Joseph Smith and the Temperance Movement

Still from blacksmithing scene, 1894, an early Edison Film

Despite the large-scale changes taking place in the nineteenth century,

temperance was the issue most concerning to American voters.1 In "Drinking,

temperance and the construction of identity on nineteenth-century America,"

Paul Johnson argues that the temperance movement was a middle-class

1
Paul Johnson. "Drinking, Temperance, and the Construction of Identity in Nineteenth-Century
America." Social Science Information 25, no. 2 (June 1986): 521.
assault on the working class. 2 The shift from agrarian to urban society raised

multiple questions in terms of identity, especially among men who were formerly

farmers and artisans.3 This identity was re-formed in the middle class through

temperance and a focus on the home where respectability became “an

individual moral achievement.”4 These middle-class values were foisted onto the

working class by “temperance crusaders” who benefited financially from cheap

labor and the reassertion of their masculinity through class dominance.5

Stripped of his artisanal identity and relegated to the status of a laborer, the

blacksmith bore the brunt of these machinations. Temperance and prohibition

were also a battle waged on immigrants, who were stereotyped as drunk and

belligerent.6 This is evidenced in the tale of Joseph Smith.

“Morality: The State Prison, or The Story of Drunken Jose. A Tale of

Truth" tells the story of the reputable blacksmith Joseph Smith, who was

hardworking and industrious, and through grit and determination, established

himself and his shop. Joseph refused to let any liquor into his shop. However,

one day he was persuaded by a customer who wanted to celebrate his newly

ironed wagon to allow a bottle into the shop for the celebration. This bottle

turned to many others, and Joseph was soon a frequent guest at the tavern

during working hours. He then lost his house to debts and turned to robbery to

2
Johnson, 522.
3
Johnson, 523.
4
Johnson 524.
5
Johnson, 524.
6 Johnson, 526.
survive. At this point, the author of the tale begins to call him Drunken Jose.7

The switch to the Hispanicized version of his name speaks to racism and

xenophobia, a strong subtext in these missives.

The moral maneuverings of the temperance movement can be read in

tabloid stories of the day. “The Blacksmiths Bottle," reprinted in the Edinburgh

Journal, tells the tale of drunken blacksmiths through the eyes of a liquor bottle.

This bottle, named Phoenix, is passed around miraculously surviving three shop

fires and outliving his owner.8 A poem printed in The Saturday Evening Post

called “The Tippling Blacksmith” reads:

To sledge, the blacksmith by his frequent whets,

These stories, reprinted in the tabloids of the day, often originated in

religious literature. The Cheap Repository for Moral and Religious Tracts were

small, inexpensively produced publications intended to improve the morals of

the literate poor. Intended to mimic the style of the old chapbooks, they

contained morality tales instead of pop culture anecdotes. These publications

were begun by Hannah More in 1795.9 During this period, the tracts focused

mainly on religious themes and temperance. Hannah More, and the conservative

7
"Morality: The State Prison, or The Story of Drunken Jose. A Tale of Truth." Temperance
Almanac The Youth's Companion. (Aug 30, 1834): 58.
8
"The Blacksmith’s Bottle." Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, Feb.1832- Dec.1853 6, no. 261 (Jan
28, 1837): 6.
9
David Stoker. “The Later Years of the Cheap Repository.” The Papers of the Bibliographical
Society of America, Vol.111, no 3, (2017): 317.
middle-class women who distributed them, saw it as a personal mission and

worked tirelessly to write and distribute these tales. This grueling schedule

eventually caught up with More, and they ceased production of new titles in

1798.10 However, the old titles were still recycled and reprinted, so production

never completely stopped.

In 1816, spurred on by the revolutionary spirit and new uprisings of the

working class, Hannah More restarted the tracts, this time with a more political

bent.11 These repositories began as admonitions to the workers on the troubles

of drink but in their later iterations became epistles railing against workers' rights

and their fight for social justice. A poem she wrote called "The Carpenter"

began as one of these temperance morality tales but shifted with the politics of

the time. The last stanza reads:

He took advantage of the times,

The purpose of these morality tales begins to emerge when viewed through this

poem. The last stanzas certainly do not reflect Christian values, as feeding the

poor is one of the core tenets of Biblical teaching. It could be argued that these

tracts are missives designed to keep the working class in their place.

The ladies' department of the Massachusetts Ploughman and New

England Journal of Agriculture tells the tale of Antoine. “Antoine, the

10
Stoker, 322-323
11
Stoker, 335
12
Stoker, 337
blacksmith, was a sturdy fellow, and despite a stoop in his shoulders, he was

handsome too, and well made. Yet, there was a shiftiness in his eyes that made

the stoop at times look wicked.“13 A delicate woman falls in love with Antoine,

who is known for fickle passions. A few weeks later, the blacksmith meets a

woman the next town over who is handsome but "with an arm almost as able to

wield a hammer as Antoine's own." She is described as coarse and

temperamental, a perfect woman for Antoine. Antoine breaks off his

engagement to the delicate princess, but on the day he is to wed the coarse

woman, she dies. He then goes back to wooing the princess, who by then is half

dead with a broken heart. The scene ends with him digging her grave as

penance. Because the author of this tale is a wealthy man who only summers in

the village, this tale also could be seen as an example of the rich imposing their

morals on the poor.

In many ways, this was a culture war. These tracts were written in

condescendingly simple language. Their stories were short and quickly reached

the point, reinforcing that they were written for an uneducated audience. Often

the hero was a wealthy benefactor or white clergyman. By focusing on the

religious and moral aspects of these behaviors, instead of the poverty at its root,

these crusaders maintained middle-class hegemony.

13
F. E. M. Notley. "Ladies' Department: Antoine, the Blacksmith." Massachusetts Ploughman
and New England Journal of Agriculture 40, no 6 (Nov 06, 1880): 4.



Gabriel and his Revolution

Woodcut of Gabriel
 Nineteenth-century labor was heavily imbued with issues of race and

racial identity. Because blacksmithing was a typical working-class profession

necessary for producing household tools and farming implements, many

enslaved people were apprenticed to blacksmiths in order to learn the trade.

This common practice could drastically increase the enslaved person's value as

becoming a blacksmith increased James W.C. Pennington's commercial worth

to one thousand dollars.14 Owning a blacksmith could be quite lucrative for the

plantation, as they not only tended to the needs of the farm but could also be

hired out to local shops for a profit. This practice was also problematic for the

slaveholder, as it provided the enslaved person more freedom of movement and

access to the general population.15 It also engendered an artisanal identity that

situated the enslaved person within the strata of proletariat labor, raising their

class-consciousness and situational awareness.16 Gabriel was one of these

trained blacksmiths.

Born in 1776 near Richmond, Virginia, Gabriel was enslaved on the

tobacco plantation of Thomas Prosser.17 Apprenticed at a young age to a

blacksmith along with his brother Solomon, Gabriel also learned to read and

write.18 After Thomas Prosser’s death, the plantation experienced financial

14
"The Fugitive Negro Blacksmith." Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, Feb.1832- Dec.1853 no. 321
(Feb 23, 1850), 122.
15 Errol A. Henderson. "Slave Religion, Slave Hiring, and the Incipient Proletarianization of
Enslaved Black Labor: Developing Du Bois' Thesis on Black Participation in the Civil War as a
Revolution." Journal of African American Studies 19, no. 2 (2015): 207.
16 Henderson, 203.
17 Bill Barry."Gabriel's Rebellion." In St. James Encyclopedia of Labor History Worldwide, edited
by Neil Schlager, 349-352. Vol. 1. (Detroit, MI: St. James Press, 2004), 351.
18 Barry, 351.
troubles, and Gabriel was hired out to local merchants. The hiring of slaves was

illegal in Virginia, but the laws were rarely enforced.19 Businesses relied on the

cheap labor of hired out slaves and would hire them over white laborers.20 The

enslaved worker rarely received compensation for his toils, with his salary

enriching the plantation's coffers. This economic injustice contributed to

tensions amongst the enslaved workers and ultimately led to the slave revolt

known as Gabriel’s Rebellion.

This rebellion was comprised mostly of trained artisans, organized by

Gabriel through a network built during religious meetings.21 The plan to attack

the arsenal in Richmond during the summer of 1800 was ultimately foiled by

torrential rains and the confessions of co-conspirators. Gabriel and forty-four of

his conspirators were hanged, but the plot would have long-lasting

repercussions.22 Gabriel’s rebellion was critical in upending the Confederate

mythology of “the happy and submissive slave, loyal to the plantation.”23

Abolitionists argued that enslaved Africans were capable of complex intellectual

activity and able to make intricate connections. This revolt was inspired by the

uprising in Haiti and our own Revolutionary War.

It has been argued that this hiring out of enslaved people became the

main impetus for the slave revolts of Gabriel, Nat Turner, and Denmark Vassey.24

W.E.B. Du Bois further argues that the Civil War and the general strike of

19
Barry, 351.
20
Barry, 350.
21
Henderson, 201-202.
22
Barry, 351.
23
Barry, 351.
24
Henderson, 193.
enslaved people in the south was part of this lineage of revolt. Du Bois viewed

this general strike as a precursor to the workers' revolutions of the twentieth

century.25 African American workers are not traditionally mentioned in the

timelines of labor revolt. However, this general strike was also crucial to the

overall strategy of the war. By leaving the plantations and refusing to cultivate

food and crops for the Confederacy, Black workers starved the plantations of

their value.26 Lincoln even agreed that the war could not have been won without

the help of African American laborers.

Much of the employment of African Americans was related to the military,

as emancipation, in the beginning, was tied to military service.27 However, once

these freed Black workers began to enter the general labor force, it complicated

working-class labor issues. Massive debates surround the motivation for

emancipation, with even Northern Abolitionists being accused of looking for

cheap labor in both the factories and in the military. There were fears among

white workers that newly freed African Americans would flood the market with

cheap labor, resulting in lower wages for the working class.28 This fear was

heavily encouraged by plantation owners. While the relationship between Black

and white workers during the nineteenth century is a fraught topic that would

take more than a few pages to unravel, plantation owners certainly used race to

25 Henderson,194.
26
Henderson, 197.
27 Lause, 59.
28 Lause, 64.
placate white workers maintain a positive interest in slaveholding.29 As

Jonathan Glickstein states, “the same institutions that sustained slavery

continued to define and regulate race relations.”30 The institutions in power

wanted to maintain the status quo, which would be upset by an alliance of Black

and white workers. The fear amongst plantation owners and their contemporary

equivalents has always been in the unification of the worker.

It is easy to overlook the contributions of Black workers on larger labor

movements, as there is a tendency to lump these revolts into the larger narrative

surrounding slavery. As Mark Lause states, ”the civil war opened the tendency

to racilaize modes of worker resistance.”31 By entangling race and resistance, it

removes the Black worker from broader dialogues within the labor movement.

Gabriel’s rebellion began with artisans seizing the means of their production, as

well as fighting for their freedom. Looking at the civil war as a labor strike

provides new insight into the nature of nineteenth-century labor and the

revolutions that followed.

29
Lause, Mark A. Free Labor: The Civil War and the Making of an American Working Class.
(University of Illinois Press, 2015), 57.
30 Lause, 59.
31
Lause, 67.

Elihu Burritt and Abolitionism
 Revolutionary-era ideas of a pronounced difference in aptitude among

people were manifest in the mind-body dichotomy that permeated much of the

nineteenth-century discourse on labor. 32 Those performing manual tasks were

viewed as having a lower intellect.33 This view is evidenced in the emerging labor

hierarchy, which foregrounded intellectual activity and derided the manual

trades. The Confederate mythology of the feeble minded worker encouraged

their argument that slavery was necessary for the well being of the enslaved. By

denigrating labor, and laborers as less mentally fit, the status quo was able to

continue unthreatened, preserving the plantations' wealth. A challenge to this

hegemony comes through the life and work of Elihu Burritt.

Elihu Burritt defied the labor hierarchy through his work as a blacksmith

and as an abolitionist, as he was a man of both the body and the mind. A friend

of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, it has been suggested that Burritt inspired the

poem “The Village Blacksmith.” This poem is markedly different in tone from the

poem written on the comic valentine. The last two stanzas read:

Toiling,--rejoicing,--sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night's repose.

32
Jonathan A. Glickstein. Concepts of Free Labor in Antebellum America. (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1991), 5.
33
Nicholas K. Bromell. By the Sweat of the Brow: Literature and Labor in Antebellum America.
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 7.

 Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought.34

The poem speaks to the satisfaction of bodily toil, a well-earned rest for a

completed task. Burritt also romanticizes his profession. In a letter to

Longfellow, Burritt asks if he can bring his hammer on his visit to Cambridge. He

explains that that is the source of his writings: “I can assure you that my

hammer is as much predisposed to swim on the top of all my ideas as was the

axe to float on the surface of the water at the touch of the prophet.”35 Burritt

describes the balance between mind and body with equal poetry: ”I set down at

my desk and commune with my little shelf of books with a relish that indeed

makes it a recreation. I resume my hammer with equal relish and ply it with such

force and effect as give strength to my arm, make the coarsest and commonest

fare more delicious than the viands of princes, sweeten my repose-and procure

me all the gratifications of industry.”36 The sentiment of the poem is repeated in

Burritt’s description of his labors.

Burritt viewed his literary pursuits as auxiliary to his manual labor;

however, it would also seem that he was inspired by it. Burritt would study

while his irons were hearting up and mastered many languages. He came to the

34
H. W. Longfellow, “The Village Blacksmith." Liberator 10, no 50 (Dec 11, 1840): 200.
35 Merle Curti. The Learned Blacksmith; the letters and journals of Elihu Burritt.
(New York: Wilson-Erickson, incorporated, 1937), 9.
36 Curti,10.
attention of Governor Edward Everett, who dubbed him “the learned

blacksmith” and offered him a place at Harvard, which he declined. Instead of

taking the offer and rising above the profession of blacksmith, Elihu remained at

the forge. Burritt was interested in elevating the working classes, as he valued

labor and the honest living of hard work. He also believed in the right to be paid

for that work, which led him to the writings for which he is most well known.

Elihu began to work directly for abolition in 1845.37 The impetus for

Burritt’s work on abolitionism came through labor. He was deeply involved with

The North American Free Labor Produce Association, an organization begun by

Philadelphia Quakers, which worked to create paid jobs in the cotton fields.38

Through this association, Burritt was in correspondence with Harriet Beecher

Stowe, who was also in favor of the cultivation of cotton by free labor.39 This

would have ended slavery and provided jobs for both the formerly enslaved

workers and the waves of newly arriving immigrants. As the wage laborer was in

direct competition for work with the enslaved workers, this program would have

eliminated the need for such destructive competition.40 Ending the enslavement

and fighting for better wages for Black workers raises the status of all laborers.

However, these programs would have proved disastrous to plantation owners

whose economic situation depended on enslaved labor, so political

maneuverings ensured they never came to fruition.

37
Curti,118.
38 Curti,118.
39 Curti,123.
40 Curti, 118-119.
 Elihu Burritt's experience both as a scholar and a laborer inspired the

campaigning for The North American Free Labor Produce Association. This

blend of scholar and laborer was a unique combination. Many of the emergent

philosophers and writers of the labor movement expounded upon the virtues of

manual labor but refused to perform it.41 This was not true of Elihu Burritt.

Burritt says in his diaries: ”I shall covet no higher human reward for any

attainment I might make in literature or science than having stood in the lot of

the laboring man.”42 Elihu Burritt was the exception, a man both of the body and

the mind, one whose sympathies always resided with the workingman even as

his fame as a lecturer and abolitionist overshadowed his toil as a blacksmith.

41 Jonathan A. Glickstein. Concepts of Free Labor in Antebellum America. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1991, 18.
42 Curti, 10-11.
JLH Mosier and the Beginnings of Industrialization

Another factor in the changing economic status of the nineteenth-century

blacksmith was the shift from artisanal production in small-scale shops to large

scale manufacturing in factories. In his artisanal state, the blacksmith occupied

a higher status and was shifting to the role of laborer. According to Jonathan

Glickstein, “the social rank of different occupations is determined by two

essential criteria: their functional importance for society and the ability, trained

or innate, needed to fill them.”43 Blacksmiths entered the century as highly

43
Jonathan A. Glickstein. Concepts of Free Labor in Antebellum America. (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1991), 6.
trained artisans providing essential goods and services, but as those activities

shifted into more mechanized forms of production, their social status was lost.

Because they produced everything from pots and pans to farming

implements, blacksmiths were considered the bridge between artisanal shops

and modern manufacturing.44 As these shops grew, they tended to specialize in

a specific item as exampled by John Deere and his patented plow, with workers

performing rote tasks repeatedly. The early nineteenth-century blacksmith was a

problem solver, a skilled craftsman, even when he was performing the repair

tasks that constituted the stock and trade of many small shops. The later

blacksmith was reduced to copying already established patterns. The move

away from hand-produced artisanal objects reduced the worker to a cog in the

newly forming industrial machine.45 We can trace this shift through the life of

JLH Mosier, a blacksmith, and carriage maker.

JLH Mosier was a fourth-generation blacksmith who entered into the

carriage making trade in New York City in the 1850s, then a center of carriage

manufacture.46 There was a strong market in the south for "pleasure carriages,"

which were carefully handcrafted, ornately decorated, and built for cruising

around town.47 These “pleasure carriages” sustained a multitude of small New

York shops until the Civil War destroyed the southern market. These small

44
Jeremy Atack and Robert A. Margo. "Gallman Revisited: Blacksmithing and American
Manufacturing, 1850–1870." Cliometrica 13, no. 1 (01, 2019): 17.
45
Harry Braverman. Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth
Century. 25th Anniversary ed. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998), 119
46
Kinney, Thomas A. ""At Home in the Smith-Shop": The Remarkable Career of J.L.H. Mosier,
Carriage Blacksmith." The Chronicle of the Early American Industries Association, Inc. 61, no. 4
(12, 2008): 133.
47 Kinney, 134.
artisanal shops were also slowly being replaced by the late1850s. Even the

carriage trade in the larger shops was becoming organized based on a division

of labor more akin to factory production than artisanal craft.48

Mosier worked for Brewer and Company Carriage makers, who employed

over 100 blacksmiths in their carriage shop in the 1870s.49 In the beginning, the

carriages were built by hand, with considerable variations in quality depending

on the metalsmith producing the work. This variation was fixed by incorporating

standardization of components and processes with each worker responsible for

a specific piece.50 Mosier was adaptable and well organized and rose through

the ranks, becoming an assistant superintendent, which kept the master artisan

away from the rote tasks now required of the laboring blacksmiths.51

Mosier was a founding member of the Guild of Carriage makers, which

began in 1875.52 The relationship of these large-scale manufacturing operations

to guilds establishes them well within artisanal methods of production, as craft

guilds have been protecting workers since the Middle Ages. Like our artisanal

blacksmith, these craft communities were based on traditional methods of

production and tended towards conservative ideas. Protecting their traditional

ways was a means of fighting industrialization. These craft guilds also served as

de facto social services in an era before more widespread governmental

protections. Mosier was interested in passing on knowledge and providing for

48
Kinney, 134.
49
Kinney, 135
50
Kinney, 136.
51 Kinney, 134.
52
Kinney, 139
the workers of his company. It has been argued that many of the contemporary

labor movements arose, not out of the factories but out of artisanal shops, as a

means of protecting these small enterprises rather than fighting for the rights of

workers.53

The blacksmith, like much of artisanal craft, was being usurped by large

scale production. Huge factories led to a booming carriage industry in the 1870s

and 1880s. The industry hit its peak at the turn of the century with the work

happening in more industrial factories and the automotive industry, making

carriage making obsolete. JLH Mosier, by 1892, had retired from labor and

nearly outlived the carriage making trade as the automobile took over. No longer

needed for the shoeing of horses or the repair and manufacture of carriages, the

blacksmith became a side act, relegated to historical reenactments and artistic

production. His replacement traded the forge for the acetylene tank, and later

the MIG welder. His hammer became an increasingly complex array of

pneumatic tools, plane brakes, and shears. The blacksmith's changing role

places him at the crossroads of modernity.

53
Craig Calhoun. The Roots of Radicalism: Tradition, the Public Sphere, and Early Nineteenth-
Century Social Movements. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 193.