was flowering during a period of relative peace, and American
manufacturers just couldn’t compete. In particular, the important
textile industry was dominated by British weavers, using advanced
looms (whose designs they’d stolen from the French) and related
technologies. Britain sought to protect this industry with laws barring
export of equipment, plans for equipment, or even the artisans who
built and operated them.
So, the Americans stole it. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander
Hamilton issued a report calling for the procurement of European
industrial technology through “proper provision and due pains”—even
as it blithely acknowledged that British law prohibited such export.^1
The Treasury offered bounties to European artisans willing to come to
the United States, in direct violation of emigration laws in their home
countries. U.S. patent law was modified in 1793 to limit patent
protection to U.S. citizens, thus depriving European owners of this
intellectual property any legal recourse against this theft.
From these seeds, America’s industrial might grew quickly. The
town of Lowell, Massachusetts, known as the cradle of the American
Industrial Revolution, was built by the corporate descendants of
Francis Cabot Lowell, who had years earlier toured British textile
plants as a curious customer (which was true, if incomplete) and
memorized their design and layout. Upon his return to the United
States he founded the Boston Manufacturing Company and built
America’s first factory—and, in a nice connection with our modern
tech industry, conducted the country’s first IPO.^2 The thievery gave
rise to a multibillion-dollar industry: consulting. The United States has
the best consulting firms in the world—theft is in our DNA.
Today, the United States is the industrial behemoth, with its own
technological advantages and markets to protect. And while we
celebrate Alexander Hamilton on Broadway, our laws repudiate his
casual attitude toward intellectual property. The United States is now
the great proponent of patent and trademark protections, and you
can’t go wrong, as a U.S. politician, criticizing China for stealing U.S.
technology. And not without cause, as China, eager to achieve
horseman status on the world stage, is sending its own Francis Lowells
over, in person and through cyberspace, to grab whatever can shorten
the path to prosperity. Meanwhile, after decades of stealing the world’s