Hostname: page-component-5d84bcc8dc-bz9xj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-08-18T16:51:56.573Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Fashioning Luxury for Factory Girls: American Jewelry, 1860–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2011

Francesca Carnevali
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The production of jewelry offers a lens through which to examine the nature of creativity in a capitalist economy. The fashioning of decorative goods for wider sections of society in the second half of the nineteenth century allowed manufacturers to expand the size of their businesses, but only by sustaining strong connections with consumers and keeping track of buyers' changing desires. The outcomes of decisions affecting their enterprises were determined by the degree to which producers understood what their customers wanted. Entrepreneurial activity was critical to the formation of strategies for coping with the problem of scarce or imperfect information and limited market power. These strategies induced a process of creative destruction, whereby old ways of making things changed, and technology, labor, skills, and capital were recombined.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 85 , Issue 2 , Summer 2011 , pp. 295 - 317
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

1 Halttunen, Karen, Confidence Men and Painted Ladies: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830-1870 (New Haven, 1982), 74Google Scholar.

2 Jewelry was similarly represented in the 1895 Montgomery Ward catalog, while Marshall Fields' 1896 “Jewelry and Fashions” catalog of 450 pages dedicated fifty-five of them to jewelry alone.

3 How cheap was a 35-cent brooch? In 1890 a female bookkeeper could earn up to $20 a week, while a domestic servant's wage could be as little as $2. A cotton weaver could earn up to $9 a week. See State of Rode Island and Providence Plantations, Third Annual Report of the Commissioner of Industrial Statistics for 1890 (Providence, 1890Google Scholar), Rhode Island State Archives, Providence, R.I. (hereafter RISA).

4 Between 1869 and 1909, U.S. per capita income increased from $2,528 to $6,140 (in 2000 dollars). See Table 4.1 in Koehn, Nancy, Brand New: How Entrepreneurs Earned Consumers' Trust from Wedgwood to Dell (Cambridge, Mass., 2001Google Scholar).

5 Scranton, Philip, Endless Novelty: Specialty Production and American Industrialization, 1865-1925 (Princeton, 2000), 10–17Google Scholar. Specialty production not only included style goods but also ranged from foundry production to locomotives.

6 Gamber, Wendy, The Female Economy: The Millinery and Dressmaking Trades, 1860-1930 (Chicago, 1997), 99, 137, 151Google Scholar.

7 Scranton, Endless Novelty, 10-12, 141-43.

8 Schumpeter, Joseph, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York, 1942Google Scholar), esp. 79-85.

9 Bakker, Gerben, Entertainment Industrialised: The Emergence of the International Film Industry (Cambridge, U.K., 2008), 341–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Blaszczyk, Regina L., Imagining Consumers: Design and Innovation from Wedgwood to Corning (Baltimore, 1999), 9–10Google Scholar.

10 Caves, Richard E., Creative Industries: Contracts between Art and Commerce (Cambridge, Mass., 2002), 3Google Scholar.

11 One could argue that accessories such as pins, cuff links, and hat pins do have a functional purpose. However, even such objects were never just useful; in order to be purchased repeatedly, they had to appeal to customers' aesthetic sense. Hence, the variety of decoration, stones, and metals that made them up.

12 Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 67, 79-85.

13 In the U.S., real per capita income more than doubled between 1869 and 1919.

14 Fales, Martha G., Jewelry in America, 1600-1900 (Woodbridge, U.K., 1995), 149–60Google Scholar.

15 E. G. Rideout & Co., Trade Catalogue, Baker Library, Historical Collections, Harvard University, Boston, Mass. (hereafter Baker Library).

16 R. G. Dun & Co., credit reports, New York City, vol. 253, Sept. 1880, p. 3000/04, and Jan.-May 1883, p. 3000/26, Baker Library.

17 Statistics of the Wealth and Industry of the U.S., 1869, Ninth Census of the U.S., vol. 3 (Washington, D.C., 1869), 447Google Scholar; Census of Manufactures, 1914, vol. 2 (Washington, D.C., 1918-1919), 976Google Scholar. The most extensive study to date of the jewelry industry in the U.S. can be found in Scranton, Endless Novelty.

18 Fales, Jewelry in America, 63-78.

19 Pinchbeck is an alloy of copper and zinc with a golden color, invented in 1720 by the London watchmaker Christopher Pinchbeck. Paste is the generic name used to indicate glass imitations of diamonds. The most well known is strass, a kind of very transparent and highly reflective lead glass, invented by the Paris jeweler Georges Frédéric Strass in the 1730s.

20 Fales, Jewelry in America, 31, 163.

21 Bury, Shirley, Jewellery, 1789-1910: The International Era, 2 vols. (Woodbridge, U.K., 1991), 447Google Scholar.

22 Bourdieu, Pierre, “The Field of Cultural Production, or: The Economic World Reversed,” Poetics 12, nos. 4-5 (1983): 311–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar, transl. by Richard Nice. On home décor, see the article on William Morris in this issue by Charles Harvey, Jon Press, and Mairi Maclean, “William Morris, Cultural Leadership and the Dynamics of Taste.”

23 Jewelers' Circular and Horological Review (hereafter JCHR) 24 (1892): 77Google Scholar.

24 Ibid.

25 Flower, Margaret, Victorian Jewellery (London, 1951Google Scholar).

26 Ladies' Home Journal (hereafter LHJ ) 7, no. 12 (1890): 11Google Scholar.

27 Fales, Jewelry in America, 10, 209, 210.

28 LHJ 6, no. 9 (1889): 12Google Scholar.

29 LHJ 8, no. 6 (1891): 7Google Scholar.

30 LHJ 8, no. 2 (1891): 23Google Scholar; 8, no. 6 (1891): 7; 8, no. 11 (1891): 29.

31 Mason, Shena, Jewellery-making in Birmingham, 1750-1995 (Birmingham, 1998Google Scholar).

32 Weisberg, Alfred M., Why Providence? (Providence, 1992Google Scholar). For a recent analysis of New England's industrial history and an overview of the literature on it, see Temin, Peter, ed., Engines of Enterprise: An Economic History of New England (Cambridge, Mass., 2000Google Scholar).

33 Scranton, Endless Novelty, 108.

34 In the 1820s, apprentices served for six years and nine months. See Manufacturing Jeweler (MJ hereafter) 1 (1885): 122Google Scholar. But, by the 1840s, apprenticeships seemed to last no more than two years; MJ 15 (1894): 43Google Scholar.

35 Scranton, Endless Novelty, 109.

36 MJ 1 (1886): 215Google Scholar; Bensel, Richard, The Political Economy of American Industrialization (Cambridge, U.K., 2000), 22–25Google Scholar.

37 Thirteenth Census of the U.S., vol. 8: Manufacturing (Washington, D.C., 1909), 605–6Google Scholar; Census of Manufactures, vol. 2 (Washington, D.C., 1914), 976Google Scholar. These figures, however, take into account only employment in firms that made jewelry, without considering all the allied trades, such as refi ning, plating, diemaking, specialist toolmaking, and trades in other firms, such as those that made jewelry boxes. If all these trades were taken into account, it is very probable that, on the eve of World War I, the employment generated by the jewelry trade was closer to 18,000. MJ 45 (1910): 878Google Scholar.

38 Nonpopulation census, schedule for Rhode Island, Providence, 1860, RISA.

39 The traditional home of the industry had been on North Main Street, but by 1860 it had moved to an area southwest of downtown, an area bordered by Pine, Dorrance, Chestnut, and Eddy Streets.

40 Greene, Welcome Arnold, The Providence Plantations in the First 250 Years (Providence, 1886), 331Google Scholar.

41 Providence City Directory, 1860.

42 Weisberg, Why Providence? 2-4.

43 Greene, The Providence Plantations, 333-34.

44 A solid wire is covered with gold on the outside and then drawn to the degree of fineness needed.

45 Frost, Walter Bliss, “Jewelry Manufacture,” in The New England States, vol. 4, ed. Davis, Walter T. (Boston, 1890), 2513Google Scholar.

46 Bury, , Jewellery, 1: 365-66 and 438Google Scholar; MJ 18 (1895): 574Google Scholar.

47 For an example of this, see MJ 28 (1901): 550Google Scholar.

48 Fales, Jewelry in America, 173.

49 Scranton, Endless Novelty, 326.

50 Scranton, Phil, “The Horrors of Competition: Innovation and Paradox in Rhode Island's Jewelry Industry, 1860-1914,” Rhode Island History 55, no. 2 (1997): 48–50Google Scholar.

51 Nonpopulation census, schedule for Rhode Island, Providence, 1880; and State of Island, Rhode, Thirteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Industrial Statistics (Providence, 1900Google Scholar), RISA. Also federal census figures for 1910, quoted in The Jewelers' Circular (Feb. 1919): 283.

52 Thirteenth Annual Report; Seventeenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Industrial Statistics (Providence, 1904Google Scholar), RISA.

53 In 1899, the majority of female bench hands earned between $5 to $7 a week, while male bench hands were paid between $12 and $20. Female stone setters could be paid even less, as most of them earned less than $4 a week. Thirteenth Annual Report, 73, 106. In 1915, female bench hands earned from $4 up to a maximum of $11 a week, while men could earn as much as $24 a week. Male stone setters could earn as much as $23 a week, while women never made more than $8. “Rates of Work and Hours of Labor Per Week Prevailing in Rhode Island Industries, Dec. 1915,” in Twenty-ninth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Industrial Statistics (Providence, 1916), 14Google Scholar (“Gold and Silver Workers”).

54 Scranton, “The Horrors of Competition,” 52.

55 MJ 40 (1907): 759Google Scholar; 41 (1908): 60, 1116.

56 Meckel, Richard A., “The Jewelry Industry, Industrial Development and Immigration in Providence 1790-1993,” Rhode Island Jewish Historical Notes 13, no. 2 (2000): 254Google Scholar.

57 MJ 18 (1895): 18Google Scholar.

58 Or only marginally functional, as in the case of accessories, such as hair combs, tie pins, or watch chains.

59 LHJ 7, no. 3 (1890): 10Google Scholar.

60 MJ 2 (1886): 246Google Scholar.

61 State of Rhode Island, Second Annual Report of the Factory Inspectors (Providence, 1896Google Scholar); and Seventeenth Annual Report of the Factory Inspectors (Providence, 1910Google Scholar), RISA.

62 Greene, The Providence Plantations, 338.

63 MJ 18 (1896): 26–27Google Scholar.

64 MJ 29 (1901): 155Google Scholar.

65 Nonpopulation census, schedule for Rhode Island, Providence, 1880; Seventh Annual Report of the Factory Inspectors (Providence, 1900Google Scholar); and Seventeenth Annual Report of the Factory Inspectors (Providence, 1910Google Scholar), RISA.

66 MJ 39 (1906): 88–89Google Scholar.

67 Nonpopulation census, schedule for Rhode Island, Providence, 1880, RISA; Rainwater, Dorothy T., American Jewelry Manufacturers (Atglen, 1988), 184Google Scholar.

68 Twenty-second Annual Report of the Factory Inspectors (Providence, 1915), 108Google Scholar, RISA.

69 JCHR (2 Aug. 1905): 18. Ostby & Barton's catalog for 1919 carried patterns for almost eight hundred gold shell rings, Ostby & Barton Gold Shell Ring Catalogue, 1919, Hay Library, Brown University, Providence, R.I.Google Scholar

70 Hall, James D., Biographical History of the Manufacturers and Business Men of Rhode Island (Providence, 1901), 101Google Scholar.

71 There are no descriptions of the Ostby & Barton factory. Used here is a description of the William Loeb & Co. firm, which operated in Providence at the same time as Ostby & Barton. Loeb & Co. was in fact a smaller concern. MJ 16 (1895Google Scholar): 412 and 34 (1904): 417, 424-25.

72 MJ 5 (1888-1889): 125Google Scholar; Hall, Biographical History, 101.

73 Frost, “Jewelry Manufacture,” 2514.

74 Scranton, “The Horrors of Competition,” 48.

75 MJ 35 (1904): 56–60Google Scholar.

76 LHJ 7, no. 9 (1890): 25Google Scholar; 8, no. 6 (1891): 7. See also Blaszczyk, Imagining Consumers, 96-97, for similar schemes for the pottery industry.

77 One such firm was that of Smith Bros., a fully integrated concern that even had its own findings department. MJ 29 (1901): 34–36Google Scholar. Another large firm, that of William Luther & Co., expanded to meet the growing demand for these goods. Their yearly production for 1880 was as follows: rings, 3.1 billion; collar buttons, 1.5 billion; sleeve buttons, 715,000; ladies' pins, 307,000; drops, 400,000; scarf pins, 525,000; scarf rings, 200,000; tail pins, 270,000; studs, 2.5 million; earrings, 610,000; bib pins, 95,000; crosses, 125,000; charms, 80,000; bracelets, 56,000; hairpins, 140,000; and badges, 640,000. MJ 3 (1885-1886): 210Google Scholar.

78 JCHR (10 Aug. 1892): 35.

79 JCHR (9 Nov. 1892): 42.

80 LHJ 10, no. 1 (Dec. 1892): 8Google Scholar.

81 Simmel, Georg, “Fashion,” American Journal of Sociology 62, no. 6 (1957): 541–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.