The birth of the hammer
Our story begins in Chicago. Though the hammer was not invented here, it is where the current use of the hammer was born. Up until the early 1800s, if you were going to build a house or a building, you did so with large timbers that were cut and fitted together like a large, well-made chair. Using mortise and tenon joints, along with pegs, large timbers—6 or 8 in. across—were cut and fit together yielding a house of mass and strength. All houses and buildings of wood, pre-1830/40, were built with timbers; they were all timber-framed.
A Note from the Publisher:
This article is an excerpt from Brent Hull‘s latest book, Building a Timeless House in an Instant Age. TiC is republishing selections from Brent’s chapter on “Technology;” they will comprise two separate in-depth articles. Part I explores the beginnings of the lumber industry, and Part II, to be published at a later date, will follow with an examination of the consequences of technological advancements.
In the 1840s, according to lore and tale, a new type of framing was invented that didn’t require skilled craftsman, and didn’t require large timbers. Instead, pre-cut and pre-milled small pieces of lumber were hammered together with small metal pegs called nails. Though nails today are made from wire with a blunted top, early nails were square and were called cut nails.
A cut nail is “cut” from a plate of steel. Imagine a wide blank of steel about the size of a plain Hershey’s chocolate bar, whose end is sheered or cut off, using a large press. The press angles the bar slightly before clipping off the end and this gives the nail a distinct taper. The advancement of the steel press meant that “cut” nails were suddenly cheap and affordable, which made the new type of framing possible. Nails before this were handmade, one by one. This was an incredibly labor intensive process that made them expensive and in some cases cost prohibitive.
This new type of framing required less skill, took less time and thus less money than timber framing. It was known as balloon framing, which was actually a derogatory term: the frame seemed so light and frail it looked like a “balloon” that would blow away. The derision speaks to many people who wondered if this new form of building could last. Certainly many skilled craftsmen must have laughed. How will two boards nailed together last as long as massive timbers carefully joined? It seemed ridiculous.
Balloon framing could have only happened on the frontier or outer edge of growth, where skilled labor was rare but the desire and need to build was strong. This certainly describes Chicago, which exploded with growth in the 19th century. Incorporated as a city in 1837, by 1890 it inhabited over one million people; it was one of the fastest growing cities in the world. Balloon framing made building houses easier. Naturally, there was a resistance. However, like most great leaps in technology, the advantages outweighed the objections and, at least out west, balloon frames became the new standard.
Naturally, with the arrival of cheap nails, the hammer became important—we need a tool to drive nails. And so it was at this time that the hammer’s position changed, becoming the tool of a carpenter.
The birth of lumber
The lumber business today is dynamic and complex, but in 1880 it was dynamic, complex, and ripe with opportunity. The demand for lumber was insatiable as America grew in the late 1880s. Because of the contagious demand, lumber companies didn’t just cut and mill lumber; they often owned the forests, shipped the lumber, and then even owned the lumberyards to sell to the end user. Long-Bell Lumber owned and ran lumberyards in Kansas. Their holdings and operations speak to the diversity and vastness of these conglomerates at the time.
Started in Kansas in the late 1880s, the founders of Long-Bell Lumber were soon swallowed up by the great demand for wood. They quickly expanded and, like most lumber companies at the time, business and opportunities fell together; since they were harvesting the lumber they might as well cut and mill it. Since they were cutting and milling it, why not make doors and windows and cabinets, since they were making cabinets why not sell it. Opportunities compounded and grew like a wild fire. The pitch in the trees lead to business in turpentine and chemicals. Shipping the lumber lead to shipping businesses, financing these operations led to banks and pretty soon there weren’t many business that didn’t somehow tie back to lumber. For Long-Bell, what started as a small lumberyard operation in Kansas grew into a multi-layered and highly-sophisticated conglomerate. By the 1920s, Long-Bell had built their own company town, called Longview, in the heart of the western forests of Washington.
Enter Clinton, Iowa. It may not be a buzzing metropolis today, but in 1870 it was a hot spot. One of the top 100 manufacturing cities in the country, it was thriving. It soon adopted the label, “the lumber capital of the world.”
Ironically, there are few trees in Clinton. Situated on the edge of the great prairies, the only trees that grew here were cheap, fast growing cottonwoods. In fact, Clinton never had great forests. The trees and timber are north of Clinton about two hundred miles. There, at the headwaters of the Mississippi in Minnesota and Wisconsin, stood seemingly endless stands of White Pine, ready for market. These are the trees that made Clinton a lumber mecca.
If you study historic lumber harvesting charts (yes there are such things) you can watch as America grew and expanded west. The movement progressed from the White Pine trees of New York and Pennsylvania, across the northern states to the White Pine stands above Clinton. The way the lumber business worked was that lumberyards or lumber companies would buy the rights or buy the land in order to harvest the trees. The lumber and forests were as open for purchase and claims just like the wide open prairie or the gold claims in California.
The resourceful men of Iowa saw the same thing Long-Bell discovered. In fact, they started about twenty years earlier, in the 1860s, while the great stands of white pines in Minnesota and Wisconsin were still plentiful. The Mississippi River was the key for the men of Iowa. After felling the trees at the headwaters in Minnesota and Wisconsin, they would be strapped together into giant rafts. These wood rafts would then float down the Mississippi to the developing towns of Dubuque, Davenport, and of course Clinton. The lumber men of Iowa built factories and began production.
By 1870 the advances of the industrial revolution had finally reached the woodworking industry and the men of Clinton were able to build factories to mill wood. By the 1870s, nearly every machine that we use in a modern shop today (table saws, sanders, planers, etc.) had been invented and was in use. It was a complete change in production techniques—every piece of millwork, every piece of molding, every door, every window, every window blind, was re-developed to be made by machine instead of by hand. It was at this time that they developed dedicated window machines, door machines, and machines for shutters. The effects of the Industrial Revolution on the woodworking industry were revolutionary. A single shop, a single manufacturer, could make everything, and do everything in one place, faster than ever before.
In her book, Making House, Crafting Capitalism, Builders in Philadelphia, 1790 to 1850, Donna Rilling describes the building industry in Philadelphia and how houses were built and constructed on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution. Philadelphia, at that time, was arguably the most sophisticated city in regard to the building trades. Even so, the craft of building in Philadelphia was characterized by small players, and home industries. Windows and doors were often made by an individual craftsman who specialized in making sash or doors. Shops were the size of a small shed today. Even successful craftsman worked out of their homes, sometimes doing piecework on the side.
By 1880 in Iowa, sash were made daily by the hundreds, and in the same plant they would make doors, moldings, columns, blinds, and mantles by the mile. One factory employed hundreds of people and built millwork with an efficiency and quality that was unheard of thirty years before. The woodworking world went from hand-made to machine-made in one generation. This is how the men of Iowa were able to build great factories; factories that twenty or even ten years before would not have been possible.
To compound the advantage, they sat on the edge of the frontier and their towns were full of eager men, immigrants and farmers alike looking for work. Because by nature machines require less skill to operate, the streets were full of an able labor force. In Clinton, an unskilled immigrant worker produced more millwork faster than thirty skilled craftsmen could by hand. The costs of the windows and doors decreased, making them affordable to a rising middle class. Technology and the new machines of the Industrial Revolution were game changers. Suddenly, overnight, quality improved and costs decreased.
Clinton was seemingly poised for greatness. The people of Clinton had a ready supply of wood, an eager labor force, and an emerging market of middle class people looking to build a home. Then came the final piece: a vastly larger market due to the advances in transportation.
The birth of the railroad
The coming of the railroad is just what Clinton needed to expand and grow their business, and in turn it changed the way people built houses. Starting in the late 1840s with the startlingly discovery of “Gold” on the Wild West coast, a rush, or better, a slow stampede stumbled west. The reason the stampede was slow was because of an inefficient means of transportation. Though hundreds and thousands desired to go west, a wide lonely prairie and a tower of mountainous rock blocked the passage. The journey, either by boat or by covered wagon, took at least six months and both routes were fraught with danger from shipwrecks, bad weather, or worse, Indian attacks. It took a dedicated sojourner to go west.
Just twenty years after the Gold Rush, California and specifically San Francisco, had grown (nearly overnight) into a bona fide city. California had more than gold—there were a few hundred thousand people with businesses and relatives and there were political issues as well. The desire to connect the country was strong and driven by businessmen, families and politicians. They all clamored to unite the country; not only for business, but also for something as ordinary as the mail.
In 1860 mailing a letter was not simple. There were two ways to get a letter from the edge of the Mississippi to California: by stagecoach or by horse. The stagecoach route was established by Eliza Butterfield who had a fleet of stagecoaches; his business was called Butterfield’s Overland Express. Butterfield’s service was a 6-9-passenger stagecoach trip that, according to one New York writer, was, “24 days of hell.” Riding 70-120 miles in a day, riders would sit in tight cabins and rumble across uncomfortable and hazardous terrain. It was a hard way to travel and twenty-four days is nearly a month wait for the mail. There was a faster way to send a letter, and if Butterfield’s coach was the regular mail, then the Pony Express was the overnight mail.
In just ten days, a rough and tumble collection of young adventurous boy riders would risk death to make their “speedy” deliveries. With stations separated ten miles apart (because that is how far a horse can gallop without rest) young men would ride 70-120 miles a day, as fast as they could from station to station. When the young men were half a mile out from a station, they would blow a horn announcing their impending arrival and a fresh horse would be saddled and ready, waiting for the hurried rider. The rider would come galloping into the camp, jump off his tired horse, and jump onto the waiting horse and be off again with lightning speed.
The Pony Express, though short lived (it was only in service for a year and a half), is famous because it symbolized man’s brave attempt to push the limits of himself to achieve new heights. As great an achievement it was, it pales in comparison to the speed and efficiency of the railroad. When the trans-continental railroad finally connected the country in 1869, the world changed. With a precision and efficiency that only a machine could deliver, the railroad changed transportation.
The leap in change from the Pony Express to the train is not even comparable. The Pony Express carried no passengers, took ten days, and was expensive. Chased by Indians, susceptible to sickness and disease, the frailty of man was exposed on the open and dangerous plain, all this for a small satchel of letters. By contrast, the mighty trains could carry countless passengers, piles of cargo, and mail by the carload, all for a fraction of the cost. The power of technology.
To the lumber men in Iowa, it was the power of the railroad that opened them to great riches. They had the raw materials, man power, the woodworking technology and now, because of the expanding railroad, the markets. The railroad opened them up to the entire country and every new railroad town meant a new market and a new client. Often the first thing put on a train heading west was lumber. How do you build a home, a business, or a town without it?
|The lumber kings of Iowa, as they were soon called, grew and prospered. They became rich men and built important and powerful business. Clinton, Iowa, at its height, boasted thirteen millionaires, more millionaires per capita than any other city in America.|
Many of the best and biggest millwork companies of this era grew up in Iowa. Clinton was home to Curtis Millwork (the birthplace of the Curtis Millworks Mitertite Joint), and Dubuque, Iowa was home to Farley Loetscher, and Carr Adams. All three firms were major and dominant players in the millwork business before and up through World War II. In 1870, Clinton, Iowa was truly the Silicon Valley of lumber.