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Mechanical and Organizational Innovation: The Drapers and the Automatic Loom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

William Mass
William Mass
Affiliation:
William Mass is associate professor in the Policy and Planning Department of the College of Management Science at the University of Lowell.
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Abstract

The Draper Company's commitment to research and development was unparalleled among other nineteenth-century American manufacturers in older industries. This innovative drive, coupled with a strategy of patent defense and control, carried the firm to the top of the cotton textile machine industry by the end of the century. The company's 1907 decision to follow a less innovative path seemed sensible in light of its secure position in a volatile market, but the costs in long-term competitive strength were high.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 63 , Issue 4 , Winter 1989 , pp. 876 - 929
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1989

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References

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9 Cotton Chats, no. 2 (Aug. 1901): The Boston Daily Evening Transcript ran the following advertisement on 24 July 1830:

NOTICE TO MANUFACTURERS

Draper's Patent Self-Moving Temples, are now in operation on all looms at Waltham and Lowell, also at various other factories…. Any person wishing to obtain said Temples can examine them at either of the above named Factories, or at the Counting Room of Mr. J.A. Lowell….

Price of the Temples, including patent right, is $2 a pair. Any person desirous of purchasing may be supplied by the Boston Manufacturing Co. at Waltham. For the right to make them, apply to the subscriber at East Sudbury.

James Draper, Patentee

10 For more on the early history of the Draper Company, its roots in Hopedale, and its origins in a Christian Socialist Utopian community, see Ballou, Adin, History of the Hopedale Community (Lowell, Mass., 1897)Google Scholar; Faulkner, Barbara Louise, “Adin Ballou and the Hopedale Community” (Ph. D. diss., Boston University, 1965)Google Scholar; Garner, John S., The Model Company Town (Amtierst, Mass., 1984).Google Scholar

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13 Garner, Model Company Town, 132; Cotton Chats, no. 73 (June 1908).

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15 Navin, Whitin Machine Works, 91–93; Gibb, Saco- Lowell Shops, 203, 230.

16 Navin, Whitin Machine Works, 41.

17 W. F. Draper, Recollections, 179–80; Cotton Chats, no. 36 (1905).

18 Navin, Whitin Machine Works; see chaps. 10 and 12 for the history of the relations between the Whitin and the Draper companies. The earliest American patent pool, controlling sewing machine patents, was established in 1856; see Hounshell, David, From the American System to Mass Production, 1800–1932 (Baltimore, Md., 1984), chap. 2 and p. 71.Google Scholar

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22 Navin, Whitin Machine Works, 184, 591n9.

23 Ibid., 186.

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28 Gibb, Saco-Lowell Shops, 263.

29 G. O. Draper, Textile Texts, 2d ed. (1903), 144.

30 W. F. Draper, Recollections, 184.

31 G. O. Draper, Textile Texts, 2d ed. (1903), 142–43.

32 Navin, Whitin Machine Works, 181.

33 Digest of Assignment of Property Rights in Patents, D. no. 12, 21 March 1895 to 7 Aug. 1897, 240–41, RG 241, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

34 In 1903 the Draper Company reported that the average per-patent costs associated with the 679 patents developed in-house since Ira Draper's first were: $100 for “fees and legal expenses,” $200 for “incidental expenses and litigation,” and at least $1,000 for “experiments.” G. O. Draper, Textile Texts, 2d ed. (1903), 308.

35 Draper Corporation pamphlet, “The Advance of the Northrop Loom” (1900), 10 (Hopedale Public Library).

36 Draper, George O., History of the Northrop Loom Evolution, vol. 1, 1886–1892 (Milford, Mass., 1897), 156–57.Google Scholar Of the other twenty-three English patents, nine were issued between 1864 and 1866. George Otis Draper kept a daily record of machine developments and experimentation, including the results of investigations of related patent claims. Three volumes are referred to but I have found only volume 1. Together they would provide an abundance of information about the evolution of loom design.

37 Navin, Thomas R., “Innovation and Management Policies—The Textile Machine Industry: Influence of the Market on Management,” Bulletin of the Business Historical Society 25 (Spring 1951): 18n3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Chase, William, Five Generations of Loom Builders (Hopedale, Mass., 1950), 13.Google Scholar

39 The bobbin rings and “peculiar” spring inside the shuttle were the key inventions among the many embodied in the redesigned automatic loom. These patents prevented the successful development of any alternative patentable bobbin-changing devices. See Transactions of the New England Cotton Manufacturers Association (hereafter NECMA) 113 (Oct. 1922): 117.

40 This stage of development is reported in Chase, Five Generations of Loom Builders, 13–15, and Draper, George O., Labor Saving Looms, 1st ed. (Hopedale, Mass., 1904), 22–24Google Scholar; G. O. Draper, History of the Northrop Loom Evolution, vol. 1.

41 G. O. Draper, Labor Saving Looms, 1st ed. (1904), 25.

42 Chase, Five Generations of Loom Builders, 15.

43 G. O. Draper, History of the Northrop Loom Evolution, 1: 423.

44 G. O. Draper, Textile Texts, 1st ed. (1901), 11.

45 Harriman, Henry I., Transactions of NECMA 68 (April 1900): 318–19.Google Scholar

46 The agreements were with Whitin Machine Works, Mason Machine Works, Lowell Machine Shop, the Lewiston Machine Works, Kilburn, Lincoln and Company, and Knowles Loom Company. Lincoln, Jonathan T., “Cotton Textile Machinery—American Loom Builders,” Harvard Business Review 12 (Oct. 1933): 101–2Google Scholar; Navin, Whitin Machine Works, 274; see also Lincoln, “The Cotton Textile Machine Industry,” Harvard Business Beview 11 (Oct. 1932).

47 Chase, Five Generations of Loom Builders, 15. As the Drapers sought to break down resistance to later loom models in various industry submarkets, they assumed the role of mill organizers on four later occasions.

48 G. O. Draper, History of the Northrop Loom Evolution, 1: 147, 220.

49 Draper, G. O., “The Present Development of the Northrop Loom,” Transactions of NECMA 59 (1895): 90Google Scholar; G. O. Draper, Labor Saving Looms, 1st ed. (1904), 25.

50 G. O. Draper, “Present Development,” 90.

51 Burlington Free Press, 5 May 1894; the Drapers also expected lower coal costs and freight rates than in Massachusetts, and that the cost of construction of the mill would be 10 percent less; Burlington Free Press, 16 May 1894. A British observer, reporting to the Manchester Guardian about the U.S. textile industry in 1903–4, wrote, “The reason given me was that in Vermont they could get cheap labour, and there was no factory laws and no unions to give trouble over the trial of a new machine.” Uttley, T. W., Cotton Spinning and Manufacturing in the United States of America (Manchester, 1905), 21.Google Scholar

52 Bassett, T. D. Seymour and Blow, David, “The Lakeside Story, 1894–1948,” Chittendon County Historical Society Bulletin 7 (May 1972)Google Scholar; Burlington Free Press, 11, 13, 22, 24 Jan. 1898; 4–5, 10–11, 16–17, 19 April, 14 May 1900.

53 Navin, Whitin Machine Works, 274; Gibb, Saco- Lowell Shops, 769n29.

54 Draper, William F., comment, Transactions of NECMA 60 (April 1896): 133Google Scholar; Navin, Whitin Machine Works, 275.

55 Navin, Whitin Machine Warks, 275–76.

56 Draper, William F., Transactions of NECMA 74 (1903): 170.Google Scholar The increase in the capacity of the cloth roll of course added to its weight, thus increasing the strength requirement for removing the cloth from the loom. This was possibly an important factor in the increase in male weavers that accompanied the introduction of the automatic loom, particularly in the South, but it is unlikely to have been the sole cause of the changing gender division of labor in the weave room.

57 Navin, Whitin Machine Works, 275–76.

58 Cotton Chats, no. 31 (Sept. 1904), which explained that the price of the Northrop loom was originally based on looms per weaver increasing from eight to sixteen. The price had been unchanged (and would remain a fixed list price until 1916), though the loom's “efficiency” had been increased. The Drapers claimed that new attachments and other improvements increased their manufacturing costs by $15 per loom. Cotton Chats, no. 38 (April 1905); no. 137 (March 1914); no. 249 (Feb. 1924); April 1952 (available as a mimeograph in the “Little Red Shop,” Hopedale, Mass.).

59 Draper Company, “Advance of the Northrop Loom,” 58–59.

60 Draper, G. O., Facts and Figures for Textile Manufacturers (Hopedale, Mass., 1896), 176–77Google Scholar; Draper Company, “Advance of the Northrop Loom,” 58–59; G. O. Draper, Labor Saving Looms, 1st ed. (1904), 208–11.

61 G. O. Draper, Textile Texts, 1st ed. (1901), 295–97; 2d ed. (1903), 308–9; 3d ed. (1907), 321–23.

62 Cotton Chats, no. 36 (Feb. 1905), and no. 41 (July 1905).

63 G. O. Draper, Textile Texts, 1st ed. (1901), 295, and 3d ed. (1907), 320; Cotton Chats, no. 96 (Oct. 1910).

64 Lincoln, “Cotton Textile Machinery—American Loom Builders,” 99.

65 G. O. Draper, Labor Saving Looms, 3d ed. (1907), 37.

66 Cotton Chats, no. 52 (July 1906). The company also threatened, “It will be understood that it is just as much an infringement to use a patented invention as to make or sell the same.” Ibid., no. 146 (Dec. 1914).

67 See footnote 69 for the references concerning the Stafford company. The suit against the U.S. Bobbin and Shuttle Company is reviewed in Cotton Chats, no. 175 (May 1917).

68 Cotton Chats, no. 51 (June 1906); Textile World, May 1905, 167; see Toru Yanagihara, “Development of Cotton Textile Industry and Textile Machinery Industry in Prewar Japan“, Institute of Developing Economies, unpub. paper, 1979, 40–45, and Mass and Lazonick, “The British Cotton Industry and Competitive Advantage.”

69 The three successful suits against the Stafford Loom Company involved a shuttle-changing mechanism—Cotton Chats, no. 2 (Aug. 1901); no. 51 (June 1906); no. 71 (March-April 1908); no. 99 (Jan. 1911); a feeler mechanism— Cotton Chats, no. 83 (Sept. 1909); no. 183 (Jan. 1918); no. 193 (Nov. 1918); and a warp stop motion—Cotton Chats, no. 117 (July 1912), no. 129 (July 1913), no. 146 (Dec. 1914); no. 204 (Oct. 1919).

70 Navin, Whitin Machine Works, 275–76, 278.

71 Mass, William, “Technological Change and Industrial Relations: The Diffusion of Automatic Weaving in the United States and Britain” (Ph.D. diss., Boston College, 1984).Google Scholar What follows is a synopsis of relevant aspects of chaps. 3 and 4 presented in “desperate brevity.”

72 For a small sampling of this large body of research, see recent surveys of the literature (on the North) in Mass, “Technological Change and Industrial Relations,” and Martha Schary, “Exit, Investment and Technological Diffusion in a Declining Industry: An Empirical Study” (Ph.D. diss., MIT, 1987); and on the South, see Wright, Gavin, Old South, New South (New York, 1986)Google Scholar, and Kane, Nancy, Textiles in Transition: Technology, Wages, and Industry Relocation in the U.S. Textile Industry, 1880–1930 (Westport, Conn., 1988).Google Scholar

73 The industrial relations conflicts in Fall River centered around the determination of the weaver's piece rate. See Mass, “Technological Change and Industrial Relations,” chap. 4.

74 The importance of individual commission houses and their influence over mill production in directing the diffusion of Draper looms in the South is emphasized by Martha Schary, “Financial Structure and Competition: Entry, Investment and Exit in the Cotton Textile Industry” (unpub. paper).

75 Smith, T. R., The Cotton Textile Industry of Fall River, Massachusetts (New York, 1944), 63.Google Scholar

76 See Bader, Louis, World Developments in the Cotton Industry (New York, 1925), 146–49.Google Scholar See the literature on the developing converter-commission houses, in Melvin Copeland and Edmund Learned, Merchandising of Cotton Textiles, Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration, Business Research Studies, no. 1 (1933) and also 25 years, The Association of Cotton Textile Merchants of New York, 1918–1943 (New York, 1944).

77 Textile World 32 (March 1907); Burgy, Herbert, The New England Cotton Textile Industry: A Study in Industrial Geography (Baltimore, Md., 1932), 207.Google Scholar

78 Taxtile World 32 (March 1907).

79 Smith, Cotton Textile Industry, 109. These measures of capacity represent the percentage of Fall River spindleage. The total Fall River spindleage was 1.27, 2.6, 3.6, and 3.95 million for 1875, 1895, 1910, and 1925, respectively. Since finer cloth requires a higher spindle-to-loom ratio, this measure is biased toward overstating weaving capacity in fine goods mills.

80 Dry Goods Economist, Jubilee Issue (1896), 73, cited in Smith, Cotton Textile Industry, 111.

81 Hammond, Seth, “The Cotton Industry of this Century” (Ph. D. diss., Harvard University, 1941), 788–90.Google Scholar

82 Fall River Daily Globe, 7 Oct. 1905.

83 By 1923, the Draper Company acknowledged that “Experience has taught that an automatic loom may make one kind of weave successfully and need much in the way of experiment and changes before it will produce another kind equally well.” They explained that the operation of the automatic appliances had to be worked out for each weave, though by this time a print cloth loom could be “fitted to run silk filling or make denim, light duck,” or other cloth of a similar weight. Cotton Chats, no. 247 (Nov. 1923).

84 Cotton Chats, no. 138 (April 1914); no. 238 (20 Feb. 1923); no. 63 (July 1907).

85 Cotton Chats, no. 71 (March and April 1908); George Otis Draper, “Nordray Loom Catalogue” (Milford, Mass., c. 1921), 8, in the possession of William F. Northrop (grandson of Jonas Northrop), photocopy in author's possession; G. O. Draper, Facts and Figures for Textile Manufacturers, 176–77; Draper Company, “Advance of the Northrop Loom,” 58–59; G. O. Draper, Labor Saving Looms, 1st ed. (1904), 208–11. For one participant's observations on the disagreements, see W. F. Draper, Recollections, 326, 375–77.

86 G. O. Draper, “Nordray Loom Catalogue,” 14.

87 Cotton Chats, no. 84 (Oct. 1909); no. 254 (Aug. 1924); no. 302 (May 1930); no. 333 (Dec. 1939).

88 G. O. Draper, Textile Texts, 1st ed. (1901), 295–97; 2d ed. (1903), 308–9; 3d ed. (1907), 321–23; Annual Report of the Commissioner of Patents, 1907–25 (Washington, D.C.); Index of Patents Issued from the United States Patent Office, 1926–27 (Washington, D.C.); Patent Assignments Index Card File, Patents and Trademarks Agency, Washington, D.C.

89 Cotton Chats, no. 141 (July 1914). The Draper Company later acquired 75,000 acres of New York timberland for manufacturing shuttle blanks, but the date ofthat acquisition is unknown. Garner, Model Company Town, 126 and 255n35.

90 Cotton Chats, no. 61 (May 1907).

91 Ibid., no. 87 (Jan. 1910); G. O. Draper, “Nordray Loom Catalogue,” 14–15.

92 G. O. Draper, “Nordray Loom Catalogue,” 15. Most of the information about the Hopedale Manufacturing Company comes from several issues of its house organ, Textrin Themes: no. 15 (Aug. 1920); no. 16 (Sept. 1920); no. 19 (Dec. 1920); no. 20 (Feb. 1921); no. 22 (April 1921). In 1921, the Nordray attachments sold for $123; they included filling changer and battery, warp stop motions, shuttle, and feeler motions; Textrin Themes, no. 22. The claim of one-third the cost of new automatic looms is made in no. 15. The Dan River mills bought 1,271 Model E Drapers in 1921 at an average cost of $346.18, so the Hopedale claim seems accurate. Smith, Robert S., Mill on the Dan (Durham, N.C., 1960), 121.Google Scholar

93 Textrin Themes, nos. 19–20. In 1918 the Draper Company gained control of Whitin patents that Mason had previously leased; see Navin, Whitin Machine Work, 278. The importance of selling complete looms grew as the stock of nonautomatic looms aged and shrank.

94 Cotton Chats, no. 170 (Dec. 1916). The text accompanying the reproduced notice explicidy threatened suit for patent infringement in these cases. There is no doubt the threat was aimed at the Hopedale Manufacturing Company, since it was the only other manufacturer of looms equipped to use Northrop shuttles.

95 Cotton Chats, no. 165 (July 1916); no. 171 (Jan. 1917); no. 179 (Sept. 1917).

96 Textrin Themes, nos. 15 and 19; Feller, Irwin I., “The Diffusion and Location of Technological Change in the American Cotton-Textile Industry, 1890–1970,” Technology and Culture 15 (Oct. 1974).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

97 Textrin Themes, no. 19; Cotton Chats, no. 306; G. O. Draper, “Nordray Loom Catalogue,” 28. By the end of 1920 the Hopedale Manufacturing Company had sold 23,882 sets of Nordray attachments and 4,851 complete automatic looms. After introducing the Nordray loom, Hopedale's sales of complete looms were about equal to the number of looms made automatic through the sale of attachments. For the years 1917–20, the total sales of automatic looms by the Draper Company was two and a half times the number of looms made automatic by the Hopedale Manufaturing Company.

98 Cotton Chats, no. 238 (1923). Until then, the Draper Company had shipped 2,100 different shuttles. Mills could choose combinations among 242 shuttle blanks, 115 springs, 34 spring covers, 151 shuttle eyes, and several other devices.

99 Lawrence, Ruth, supervisor, Draper, Preston and Allied Families (New York, 1954), 58.Google Scholar

100 For a more complete history see Mass, William, “Decline of a Technological Leader: Capabilities, Strategy, and Shuttleless Weaving, 1945–1974,” Business and Economic History, 2d ser. 19 (1990): 234–44.Google Scholar

101 Farnie, D. A., “The Textile Machine-Making Industry and the World Market, 1870–1815,” Business History 32 (Oct. 1990): 150–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Saxonhouse, Gary and Wright, Gavin, “Rings and Mules Around the World: A Comparative Study in Technological Choice,” in Technique, Spirit and Form in the Making of Modern Economies, ed. Saxonhouse, and Wright, (Greenwich, Conn., 1984)Google Scholar; Simmons, Colin, “Hollins, Denis Machell: Textile Machinery Manufacturer,” in Dictionary of Business Biography: A Biographical Dictionary of Business Leaders Active in Britain in the Period 1860–1980, vol. 3, ed. Jeremy, David (London, 1985)Google Scholar; Mass, “Technological Change and Industrial Relations,” chap. 5.

102 See Mass and Lazonick, “The British Cotton Industry and Competitive Advantage.”

103 Ohno, Taiichi, “How the Toyota Production System Was Created,” in The Anatomy of Japanese Business, ed. Sato, K. and Hoshino, Y. (Armonk, N.Y., 1984)Google Scholar; see also Cusumano, Michael, The Japanese Automobile Industry (New York, 1985), esp. 27–32, 58–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

104 G. O. Draper, “Nordray Loom Catalogue,” 14.