Hidden History: How Ben Franklin and Friend Created Britain’s Industrial Revolution

Who We Are: America’s Fight for Universal Progress, From Franklyn to Kennedy Volume I 1750s to 1850s

By Anton Chaitkin (2020)

Book Reivew

The first and most fascinating section of this book recounts the hidden history of Western industrialization. Contrary to what we’re taught in school, it wasn’t capitalist entrepreneurs who introduced automated manufacturing processes to Britain in the late 19th century. Britain’s ruling elite initially opposed industrialization as a threat to their profitable colonial/slavery-based empire. Britain’s industrial revolution came about largely due to the commitment of American-born patriot Benjamin Franklin and a personal network of British inventors and merchants. Their goal was to increase Britain’s standard of living by harnessing the energy of water and steam-powered machines.

I’ve divided this review into three parts: Part 1 recounts the history of Western industrialization, Part 2 recounts American history from the ratification of the US Constitution to the 1850s and Part 3 recounts the bloody role of British intelligence in the French revolution.

In 1757 when Franklin returned to England (for the second time) as the official representative of the Pennsylvania colony, the former had no roads, canals or railroads and the only way to ship iron or coal was cross by horseback in saddle bags over muddy road. A year later, Franklin and his friends* had set up the first workshops in Birmingham to do experiments in electricity and metallurgy. The first major public project they undertook was to build a network of canals to enable a faster and more reliable method of transporting coal to homes and new manufacturing plants with steam powered machines.

Franklin’s friends Joseph Priestly and Matthew Bolton, James Watt and their sons the first steam powered loom in 1784. In 1790, they began building the first steam powered textile mills. In 1795, they built England’s first manufacturing plant Soho Works (which ultimately built the country’s first steam engines) in Birmingham.

Under close surveillance by the British government, Priestly accompanied Franklyn when he returned to Pennsylvania following the outbreak of war between Britain and the American colonies. That was the same year British intelligence chief (who later served as prime minister) Lord Shelborne commissioned Adam Smith to write the Wealth of Nations. His goal was to attack the nationalist economic model (favored by Franklin and his friends), originally pioneered by Louis XIV’s first minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert. The latter strongly promoted protective tariffs and government promotion (via credit creation and bonuses for new manufacturers). It was via the Wealth of Nations, the British coined the term “free trade,” referring to a system in which they maintained protective tariffs while demanding all their trading partners abolish them.

The moment British general Charles Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown in 1781, the British launched a trade war with the US, flooding the country with cheap goods. This led to a US currency collapse that prevented the Continental Congress from paying their war debts (including arrears owed to revolutionary war veterans).

After Shay’s Rebellion (see Hidden History: Shay’s Rebellion the First Civil War) led to insurrection in Massachusetts, General Washington’s second-in-command Alexander Hamilton and his supporters organized a constitutional convention. Hamilton saw the absolute necessity of enacting tariffs to protect the struggling republic against cheap British imports. However free trade supporters claimed the existing Continental Congress had no power to do so.**

Despite efforts by British intelligence (organized by Albert Gallatin a Geneva ex-pat who reported directly to Shelborne) to mobilize grassroots opposition to ratification, the US Constitution was ratified (by the required 9 out of 13 states) in 1788, and the new republic elected its first national government in January 1799.

Appointed by Washington as the first treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton stabilized US currency by having the federal government assume all the states war debts and restoring the face value of federal war bonds by paying the outstanding interest owed. This enabled them to be traded as currency. His next moves were to  enact tariffs and excise taxes to 1) protect the US against cheap British imports 2) raise revenue finance essential government services and to establish a US national bank to provide government credit to fledgling US industries.***

Thomas Jefferson returned from France (where he served as ambassador) in 1789 and joined with James Madison (who represented Virginia in the House of Representatives) to organize Southern plantation owners to oppose Hamilton’s first finance bill as “debt slavery.” Washington and Hamilton eventually won Madison’s support in Congress by agreeing to move the US capitol from Philadelphia to slave territory.

*Matthew Bolton (manufacturer of buckles, buttons and toys), Josiah Wedgewood (potter), Erasmus Darin (scientist and grandfather of Charles), John Wilkinson (iron monger), Joseph Priestly (scientist who first identified oxygen) and James Watt (inventor of steam engine).

**It wasn’t rich New York and Boston bankers who convened the constitutional convention as is commonly claimed.

***The main aim of the first US central bank was to combat speculation by private banks that was destroying the US economy and to establish a source of low cost credit for fledgling industries. The First Bank of the United State was privately owned to avoid political manipulation but subject to presidential and congressional oversight. Foreign stockholders of the bank couldn’t vote their stock or sit on the board. The  federal government initially owned a fifth of the $10 million of stock issued but later sold it.