Energy Systems
and the Evolution of Connecticut Society
By
Truman Warner, Western Connecticut State University
Historians
and social scientists have long expressed interest in the relationship
between energy and society. In recent years one school of anthropology
in particular has explored the importance of energy as a causative
force in historical change and cultural evolution. Scholars stressing
this approach traditionally have used a worldwide, cross-cultural
perspective, focusing on large-scale evolutionary stages such
as hunting and gathering, pastoralism and agriculture. However,
the essential concept of using specific types of energy extraction
and the related technology necessary for the production of food
and other essential subsistence items as criteria for identifying
and examining meaningful periods in human development is also
applicable to less inclusive and more localized historical studies.
The
research strategy which evolved from this approach places priority
on the simple fact that human beings in order to survive, reproduce,
and perpetuate themselves, must adapt to their varied environments.
The term "adaptation" means a population's
...relationship to its habitat. The concept
of adaptation is historical: when we say a population is adapting
we mean that it is altering its relationship to its habitat in
order to make that habitat a more fit place in which to live,
or to make itself more fit to live in that milieu.1
Research
in a broad range of cultures has led to the conclusion that this
"adaptation"
... is accomplished principally by cultural means, through
the harnessing of new sources of energy for productive ends and
through the organization of social relations that make it possible
to use these energy systems effectively. Examples of such energy
systems are the bow and arrow, the spear, the digging stick or
hoe, the plow and draft animals, steam and electricity.2
Integral
also to such an analysis is a study of how a society maintains
or fails to maintain a balance between its ability to produce
the basic necessities and its ability to reproduce, so that the
population itself is neither too large nor too small.
Changes
in sources or energy or changes in the technologies utilizing
a source of energy already in place demand that the society make
changes in the way it organizes the social relations that make
it possible to use the energy system. Thus, to deal with a particular
productive and reproductive system, a society must organize itself
into groups that are effective in making decisions and maintaining
order in the production, allocation, exchange, and consumption
of goods and labor. In all societies there are two general categories
of institutions which perform these duties: (1) domestic groups
and (2) larger politico-economic groups such as bands, communities,
tribes, nations, classes, political parties and associations.
The structure of each of these reflects the energy extractive
technology in use at a specific time.
Other
institutions, while also important, usually play a somewhat secondary
role to those directly involved with meeting the basic material
needs of a population.
However,
the impact of how a group extracts and utilizes energy goes far
beyond the structure of its institutions. A particular system
for transforming energy plays a causative role in forming values
and beliefs, for the people involved need to relate to the world
in ways that will explain and rationalize their particular circumstances.
Thus,
this research strategy establishes priorities for formulating
theories about the causes of socio-cultural behavior. Of primary
interest to the researcher is the system of production and reproduction
by means of which the population copes most directly with the
natural habitat. The paradigm then asserts that it is highly probable
that the technologies involved in production and reproduction
will determine the domestic and the politico-economic institutions
and that the latter will probably determine the patterns of the
other institutions. Values, ideologies, belief systems and other
mental constructs will develop to support and rationalize not
only the individual parts but also the society as a whole.
These
ideas as presented in skeletal form may appear overly simplistic
for use in historical studies. Experience, however, demonstrates
they can provide a useful set of guidelines for collecting, organizing
and interpreting historical data.
A
beginning point for teachers and students would be to identify
the major eras of energy usage in Connecticut's past. Although
not emphasizing the energy component, most historians have already
included such periods in their accounts. The seven most commonly
listed are as follows:
1.
The hunting and gathering epoch when, for several thousand years,
the local inhabitants organized into wandering bands and foraged
for wood and food as their major energy sources.
2.
The horticultural stage, established long before the arrival of
European settlers, when the Indians grew food in small gardens
and supplemented it by hunting, fishing and collecting. As in
the previous era, the human body was the major energy transformer,
the means by which the raw materials furnished by plants and animals
were turned into muscle power.
3.
The period of subsistence agriculture when the first settlers
lived in nearly self-sufficient farm communities as they attempted
to establish themselves in the new setting. The colonists replaced
or supplemented the hand-powered tools of the Indians with the
plow, draft animals, other iron tools including firearms, and
many new varieties of domesticated plants. The result was a radically
altered environment and a new pattern of social organization essential
for an agricultural society.
4.
The era of agricultural commerce. As part of a European-based,
mercantile economy, the inhabitants quickly began to produce agricultural
surpluses for export in return for goods they could not supply
locally. This arrangement entailed not only such transport technologies
as carts and wagons, cart paths, highways, and ships, but also
an altered resource base of imported goods.
5.
The era of small shops and mills which proved to be the opening
stage of industrialization. Connecticut possessed very limited
resources with which to create the new economy. Raw materials
were limited. Water power was not dependable. Wood was becoming
scarce. The state's most valuable asset was an abundance of human
labor, and therefore it was in businesses requiring a skilled
labor force that the incipient industrial movement flourished.
6.
The period of fossil fuels. Coal imported from outside the state
moved Connecticut into the industrial era. The sources and forms
of energy multiplied—gasoline, electricity, natural gas, and heating
oil—paralleled by an unprecedented expansion of new technologies
including electric lights, telephones, radios, automobiles, airplanes,
and television.
7.
The so called post-industrial era currently in the process of
development. Nuclear-powered generators supplement those energy
sources already in place and computerized production lines and
information processers offer fewer jobs in manufacturing and more
in personal and informational services.
Other
periodization is also possible and in some instances preferable,
for these broad divisions generally do not address directly a
variety of energy sources such as whale oil or kerosene or explore
the implications of the introduction of various technologies such
as the wood-burning stove in place of the fireplace or of gas
lighting for the home and streets. In addition, specific dates
must be adjusted for various regions and communities, inasmuch
as there often is a considerable time differential among areas
within the state.
The
early manufacturing era will serve as an example of how this model
can be applied. This period began when home industries and then
factories making goods for export first appeared as a serious
economic alternative and ended when the general availability of
coal made possible modern style industrialization.
A
new energy system disrupts, often severely, the old patterns of
a society, and this period in Connecticut's history is not an
exception.
Throughout
the Colonial Period farming had remained the primary system for
extracting energy from the environment, but the population soared
from an estimated 30,000 in 1701 to 197,842 in 1774. An observer
in 1788 very perceptively expressed the dilemma faced by the state
as the number of inhabitants outpaced the ability of the agricultural
technology to support them:
The fact is we have too many inhabitants for the extent
of territory considering our mode of cultivation and the employment
of the people. All have not farms or can they obtain them. Of
course until manufactures are introduced the people must be idle
or crowd into those professions which do not immediately depend
upon the soil.
The
state responded to this imbalance in several ways. It exported
thousands of its residents to less populated sections of the country.
It strove to improve the agricultural sector through better seeds
and breeds of animals and new tools and technology. It rapidly
expanded its small shops and factories to supply sufficient quantities
of manufactured items for export such as tinware, clocks, hats,
cloth, shoes, and combs. As the energy output, as measured in
kilowatts, expanded from that of man (0.1), ox (0.2) and horse
(0.5), to water wheel (300) and steam (2,000), the impact on Connecticut's
citizens was tremendous.
The
creation of new or altered economic and political adaptations
was inevitable, and many of them, including incorporated cities
and boroughs; a new state constitution; turnpike, canal and railway
companies, and banks are discussed extensively in the historical
literature. Always a component of such institutions in any society
is the concept of power—the ability of someone or some group to
direct or regulate the behavior of others. Those who control energy
sources or the flow and utilization of the various forms of energy
become wielders of social power. For example, the proprietors
and those who inherited their rights in the early settlements
owned and/or distributed the land, the major energy source in
an agricultural society. As a consequence, proprietors' families
were potentially more powerful in making decisions about a wide
range of activities than were the landless or those with limited
holdings. Similarly, in the early industrial era, the power to
make crucial decisions about the exercise of technology as well
as many other aspects of community life gradually was acquired
by those more closely associated with the factory system. Thus,
as energy patterns changed, so did the statuses in society from
which social power flowed.
Changes
in domestic structures as they reflected the influence of the
new manufacturing system are not as fully documented. However,
reference to new roles, especially of women, who lost some of
their vital economic functions in the home when factories took
over several of their traditional responsibilities, is indicative
of trends occurring in the family as a whole. As early as 1790
a Danbury newspaper editorialized:
Manufactures will promote industry, and industry contributes
to health, virtue, riches and population. If we purchase clothing
one half of our women must be idle or only trifling.... If we
manufacture, our men will be employed in processing and preparing
the materials; and our women will not be under the necessity of
spending five afternoons a week, giving and receiving visits,
and chatting around the tea table. What they do is so much added
to the wealth of the country. When industry becomes reputable
among ladies in higher life, it will of course take place among
all ranks.... Vivacity, strength and activity will not be thought
too indelicate, coarse and masculine for a fine lady, nor will
affected timidity, artificial faintings and labored shrieks and
startings be supposed to have charms.
Sixty
years later, as the industrial period was dawning and when factory-made
cloth already had virtually replaced homespun, Horace Bushnell
(1802-1876) observed that
...this transition from mother and daughter power to water
and steam power, is a great one, greater by far than many have
as yet begun to conceive—one that is to carry with it a complete
revolution in domestic life and social manners.
Concepts
of proper child behavior similarly underwent alterations. Wishy
summarizes one troublesome facet of the child rearing process
related to this changed economy when he notes that parents
...were trying to maintain traditional and unyielding principles
in an uncertain, unstable world. Their inherited Christian, republican
codes of character and faith became an amalgam of incompatible
elements. It was absolute while life was relative. A strong otherworldliness,
for example, did not mix well with an intense desire to get as
much from the world as possible.3
Thus,
attitudes and belief systems, too, are part of this patterning,
for the manufacturing and commercial system offered opportunities
for self-advancement and personal wealth considerably different
from those prevailing in the earlier agrarian society and resulted
in new social and ethical values.
Bushnell,
for example, believed that "in removing the rough necessities
of the homespun age, it may take away, also, the severe virtues
and the homely and true piety by which...that age is so honorably
distinguished."
As
early as 1809 one observer of the Connecticut scene wrote that
If there are any prevailing or peculiar vices belonging
to the state we think that an avaricious or mercenary spirit is
the most conspicuous. This probably is owing in part to the prevailing
spirit and habits of trade; but principally to civil institutions
and the established principles and customs of society which attach
an underserved importance to property.
P.T.
Barnum (1810-1891) thus described the chicanery and competitiveness
of his early business career:
The slightest inattention on the part of the storekeeper
and he is fooled on weights or measures; the least heedlessness
on the part of the farmer and he is swindled.
Another
appraisal from the same community hints at the same competitive
spirit but is more generous in its evaluation.
Hard workers as were the men and women there, sharp, too,
at a bargain as they were, and eager to get gain, no one with
much knowledge of them but would soon discover that in their thoughts
and questions the next world has not less importance than this.
Many
inhabitants found not only these new ideals but much of the new
life-style uncomfortable. The old ways seemed proper because of
their familiarity but often were no longer practiced. Agriculture,
for so long a highly respected occupation, was being challenged.
The children of successful farmers often moved to the West or
adapted to urban life. Because the small shops did not require
great capitalization, individuals who in the past perhaps could
not have acquired the property necessary to become prosperous
might more easily begin their own commercial enterprises. With
skill and hard work, a competitive spirit, imagination, and even
a bit of cunning, some of these entrepreneurs became successful
and threatened the old elite. The increasing variety and number
of job opportunities supported an increasing egalitarianism many
considered dangerous.
To
deal with such symptoms, which one author describes as "jarring
disjunctions between norms and experience, old beliefs and new
realities, dying patterns and emerging patterns of behavior,"4
societies, almost universally it seems, turn to revitalization
movements, which are deliberate attempts by members of a society
to create a more satisfying way of life. The whole revitalization
process often takes several decades, and the typical stages which
have been carefully identified and described by Wallace5
are applicable to what occurred in Connecticut at that time. In
this sense the Second Great Awakening in the churches of the state
was a typical response of a culture in the midst of great change,
for, by definition, an awakening occurs
...when a society finds that its day-to-day behavior has
deviated so far from the accepted (traditional) norms that neither
individuals nor large groups can honestly (consistently) sustain
the common set of religious understandings by which they believe
(have been taught) they should act.... Then men begin to doubt
their sense and their sanity and to search about for new gods,
new ways to perceive and comprehend the power that guides the
universe.6
The
religious revivals of the 1800 and 1830 period are classic examples
of this restructuring at work, as were such secular activities
as the writing of the Constitution of 1818 and the many humanitarian
efforts of the social reformers.
These
are but samples of the many types of events in Connecticut's history
which this research strategy can illuminate. A schema of this
sort encourages students to seek out explanations of cause, and
when applied comparatively in different periods as defined by
energy usage, it suggests regularities in human behavior that
merit further historical investigation.
1
Yehudi Cohen, Man in Adaptation. The Cultural Present (Chicago,
1968), p.3.
2
Ibid., p. 4.
3
Bernard Wishy. The Child and the Republic: The Dawn of Modern
Child Nurture (Philadelphia, 1968), p. 77.
4
William G. McLaughlin, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform
(Chicago. 1978), p. 10.
5
Anthony P.C. Wallace. Religion: An Anthropological View
(New York, 1966). passim.
6
McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform, p. 12.
*
Entry under revision.
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