Our friend in England has been reading the arguments that swirled around
the Iron Act, which involved a lot of rhetoric and misinformation about the
labor system in the Chesapeake iron industry. In fact, it wasn't the labor
that made American iron so cheap. In my humble opinion, the American
advantages included the fact that the British king, rather than the Swedish
king, controlled the American colonies. Joshua Gee, one of the founders and
the theoretical father of the Principio company, pretty well laid out the
reasons for American iron in his many pamphlets and appeals to Parliament.
The basic source on slavery in the iron industry is
Ronald Loran Lewis, Slavery in the Chesapeake Iron Industry, 1716-1865, PhD
dissertation, University of Akron, 1974.
There has been quite a bit of work done since then, particularly on
individual furnaces. For an overview of the economics, including a brief
comparison of slave and free labor:
Paul F. Paskoff, Industrial Evolution: Organization, structure and growth
in the Pennsylvania iron industry, 1750-1860. Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1983.
Still one of my favorite sources, relating to the premier company in
American ironmaking:
Michael Robbins, The Principio Company: Iron-Making in Colonial Maryland,
1720-1781. PhD dissertation, The George Washington University, 1972.
Probably the freshest look at a slave-staffed ironworks is Douglas
Sanford's exploration of a very early Virginia tidewater iron operation.
Douglas W. Sanford, project manager, The Neabsco Mills Ironworks:a phase I
and Phase II Archaeological Survey Prince William County, Virginia. Report
by Center for Historic Preservation, Mary Washington College,
Fredericksburg, Virginia, 1993.
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