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ABSTRACT
This article characterises the work of paid casting cleaning at Hopewell Furnace, a charcoal-fired cold-blast iron furnace operating c. 1771–1883, in Berks County, Pennsylvania, USA. The uniformity of regional museum artefacts suggests that conclusions apply to the general south-east Pennsylvania region. Cleaning is shown to have consisted of sand removal, removal and limited dressing of protrusions (gate and fin), a significant amount of casting moving, and likely the extraction of castings from moulds. The work was similar to other unskilled work, involving strictly physical labour with a need to sometimes move heavier objects, and with a commensurate to slightly higher pay rate. Most cleaning was a side-line, and not all castings were cleaned ‘professionally’, the fraction being estimated between 36% (documented) and 58% (extrapolated). Most cleaning payments were by weight, almost exclusively at $0.75 per ton, with the remainder paid by the piece, or possibly at a fixed price for the entirety of the work. There is evidence that cleaners were mainly family and friends of the moulders. They were all white and mostly adult men.
Acknowledgements
The assistance of the following people and institutions is greatly appreciated. Robert B. Gordon provided frequent comments and important advice on the interpretation of cast-iron artefacts. Becky Ross, retired from Hopewell Furnace NHS, provided essential assistance for access to Hopewell accounting records. The following people provided access to their artefact holdings: Neil Koch and Jason Powell of Hopewell Furnace NHS; Melissa Jay and Cory Amsler of the Mercer Museum; Amber Vroman of the Berks History Center; Karen Ploch of the Historical Society of Montgomery County; Heather Hansen and Ellen Endslow of the Chester County History Center; Mike Emery of Cornwall Iron Furnace; Mark Zerr and Jack Woods of Joanna Furnace; and Jeff Dreisbach of Lancaster, PA. Comments from the editor and reviewers have helped to improve this paper.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
All on line resources accessed 17 January 2022.
1 Brian Schmult, Analysis of Paid Casting Cleaning at Hopewell Furnace (8 October 2020), report available from the author.
2 This included database searches on various terms, see the report section 2.1, p. 5.
3 Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert, eds., Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts (1751–1772), [AQ5] University of Chicago: ARTFL Encyclopédie Project (Autumn 2017 ed.), ed. Robert Morrissey and Glenn Roe, https://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu/, see the Forges plates (Tome 21), Section 3; Abraham Rees, The Cyclopaedia; or, Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Literature, Volume 6 (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, 1819), https://archive.org/details/cyclopaediaorun06rees/page/774; Frederick Overman, The Moulder’s and Founder’s Pocket Guide: A Treatise on Moulding and Founding in Green-Sand, Dry-Sand, Loam, and Cement (Philadelphia: A. Hart, 1851).
4 Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopaedia, or An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1728), University of Chicago: ARTFL Cyclopaedia Project, https://artfl-project.uchicago.edu/content/chambers-cyclopaedia, see volume 1, p. 83 or headword ‘Foundery’ [sic].
5 Encyclopaedia Britannica, or, A Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, Compiled upon A new plan, 1st ed. (1771), Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica (1979), https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/004556112/Home, see volume 2, p. 625. Colin MacFarquhar and George Gleig, eds., Encyclopaedia Britannica: or, A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature, 3rd ed. (1797), https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/metabook?id=britannica3, see volume 7, p. 377.
6 Luke Herbert, ed., The Engineer’s and Mechanic’s Encyclopaedia, Volume 1, 2nd ed. (London: Thomas Kelly, 1849), https://chestofbooks.com/crafts/mechanics/Engineer-Mechanic-Encyclopedia-Vol1/index.html, see the ‘Founding’ section.
7 Overman, starting p. 218, section called ‘Cleansing of castings’.
8 George Ripley and Charles Anderson Dana, eds., The New American Cyclopaedia: A Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1858),[AQ6] https://archive.org/search.php?query=%22new%20american%20cyclopaedia%22%20AND%20mediatype%3Atexts, see the ‘Casting’ article in vol. 4, p. 532.
9 Charles Tomlinson, ed., Tomlinson’s Cyclopaedia of Useful Arts, Volume 1, Second Edition (London: Virtue & Co., 1866), https://archive.org/details/cyclopaediaofuse01tomluoft/page/n10, see the article on ‘Casting and Founding’ in vol. 1 on pp. 338–50, with cleaning comments on p. 345.
10 N.E. Spretson, A Practical Treatise on Casting and Founding, Second Edition (London: E. & F.N. Spon, 1880). Chapter XXVII starting on p. 368 is ‘Cleaning and Dressing Castings’.
11 Charles Coulston Gillespie, A Diderot Pictorial Encyclopedia of Trades and Industry, Volume 1 (New York: Dover Publications, 1959), see pls 179 (cutler), 183 (swordmaker 3) and 185 (pin factory 2).
12 Steel Founders Society of America, Steel Castings Handbook, First Edition (Cleveland, OH: Steel Founders’ Society of America, 1941), see starting p. 8, ‘Early Cleaning Methods’; Charles W. Briggs, Steel Castings Handbook, Third Edition (Cleveland, OH: Steel Founders’ Society of America, 1960). The section on ‘Finishing Operations’ starts on p. 579 and includes cleaning. United States Steel, The Making, Shaping and Treating of Steel, 10th Edition (Pittsburgh, PA: Association of Iron and Steel Engineers, 1985). The cleaning of steel castings is described on p. 1213.
13 Cleaning Castings (Des Plaines, IL: American Foundrymen’s Society, 1977).
14 Joseph E. Walker, Hopewell Village: The Dynamics of a Nineteenth Century Iron-Making Community (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1966), 323.
15 Jay M. Leary, ‘An Investigation of the Manufacturing and Marketing of Iron Stoves at Hopewell Furnace, 1828–1835’ (Master of Education Thesis, Millersville State College, August 1971). See the section starting p. 64 on ‘The Casting Cleaners’.
16 Donald Allen Crownover, Manufacturing & Marketing of Iron Stoves at Hopewell Furnace, 1835–1844 (West Chester, PA: West Chester State College, 1969), 77.
17 Robert B. Gordon, ‘Material Evidence of the Manufacturing Methods Used in “Armory Practice”’, IA, The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology 14, no. 1 (1988): 23–35, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40968136. Also Robert B. Gordon, ‘Analysis and Interpretation of Artefacts in Industrial Archeology’, IA, The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology 26, no. 1 (2000): 103–11, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40968510.
18 Robert B. Gordon, 2020, private communication.
19 A five-plate stove is a rectangular box enclosed on five sides by plates with the last side being the back wall of an adjacent fireplace. A six-plate stove is similar but has all six sides enclosed by plates and is free-standing. A ten-plate stove is a six-plate stove with an internal oven carved out of the inside by four additional plates.
20 Eugene S. Ferguson, ‘The American-ness of American Technology’, Technology and Culture 20, no. 1 (1979): 3–24, see especially 7–13.
21 These are representative of 14 additional stoves from about 7 other furnaces, comprising 112 plates and 190 metres of edge. See table 11 on p. 42 of the report.
22 For more transaction details, see report section 7, p. 45.
23 See generally the report section 4 (pp. 11–23) and specifically tables 6–8 (p. 22); and section 7 (pp. 45–51) and specifically table 16 (p. 49).
24 See report section 13.4.9, p. 78.
25 A significant amount of estimation is required for this; see the report sections 13.5–13.6, p. 79.
26 See report p. 86, table 32, for a range of estimates for three stove types.
27 See section 8 (p. 52) of the report, which includes a table of all moulder payments and fractions.
28 Julie A. Matthaei, An Economic History of Women in America: Women’s Work, the Sexual Division of Labor, and the Development of Capitalism (New York: Schocken Books, 1982), see generally part 1 for the sexual division of labour. Also see generally Heidi Hartmann, ‘Capitalism, Patriarchy, and Job Segregation by Sex’, Signs 1, no. 3 (1976): 137–69; and Teresa Amott and Julie Matthaei, Race, Gender, and Work: A Multi-Cultural Economic History of Women in the United States (Boston: South End Press, 1991).
29 Julie A. Matthaei May, ‘Consequences of the Rise of the Two-Earner Family: The Breakdown of the Sexual Division of Labor’, American Economic Review 70, no. 2 (1980): 198–202.
30 Matthaei, Economic History of Women in America, 45.
31 Hartmann, ‘Capitalism, Patriarchy, and Job Segregation by Sex’, 161, 167.
32 Ava Baron, ‘An “Other” Side of Gender Antagonism at Work: Men, Boys, and the Remasculinization of Printers’ Work, 1830–1930’, in Work Engendered: Toward a New History of American Labor, ed. Ava Baron (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 50.
33 Mary H. Blewett. We Will Rise in Our Might: Working Women’s Voices from Nineteenth-Century New England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 36.
34 Matthaei, Economic History of Women in America, 65.
35 For a more extensive treatment, including data tables, see the report section 11, p. 59.
36 J.P. Lesley, The Iron Manufacturers Guide to the Furnaces, Forges and Rolling Mills of the United States (New York: John Wiley, 1866), 40–1.
37 Suzanne Fellman Jacob, The History of Joanna Furnace 1791–1999 (Geigertown, PA: Hay Creek Valley Historical Association, 1999), 285–6, no documented casting after 1860.
38 Frederic K. Miller, ‘The Rise of an Iron Community: An Economic History of Lebanon County, Pennsylvania from 1740 to 1865’, Lebanon County Historical Society Publications XII, no. 3A–3C (1950-1952): 112.
39 Howell J. Harris, ‘Inventing the U.S. Stove Industry, c. 1815–1875: Making and Selling the First Universal Consumer Durable’, Business History Review 82, no. 4 (2008): 701–33.
40 Harris, ‘Inventing the U.S. Stove Industry’, 712.
41 Harris, ‘Inventing the U.S. Stove Industry’, 707.
42 Harris, ‘Inventing the U.S. Stove Industry’, fig. 2, 710.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Brian Schmult
Brian Schmult is a former computer researcher with a long-time interest in the history of technology. His past work includes research at the former AT&T Bell Laboratories in autonomous robotics, virtual reality and force-feedback interfaces. He currently does research related to the south-eastern Pennsylvania historical iron industry, and previously published a study of the evolution of the blast machinery at Hopewell Furnace. He also volunteers at Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site.
Correspondence to: Email: [email protected]