 1874): 113, 149.

28 Green, James, Green's Saint Louis Directory (No. 1) for 1845 (St. Louis, 1844), 26Google Scholar; “The First Manufacturer of Stoves in St. Louis,” The Metal Worker 3 (13 Mar. 1875): 3; “Semi-Centennial of the Bridge & Beach Manufacturing Company,” Stoves and Hardware 9 (15 Jan. 1887): 14–15; Jewett, Sherman S., “President's Address,” The Metal Worker 3 (12 June 1875): 3Google Scholar; Stevens, Walter B., Centennial History of Missouri (St. Louis, 1921), 53.Google ScholarLyford, W. G., The Western Address Directory (Baltimore, 1837), 99Google Scholar, 143, 166, 218, 309, 331–32, 399–403, 423, details the beginnings of stove manufacture and sale by general foundries in the river towns from Pittsburgh to St. Louis—including Wheeling, Zanesville, and particularly Cincinnati.

29 Williams, Edwin, New-York As It Is, in 1837 (New York, 1837), 106–7Google Scholar, records fifteen stove manufacturers and dealers, all situated within a few blocks of one another on the Lower East Side (mostly Water and Canal Streets); more are known to have existed. Mott's 1841 catalog is a product of the market leader's response to the resulting competitive challenge.

30 Philadelphia's Franklin Institute, with its Journal, was the most important medium for the circulation of patent information, before Scientific American began, and it provided expert critiques as well as publicity and plaudits; see e.g. [Thomas P. Jones, the editor], “American Patents,” Journal of the Franklin Institute 17 (Jan. 1836): 40, 45, 54, 56; “Seventh Annual Fair of the American Institute,” Mechanics' Magazine, and Register of Inventions and Improvements 4 (25 Oct. 1834): 242. Other major regular trade exhibitions included those of the New York Mechanics' Institute (e.g. “First Annual Fair of the Mechanics' Institute,” Mechanics' Magazine 6 [Nov. 1835]: 263), and, for New England, the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association (e.g. The Fourth Exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, at Quincy Hall, in the City of Boston, September 16, 1844 [Boston, 1844], 44–47). Mott's 1841 catalog cited the ten awards and nine diplomas he had received from the American Institute since 1836, together with contented (high-status) customers' testimonials, in support of his claims on behalf of his products (Description and Design, 14–17), evidence of the value of these independent validating agencies in building buyer confidence in market-leading goods at a time when the product was developing fast and consumers lacked experience of it.

31 Mott, Description and Design, 17, 31–32, emphasizes the role of his patents in Mott's competitive strategy.

32 Blunt, Edmund M., The American Coast Pilot (New York, 1822)Google Scholar, unpaginated advertisement; Howell and Tenney, Bi-Centennial History of Albany, 566. Unfortunately neither of James's patents (2296X of 1815, or 3854X of 1824) survived the 1836 Patent Office fire, but good examples of his stove live on in museum collections, notably at Old Sturbridge Village. Leibrandt, & McDowell, , Philadelphia Stove Works and Hollow-Ware Foundries: Catalogue and Price List (Philadelphia, 1861), 17Google Scholar, still included the James Cook (by name)in its product range.

33 Harold C. Martin, “Nott, Eliphalet,” 513, and “Nott Stoves,” 523–24, in Encyclopaedia of Union College History, comp. and ed. Wayne Somers (Schenectady, 2003); Spencer, John C., Argument in Defence of the Rev. Eliphalet Nott, D. D., President of Union College (Albany, 1853), 63–64Google Scholar, 81, 84 and Reply of the Trustees of Union College, to Charges Brought Before the Assembly of New York (Albany, 1853), 88–90, detail the confused financing of Nott's enterprises.

34 Stanley's key patents were 7333X, 1832, 9282X, 1835, and 91, 1836—their novelty is examined in “Decision of the Circuit Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of New York, in a patent case [Henry Stanley vs. Henry Hewitt] involving some important principles,” Journal of the Franklin Institute 17 (Mar. 1836): 165–70; “First Annual Fair of the Mechanics Institute,” Mechanics' Magazine, and Register of Inventions and Improvements 6 (Nov. 1835): 293; Stanley v. Whipple [2 McLean 35, December Term 1839] in Robb, James B., comp., A Collection of Patent Cases Decided in the Circuit and Supreme Courts of the United States (Boston, 1854), 2: 1–10Google Scholar; Stanley & Co., Remarks and Directions for using Stanley's Patented Rotary Cooking Stove (Baltimore, 1834)Google Scholar—the first surviving manual for stove users; The Worcester Almanac, Directory and Business Advertiser, for 1855 (Worcester, 1855), 23. For an entertaining and enlightening account of the purchase by a farm family of its first stove, a Stanley rotary, bought for $65 in Cincinnati, see Eddy, T. M. (“Ronald, of Indiana”), “The Pioneer Cooking Stove,” The Ladies' Repository 17 (Jan. 1857): 40.Google Scholar

35 Allen, Robert C., “Collective Invention,” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 1 (1983): 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 Ellsworth, Henry L., A Digest of Patents, Issued by the United States, Including the Years 1839, 1840, and 1841 (Washington, D.C., 1842), xix–xxGoogle Scholar; figures as in Figure 2; Howson, H., “Proposed Remedial Alterations of, and Additions to, the Present Law Regulating the Grant of Letters Patent for Designs,” Journal of the Franklin Institute, 3rd ser. 39, 69, no. 4 (Apr. 1860): 265–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 David Wood to Messrs Mills & Taggart [attorneys], 6 Nov. 1841, in Millville Furnace: Jordan L. Mott Suit, 1841–46, David C. Wood papers, box 1.

38 Millville Furnace Legal: Wood v. Postley, 1831–40 and Millville Furnace: Jordan L. Mott Suit, 1841–46, in David C. Wood papers, box 1. Postley's first stove patent, 2074X, dated back to 1814; his last, 3128, was taken out in 1843, i.e., his career spanned the entire first period of the industry.

39 Porter and Livesay, Merchants and Manufacturers, 35.

40 The diversity of stove types and models is the clearest message of any stove catalog, a genre of publication which acquired a stable format in the early 1850s–e.g., Rathbone & Kennedy, Stove Manufacturers (Albany: Rathbone & Kennedy, 1854), http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/2839128. In 1875, twenty-seven stove manufacturers of Albany and Troy and 150 NASM members, who also reported, each produced on average thirty-two named models, implying a mean annual output of c.300 to 350 stoves per model. “Albany and Troy Stoves: Alphabetical Index of Manufacturers, and of the Stoves Made By Them,” The Metal Worker 3 (22 May 1875): 3; “New Publications: Josiah Jewett [Sec], Names of Stoves, Ranges and Furnaces,” The Metal Worker 6 (2 Dec. 1876): 6; output estimates computed from Dunlap, Thomas, comp. and ed., Wiley's American Iron Trade Manual (New York, 1874), 335–52.Google Scholar Aggregate output, of firms and the industry as a whole, was large, in terms of units made and sold; but this kind of mass consumption does not imply mass production, as conventionally understood. See Scranton, Philip, Endless Novelty: Specialty Production and American Industrialization, 1865–1925 (Princeton, 1997).Google Scholar

41 “Trade Marks,” NASM Proceedings 34 (11 May 1905): 234; 1853: The Commercial Advertiser Directory for the City of Buffalo (Buffalo, 1853), 72.

42 Taylor, Jacob N. and Crooks, M. O., Sketch Book of St. Louis (St. Louis, 1858), 6Google Scholar, 75, 77, 82, 88–89, 326, 391; Dacus, J. A. and Buel, James W., A Tour of St. Louis (St. Louis, 1878), 231–34Google Scholar; Darby, John F., Personal Recollections (St. Louis, 1880), 429–30, 434, 443–44Google Scholar; Hayner, Rutherford, Troy and Rensselaer County New York: A History (New York, 1925), 3: 179Google Scholar; Randy Baehr, “Giles F. Filley: A Brief Biography (1995),” online, http://home.earthlink.net/~turnerbrigade/filley.htm, Southerton, Donald G., The Filleys: Three Hundred Fifty Years of American Entrepreneurial Spirit (Lincoln, Neb., 2005), 63, 69–70, 83–86.Google Scholar

43 Butcher, R. advertisement, Galena City Directory, 1854 (Galena, 1854), 32Google Scholar; Samuels, Gayle B., Enduring Roots: Encounters with Trees, History, and the American Landscape (New Brunswick, N.J., 1999), ch. 1.Google Scholar

44 “Supreme Court of Missouri. Giles F. Filley, Respondent, v. A. D. Fassett et al., Appellants [Filley v. Fassett],” American Law Register 17 (July 1869): 402–11; “Big Failure in St. Louis,” York Times, 7 Feb. 1896, 8; “Charter Oak Stove and Range Company's Jubilee,” Atlanta Constitution, 19 Nov. 1899, 17.

45 Conclusion based on comparing firms with pre–Civil War trademarks in “Trade Marks,” NASM Proceedings 34 (11 May 1905), 231–37, with data on the size distribution of firms in the early 1870s from Wiley's American Iron Trade Manual, 335–52, and on firm survival and influence within the industry from the Proceedings of the NASM from 1872 until 1915.

46 Waite and Waite, “Stovemakers of Troy” and Groft, Cast with Style, 111–20.

47 The best source for understanding the city retail trade, albeit a generation later, is the correspondence from managers of Marcus Filley's Water Street store to Filley and others in the home office at the Green Island Stove Works in Troy, in the Filley papers at the New York State Library, Albany [hereafter NYSL], box 16, folders 1–2 esp. (1873), and 11, folders 4–11 esp. (1881), plus a scattering throughout; and at Rensselaer Polytechnic, Troy, boxes 2–3 (1869–70 and 1881).

48 Jones, [Luke Shortfield, pseud.], The Western Merchant: A Narrative (Philadelphia, 1849), vi.Google Scholar

49 Freedley, Philadelphia and Its Manufactures, 97.

50 See Bruegel, Martin, Farm, Shop, Landing: The Rise of a Market Society in the Hudson Valley, 1780–1860 (Durham, N.C., 2002), 164CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mahoney, Timothy R., River Towns in the Great West: The Structure of Provincial Urbanization (New York, 2003), 209, 211–12.Google Scholar

51 Tooker, Elva, Nathan Trotter, Philadelphia Merchant, 1787–1853 (Cambridge, Mass., 1955), 114–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

52 Cf. Varle, Charles, A Complete View of Baltimore (Baltimore, 1833), 161Google Scholar with The Massachusetts State Record and Year Book of General Information, 1848, vol. 2, ed. Nahum Capen (Boston, 1848), 215. The New York Mercantile Union Business Directory for 1850–51 (New York, 1850), 364–66, 384–87, describes a state with stove and tinware dealers everywhere. See also W.W.Reilly & Co.'s Ohio State Business Directory for 1853–4 (Cincinnati, 1853), 374–76.

53 Hunt, John W., Wisconsin Gazetteer (Madison, 1853), 49, 247, 127Google Scholar; Montague, E. J., A Directory, Business Mirror, and Historical Sketches of Alton County (Alton, Ill., 1859), 120Google Scholar, 137, 157, 159. 161, 163, 166; Clark, Charles F., Michigan State Gazetteer and Business Directory for 1863–4 (Detroit, 1863)Google Scholar; James D. Johnston & Co., Johnston's Detroit City Directory and Advertising Gazetteer of Michigan (Detroit, 1861), 336.Google Scholar

54 D. L. Fullerton (Augusta, Ga.) to Marcus L. Filley, 24 Nov. 1868, box 6, folder 3, NYSL. The antebellum South had few stove dealers or users outside of its coastal and river cities, and even there the distribution network by the 1850s was barely comparable to that in the Northeast a generation earlier. See Campbell, John P., The Southern Business Directory and General Commercial Advertiser, vol. 1 (Charleston, S.C., 1854)Google Scholar; Nashville City and Business Directory, for 1860–61, vol. 5 (Nashville, i860).

55 As early as 1841, Jordan Mott promised to keep old patterns in his inventory so that he could always supply replacement parts even for discontinued models, giving buyers confidence to invest in goods which, with care and repair, could last a generation; Description and Design, 22.

56 D. S. Cutter & Co., Sacramento City Directory for the Year A.D. 1860 (Sacramento, 1859)Google Scholar; Hittell, John S., The Resources of California (San Francisco, 1863), 400Google Scholar; “Aleph,” “The Stove Business: A Look through the Foundries of Troy, N.Y.—Their Factors in Chicago,” Chicago Tribune, 28 Sept. 1867, 4.

57 For stovemakers in Detroit, see Mitchell, James J., Detroit in History and Commerce (Detroit, 1891), 40–44.Google Scholar

58 William H. Whitehead in NASM 6 (17 Jan. 1877): 63, 64.

59 “Excise Tax,” Merchants'; Magazine and Commercial Review 47 (1862): 252.

60 Newberry, Filley, & Wiswell [the junior partner’'s “Troy Stove Store” advertised in Hall, E. H., 1855–6: The Chicago Directory, and Business Advertiser (Chicago, 1855), 116Google Scholar, along with three other Eastern branch houses including Jewett & Root (Buffalo) and Treadwell, Perry & Norton (Albany). There were also at least thirteen local dealers, but only one stove foundry, for a city of eighty thousand people.

61 Summarized from correspondence with traveling salesmen in the Filley papers, notably Ira J. Wood (Midwest and Texas, esp. 1864–1872) and George Meriwether (Texas, principally 1879–1881); Minute Book, Detroit Stove Works, 1866–1894, Detroit Public Library; Minutes of the Meetings of the Board of Directors of the Reading Stove Works, Orr, Painter & Co., 1891–1903, Accession 1828, Hagley Museum and Library; extensive reading of the trade press (The Metal Worker and Stoves and Hardware) for the 1870s to 1900s; and comprehensive study of the NASM Proceedings, 1872 to 1915. Most of this evidence is post–Civil War, but the little that is available for the 1850s points to a basic continuity. See also Spears, Timothy B., One Hundred Years on the Road: The Traveling Salesman in American Culture (New Haven, 1995)Google Scholar; Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed, 61–63; and especially Friedman, Walter A., Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America (Cambridge, Mass., 2004), ch. 3.Google Scholar

62 Howell J. Harris, “The Stove Trade Needs Change Continually': Designing the First Mass-Market Consumer Durable, c.1830–1900,” Winterthur Portfolio, forthcoming, preprint at http://www.dur.ac.Uk/h.j.harris/stoves/0804-Designing_Stoves.pdf

63 Tedlow, New and Improved, 5. Hebert, Luke, The Engineer's and Mechanic's Encyclopaedia (London, 1836), 1: 535Google Scholar, illustrates the impact of Nott's stoves in the United Kingdom, where Nott made sure to have his patent registered (“List of New Patents Sealed in 1830,” Mechanics'; Magazine [London] 424 (24 Sept. 1831): 477). Powell, Walter W., “Neither Market nor Hierarchy: Network Forms of Organization,” in Research in Organizational Behavior 12, ed. Staw, B. M. and Cummings, L. L. (Greenwich, Conn., 1990), 295–336.Google ScholarChapin, John R., The Historical Picture Gallery of Scenes and Incidents in American History, vol. 5 (Boston, 1856)Google Scholar, an advertising compendium, contains major stovemakers' entries at pp. 17, 265, 266, 270, 273, 274.