Raber Associates Consultants in the Historical and Social Sciences
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RABER ASSOCIATES CONSULTANTS IN THE HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES CONSERVATIVE INNOVATORS AND MILITARY SMALL ARMS: AN INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF THE SPRINGFIELD ARMORY, 1794-1968 prepared for: U.S. Department of the Interior National Park Service North Atlantic Regional Office 15 State Street Boston, Massachusetts 02109-3572 August 1989 This report is made pursuant to Contract No. CX1600-5-0019. The amount charged to the Department of Interior, National Park Service, for the work resulting in this report (inclusive of the amount so charged for any prior reports submitted under this contract) is $44,888.00. The names of the persons employed or retained by the Contractor, with managerial or professional responsibility for such work, or for the contents of the report are as follows: Michael S. Raber Patrick M. Malone Robert B. Gordon Carolyn C. Cooper 81 Dayton Road • P.0. Box 46 South Glastonbury • CT 06073 (203) 633-9026 Edited 2006 by Richard Colton, Historian Springfield Armory NHS One Armory Sq., Suite 2 Springfield, MA 01105-1299 1 This report is perhaps best described as a case study in American industrial history, treating the Springfield Armory as a very unusual factory system. Through most of its history, the Armory had one customer and one principal job: to supply the U.S. Army with reliable, powerful shoulder arms. In this role, Springfield's longstanding—if uneven—federal funding through many economic crises, the peculiarities of Army small arms demands, and, perhaps, the power of Armory workers in shop management all contrast with the histories of most private industries. If unusual, however, the Armory was hardly irrelevant or tangential to the development of American industry, especially prior to the Civil War. Historians have long recognized this government factory's central place in economic and industrial history, and if anything have often overstated the case. The lack of any comprehensive study of Springfield Armory has therefore been something of a gap in that history, a gap which we are bridging—although not filling--with this report. As a research subject, the Armory is better characterized as an abyss than a gap. When closed in 1968, the Armory was probably the longest continuously-operated industrial facility in the United States, with a history of over 170 years, and had generated enormous quantities of paperwork and artifacts which remained available for study. Here again, government management practices were unusual among antebellum American industries, leaving Springfield as one of the best-documented factories of the period. In the 20th century, the growth of Army and other government bureaucracy accelerated the generation of documents, to such an extent that detailed study of events after 1945 is often an act of self-immolation. Our first debts as authors are to the very few scholars who have previously emerged intact from prolonged exposure to Springfield Armory data with useful, if partial, monograph treatments of Armory history. Without their works, it is doubtful we could have completed this one in any reasonable period of time. Given the difficulties in editing the results of immersion in thousands of letters and reports, it is probably no accident that some of these works have never been published. Derwent Whittlesey's 1920 dissertation mastered the complexities of Armory political history and local controversies through the Civil War. Constance Green, during her employment at Springfield as a historian during World War II, combined documentary and informant research to produce a more comprehensive manuscript chronicling Armory history through the Civil War, and from 1919 to 1944. Edward Ezell has spent much time during the past twenty-five years finding the story of post-1945 rifle development in the thicket of Army paperwork and the memories of those most 2 directly involved, eventually producing an excellent book. Merritt Roe Smith's widely-recognized books and articles since the early 1970s on Harpers Ferry Armory, the Ordnance Department, and 19th-century small arms makers have included extensive use of Springfield Armory correspondence. Finally, Felicia Deyrup's pioneering 1948 publication on pre-1870 Connecticut Valley arms makers relied heavily on Armory records, and proved extremely pertinent to our final selection of topics and issues. The National Park Service's principal objective in contracting for this study was coverage of the entire period of Armory operation, and assessment of Springfield's place in American industrial and military history. Given the wealth of Armory data and the Park Service's available resources, we had to make careful decisions on the scope and organization of this report while meeting this objective. In following the story of how the Armory's industrial practices met Army Ordnance Department requirements, we have largely ignored its role in local and regional economics, politics, and social organization. Although partially treated in the work of Whittlesey, Green, and Deyrup, and in some local histories such as Michael Frisch's, the Armory's place in the Springfield region has never been thoroughly analyzed, and to have done so would have pulled us onto a largely separate and very long research path. Somewhat similarly, we have made only preliminary attempts to trace or define the Armory's influence on private American industry, since the availability of pertinent, detailed comparative studies or case histories remains limited. It is clear from our work, however, that the military demand for interchangeable small arms led to a factory system of enormous but very specialized strengths, with less widespread applicability than sometimes believed. Our conclusions here agree with those of Donald Hoke's 1984 dissertation, but the subjects of both the Springfield region and the Armory's influences are still very open ones for ambitious researchers. As to how we have concentrated our efforts, two decisions were paramount: organization of the report, and selection of research material. After considering a combination of chronological and interpretative chapters, we opted for a more thematic or topical approach, corresponding in part to how we had to unravel the Armory as an industrial system. Each major aspect of Armory operations--physical plant development, materials management, organization of labor, mechanization and manufacturing, and research and development—appears in a separate chapter (Chapters 4-8) covering the entire period 1794-1968. To explain why these operations took their particular historical forms, chapters 2 and 3 discuss military demands, the weapons which were the 3 Armory's principal products, and the extraordinary emphasis on making these weapons inter- changeable. Chapter 1 throws a chronological net over all these topics, to capture a more unified picture and guide the reader through the following seven chapters. Following our version of what the Armory actually did, and why it was done, chapters 9 and 10 offer summary interpretations of Springfield's place in American economic and military history. We recognize that this approach necessarily creates some redundancies in presentation, although long-term trends in Armory operations sometimes appear more clearly this way. Of equal importance, it became clear that, since effective use of a largely chronological organization would have required the same assimilation of the principal topics, we would have had to write this report twice. We will, in fact, try it again the other way, but as a separate published book. In selecting research material, our basic approach was to assemble what was already available on our topics, identify what was missing or less than convincing, and fill in the gaps with primary research. In addition to the works of the authors already mentioned, there are hundreds of books, articles, and unpublished papers pertaining to Springfield Armory. Collectively, we read most of them. We rechecked original correspondence cited in the works of Whittlesey, Green, and our colleague Merritt Roe Smith as needed, but only made new ventures into the mass of these traditional primary sources for information on poorly documented points. Since letters and government reports rarely told us what was actually happening in Armory shops, we relied on more direct sources. The availability of detailed work returns and payrolls, extremely rare among 19th century American factories, gave us itemized data on the organization and productivity of Armory workers. We also used material evidence, in the form of finished weapons, unfinished parts, and gages, available at the Springfield Armory Museum, the National Museum of American History, and some private collections. The artifacts, which included weapons made at other public and private armories, provided many new insights into the ways Springfield armorers actually made their weapons, the extent to which their work reflected Armory standards of interchangeable manufacture, and the relative quality of their work among contemporary arms makers. Many of our more original conclusions emerged directly from use of the accounting data and the artifacts, suggesting the wide range of sources and approaches needed in industrial history or archaeology. Budgetary constraints, copyright problems, and Park Service priorities have limited some other approaches which would otherwise have improved our presentation. Even with the alteration or removal of some Armory buildings since 1968, there is clearly much to be learned from 4 more detailed inspection of surviving