FRONTIERS^301times make hard masters. Inevitably, in spite of what economists tell us
about the homogenizing effects of competition, some employers left
much to be desired.^19 Even so, conditions were apparently better than
in old England. To cite Charles Dickens, the contrast was "between the
Good and Evil, the living light and deepest shadow."^20
Another example of technological autonomy. The newly indepen
dent Americans also imported steam engines, at first of the atmos
pheric type. But then they opted for high pressure, and once again local
invention played a critical role. The key figure was Oliver Evans
(1755-1819), a brilliant jack-of-all-trades who made important con
tributions to wool carding and flour milling as well as to steampower.
Evans's device went back to the 1780s, but the major applications date
from the turn of the century.* These high-pressure reciprocating en
gines, typically smaller and cheaper, gave more power for size than the
older atmospheric-vacuum type; hence were well suited not only to in
dustry but to transport, where space counted. These smaller machines
made possible the steamboat and the railway locomotive. On the other
hand, high-pressure engines could explode—one reason why James
Watt and many British engine builders and users stuck to the atmos
pheric variety. The Americans seemed ready here to trade dead and in
jured for cheaper power and transport.
The decisive and most distinctive American innovation, though, was
not any particular device, however important, but a mode of produc
tion—what came to be called the American system of manufactures.
This was a creative response to (1) a market free of the local and re
gional preferences and the class and status distinctions that prevailed in
Europe, hence ready to accept standardized articles; and (2) the
scarcity of labor relative to materials. The two were related. In a labor-
scarce economy, standardization was a way of dividing, hence of sim
plifying, tasks and making them repetitive, thus substantially enhancing
productivity. But fast work tended to waste material—no time for Old
World habits of trimming and thrift. In Europe, even rich merchant
bankers might write their letters down the page, then turn the sheet
and continue at right angles in order to save paper.
Already in colonial times, for example, much American house con-
*Evans sent a copy of his plans to England in 1787, where Richard Trevithick, the en
gineer often assigned the invention, is said to have seen them in 1794-95—Enc. Brit.,
11th ed., s.v. Evans, Oliver. An early example, then, of a continuing battle for priority
between mother country and daughter colony. Of course, the very fact of this contest
testifies to the precocity of U.S. technological advance.