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Swarthmore CollegeWorksPolitical Science Faculty Works Political Science2010Keeping New England’s Factories Off Limits:Horatio Alger’s Erasure Of The IndustrialLandscapeCarol NackenoffSwarthmore College, cnacken1@swarthmore.eduFollow this and additional works at: http://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-poli-sciPart of the Political Science CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Political Science at Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in Political Science FacultyWorks by an authorized administrator of Works. For more information, please contact myworks@swarthmore.edu.Recommended CitationCarol Nackenoff. (2010). "Keeping New England’s Factories Off Limits: Horatio Alger’s Erasure Of The Industrial Landscape".Worcester Review. Volume 30, Issue 1-2. 101-104.http://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-poli-sci/586Volume XXX 101Carol NackenoffKeeping New England’s Factories off Limits:Horatio Alger’s Erasure of the Industrial LandscapeWhen Horatio Alger, Jr. moved with his family from Chelsea to Marlborough at theage of twelve, in 1844, he could hardly have escaped the presence of factories in Centraland Eastern Massachusetts. 1 The area around Worcester was a vibrant center for newindustrial development. Canals and railroads facilitated travel and transport of goods.Worcester, whose population grew dramatically between 1820 and 1850, became knownfor its metal industries, including wire mills. Nearby Framingham was home to a cottonand wool manufactory by 1829 (Barry 149). At the Lowell Works, where textile manufac-ture began early, wage-laborers had been demanding better pay and reduced hours. InMarlborough itself, an 1835 map of the town pinpointed a few saw mills and grist millsalong its waterways; a town historian noted in 1862 that until recently, “[h]aving only aninconsiderable water-power, she has had no factories of any note” (Hudson 260-261).Another town historian indicated the presence of “two small wool-fabric mills on water-power of the Assabet River” (Bigelow). However, by the time of the 1837 state census ofmanufactures, seven years before Alger’s arrival, Marlborough was home to boot andshoe manufactories plus a few tanneries, and some women were employed making strawbonnets (Hudson 261). The population of Marlborough doubled between 1840 and 1855,and nearly tripled from 1840 to 1860 (Hudson 252-253). The valuation of shoes manufac-tured in Marlborough more than doubled between 1837 and 1845 (Hudson 262).The region’s economic and social transformation would only become more dramaticafter the Civil War. When Harvard College and Harvard Divinity School graduate HoratioAlger, Jr. began publishing serialized stories and novels under his own name around1864, many were set in the New England states and in New York. And yet the rareappearance of a shoe, furniture, or brick manufactory or mill in these stories featured pre-industrial skilled labor. The work process had not been noticeably altered by mechaniza-tion.In those few instances when Alger’s heroes briefly join the industrial workforce,they are hurried out of it. In Five Hundred Dollars, an Alger story serialized beginning in1889, hero Bert Barton loses his job as a shoe pegger because of the introduction of amachine (52). This was a very rare occurrence in an Alger story. In Brave and Bold, an1874 novel, Robert Rushton has been the mainstay of support for his family by workingin a brick factory in Millville. We are told that this factory provides almost the onlyemployment in town—although Robert’s mother braids straw for a hat manufacturer in anearby town—that Robert earns six dollars per week, and that there is a twenty-five-centdocking for tardiness (6, 10-11, 23). In Ben Bruce, a story serialized beginning in Decem-ber, 1892, the hero wants to leave his mean stepfather’s household and meets a friendwho superintends a “factory for the manufacture of leather board.” The friend is willingto offer Ben a job, and Ben expresses a preference for this factory job over working on a102 The Worcester Reviewfarm, with the friend indicating that Ben would be preparing himself for “higher” work.The wage is satisfactory, but just before a bargain is struck, the dam that supplies waterpower for the factory is blown up before their very eyes; two workmen who have been letgo apparently accomplished the deed (Ben 9-12). So Alger goes to dramatic lengths tosave his boys from entering the world of manufacturing. These fictional youths oftenbegin work as actors, circus riders, bootblacks, newspaper boys, or magicians’ appren-tices, but Robert Rushton, Ben Bruce, and Bert Barton are among the very few who seekout factory work. His boys generally avoid taking up a craft or trade, often asserting thatthey don’t think they are cut out for the particular work. Alger’s stories hardly everdescribe factory work, and the reader rarely glimpses the inside of a manufacturingestablishment. Alger’s heroes succeed by avoiding such employments.In fact, although Alger treated his readers to big city street scenes and sights (mostoften in New York), rarely does a hero see a factory on his travels, even as he wanders thecity in search of work. In Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, set in Chicago the same yearthat Alger finished Luke Walton, the title character passes a number of manufacturingestablishments on her long walk downtown, and when she is unable to find a position asa shop girl, she takes an unpleasant and poorly paid job manufacturing shoes. Carrienotices men engaged in heavy labor and poorly clad girls in shops and factories withlittle chance of improvement. Alger’s young hero in Luke Walton, however, sees none ofthis as he walks downtown. In urban settings, instead, Alger’s title characters see mer-chants, shopkeepers, bankers, counting houses, clerks, and errand boys. They do dis-cover that many jobs in the city will not pay a living wage, but note that these must bejobs for boys who live at home and work to augment the family earnings. Boys who seesqualid tenements find victims and moral defectives living there. Employers tell protago-nists that they can find plenty of boys who will take these (sub-survival) wages. Alger’sheroes are not among them.Looking for opportunities to rise through the ranks, Alger’s heroes find jobs in thewhite-collar workforce, even though only 18 percent of the workforce was classified aswhite collar as late as 1900 (United States, Series D182-232). Rather than make a Faustianbargain for factory wages, these boys find that something or someone intervenes so thatthey will not have to settle for such work. Women who have to work in Alger’s stories arenot as geographically mobile as boys and men. They cannot so easily walk or run awayfrom home to avoid factory labor. Alger’s fictional females often participate in manufac-turing by sewing, either in the putting out system or through piecework. In Rough andReady, one female character dependent on her earnings sews in her room for long hourseach day, earning only a third of what the title character does as a newsboy. She is losingher health and barely earns enough to survive; she tells the hero that if anyone com-plains, employers “take away their work and employ somebody else” (97). In Helen Ford,we meet a woman who labors for long hours at sewing but finds her wages reduced by 20percent, while “many could not obtain a chance to work at any price” (255). Alger consid-ers the wages and working conditions of seamstresses unhealthful and disgraceful. Onlymarriage or some other form of rescue can help these women in Alger’s stories. Mindlessdrudgery and participation in the manufacturing process are linked with the female.Volume XXX 103Alger clearly did not believe that the factory provided sufficient opportunities formobility. It also suffered from the threat of unstable work. Of the shoe and boot industryaround Marlborough, it could be said that “though diversified, the local economy wasnot immune to the cyclical fluctuations which plagued the shoe industry at large”(Scharnhorst with Bales 13). An Alger shoemaker, forced to close down temporarilyduring a market glut, comments: “that’s the worst of the shoe-trade. It isn’t steady. Whenit’s good everybody rushes into it, and the market soon gets overstocked. Then there’sno work for weeks” (Alger, Bound 204). While some of Alger’s contemporaries and somelater historians thought that there were many opportunities to rise from day laborer tomanager or factory owner, he saw various downsides to such a project for upwardmobility.One problem was that Alger thought the modern factory system offered inadequateopportunities for personal contact between employers and employees. Alger’s heroesenjoy frequent contact with their employers, which is essential so that praiseworthy andsteady character can be noticed and rewarded. Alger was furthermore not convinced thatmanufacturing establishments nurtured good character, providing positive examples forthe young; corruption of character through exposure to the bad habits of co-workerswas a danger. Since Alger’s young bootblacks, newsboys, and baggage smashers whohave grown up on the streets of the city already have some bad habits, they are espe-cially in need of nurture to improve their character flaws. Because Alger frequentlyconsidered “capitalists” greedy and machine-like themselves, unfeeling and uncaringabout the human consequences of their business decisions, the factory was not a goodplace to deposit heroes.Alger, a product of antebellum Harvard Unitarian training, tended to share the viewthat “man had both a mind (that is, a spirit) and a body, but his destiny clearly lay indeveloping the power of the former” (Howe 42). After Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1847 tripabroad, he wrote that “the machine unmans the user” (qtd. in Kasson 127). For Alger,likewise, the factory work environment that he may have first noticed as a boy inMarlborough did not help to make boys men. To have some power or control overoneself, one had to be engaged in work where there was some discretion over tasks andtime, along with opportunity to use one’s mind and wits. Repeated application of one’sphysical capacity for labor to routinized work paid by the hour was linked with absenceof power. Only boys who had some opportunity to exercise judgment and intelligence onbehalf of an employer could prove themselves to be loyal and trustworthy.In Alger’s fictional universe, which may have been shaped in part by Marlborough’sgrowth as a manufacturing town, the community of interest between employees andemployers must endure. The factory is a troubling place in this landscape.Notes1. An earlier and extended treatment of Alger’s treatment of the factory appears inCarol Nackenoff, The Fictional Republic: Horatio Alger and American Politi-cal Discourse (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), Chapter 5.Material used by permission of Oxford University Press.104 The Worcester ReviewWorks CitedAlger, Horatio, Jr. Ben Bruce: Scenes in the Life of a Bowery Newsboy. New York:A. L. Burt, 1901.—. Bound to Rise; or, Harry Walton’s Motto. 1873. Philadelphia: Henry T. Coates,n.d.—. Brave and Bold; or, The Fortunes of a Factory Boy. Boston: A. K. Loring,1874.—. Five Hundred Dollars; or, Jacob Marlowe’s Secret. 1890. Chicago: M. A.Donohue, n.d.—. Helen Ford. 1866. Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, n.d.—. Luke Walton; or, The Chicago Newsboy. Philadelphia: Porter and Coates,1889.—. Rough and Ready; or, Life among the New York Newsboys. Boston: A. K.Loring, 1869.Barry, William. A History of Framingham, Massachusetts, 1847. Accessed athttp://books.google.comBigelow, John. “To Richard Weiss.” 10 December 1962. The American Myth ofSuccess: From Horatio Alger to Norman Vincent Peale. By Richard Weiss.New York: Basic Books, 1969. 50.City of Marlborough, Massachusetts. Historical Maps. Marlborough, MiddlesexCounty, 1835. Accessed at http://www.marlborough-ma.gov/Gen/MarlboroughMA_PublicWrks/MarlboroughMA_GeoInfSrvc/Images/Historical_Maps/CityMap_1835.pdfDreiser, Theodore. Sister Carrie. 1900. New York: Modern Library, 1917.Howe, Daniel Walker. The Unitarian Conscience. Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress, 1970.Hudson, Charles. History of the Town of Marlborough, Middlesex County,Massachusetts. From its First Settlement in 1657 to 1861. Boston: T. R.Marvin & Son, 1862. Accessed at http://www.historicmarlborough.org/HistoriesofMarlborough.htmlKasson, John F. Civilizing the Machine: Technology and Republican Values inAmerica, 1776-1900. New York: Penguin, 1976.Scharnhorst, Gary, with Jack Bales. The Lost Life of Horatio Alger, Jr.Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985.United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. HistoricalStatistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970. Bicentennial Edition.Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1975.Copyright of Worcester Review is the property of Worcester County Poetry Association and its content may notbe copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express writtenpermission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

Keeping New England’s Factories Off Limits: Horatio Alger’s Erasure Of The Industrial Landscape

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Keeping New England’s Factories Off Limits: Horatio Alger’s Erasure Of The Industrial Landscape

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