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In celebration of our Web site, we take a careful sighting into the past, and discover that the sheet metal trade has a rich heritage of skill, but that it also served as a prime mover at various times in history, propelling us in new directions of industrial culture.
It was probably the most important trade in the formative years of our industrial economy, when the burning issue was colonial self-sufficiency versus profit-motivated trade restrictions from the mother country.
The growing sheet metal trade required increasing amounts of raw materials and sparked a Yankee "do-it-yourself" movement that made Paul Revere the first copper rolling mill operator in the United States.
It was the prospering tinsmiths of the northeastern U.S. who invented the Yankee Peddler, and thereby created an additional dimension in the mercantile history of the United States. The peddler was the direct antecedent of the Avon Lady -- as well as the traveling entertainer and news broadcaster. From a pack on his back, and later a specially designed peddler's wagon, the salesmen of the tinsmithing settlements could satisfy the basic needs of almost any of the widely-scattered farmsteads of rural America.
Sheet metal ware eventually eliminated dependence on England and other European nations for a bewildering variety of goods. Containers, tools, implements, furnishings without end. And then the hand tools to make them with, and, finally, the coming of the automated equipment.
Sheet metal was also indispensable for ship's fittings, and to protect the roofs of the increasingly concentrated city homes and commercial structures against the spread of dreaded fire.
For about a century, the U.S. was, in large measure a "tin culture." There was hardly anything useful or decorative that couldn't be fashioned out of tin and wood, save for the heaviest and strongest structural units.
The illustrations on this page are only a tiny sampling. Almost all are entirely handmade, and some likely date from before the Revolution. They exhibit the directness, and the force of the simple design of sheet metal in human service.
From tinsmith's pig, or tool-box, to the tin can, the path of that first vital and vigorous century, that moved us into the industrial age, is illustrated.
From the beginning, the new colonies were dependent on skilled craftsmen.
As we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the United States' independence, we can recall with pride that a printer, shoe maker, carpenter and an instrument maker signed the Declaration of Independence. They were Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, George Walton, and John Lamb. The prominence of these men reflects the importance of skilled craftsmen in colonial times.
But they were only the vanguard of a growing army of craftsmen who fashioned with their hands and minds not only the products a new nation built with, but shaped the character of their industries. With their skills, these men set the political and economic course of the new nation.
In the early days, sheet metal workers were the basic manufacturers. They produced the capital goods, candle molds, bread pans and other diverse tools and implements, with which other producers manufactured consumer items. They kept the bustling commerce of the new nation on an upward spiral.
In a way, they and their counterparts in other colonial manufacturing industries were too good. It was the colonies' ability to turn out manufactured goods, in the final event, that brought oppression from the mother country, and lit the fuse of revolution. England wanted no competition for her own craftsmen. She wanted to strip the colonies, wherever they were, of raw materials, and to ship back to them a never-ending stream of manufactured products sold at a profit.
The colonies wanted to be the masters of their own fate.
In the very early years of the new nation, the sheet metal craftsman kept the imported goods in repair. Cooking pots, spoons, plates, bowls--all had to be kept for lifetimes. Metal was precious.
 But as the nation flourished, local manufacturing began, led by the sheet metal trades. Well before the revolution, settlements had enough work to keep a diverse galaxy of skills busy--tinkers, whitesmiths or tinsmiths, the tinplate workers and the coppersmiths. They worked with tools not very different from some of those found today in sheet metal shops--snipping, hammering on irons, soldering, bending and riveting. And as today, they took great pride in a well-turned bead or clean joint.
The metal trades in the Colonies boomed particularly after 1750, according to one account, "so great was the need for metal articles in colonial cities and so expensive were imported English hardware and metal fittings."
When the new nation began turning to commercial bakeries instead of home hearth for daily bread, in early years of the 19th century, tinsmiths provided the pans.
At this time the bread industry was undergoing some fundamental changes. Brewer's yeast became available to bakeries, making it possible to make dough in large batches.
A development that was partly responsible for this was the expansion of the ice industry, from which evolved the refrigeration industry, and air conditioning.
Natural ice was plentiful in the colonies, and a sizeable industry grew up shortly after the Revolution. By 1800, ice was exported from the U.S.
The commercial availability of ice in turn made possible year-round operation of breweries, which previously had operated only in cooler months. The metalsmiths of the day were doubly served. Yeast was made available for bakers, and more work was created in fashioning copper vats and other implements for the breweries.
According to Dr. G. Terry Sharrer, Assistant Curator of the Division of Extractive Industries at the Smithsonian Institution, the essence of early growth in the colonies was manufacture.
The new cities, strung down the east coast from Boston to Charleston, needed a favorable balance of trade. They were trying to export to Europe, as well as replace imports with native goods.
"The radicals of the revolution," Sharrer said, "were actually conservative businessmen, deprived of the right to wealth." And, Sharrer adds, despite the fact that they were conservative by nature, they risked everything they had, including property and lives, with the workers who served the revolutionary cause.
The labor organizations that existed among the early Colonial craftsmen were patterned after the old European Guilds. Apprenticeship was recognized early in the Colonial days. In 1680, New York City adopted an ordinance which read, "coopers, carpenters and smiths, etc.... serve five years before being allowed to set up business."
For the most part, relations between journeymen and masters were amicable and complimentary because the line between the two was difficult to distinguish.
Then came a new force in the economy of the Colonies. Sometime near the point at which the Constitution was signed (1787) the middleman arrived.
No longer was the master craftsman the salesman. Now the middleman, or wholesales, set the price. This new market system forced the master workman, or manufacturer, to drive a hard bargain with his journeymen employees. Instead of raising the price when costs increased, the master workman cut the journeyman's wages, since he no longer controlled the price. It was this development, in turn, that inspired wage earners to form the first real unions.
The first authenticated craft organization was formed by the house Carpenters in Philadelphia in 1724, and their first recorded strike was in 1791.
Despite the differences between the masters and the journeymen, at this point in time, they still had things in common. They formed associations to find better methods of production, to improve apprentice training, and to upgrade the quality of workmanship.
Two of these organizations still survive. They are the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen in New York City, founded by 30 trades in 1785, and the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, incorporated in 1823.
Early union activities were usually one-time operations conducted to win pay raises. A temporary committee organized for the purpose was dissolved as soon as the issue was resolved.
Meanwhile, the gulf was widening between master and journeyman. As transportation improved, the potential market greatly expanded. A new group rose to power--the merchant capitalists--by providing the masters with more money to expand their businesses.
In 1789, a journeyman in a typical craft earned about $6 a week, which could support a family adequately, with no luxuries. By 1818, wages were up to $9.
In those days, too, everyone worked from "see to can't see" (sunrise to sunset) six days a week. According to an 1818 survey, the year-round average working week was 73-1/2 hours.
Apprentices during this time were treated with respect and consideration. In Connecticut, masters were required to see that their charges learned to read and write, and to be sure all journeymen conducted themselves morally.
As his skills improved, an apprentice in the sheet metal crafts would be graduated from cookie cutters to calf weaners, basins, pans, pails and finally chandeliers or crooked-spout coffee pots.
The depression of 1817 put 50,000 people out of work in Boston, New York and Philadelphia alone, spurring new interest in labor organizations. Unions of crafts were established in the larger cities, and there were many local strikes over wage issues. Gradually a fight began against the traditional workday.
In Boston, about 600 carpenters struck for a 10 hour day in 1825. They found themselves aligned against the master builders, by now fitting the description of contractors, and the powerful new class of money-lenders who stood behind those contractors.
The concept of political activity was apparently first implemented by the Mechanics Union of Trade Associations in Philadelphia. It sponsored the Workingmen's Party, a union of building trade workers, and was a factor in the 1828 elections.
The "people's candidate," Andrew Jackson, won the 1828 election. "Old Hickory," as Jackson was called, would bring to the new urban and industrial centers some of the individual liberties guaranteed by the Constitution. These had been eroded by the power of wealth and property.
While the labor movement was developing a greater political awareness, the sheet metal industry was developing further and reaching out into new areas as new uses for tin were discovered.
As the demand for tin and other sheet metal products developed in the 19th century, ingenious mechanics invented ways to produce more in less time. A Massachusetts tinsmith, Eli Parsons, invented the first known set of American tin-working machines. His patent, granted in 1804, covered rolling shears to cut sheet tin, and a sweep gage to hold tin plates to be cut into circles, and to hold those newly-cut circles while the edges were turned. He also created a device to turn the edges, a machine for locking the sides and edges together, and a machine for forming wire bead edges.
 Many improvements were made in the machines and by 1870, the firm of Peck, Stow and Wilcox was producing every basic hand-powered machine. The company employed 500 men.
The advent of the tin can brought obvious benefits to society, and, for a while, created more hand work for sheet metal craftsmen. But it was the canning industry that had much to do with the demise of this hand craftsmanship. The can brought mass production to the sheet metal industry.
English businessmen were preserving provisions for sick sailors in tin cans by 1812, using tin-plated iron. Cans were introduced in the U.S. by William Underwood, London-trained in the art of preserving food. He brought his know-how to the U.S. in 1821, and introduced the first can in 1839.
The first tin cans were hand-made by tinsmiths. Using shears and soldering irons, they cut rectangular body pieces and round end pieces from sheets of tin plate. The body was shaped by wrapping it around a solid cylinder, then soldering the ends together. All the solder went on the outside. Early tinsmiths produced about 10 cans a day.
The top of the can had a hole the size of a large coin in it, through which the food was poured. A lid was then soldered on, leaving a small hole in the center. This was sealed with a single drop of solder after the food was immersed in boiling water for sterilization.
Hand production increased to 60 cans a day, but handwork was soon eliminated. The Howe "Floater", invented in 1876, moved complete and unsoldered cans at an angle through a solder bath, which tinned the joints. Four men could produce over 1000 cans a day. Sheet metal craftsmen were needed only to solder the hole cover on, and the vent hole shut.
In 1888, even this function was eliminated by the Cox Capper, which soldered the top on automatically.
1911 marked the beginning of the modern approach to air conditioning, when Willis H. Carrier presented a paper on the subject to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. In the early years, the objective was to control humidity, in such places as textile mills.
In 1922 the first air conditioning system for human comfort was used in a motion picture theater. In the early 1930's, the small unitary air conditioner made its appearance, and after World War II, the industry nearly exploded.
Other opportunities arose, including the introduction of stainless steel for kitchen equipment, an industry that now provides employment for many sheet metal craftsmen.
The introduction of plastics also provided opportunities, and as the art and science of advertising grew, American sheet metal workers made their contribution to the expanding sign industry.
Today the skills are more diverse, the service to the society broader, but the traditions are much the same as they were when those first new craftsmen began to build their new nation.
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, Dayton, and Youngstown. They founded the Tin, Sheet Iron and Cornice Workers' International Association. The President was Archibald Barns, Secretary was A. W. Chatfield, and Kellerstrass was named Treasurer.
The modern ring of these words is not coincidence. The 1924 elections followed by two years the United States' first "Watergate": the "Teapot Dome" scandal that involved top-level payoffs for government oil leases.