In the years after the Civil War, American industrial development was rapid. Mushrooming factory towns became, with the exploitation of timber and mineral resources, a characteristic feature even in frontier areas. The Saginaw Valley of Michigan mirrors this phenomenon. A lumberman's frontier, it grew to be a major center of lumber production for the nation.

An essential factor in this industrial expansion was the growth of the labor force. In 1850 a single mill of the Valley employed 12 or 14 men; by 1885 it required the services of 75 to 150 men and in some cases of 200. In 1885 over 4,000 men were employed in the mills of the Valley. Such growth of the industry and of the labor force introduced serious problems of labor relations.

This article is concerned with a description and analysis of labor relations in the sawmills of the Saginaw Valley from 1865 to 1885. Labor relations rest to a great extent upon attitudes; the attitudes of the employer, of the employee, and in some cases of the rest of the community. Presumably these attitudes have a basis in the conditions under which the industry is operated and under which the labor force works and lives.

The earliest printers in Europe faced financial, storage, and marketing problems not unlike those of new industries today: how to attract operating capital for production and for carrying inventories, where to store a slow-moving and bulky stock, and how to overcome the prejudice against a new product, in order to create an extensive market. These were the three major difficulties that the first printers in Italy as well as elsewhere had to surmount.

In the Benedictine monastery, at Subiaco, south of Rome, in 1465, two German printers, Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz, had set up a printing press, which two years later they moved to Rome. Other Germans introduced printing into Milan and Venice in 1469 and the following year into Foligno and Trevi. By 1472, Venice had over a half dozen competing printing offices established by German and by French printers. About fifteen other Italian cities had at least one printing office.

The profits of and the amount of capital sunk in the Lauchhammer Iron Works are not revealed in the Festschrift, the history of that firm which has served as the main source of this article. (The omission is hardly surprising, since this company was owned by noblemen, one of whom was the most powerful official in the Kingdom of Saxony, and since its history was written by the general manager of the Works and was published in 1825.) But profits must have been considerable. Otherwise the Works' continuous improvement and expansion, described earlier in this article, would have been impossible. In 1818, the Lauchhammer Iron Works was even able to lend to the Gröditz plant the funds it needed to expand into an integrated iron enterprise. Whether the Works had any bank connection prior to 1825 is not known; none is mentioned in the history, but that fact is not conclusive. Cash holdings were probably rather large; this, however, was not the case in 1776 (see the inventory on page 233). It seems certain that both expansion and improvement in the eras of both Einsiedels were financed by ploughing back profits.

Twenty-one years ago Baker Library, Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, acquired the early records of Pierson & Company, dealers in iron and makers of nails and screws, at Ramapo, New York. But only now has the organization and listing of these materials, dated from 1795 to 1865, been completed.

The Piersons began making cut nails in New York City in 1787 or 1788. In 1795 Josiah G. Pierson obtained a patent on a nail-making machine which is reported to have been the first such device “that produced satisfactory results and was generally used.” That same year Pierson established a plant at Ramapo, a village in Rockland County, New York, not far from the New Jersey line. The plant included a rolling and slitting mill; raw materials were received through Haverstraw, and finished goods were shipped by the same route to New York City, where an office and store were maintained at 107 Broad Street. Josiah Pierson died in 1798, and shortly Jeremiah H. and Isaac P. Pierson were carrying on the business under the firm name of Josiah G. Pierson & Brothers.