Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
10
result(s) for
"Kornblith, Gary John"
Sort by:
Ruling America
Intro -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1 The Dilemmas of Ruling Elites in Revolutionary America -- 2 The \"Slave Power\" in the United States, 1783-1865 -- 3 Merchants and Manufacturers in the Antebellum North -- 4 Gilded Age Gospels -- 5 The Abortive Rule of Big Money -- 6 The Managerial Revitalization of the Rich -- 7 The Foreign Policy Establishment -- 8 Conservative Elites and the Counterrevolution against the New Deal -- Coda: Democracy in America -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Contributors -- Index.
Book
The Craftsman as Industrialist: Jonas Chickering and the Transformation of American Piano Making
Master craftsmen played a critical role in launching the Industrial Revolution in America. In this case study of artisan entrepreneurship, Professor Kornblith analyzes the career of Jonas Chickering (1798–1853), the foremost American piano manufacturer before the emergence of the Steinways. By revolutionizing the way in which pianos were made, Chickering—with the help of others—turned a modest craft operation into a major industrial enterprise. Yet, Kornblith contends, he remained true to the craftsman's goal of artistic excellence and won the respect of his employees as well as of the public at large. By the force of his example, Chickering contributed to the acceptance of technological change within the trade and, more broadly, to the legitimation of industrial capitalism within American culture.
Journal Article
FROM ARTISANS TO BUSINESSMEN: MASTER MECHANICS IN NEW ENGLAND, 1789-1850. (VOLUMES I AND II)
This dissertation locates the roots of middle-class consciousness in the rise of master mechanics to positions of social influence during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The study focuses on the members of mechanics' associations in Providence, Rhode Island, Boston, Massachusetts, and Salem, Massachusetts. Amid the upsurge of egalitarian sentiment in the post-Revolutionary era, mechanics in these cities mobilized collectively to achieve parity with local mercantile interests. As part of this process, they founded a series of organizations encompassing practitioners of a wide range of trades. The first of these organizations to endure was the Providence Association of Mechanics and Manufacturers, formed in 1789. Next came the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, established in Boston in 1795. Last was the Salem Charitable Mechanic Association, instituted in 1817. The first section of the dissertation (four chapters) describes the foundation and early development of these associations and analyzes the ideology of their members between approximately 1789 and 1820. The second section examines the role played by association members in the capitalist and industrial transformations of the three cities during the first half of the nineteenth century. Employing a variety of quantitative indicators, Chapter Five delineates the broad contours of economic change in each community. The next six chapters examine the entrepreneurial transition from artisan to businessman as manifested in the biographies of particular associates. The third section of the thesis explores the ideology of member mechanics between approximately 1820 and 1850. Chapter Twelve evaluates their efforts to extend the traditional conception of the mechanic arts to include applied science and industrial technology and their repeated attempts to reconcile the desire for personal gain with the republican notion of a higher public good. The closing chapter concentrates on how masters responded to the emergent working-class consciousness of their journeymen as the lines between employer and employee became more sharply drawn with the advance of industrialization.
Dissertation
The Dilemmas of Ruling Elites in Revolutionary America
The American Revolution became a battleground between two powerful, rising forces: the growing exclusivity and sense of entitlement of colonial elites, and the emerging egalitarianism, especially of the “middling sort” who were just beginning to master the new language of natural rights. Both the aspirations of the elites and the hopes of those who resisted them derived in large part from Great Britain. Much of what these settlers from very different colonies had in common stemmed from their willingness to anglicize their culture and society throughout the eighteenth century.¹
In 1760 there was no “America,” no “South,” and no “North.”
Book Chapter