129.
** Roe, "English and American Tool Builders", p. 133.
While Whitney worked out his plans at Whitneyville, Simeon North,
another Connecticut mechanic and a gunmaker by trade, adopted the
same system. North's first shop was at Berlin. He afterwards
moved to Middletown. Like Whitney, he used methods far in advance
of the time. Both Whitney and North helped to establish the
United States Arsenals at Springfield, Massachusetts, and at
Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in which their methods were adopted.
Both the Whitney and North plants survived their founders. Just
before the Mexican War the Whitney plant began to use steel for
gun barrels, and Jefferson Davis, Colonel of the Mississippi
Rifles, declared that the new guns were "the best rifles which
had ever been issued to any regiment in the world." Later, when
Davis became Secretary of War, he issued to the regular army the
same weapon.
The perfection of Whitney's tools and machines made it possible
to employ workmen of little skill or experience. "Indeed so easy
did Mr. Whitney find it to instruct new and inexperienced
workmen, that he uniformly preferred to do so, rather than to
combat the prejudices of those who had learned the business under
a different system."* This reliance upon the machine for
precision and speed has been a distinguishing mark of American
manufacture.
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