Midnight Ride, Industrial Dawn: Paul Revere and the Growth of American Enterprise

摘要

Paul Revere's midnight ride to warn of the advancing British army is his best known contribution to the Revolutionary War, but it was his lifelong participation in developing American industry that represents his lasting contribution to the country. So argues Robert Martello in his excellent book Midnight Ride, Industrial Dawn, part biography and part history of the coming age of industrial capitalism. In tracking Revere's journey from silversmith to mill owner and manufacturer, Martello also aspires to tell the story of transforming business practices, a period he calls proto-industrialization, a situation between craft and industrial production. The multiple transitions Revere made-from apprentice and artisan to owner and manufacturer, from a worker with tools to a manager of people and machines, from barter to cash methods of payment-are used to shed light on the larger transitions in American society. Revere's movements toward industrialization are a launching point for discussions of accompanying transformations in labor, technology, capital, and the environment in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.