War Dog

PETER: Welcome to the show. I’m Peter Onuf, here with Ed Ayers.

ED: Hey, Peter.

PETER: And Brian Balogh.

BRIAN: Hey there, Peter.

PETER: Today we’re doing something a little different on BackStory. As always, we’ll be exploring the history of one topic– in this case, manufacturing– but we’re going to take a look at that history by examining five objects. And in looking at those five objects, we’ll illuminate key moments in the history of American industry.

ED: First up, the precursor to the modern rifle– the musket.

BRIAN: What’s so special about a musket, Ed?

ED: Oh, Brian, that wasn’t exciting enough to you?

[LAUGHTER]

PETER: You can have a ball with muskets.

ED: Oh, god. And we’re going to begin by talking about someone you might recognize, a Mr. Eli Whitney.

BRIAN: I know him. He invented the cotton gin.

ED: Well, kind of.

PETER: He did not invent the cotton gin. This is historian Merritt Roe Smith.

MERRITT ROE SMITH: He invented a very effective cotton gin. There had been many cotton gins before Whitney came along. But they could not gin green seed cotton, which was the main type of cotton grown in the southeastern part of the United States.

ED: In other words, Eli Whitney perfected the cotton gin. He filed for a patent in 1793, hoping to get rich off his design. But instead of getting rich, he spent all his time suing people.

MERRITT ROE SMITH: Primarily concerned about pirating his invention– people building it and then not paying him royalties for it. And that got to the point that by 1798, he was nearing bankruptcy.

ED: Whitney was in a tough spot. Enter the musket.

MERRITT ROE SMITH: Whitney learned that the Secretary of the Treasury, a guy named Oliver Wolcott, was putting out calls for firearms contracts.

ED: The fledgling United States government needed to stockpile weapons to protect itself against a growing threat from France. The two countries were involved in an undeclared war over French attacks on US shipping. Where government officials saw a threat, Whitney sensed a business opportunity.

MERRITT ROE SMITH: Whitney saw a firearms contract as a way of rescuing his cotton gin business, basically, because he was going to get an advance on the contract. I think the advance was something like $10,000. Lot of money in 1798.

ED: The feds gave Whitney two years, until 1800, to complete the contract. There was just one problem. Well, actually, make that several problems.

MERRITT ROE SMITH: He didn’t own a factory. He had no workforce. He had no experience making firearms. And so it was a very gutsy move on his part to do something like that.

ED: Was it a stupid move on the part of the government to give it to him?

MERRITT ROE SMITH: Well, yeah. In my opinion, it was. Because they were desperate, I suppose, for firearms, but still, to contract with somebody who had no experience is pretty remarkable.

ED: Given these circumstances, it’s no surprise that Whitney blew his deadline. So the inventor headed to DC to ask for an extension. And this is when the musket really made an impact.

MERRITT ROE SMITH: He went to Washington with a box of muskets that he had made up in New Haven to demonstrate to John Adams, who was the outgoing president, and the incoming president, Thomas Jefferson, and other dignitaries, that he could pull out the firing mechanism from his muskets and exchange them with one another. And from this, Jefferson concluded that all the parts were basically interchangeable.

ED: “Interchangeable parts.” Now, those words might not mean much to us today, but in 1800, they represented a revolution.

MERRITT ROE SMITH: Before that, each gun was made unto its own. Each one had its own parts, but they would not interchange with other guns– mainly because they were made in a craft style, which meant that every part was hand-filed and fitted and shaped to the point that it was going to– all the parts would come together. Whitney was claiming that he could make a gun that didn’t require filing or fitting, that it was all the parts would be able to fit one another, whether you’re making 10 guns or a thousand guns, or whatever.

ED: Think of it this way. Before interchangeable parts, if a gun broke, there was nothing a soldier could do to fix it. But with Whitney’s musket, a damaged part could be replaced on the spot, and the implications were huge.

MERRITT ROE SMITH: You know, Jefferson and Adams really blew their minds when he had this demonstration, and they walked away thinking, this guy’s doing something new and different. We need to support him.

ED: By the time Jefferson became president in 1801, the war with France was over. And that was a good thing, because Whitney still hadn’t delivered his muskets. On the other hand, Whitney had something more powerful than a government contract. He had an idea that he could promote. Whitney spent the rest of his life spreading the gospel of interchangeable parts, and this idea would propel manufacturing and industry in ways that neither Whitney, nor John Adams or Thomas Jefferson, could even begin to imagine.

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