The Baldwin Locomotive Works, the Capital Equipment Sector, and American Industrial Practice in the Nineteenth Century

In this century, mass-producing manufacturing corporations turning out standardized products in bulk are the leading industrial form. So dominant in the modern era, these companies have also come to signify much of our nineteenth-century industrial history. While mass production certainly deserves its biographers, the sheer volume of this literature has blocked many from perceiving the full variety of production practices which propelled and sustained the industrializing nation. This dissertation summary examines an ignored segment of the nineteenth-century economy the capital equipment builders and it describes how operations in this sector diverged greatly from the mass producing paradigm. 2 I define capital equipment as those mechanisms old to secondary firms for their use in the final production of goods or delivery of services. Examining this sector through a case study of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, I argue that capital equipment builders pursued a distinctive business trategy of related policies in product innovation, management, production, and labor relations. This multi-faceted strategy arose from challenges particular to the capital equipment sector, and it clearly distinguishes capital equipment builders from American System machinery manufacturers. Once examined and acknowledged, these distinguishing attributes of the sector will substantially revise nineteenth-century business,