The carriage trade : making horse-drawn vehicles in America
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The carriage trade : making horse-drawn vehicles in America
（Studies in industry and society）
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004
- : hbk
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 303-361) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
In 1926, the Carriage Builders' National Association met for the last time, signaling the automobile's final triumph over the horse-drawn carriage. Only a decade earlier, carriages and wagons were still a common sight on every Main Street in America. In the previous century, carriage-building had been one of the largest and most dynamic industries in the country. In this sweeping study of a forgotten trade, Thomas A. Kinney extends our understanding of nineteenth-century American industrialization far beyond the steel mill and railroad. The legendary Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company in 1880 produced a hundred wagons a day-one every six minutes. Across the country, smaller factories fashioned vast quantities of buggies, farm wagons, and luxury carriages. Today, if we think of carriage and wagon at all, we assume it merely foreshadowed the automobile industry. Yet., the carriage industry epitomized a batch-work approach to production that flourished for decades.
Contradicting the model of industrial development in which hand tools, small firms, and individual craftsmanship simply gave way to mechanized factories, the carriage industry successfully employed small-scale business and manufacturing practices throughout its history. The Carriage Trade traces the rise and fall of this heterogeneous industry, from the pre-industrial shop system to the coming of the automobile, using as case studies Studebaker, the New York-based luxury carriage-maker Brewsters, and dozens of smallerfirms from around the country. Kinney also explores the experiences of the carriage and wagon worker over the life of the industry. Deeply researched and strikingly original, this study contributes a vivid chapter to the story of America's industrial revolution.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Remembering a Forgotten Industry
1. Rich Men's Vehicles at Poor Men's Prices: The Development of a Trade and Its Products
2. Knights of the Draw Knife: The Craft Origins of Horse-Drawn Vehicle Manufacture
3. From Shop to Factory: The Industrialization of a Trade
4. The Coming of Parts: Specialty Manufacturing in the Wagon and Carriage Industry
5. An Empire of Taste: The Brewster Carriage Dynasty
6. A Wagon Every Six Minutes: The Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company
7. From Craftsman to Assembler? Industrialization and the Wagon and Carriage Worker
8. That Damned Horseless Carriage: American Carriage Makers Respond to the Automobile
Epilogue: Hail and Farewell
Notes
Glossary
Essay on Sources
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"
