HIST363: Global Perspectives on Industrialization

Developments inside the factory from the eighteenth to the 20th century can only be described as a history of European-wide transfer and entanglement. Let us take as an example the Swiss company Escher, Wyss & Cie. Switzerland was one of the first industrialized regions on the Continent but had, in comparison to Great Britain, many fewer problems at the end of the nineteenth century changing over to new sectors such as mechanical engineering, electrical industry and chemical industry.

Escher, Wyss & Cie. is emblematic of this changeover. The company was founded in 1805 as a mechanical spinning mill in Zürich and rose during the second half of the century to be one of the most important mechanical engineering firms in Europe. The production facility, based on Arkwright's factories, was the second mechanical spinning mill in Switzerland. Escher Wyss remained the largest Swiss industrial concern into the late nineteenth century and had a wide influence, as it designed factory buildings as a contractor for other companies abroad.

Several decades before the founding of Escher, Wyss & Cie., a member of the Escher family, Heinrich Escher, had had a silk mill built near Zurich which, similarly to Lombe's mill near Derby, imitated Italian models. Escher succeeded by hiring Italian foremen who brought the necessary technical knowledge with them to Switzerland.

Four years before the opening of Escher Wyss's mechanical spinning mill, a factory was launched in St. Gallen in 1801. Yet it enjoyed little success and closed in 1819. For the importation of English machines was quite expensive, there were permanent technical problems, and the factory was dependent on English experts. This failure, however, was of great significance for further technological development in Switzerland, as it brought familiarity with the new technology.

Beginning in 1820 many new spinning mills were opened, and by 1835 the level of the English and Alsatian cotton industry was achieved. Kaspar Escher, who founded Escher, Wyss & Cie. and who had been trained in Italy as an architect and merchant, arranged for the cheaper importation of English machines. He did so by buying smuggled spinning machines in Rouen from an English producer, engaging in industrial espionage himself, and, among other things, smuggling the "Jenny-Mule" spinning machine into Switzerland.

The decisive stroke, however, was further expansion of the mill itself, for which a Scottish engineer was engaged in 1822. He in turn brought with him from England the latest in smuggled technology, a cotton lay-up machine. The factory building was modernized remarkably early, which made it somewhat independent of time of day or year. Gas lighting was installed in 1814, quite soon after it was introduced into English factories; in the following year a steam furnace was added.

Especially significant was the early organization of a mechanical engineering division, which by the 1830s had already become more important to the company than the spinning mill itself. Here, too, it was helpful to have contacts with England, where Escher's son Albert had been trained as a mechanical engineer and manager. By the mid-1820s Albert took over the management of mechanical engineering at Escher Wyss. Although Escher Wyss built the first Swiss steam engines, they were a less important source of power for the company than is often assumed. As was normal in Switzerland until the end of the century, steam power was only an auxiliary in case water power, which was more cost-efficient, was interrupted due to bad weather.

By the mid-nineteenth century, Escher Wyss was already playing an important part in the industrial development of Germany. In 1839, the state of Württemberg ordered the delivery of a mechanical linen mill to Urbach, and in 1857 Escher Wyss opened a branch in Ravensburg. An outmoded approach to building factories began to cause problems for the parent company at the end of the century.

Traditionally, cost-saving was the most important aspect of new construction, such that even in the late-nineteenth century the factory building was seen as a mere shell for production, and the flow of material was not considered in the design. Only right before the turn of the century was a new building with coordinated overall planning opened, but the machines with which it was outfitted were quite soon considered obsolete. In the twentieth century, Escher Wyss lost its significance.

The extent to which, by the late nineteenth century, factories were also influenced by European (and trans-continental) transfer processes can be illustrated with the career of the engineer and entrepreneur Fritz Wolfensberger. Born in Zurich, Wolfensberger apprenticed as a metalworker at Escher Wyss, trained as an engineer at the Kantonales Technikum in Winterthur, and gained his first work experience in Scotland. Influenced by American innovations in operational management, first by "systematic management" and then by the "scientific management" of Frederick W. Taylor, Wolfensberger failed with his ideas for modernization from 1891 to 1904, first at the Deutz gas motor works in Cologne, then in the Oerlikon machine works in Switzerland, and finally upon his return to Escher, Wyss & Cie.

Escher had explicitly sought an engineer, ideally American, to modernize its factories, but it was ultimately unwilling to institute Wolfensberger's radical suggestions. In 1904 Wolfensberger returned to Deutz in Cologne, where a management restructuring gave him the necessary freedom to realize his ideas. Propelled by his experience at several European mechanical engineering firms, his knowledge of American ideas of scientific management, and a study trip to the USA, Wolfensberger converted Deutz to mass-production even before the First World War.

In addition to the modernization of the machinery, financed in part via loans and with a focus on special-purpose machines, he also instituted wide-ranging changes in the work spaces. Thus the factory was restructured according to a plan to facilitate workflow. In addition, rationalization measures were introduced to improve hygiene, since Wolfensberger – whose thought was typical of successful managers of his age – considered the human factor to be of great significance for production.