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Technology & Finance In The Empire Period. Season 2, Episode 21.
45 Plays3 years ago
Wrapping up the Empire period we discuss how changes in technology and finance changed the Empire period as all periods to come.
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Transcript
Partnership Announcement
00:00:21
Speaker
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00:01:07
Speaker
And we're back.
Return from Break
00:01:09
Speaker
Welcome back, everybody. It feels like it's been forever. Well, because basically it has been. I was trying to remember the last time we were down here recording. It's been at least three weeks. Oh, yeah, yeah. But I don't remember exactly how long. We're going to need a refresher on... On the Empire period. Everything that we talked about. So yeah, today we're on to episode 21, the final episode of the Empire period.
00:01:37
Speaker
Is that the correct number? Because I was looking at the next thing I had, which was Shaker. And for whatever reason, I skipped like the episode 30 or something like that. No, it's definitely 21. All right. Because I got confused somewhere in there. Yeah, let's see. I got the Shaker right here. No, you got 22. Did I say I sent you Shaker? Yeah. All right.
Empire Period Figures
00:02:01
Speaker
Yeah, 22.
00:02:04
Speaker
23 all right, so it's you might yeah, maybe you open the different different file So let's see where we leave off last episode we left off Talking about Duncan Fife We're talking about you know important people in the in the period about oh, yeah, Napoleon Duncan Fife lani a or lani air and
00:02:33
Speaker
Yeah, those two different guys, right? Lanier, or is that just, oh, I see, I put a U in one of them in there. Yeah, I think it does have a U.
Super Bowl and Snowstorm
00:02:44
Speaker
You guys probably remember rather than we do. Yeah, because in listener time, it's a week. Right, for us, it's been a month. And we've been busy working in the shop. Yeah, you can say that again. We had that, the bomb storm. Yeah, bomb cyclone.
00:03:05
Speaker
That was over the weekend though, luckily. Yeah. We did get about a foot of snow. Yeah. Um, but it was, it was kind of that light snow. Wasn't, uh, they say there may be more snow coming for Super Bowl Sunday. Uh-oh. That's the word on the street. I don't like the sound of that. Yeah. You know, I want to sit down and I don't like going to any of those Super Bowl parties or anything like that. I like to sit home in my own house. I want to hear anybody yakking.
00:03:36
Speaker
They need to establish the running game. Thanks, Steve. All your friends and these people you just met, because they're friends of friends and people invited you and they're like... Everybody tries to sound like they know what they're talking about. I know. Listen, you were in the marching band.
00:03:58
Speaker
And even people like me that played football, that was 35 years ago, where high school football, you know, you threw like 10 passes a game.
Industrial Revolution's Impact
00:04:13
Speaker
Every play. Pull back up the middle. So different. Where I went to school, I went to a big school after my sophomore year, but my junior and senior year I went to a little school in Texas, Class A, which was
00:04:35
Speaker
That was the first, what would you call it? That was the first division that had 11 men. If you went slower than where I went to school in China Spring, yeah, it was some other kind of football. The guy, we're gonna run 22 blasts this play. And then the next play we're gonna run 23 blasts. Everything was off tackle.
00:05:05
Speaker
46 died. That's all I remember from my time, actually played running back.
00:05:22
Speaker
So let's see, this episode we're talking about changes in technology and finance in the empire period. Yeah, that's one of the topics because the industrial revolution is starting to come about and affect furniture and everybody can kind of extrapolate what the mechanization means, you know, the loss of craftsmanship and
00:05:49
Speaker
I mean, one of the really big things is something you maybe you don't think about is that you lose touch between, you know, you lose that relationship between the craftsman and the client, the end user, like,
00:06:04
Speaker
Us, we go to somebody's house, we talk to them, we see what's going on in their home. Sometimes that can be a little difficult, direct client relations.
00:06:22
Speaker
you know, folks, you know, fluctuating tastes and things like that. But there's a direct relationship between us and our client where once that division of labor happens, it's gone and it's kind of gone forever to a point.
00:06:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's a difference between, you know, going to the store and picking something up and, you know, having someone come to your house and design it for you specifically. Mm-hmm. And imagine if in our shop, we only were allowed to do one task. Mm-hmm. Like all I did was playing. And, you know, so eventually I'm going to not have the skills required to, uh,
00:07:12
Speaker
joint properly or maybe cut some dovetails or whatever, because that's all I do all day long. Yeah. Like they say, if you don't use it, you lose it. Yeah. Um, but that's part of the industrial revolution. It's like people work faster. They weren't happier, but, um, that comes into play in, in furniture in a big way, you know, sort of assembly line mentality. Yep.
00:07:41
Speaker
Henry Ford, the anti-Semitic bastard that he was. A lot of people don't know that. He sure did get to build cars quickly and efficiently, but being relegated to one single task, all you do is put on the right front wheel.
00:08:04
Speaker
You have no idea what's going on in the back of the car, fasten the trunk lids. That's all you're good for is that. And then when it gets to you, you don't notice if something went wrong before you because your focus is just on putting on that right front wheel. And think about how easily you can be replaced.
00:08:24
Speaker
Yeah, takes the power out of the employed hands. All you got to learn is fasten those four bolts. And if you make too much noise there on the factory line, they let you go.
00:08:40
Speaker
Yeah. Remember we said this when you're living in the Amazon company town in five years. That's right. Eating your soil in green. You heard it here first. So we're fighting the good fight. Yeah. It ain't easy. No, no. It's funny because, you know, in the social groups that we belong to, a lot of the folks are sort of
00:09:09
Speaker
you know, call them high level hobbyists, where they have a day job and they've got skills, but they don't make that leap to living off of those skills because that's, that's the real challenge in today's marketplace. And they kind of see us as living the dream. If they only knew. Yeah.
00:09:34
Speaker
It can be difficult. Yeah, but, you know, we're satisfied with, you know, ourselves and our beliefs and everything we work for. But the other topic we're going to discuss is the change in finance. Okay.
Joseph Meeks and Empire Style
00:09:50
Speaker
Because, you know, the arms of finance that allow
00:09:58
Speaker
factories to develop because before that it was a shop like ours. That's the other thing. We kind of start and exist on a wing and a prayer. We need a new machine. We get the next job. We buy a new machine. Hope we can crack out that job with enough time to spare to pay ourselves. Right. We're not carrying a heavy debt. We run lean and mean.
00:10:23
Speaker
Um, but you know, these guys, they, they said, let's look at this system. Let's look at hiring a hundred people. We need big machines. We need a big space. We need to carry inventory because people are just going to walk in and buy something that's already made. Yeah.
00:10:43
Speaker
So these are all changes that happen as part of the Industrial Revolution as it pertains to furniture building. And Joseph Meeks was actually a furniture maker.
00:10:58
Speaker
And we touched on him in the last episode, if my memory serves. Yeah, he was the one that came up with like the billboard, not a billboard, but the advertisements. Yeah, they called it a broadside back then. Yeah, broadside, okay. I actually found, I remember I found a sofa of his on... Yes!
00:11:17
Speaker
What is the name of that website? Was it FirstDibs? FirstDibs, yeah. Yeah, FirstDibs.com is a website we've used to collect pictures and some information. We've been sent stuff from designers, too, on their, you know, to use as reference material.
00:11:37
Speaker
Yeah, they're a pretty classy organization, it seems. They deal with real antiques. And although Meeks isn't in the same class as Fife or Lanier, he did build some pretty good furniture, considering the number of pieces he produced. He was the first full-on factory dude. Yeah, catalog guy.
00:12:04
Speaker
Yeah. Um, and he was based out of New York city where a lot of the empire, um, period furniture was, was coming out of New York and, you know, got an empire state of mind. Hmm. Like that song. Yeah. Yeah. There's probably no relation there, but it's curious. Yeah. The empire period. Yeah. Empire state building. Yeah. I wonder how we got to be the big apple.
00:12:35
Speaker
I don't know. That's a curious one. Yeah, New York's got an awful lot of monikers. Yeah. What? Big Apple, the Empire State. It's like an Empire is also a type of Apple. I think that probably came after. Yeah. Yeah, New York's a big Apple producer. Yeah. Upstate. Mm-hmm. So what time are we talking about here?
00:13:02
Speaker
Meeks, he founded what would become a large firm that produced good quality furniture from 1797 to 1869. Wow, that's a pretty good stretch, 70 years. In 1833, he published the aforementioned Broadside, which is basically like what might be considered like today's catalog. You know, we get them in the mail.
00:13:31
Speaker
had 39 illustrations, mostly furniture, some drapery and things like that. And it was all kind of simplified American empire style and had prices and yeah, intended to be a catalog that consumers could use to order furniture straight from Meeks's factory.
00:13:54
Speaker
So in this way, he's a really influential cabinet maker and businessman because he's disseminating the empire style to this big broad audience. He's selling a lot of furniture to a lot of people. The regular Joe. Yeah. And so he's adding to the trend. And if you've got the inclination and you have the money,
00:14:22
Speaker
then people like the upper class, people within the upper class could go to somebody like Fife and have something made. So we're pulling up an actual photograph of his broadside. The thing that's cool is down in this tiny little lettering are the prices. See a lot of two digit numbers. Yeah.
00:14:48
Speaker
Couple of three, one, two, three, four, five. And even though it's been a while, we definitely recognize these empire characteristics. Look at those chairs, the way the back legs flare out. I don't know if anybody remembers us talking about the Clismos chair. Yeah, I think that was two episodes ago.
00:15:16
Speaker
Yeah, so that was... Was this like a horse mirror or something? Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, I believe we did look at this broadside also in maybe the first episode of the empire. Yeah.
00:15:37
Speaker
So for those of you listening at home, and if you've got a deeper interest besides just listening while you're passing the time at work, it's easy to look up. Meeks is spelled M-E-E-K-S. Joseph Meeks broadside. And all this stuff is pretty easy to find on the internet. You just gotta know what you're looking for.
00:16:03
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you're not digging through catacombs to get this information. No. And like we were talking the other day, as we get closer and closer to present time, there's a lot more stuff available. We don't have to do is dig a deeper dive into finding some of this stuff out, especially as we get into the next periods.
00:16:24
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And now we already did Shaker, so it's arts and crafts that must be the next period. No, we didn't do Shaker yet. We didn't do Shaker? No, it's the next one. Oh, I'm confused because, you know, doing the research... We came off a federal, did an empire. We came off a federal. Yeah, federal's an empire, and then Shaker's next.
Market Revolution Changes
00:16:51
Speaker
Okay, cool.
00:16:53
Speaker
So the start of the American Revolution, American Revolution, start of the American Industrial Revolution. That was the colonial period. Yeah. Slip back into my history teaching days. Listen up, class. Shot heard around the world. It was the start of the revolution.
00:17:15
Speaker
Yeah, because the Industrial Revolution really starts in England and, you know, you got kids slapping labels on bottles and stuff. We weren't quite as... What's the word I'm looking for? Involved with child labor over here. Yeah, well, maybe not until the early 1900s. Yeah.
00:17:43
Speaker
But it's often attributed to Samuel Slater. And he opened up an industrial mill in the US in 1790. And again, borrowed heavily from the British models. Okay, fabric mill. Yeah, yeah. That's...
00:18:02
Speaker
That's a good thing to point out because we're all thinking lumber mill. Yeah, isn't it funny how mills are lumber, fabric, paper, grain. Yeah, like they use mill for a lot of... Yeah.
00:18:15
Speaker
So he actually had technology that increased the speed with which cotton thread could be spun into yarn and then of course yarn into cloth and how that affects furniture is upholstery and if you've seen pictures of the Empire stuff it's heavily upholstered.
00:18:37
Speaker
Not all of it, but like the sofas and things like that. Front, back, sides. Yeah, I mean the chairs, a lot of them have upholstered seats. You go back to Colonial, everything was wooden. Even a lot in the federal.
00:18:53
Speaker
Yeah. It's like the difference in the confessionals we made between the penitent side seat, which was this little oak, you know, fall down seat and the custom upholstery over on the other side. Yeah. Moving on up. So, uh,
00:19:18
Speaker
While this was a vital new technology, the Industrial Revolution required several other elements before it really could transform American life and business.
00:19:35
Speaker
So there's this thing that they call the Outwork System. And it's where small parts of a larger production process are carried out by numerous individuals in the home. Does it sound familiar? Yeah. Don't think that the titans of industry are not, you know,
00:20:05
Speaker
knowing this, that everybody's working at home and we think it's a great thing, but everybody's on call 18 hours a day. And it seems like people are not working, but everybody's always working, it seems.
00:20:25
Speaker
uh... and uh... that was it that started way back then they would uh... have you and me each of our own little you know work rooms building pieces and they come by and collect them they need to work a little faster there uh... how many steps are you taking from the bench to the bin do you really need to stop and eat
00:20:53
Speaker
Oh, man. But the factory system was really the chief organizational breakthrough of the Industrial Revolution. And everybody kind of knows what that is. And that's where all this large scale work is performed in a single centralized location, i.e. the factory. And instead of people working in their own individual homes, they got their own little station in the factory.
00:21:27
Speaker
And people were lauded for this sort of thing because it brought, I guess, economic success. I mean, when we look back at it now, we kind of have more of a jaundiced view of this. Well, depending on who you ask. Well, I do.
00:21:53
Speaker
You know, something's definitely lost in all of this mechanization and sort of the, what kind of a, you know, we're fully aware of now is the centralization of profit. That's what was in my head just now. You know, it's like you got the one guy at the top who's making all the money. Everybody else is just getting, you know. A wage. Paid a wage.
00:22:21
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. No incentives, you know. None. To do better, be better. Yeah, it's funny as we talk about this and sort of view it in the light of what's happened in the last, I don't know, what would you say, 10 years with the real domination of things like Amazon and
00:22:51
Speaker
marketplaces like that, how history really does repeat itself. It's just a different, it's in a different form now. So there were some early innovators of this approach, you know, the factory system, and they were known as the Boston Associates.
00:23:17
Speaker
Sounds pretty grim. Sounds like a gang, doesn't it? Yeah, the Boston boys. They recruit thousands of New England farm girls to operate the machines in their factories. Wow. That's like all those things we talked about, like the spinning jennies and all those thread and cloth-producing machines, because the Boston low
00:23:44
Speaker
areas, that's where all this stuff was really centered. And they had these tightly controlled mill towns, which we were kind of joking about. You were talking about the Amazon town, and that's really what it was. They're talking about that from what I heard. Starting a town. Holy crap.
00:24:09
Speaker
So you had this workforce that was kind of untapped. You know, women did not work outside the home. Yeah, you know, you can't vote or anything. You got all this free time in your hands. Just come work at the mill. That's right. Because we're still talking about the 1820s and women. That's 100 years you had before. It was so crazy to think about.
00:24:37
Speaker
Another little tidbit of history that I think people forgot. Yeah. Women could not vote in the U.S. until 1920, right? Yes, something like that. Let's see. Let's look it up. I don't want to be spreading false information. Yeah, we try to be as accurate as possible here at the American Craftsman Podcast. We like to inform and entertain. Yeah. Uh, yada, yada, yada. I don't know. What amendment was it?
00:25:06
Speaker
Passed by Congress June 4th, 1919 and ratified on August 18th, 1920, the 19th Amendment guarantees all American women the right to vote. There you go. Sometimes it feels like we're going backwards, doesn't it?
00:25:21
Speaker
Feels like we are. We try to stay apolitical, but sometimes it's hard in the face of what's going on. Yeah, these Boston associates, they preferred female labor because they pay the young girls less than men.
00:25:43
Speaker
I mean, you can't make this up. This is history repeating itself. They called them the Lowell girls because Lowell, Massachusetts was one of the most famous mill towns. Women put up with it because it was like this new thing that they could get out of the house.
00:26:10
Speaker
Instead of being dominated by their husbands at home, now they're dominated by the boss in the factory. Yeah. Well, I mean, they're jumping out of the fire and pan into the fire. Um, but you know, you can't blame them. No.
00:26:28
Speaker
Wow, so I put a note here, the first strike among textile workers protesting wage and factory conditions occurred in 1824. It didn't take long. Wait a minute, this sucks. Yeah, we're talking pre-unions here. Yeah, so first strike happens like basically a year later.
00:26:56
Speaker
It's funny, you know, people talk about, you know, how people these days complain about like a 40 hour work week and stuff like that. And, uh, and they say, well, you know, back in the day they used to, people used to work six days a week, 12 hours a day, blah, blah, blah, blah. But that didn't start until the industrial revolution. When now you had these profiteers who.
00:27:23
Speaker
were up at the top. They're not working 60 hours a week. Oh, no. They have all you working 60 hours a week. And they're taking home the big chunk of the money. Yep. You know, you think guys like Nicholas Disbro was working himself to the bone for himself? No way. I mean, the one thing we had before this was more of a life balance. Of course, you know, we don't want to sugar coat it. Life was hard. Yeah.
00:27:54
Speaker
You know, but it's different working hard for yourself. Yes than working hard for someone else which we know First hand. Yeah, it is a completely different feeling Putting in the hours like when we have to work extra days or extra hours or something like that We do it
00:28:15
Speaker
And when it's done, you kind of exhale and go, that was good. Yeah. That was good. You know, it doesn't take away that it's hard work while it's happening. But after you do that kind of thing for an employer, you just kind of feel used. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Chewed up and spit out.
00:28:44
Speaker
So all this increased production in the textile mills, and it's a key part of the industrial revolution here in America, and a quick aside,
00:29:00
Speaker
It's part of the triangle trade route that's going on. I mean, it's part of why growing cotton in the South and America is such an important part of the economy and why slaves were so desperately held on to.
00:29:18
Speaker
So, up north, not to compare in the least the type of labor in the factory to being a slave, but at the bottom rungs of society, it's tough all over.
00:29:38
Speaker
So we talked a little, you know, we mentioned that we needed a different type of financial system. And so what happens is there's this expanded system of credit that helps to ensure entrepreneurs can secure the capital they need for all these large scale and risky new ventures. So venture capital. Yeah.
00:30:04
Speaker
With every sentence, you could link it to what's going on today. And my mind immediately goes to, this stuff's not free. This is not, hey, let's create this system of credit to help industry. This is another business in and of itself.
00:30:27
Speaker
Um, where, you know, sort of people are profiting by just having money now and making it available. And so they already have more money. We kind of call that loan shocking on the street. It's like a, uh,
00:30:49
Speaker
What's that, like a perpetual motion machine? That doesn't actually exist in reality, but if you have money, you can create a perpetual money machine. The only requirement is having money.
Society and Inequality
00:31:03
Speaker
I know.
00:31:05
Speaker
And when you read it and don't think about it, it sounds like such a great thing. But there are all these consequences. And I don't know if it's just because it's my time in life and having worked my whole life and seeing the unfairness of the distribution of things.
00:31:32
Speaker
You kind of get a little bit soured reading about all this stuff coming into being because they promised us things were going to be different.
00:31:44
Speaker
And I wonder what our listeners think. Because most of the people that listen to us, I'm sure, are just their workaday folks like us. They're at their desk. Maybe they're milling around the shop with their headphones on. And they're thinking. So I hope this is provocative in that way in some sense.
00:32:13
Speaker
Um, another thing I didn't mention in the title was we needed an improved transportation system to get all the raw materials, to get the finished goods, you know, to their destinations. So we're talking about the locomotive.
00:32:28
Speaker
Yeah, and on the east coast, I don't know, it's been so long since this was, you know, written down, we had the canals. Yeah, I think we touched on that maybe in the federal, because that's when they sort of came to be, I think. Right, the Erie Canal was a really big one. Yeah. Oh, you're right, because we were talking about that canal. The DNR Canal, yeah.
00:32:55
Speaker
So state governments, they play a key role in encouraging new banking institutions and a vastly increased transportation network. All right, government, here we go. The later development is often termed the market revolution. I guess as opposed to the industrial revolution, because of all these changes in how money and finance is made available.
00:33:22
Speaker
It's called the Market Revolution because the central importance of creating more efficient ways to transport people, raw materials, and finished goods, I guess to and from market. Oh, Alexander Hamilton.
00:33:37
Speaker
he's uh... he's famous now you know because of the play and everything i haven't seen that me that i wonder um... you know he started the bank of the united states i wonder if that's part of the play what's he on the ten dollar bill uh... yeah uh... and he got a special national charter from the congress in seventeen ninety one uh... very successful
00:34:04
Speaker
The orange bill. What's up with that? Tens are orange. They are? You know, it's been so long since I actually looked at money. Maybe I'm wrong. You got a tan anywhere? No, I don't even have my wallet. If it's one thing I've adopted in this, you know, new technological era is I don't really use money. Yeah, they're orange.
00:34:33
Speaker
Oh, wow. Yeah. Is that some of that, uh, anti-counterfeiting stuff in the, in the cloth? Yeah. And like a $5 bill is like kind of red or like a more of like a pink. Well, it's got like a pink issue in the middle. Yeah, I see that. Why are people selling money on eBay? So they're selling a $5 bill for a 989. Yeah.
00:35:01
Speaker
I'd say, uh, you know, probably got some kind of defect. That's, that's the business if we should be in. Save all the wheat pennies. Yeah. Hundreds blue. The 50 is kind of red too. 20s are green though.
00:35:24
Speaker
Who's on the 50? Is that Ulysses S. Grant? Grant, yeah. And who's on the 100? Ben Franklin. Oh, I didn't know that. Andrew Jackson on the 20. Andrew Jackson. Yeah. Famous Indian slayer. Yeah, my God. I mean, we're tearing down statues of Columbus. We got Jackson on the 20. That's true.
00:35:55
Speaker
I guess you can't erase everything. We got to hang on to some of those people. Takes time, I guess. Otherwise, there'd be nobody left. I mean, who could we use that's pure of heart and deed? You don't have to think on that one. I mean, we got to put them by the Teresa.
00:36:19
Speaker
Yeah. Then all the anti-religious folks will be up in arms. Yeah. You know, so.
00:36:28
Speaker
back to Alexander Hamilton. And this is before that play happened. He started the Bank of the US. And I don't know that much about the Bank of the US, but it was quite successful. It led to, of course, lots of branch offices, eight to be exact, that opened in major cities by 1805. So we're still talking about
00:36:57
Speaker
you know, over 200 years ago. So the Bank of the US is a government chartered national bank, and it was pretty controversial, politically.
00:37:12
Speaker
And Madison was the president at the time, and he didn't submit the bank's charter for renewal in 1811. I guess politics came in, and what's it say there? The key legal and government support for the economic development in the early 19th century
00:37:34
Speaker
ultimately came at the state rather than the national level. I see. So the Bank of the U.S. was a federal institution and probably the main argument was for more state control. Right. I just realized that the light thing is right. The ball is in my way. Was that like that last time?
00:38:03
Speaker
It's like being at the game, you know what I mean? What just happened? Just got the cheap seats. So 1911, the charter for the National Bank is not renewed. It closes. State governments create over 200 state chartered banks within five years.
00:38:26
Speaker
So they're state chartered, but you know who's behind it. It's all private money. The use of state chartered to provide special benefits for a private corporation was crucial.
00:38:44
Speaker
if not controversial, innovation in the new republic of America. The idea of granting special privileges to certain individuals seemed to contradict the republican ideal of equality before the law.
00:38:59
Speaker
What do you think of that? We're just built on these bricks of I don't want to get too drastic inequality, but I mean everything that's happening now goes straight back It's not like these are recent developments
00:39:24
Speaker
And I guess that's part of why it happens. You know, we're so used to it. And change is probably impossible at this point. Yeah, I mean, you see the ideals that the country were founded upon sort of being co-opted just 50 years after the inception of the country. It was like a good idea on paper. Yeah, they're like, well, we didn't really mean it like that.
00:39:54
Speaker
Not everybody, not everybody, everybody. Yeah, yeah. It's funny when we started this episode, it didn't realize what we would be getting into. But the Industrial Revolution, just in general, strikes kind of a chord with craftspeople if you dig into it, because it kind of leads to the demise of what we hold dear.
00:40:19
Speaker
Yeah, we'll see in about five episodes from now, the rejection of the entire Industrial Revolution and the Arts and Crafts movement. Yeah, we're going to pop some champagne when we...
00:40:33
Speaker
when we get to get to celebrate people that are kind of, you know, the closest thing we have to our heroes in the craft, you know, all the people that, you know, created the designs and the work, reintroduced the elements of work and craft that we admire. Yeah.
00:40:56
Speaker
So the banks expand, internal transportation and improvements. It's all at the heart of what becomes this market revolution, an arm of the American industrial revolution, roads, bridges, and especially the canals. It was an expensive venture.
00:41:22
Speaker
But state politicians supported it using government-granted legal privileges and funds. So this is where a lot of those early robber barons got to be who they were.
00:41:38
Speaker
And, but it did, I mean, it helped create the infrastructure that would stimulate economic development. What, you know, definitely not all bad. It's just, um, it does is centralize the, the greatest wealth within just a few people. And we seen now how, um, you know, problematic that can be even in a, you know, a representative democracy like we have here.
00:42:04
Speaker
Yeah, I mean those people's family are still living off the money now, 200 years later. And with money comes power and all those other things. The most famous state-led creation of the Market Revolution was undoubtedly New York's Erie Canal.
00:42:25
Speaker
Look at that. We're right here in the center of it. It's a 364-mile man-made waterway that flows between Albany on the Hudson River and Buffalo on Lake Erie.
00:42:40
Speaker
and the canal connected the eastern seaboard and the old northwest. Like the old northwest, I'm pretty sure refers to places like Ohio. Yeah, like Illinois, maybe, or Indiana. It's funny to think of that, right? Just, you know, 1,500 miles from the real northwest. We hadn't taken that yet.
00:43:06
Speaker
So the Great Access at the Erie Canal sets off a canal frenzy that along with the development of the steamboat created a new and complete national water transportation network by 1840. So there you go, that's our sort of synopsis of the market revolution.
00:43:27
Speaker
What do you think? Very interesting. Yeah. It does make you think. Depending on your point of view, when you just think about the Industrial Revolution, it could be
00:43:47
Speaker
something that people view as like a launching point into, you know, bigger and greater things. And it could also sort of be, you know, wow, there's a dark side to this. But I suppose it was unavoidable. There are no countries that I could think of, you know, that are part of, you know, modern economy that
00:44:17
Speaker
have sort of sidestepped it. Can you think of anything? I don't think so. I mean, it seems like an evolutionary sort of progression. Yeah. But maybe that's just because we're so indoctrinated into the idea of it.
00:44:37
Speaker
It's true. It's true. Um, you'd have to probably be part of like a small nation. Yeah. Um, you know, I think there's like, I mean, Italy's got the, and France have some small, um, you know, craft unions and things like that, where they try and control that stuff more tightly than we do here.
00:45:03
Speaker
Yeah, I think those are probably heavily subsidized by the government. They are, yeah. Damn government. Can't compete with the big money.
Woodworking Machines Evolution
00:45:15
Speaker
So now we're going to start talking about maybe some of the machines and things like that that help.
00:45:22
Speaker
Do what we do. Yeah, that's when the Woodpecker Square came out. When did we... When was aluminum... It was actually a catalyst for the Industrial Revolution, the Woodpecker Square. When was aluminum... I don't want to say invented, but when was it popularized? Is that... I mean, it's an alloy, right? Gotta be... Or is it? I don't know.
00:45:49
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. I think there might be pure aluminum. Yeah, I think so too. But typically it's an alloy, because I think maybe pure aluminum is too soft. It's a good question. I think aluminum got big in like maybe the 60s, 70s? Yeah, so woodpecker was really ahead of its time if they were around back then.
00:46:14
Speaker
Yeah, so the first machine come along was the power planer. Wow. Previous power driven planers with rotary heads used to mill flat stock to thickness. Let me read this. Previous two power driven planers. Oh, previous two. Let's see if the pole's in my way. Let me move the damn pole. Yeah. Yeah, so before the power planer. Oh, there we go.
00:46:46
Speaker
Yeah, we go. Oh, Lord, that was close. Yeah, that was a close one. For you not viewing at home, we had a near... Yeah, nobody's viewing at home anymore. Industrial accident. Yeah, we almost lost our professional lighting, which is now just lighting. Yeah, so let's start again. It's better for me, too. It was actually a block of mine. Yeah, so previous to the power planer, we had...
00:47:16
Speaker
just folks like you and me and a hand plane. Yeah. Flattening boards. Could you imagine if we had to do that now? We'd make zero money. Well, I mean, not to go back into the conversation, but it's all about the cost of living. I mean, people could
00:47:39
Speaker
make a living being a cabinet maker and playing boards by hand, do all this stuff by hand that took so much time and still produce a piece of furniture, sell it and make a living. Well, the Industrial Revolution created the race to the bottom where it was all about putting out the cheapest products.
00:48:03
Speaker
Not the best product. Yeah. Oh man. So before the power driven planer and all that technology, you and I were on the bench flattening our boards by hand, took skill, took a lot of skill, as we know. Some winding sticks.
00:48:22
Speaker
And the earliest recorded patent for a planer was granted in 1776 in England. The patent was merely for crude sketches that were never developed into a working machine. So the idea was there. And I got dreams too. I can make a drawing.
00:48:44
Speaker
Yes, this thing is going to make the wood flat. But can you make it? No. No. The first actual wood planing machine was built by Malcolm Muir of Glasgow, Scotland in 1827. The planer's purpose was specifically for the milling of tongue and groove flooring. Look at that.
00:49:06
Speaker
and included a cutter head to smooth both faces of the board and to run the tongue and groove joinery in the board's edges. Wow, that was a four-sider.
00:49:15
Speaker
Yeah. And stateside here in America, a similar machine was invented and patented in 1828, a year later, by William Uncle Billy Woodworth. Something about when your nickname is Uncle Billy sort of diminishes your intellectual capabilities for some reason.
00:49:40
Speaker
So there's the machine right there. We're looking at a photo of it. I guess the cutter assembly's on here. You got your in-feed and your out-feed. It's a belt-driven machine. Yeah, a canvas or maybe leather. Yeah. It's like a little workbench. Right. Got like a lamb's tongue feet. Yep. Isn't it cool?
00:50:04
Speaker
big square headed bolts. Yeah, even the base of this machine, which is kind of like, it's so rudimentary, but there's little embellishments that make it just nice. You know, somebody did this and took some pride in it. Yeah, these spokes didn't have to be curved. Right.
00:50:28
Speaker
Right. The wheels of the drive pulleys and everything like that have these sort of, I don't know. There is a name for that. I don't remember it. That flared sort of motif in the spokes. It's just, yeah.
00:50:51
Speaker
But it's basically a blade that the wood is pushed through. Yeah. And you can raise and lower it. And you can see the cranks on the far side. Yeah. And it's got two drive things. So I guess it's doing a top and a bottom. Yeah. Yeah. Cutter. It's basically like a two-sided William & Hussey. Yes. Which is nearly as simple as that machine. Right. And that's a shaker thickness planer.
00:51:20
Speaker
Oh, that's the shaker thickness plane. Yeah. Yeah, they didn't take credit for that. So Uncle Billy Woodworth, his machine had two long sharp blades mounted in a rotating horizontal bar set at an adjustable height above a flat table.
00:51:41
Speaker
And mounted in the table were slowly rotating cylinders that pushed and pulled the board under the rotating planer blades. So it hasn't changed much. No. This design was the precursor of the modern planing machine. It sounds just like it, yeah. The biggest drawback of the Woodworth machine was that while it smoothed and regulated the thickness of the boards, it didn't always make it truly flat.
00:52:08
Speaker
If the board was twisted and warped before planing, it'd probably still be twisted and warped after planing. I mean, we know that. Yeah, where's the jointer at? That's it. You need to joint the wood first. The second player in the story here is Thomas Daniels of Worcester, Massachusetts.
00:52:37
Speaker
And his was the first machine patented that actually flattened the board, patented in America, that truly flattened the board. His planer, patented in 1834, had a movable carriage to which a rough saw on board could be secured so it could not move or flex. So that's just like the guys that put boards
00:53:00
Speaker
on a sled with little shims under it and stuff like that. I'm sure that's exactly what that was. Like an automated jointer. Yeah. The carriage advanced under a rotating vertical shaft to which was fastened a bar parallel to the carriage. This bar had a cutting blade mounted at each end. When rotating, the power was often supplied by water wheel.
00:53:26
Speaker
The cut is sliced across the board, removing any unevenness and leaving a truly flat surface.
00:53:33
Speaker
Could you imagine this happening like the first time and the and like how much I mean we would be happy as a party to make a board that was a consistent desire thickness the height of the cutters above the board would be set at that height and the board would be turned over secured to the carriage and then passed under the cutters. So it was kind of like the first combo machine. Yeah.
00:54:03
Speaker
Each machine had its advantages, though. The Daniels planer produced a board that was not twisted or warped, and the Woodworth machine produced a smoother surface.
00:54:15
Speaker
Yeah, I imagine these boards were coming with all kinds of tear-out. And often a shop would have one of each, one to flatten and then one to do the finishing work, which would be the Woodworth machine. That picture's tiny. This is the combo machine. Oh, wow. So it spins.
00:54:43
Speaker
like almost like a propeller blade. Yeah. So the machine that flattens the board, so you're sending your board through, let's say like on a sled, like you would imagine, you know, you would do on a joint on a planer today. But the blade comes down spinning like a helicopter almost. Yeah. Interesting. Now are these two blades?
00:55:13
Speaker
Yeah, I don't understand that. Unless that's part of the carriage assembly. No, this is the carriage. This thing slides underneath of this cutter assembly. Oh. This is kind of like a... A conveyor? Well, it's like the sled on our sliding crosscut. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I see, yeah. Hook the board up to this and push it through underneath of this cutter.
00:55:40
Speaker
I see. Maybe this is just if you got to take off a lot. So you got, you know, cutting up there too. Interesting. Oh, that where it goes between. No, I don't think it does that. Yeah, that would preclude the blade from hitting. Yeah. Interesting. The old Daniels planer. And look what we were talking about here. The jointer doesn't come about until 1866.
00:56:05
Speaker
So they're working for about 30 years, 35 years in this fashion, and probably by the time it gets circulated into shops, 40, 50 years. Yeah, well, a hell of an improvement. Yeah, now we got the bandsaw coming around. The bandsaw, actually. That's a tanowitz. I know.
00:56:28
Speaker
This is funny, isn't it? Yeah. This is a picture of a bandsaw from 1808. And it looks just like one of these classic old machines that we all kind of lust after. Yeah. I think I've seen this exact bandsaw somewhere. You know, it's got like a C-shaped arm with big, huge wheels. Yeah, that's like, well, I mean, I guess there's no scale, but it looks like a big 36-inch kind of deal. Yeah. Cast iron base.
00:57:00
Speaker
But again, even in the base, see how they kind of add some curves to it? Oh, yeah. I mean, like our band saw, it's just totally utilitarian. It's a rectangle. Yeah. You know, they probably figured out what uses the least amount of steel, what shape. How simple can we make this?
00:57:27
Speaker
uh... so the bandsaw although widely considered french in origin was invented by the Englishman like that they just dismissed that completely nope not the French although widely considered French in origin declaratively he was invented by the Englishman William Newberry
00:57:52
Speaker
In 1808, Newberry patented a machine for sawing wood in which an endless band or ribbon saw strung over two wheels was used. Newberry also claimed that it could be used for splitting skins, et cetera. It'll split your skin if you touch it. Oh, yeah. In operation, a plain steel or iron band sharpened but without teeth was probably used. Wow.
00:58:22
Speaker
Strangely, the invention laid dormant for many years, and probably through the difficulty of obtaining blades of sufficient toughness to withstand the strain put on them, and the difficulty then found of rejoining the saw blades when broken. That's what I was just thinking. They didn't have welders back then. You have to forge it together. Yeah, I wonder how they made the blades. It has to be forge welded. Yeah.
00:58:54
Speaker
So while Newberry's machine exhibited a practical utility, it failed to realize the inventor's anticipations, especially considering the inferior quality of the saws when attainable, the saw blades, which I should have said. So you recognize him as the inventor of the band saw.
00:59:21
Speaker
didn't really come into practice for quite a while. But it's almost unchanged. I mean, the big improvement comes in the blades. And the guides, yeah. Yeah, yeah. No ball bearings back then. No. So I mean, I'm just amazed at all this stuff. Before 1812, timber is cut by hand.
00:59:44
Speaker
Over 2000 oak trees were needed to produce a single wooden sailing ship, all cut by hand. A great deal of timber to be cut by men with what was effectively at the time a very big hand saw.
00:59:59
Speaker
And, you know, they use those pit saws, like one guy in a hole at the other end of the saw. I mean, could you imagine that's your job, jumping down into a hole and like pulling and pushing on a saw? I think even the Egyptians were doing that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's essentially unchanged for, you know, 2000 years.
01:00:22
Speaker
In 1817... Shit, Moore, wasn't that like 2500 B.C.? Yeah, yeah. 4,000 years, yeah. 5,000 maybe. Don't get me started on Go Beckley Tepe.
01:00:43
Speaker
That's the after show. Yeah, go ahead, dive down that rabbit hole. So 1817, now this is like 20 years before the planer, there was a steam sawmill with a circular saw for cutting veneers. This, I remember, the guys had to cut veneers by hand.
01:01:09
Speaker
Some folks you probably never heard of, but whose inventions led to the development of modern woodworking machinery. Here we go. Joseph Brahma. He's the son of a Yorkshire farmer, apprentice to a carpenter, and he began his professional career building water closets.
01:01:35
Speaker
Oh, I remember this guy. So he quickly showed a talent for invention and designed a greatly improved flush mechanism and hang with us there. We'll get to the woodworking part. He patented it in 1778 and his design continues for decades.
01:01:53
Speaker
So after attending some lectures on locksmithing, he designed a lock of his own, and he patented it in 1784 and opened the Brahma Lock Company. So again, these are guys you probably haven't heard of, but they did invent some woodworking pertinent
01:02:11
Speaker
inventions. His lock is an invention? Oh no, okay, I see, we're getting somewhere. Yeah, so his locksmithing requires highly precise machining and Brahma was having trouble making locks at an economical price. So he has an employee that gets recommended to him, a young kid actually, only 18, named Henry Maudslay. And
01:02:35
Speaker
when uh... brahm sent for maud slate he was surprised to learn he was just a kid but he soon proves his worth together they design and build a lot of new machine tools uh... to make lock manufacturing more efficient less costly and these tools were adaptable for making other products as well so today brahmas uh... best remembered for inventing the hydraulic press well
01:03:03
Speaker
a fundamental tool of manufacturing ever since. He devised his way to multiply force through a liquid with pistons so as to shape metal parts. I mean, we seem to think that earlier civilizations understood fluid dynamics as well, but I guess
01:03:27
Speaker
This hydraulic press is part of his inventory now. With high pressure, he had trouble sealing the pistons without leakage. We know a forklift like that.
01:03:43
Speaker
Yeah. So, but it's Maud's way who found a way to do that. And he received little credit for his essential contribution. Shocker. So, what became known as the Brahma Press.
01:03:58
Speaker
But by the time Maudsley was 19, he was the manager of Brahma's shop. And when he got married and asked for a raise of 30 shillings a week, Brahma said no. And Maudsley left to open his own shop. So one of Maudsley's first commissions was to build woodworking machines for the Royal Navy to industrialize the manufacture of rigging blocks.
01:04:26
Speaker
They were used by the thousands in every big sailing ship. So Maud's Lay invents a machine that can make 130,000 blocks a year and needed only 10 men to operate. So the good and the bad. Previously it employed 110 men to produce that many. So those 100 guys are out of work.
01:04:53
Speaker
Maudsley's great contribution to machine tools was the screw cutting lathe. So he makes a lathe that'll cut screws. Before that it's all done by hand and Maudsley recognizes the process and built his entire lathe out of iron to make it more stable. Mechanized the process. Oh yeah.
01:05:18
Speaker
Wow, so his screw lays were soon steam powered and it allowed a stable rotation rate, not possible with a foot treadle. I guess so, you know, with the foot treadle, you're kind of going, you're ebbing and flowing. Yeah, you're going to be a robot if you're going to... Yeah.
01:05:36
Speaker
So he also devises a way to precisely determine the pitch of the threads to make them consistent. That's a biggie. Oh, yeah. So for the Royal Navy, he produced a bolt that was five feet long and had an astonishing 50 threads per inch. 50? Yeah. The nut engaged no fewer than 600 threads.
01:06:00
Speaker
And the Navy awarded Mod's Lay a prize of 1,000 pounds. More importantly, the Mod's Lay lathe allowed the standardization of screws, nuts, and bolts, which was a vital step towards interchangeability. Wow. 50 threads per inch. I'm pretty sure, you know, the more threads per inch, the stronger, like the more force can be applied. Wow.
01:06:27
Speaker
So that's a lot of force. Yeah. Yeah. Cause you imagine these things are used in big ships. Yeah. Wow. Holy hell. Is that how we end this episode? Yeah. That's it. We're going to end on the Maudsley. Henry Maudsley. Wow. Forgotten name in history. Yeah. That's crazy. I want to see if I can pull up a picture of that, uh, thread.
01:06:59
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of folks got lost to history. Molds lay thread. Oh, the internet's great for all this stuff, isn't it?
Conclusion and Raffle Introduction
01:07:14
Speaker
I mean, you're typing it. Look at that machine. Well, that's his machine. Looks like it's made out of bronze. Wow. Wow, that's a great picture. Yeah, it kind of looks like a milling machine. Yeah.
01:07:30
Speaker
I guess it uses these indexes to... Yep. You know, this thing spins and turns, you know, it's a gear. Almost looks like something really huge can make a watch. Oh, I guess it goes through here. Yeah, that's probably where they insert the steel that will become the bolt. And that thing on the right with the handles, I guess that engages the cutting edge. Wow.
01:08:00
Speaker
Very cool. I tell you. This stuff can be pretty fascinating. Yeah. Is this in the museum somewhere? Science museum group. That looks like the font from like the map. It's a .co.org.uk website.
01:08:32
Speaker
Looks like it is in a museum, just from the photo. Yeah, the museums have the best photos. Well, I guess Maud's Lay had the last laugh. Is that him? Yeah. Look at this, got a bust. Because, what was the other guy's name? Brahma. Braham or Brahma? I think Brahma.
01:09:04
Speaker
Braheem? Braheem? Braheem. Braheem. Braheem. Braheem. B-R-A-M-A-H. Let's see what, let's see what, how history remembers him. The Brahma hydraulic press. Mmm.
01:09:34
Speaker
More drawings. He certainly doesn't seem to be as prestigiously remembered. It's like a piece of furniture. Yeah. You know, it's a lot of sketches and we don't see anything. That looks like it's in like a
01:09:55
Speaker
tiny kind of local museum, not like a national archive or anything. Yeah, well, you reap the seed you sow. He was a dick. Yes, he was. Well, that concludes the Empire period. Yeah. What do we gather from that? That the Industrial Revolution changed society a lot.
01:10:23
Speaker
It did, didn't it? I mean, in other ways than just, I mean, the simple version is that it introduced machines. But man, the impact and fundamentally changed what we do. I mean, even though there are holdouts like us and other small shops, we're basically
01:10:48
Speaker
you know, non-players in the field, you know, of furniture. You know, we produce handfuls of pieces while there are factories making hundreds per day. Oh yeah, they make more in an hour than we make in an entire year. Yeah. And it's...
01:11:14
Speaker
I guess, you know, and with the, what we also saw is that with the proliferation of, you know, ideas and content and tangible goods, it sort of, um, it creates what people's expectations are, you know, and the cost of things and the quality of things. Yeah. Um,
01:11:42
Speaker
And if you're only paying, you know, $50 for a couch instead of 300, um, and we're talking in those dollars. So, you know, your, your thought about replacing that couch in 10 years time, isn't such a big deal. Yeah. The barrier of entry is lower. Mm-hmm.
01:12:06
Speaker
You're not talking about, well, we saved up. We bought this bedroom set and our kids and their kids are going to enjoy this. That kind of thought process is gone for the most part. Yeah.
01:12:29
Speaker
But stylistically, the Empire period brought in some interesting things that have stayed with us. The Clismos chair in its most extreme and, I'll say, honest form, you know, where it's closest to that relief carving that was found in what was it? Greece. Greece, yeah.
01:12:55
Speaker
You know, it's more of like a specialized piece. It's pretty ornate. But the styling of the legs especially, I was at the eye doctor when I texted you and said, they got Clismos chairs here in the waiting room. Yeah, you start to see it everywhere. If you haven't looked up the Clismos chair, just take a look and you'll start to see it everywhere. See the inspiration.
01:13:20
Speaker
Yes, yes, it's a really strong style influencer, especially the back legs, the way they kind of, and with the front legs, but it also, there's a version with straight front legs, but yeah, I was like, oh my God. And then you look around, like for somebody to like share it with, and you go, no, just shut up. I have no idea.
01:13:50
Speaker
Uh, before we end, I want to say, um, we have an idea of something that we might do. Let us know if you have any interest. Um, the cherry bench that we made with the turn walnut legs thinking about trying something out, doing a raffle. Um, I'm into that idea.
01:14:10
Speaker
Yeah, kind of stealing this idea from a lot of these custom knife makers that I've seen on Instagram doing it, where rather than buying a $750 knife, you can buy a raffle ticket for $15 and
01:14:27
Speaker
and you might win. Yeah I guess if you're interested in it we'd be curious to hear like what would be the the price of entry that would feel comfortable and justified. Yeah well I'm not even gonna ask people for that just let me know if you're interested. Yeah because it's too much. It's gonna get too complicated. Yeah $50 is what I was thinking so would you pay $50
01:14:53
Speaker
for the chance to win this bench up against a hundred people, a hundred tickets at $50 to win the bench delivered to you. Yeah, we'd create it up and be delivered in a van or something like that. Lower 48, US only lower 48 because, you know, we can't ship it. We're going to have to sell 500 tickets if you want to get it, get it to Australia or something. Um,
01:15:19
Speaker
So yeah, let us know. We'll probably run it through our website. That way, you know, Instagram, it's technically not allowed. And then we're dealing with PayPal and Venmo and all this BS. So it'll be on the website. You know, you could buy your ticket. It'll, you could buy it, you know, whatever payment the website accepts, which is, you know, credit card, debit card, all that. So to make it easy. So yeah, let us know if that's something you'd be interested in.
01:15:49
Speaker
And so the raffle runs until all the tickets are sold. Right, yeah. So there's 100 tickets, the raffle goes off once all 100 tickets are sold. That's $5,000. That pays for the bench plus the cost of shipping. Or you could just buy the bench, which is for sale on the website. That's no fun.
01:16:09
Speaker
But yeah, let us know. We're gauging the, uh, the interest of, I've had about 40 people who've said they're interested. So if we get a hundred people who are interested, we'll do it. Yeah, that'd be awesome. I'd love to see it go to, you know, not that, uh, I want it out. I'd just love to see it go into somebody's house. Right. I mean, when do you get the opportunity to get a, to win a, we'll call it a $5,000 bench for 50 bucks.
01:16:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's definitely one of a kind, not just in its design, but it's just the wood use. It's a board that cannot be duplicated because Mother Nature did it. Yeah. So if you've made it this far into the podcast an hour and 15 minutes in, you are a diehard listener and you can let us know what you think.
01:16:59
Speaker
But yeah, at that, we'll see you next week for the first episode in the Shaker period. Thanks for hanging in there. See you next week.
01:17:24
Speaker
Ain't no shame, but there's been a chain