1. John West Rulon & Sons, A Philadelphia Story.
Removing the document from its plastic storage envelope, the text of this entry of merchandise written in Spencerian script reveals the December 16, 1866 record of the ship Propontis, which carried ten chests of Madras indigo and was owned by a man whose name I couldn't initially read (fig. 1). After flipping the document over and over, comparing “o”s and “i”s on the handwritten company names at the top center front and middle back of the paper record, I felt confident that this mystery Philadelphia importer was named John W. Rulon, and his company J.W. Rulon & Sons (fig. 1, 2, 3). But who was John W. Rulon, what did the family have to do with Philadelphia textiles and indigo?
Luckily record keeping runs in the family, and John W. Rulon, like cousin John C. Rulon, who published their family history called The Rulon Family and Their Descendants in 1870, two years before John W.’s death, held on to his papers that now reside with The Historical Society of Pennsylvania—except this one. As the family story goes per John C. Rulon, a Huguenot protestant Rulon brother was put in a hogshead and placed on a ship full of merchandise headed towards America from France to escape persecution. A fitting beginning for the story of this mercantile family of Philadelphia, whose 1866 indigo import took place some 162 years after a first Rulon is confirmed to have been born in Monmouth County, New Jersey in 1704.[1] This Rulon, David, the son of the original Huguenot refugee, was himself a textile worker. A 1734 land deed in the possession of one David C. Rulon states that David was a weaver and John West Rulon’s great grandfather.[2]
This document is from a period mostly outside of the scope of the John W. Rulon Papers. While they range in scope from 1807-1861, there is only one entry after 1844 which is a note to a German bookseller in Philadelphia. There is some mystery as to what became the bread and butter of J. W. Rulon & Sons because of this, but this entry of merchandise reveals one continuity in the family’s trade: Indigo. While the John W. Rulon Papers reveal a diverse range of imported commodities—from live exotic animals for sale and exhibition to luxury silks—indigo makes its first appearance early on in the 1830s during a time period when Rulon was travelling between Calcutta and Philadelphia frequently.[3] Initially, Rulon’s indigo trade centered in Calcutta during the period he was incorporated with his cousin Samuel W. Archer from 1829 until 1833, when the partnership ended.[4] When Rulon reincorporated with a business partner and friend, Thomas Richards, under Rulon & Richards from the beginning of 1834 until 1840, he was still importing mainly from Calcutta to Philadelphia with the same general merchandise including indigo. In a March 20, 1835 letter to Rulon & Archer a colleague Charles Huffnagle describes a litany of deals on animals including rhinoceros parts and a “shocking” indigo account, meaning what exactly we do not know, though the correspondence of these men made up a web-like trade network between Philadelphia, Calcutta, Canton and Liverpool.[5]
While there is a gap in Rulon’s records after 1844 to 1861 detailing a full history of his indigo trade, the 1866 entry of merchandise demonstrates that at some point Rulon ceased importing indigo from Calcutta in the then British-ruled Bengal Presidency, turning to southern India’s Madras by 1866 or before. This supply shift is likely indicative of how Rulon’s business was affected by changes in indigo labor following the Indigo Revolt of 1859 which led to reforms instituted by the Indigo Commission of 1860.[6] As Subhas Bhattacharya wrote of comments given at the opening of the Bengali colonial government’s Indigo Commission, no indigo that passed through Great Britain was unstained by blood.[7] In the case of Rulon’s 1866 indigo import, it seems reasonable that these 10 chests of the dyestuff shows this business move away from the familiarity of Calcutta towards a less embroiled Madras via Liverpool.
In fact, the results of the Indigo Commission did lead to a market shift in indigo prices across the Indian Subcontinent which are reflected in this document. As the colonial Bengal Government resolved to make Bengali planting monopolists pay the raiyat laborers more for their work, the inhabitants of the lower part of the region became less inclined to take on the indigo production let go by the planters of central Bengal, as its cultivating season was in conflict with other crop rotations.[8] As a result, raiyats in Madras and Upper India (Behar) took on the work at the lower pay their fellow workers in Bengal fought against, effectively transferring the center of the indigo industry south to Madras where production in the thirty years from 1855-1885 rose from 1,270 tons to 6,500 tons.[9] While contemporary questions of moral economy look back at shifts in the indigo trade and suggest that sympathetic actors in Indian colonial government and the West played a role in changing the market, Rulon’s family owned company appears to have made a calculated economic choice to shift its sourcing to Madras which was possible due to their smaller, more nimble structure and the fluidity of the Philadelphia industrial model which had solidified by 1866.[10]
2. The Philadelphia Format: A Family Affair.
By the time that Rulon imported this shipment of Madras indigo in December of 1866, the Philadelphia textile manufacturing landscape had become a diverse, booming trade that developed differently to other industrial centers. Oftentimes when we think of the textile industry booming in the early to mid 1800s, the Lowell Mill Girls first spring to mind. While slavery in the North had never come to dominate its economy like that of the South, cheap labor was the way to go when it came to industrial textile production and expansion. As Eric Loomis opens “Lowell Mill Girls and the Development of American Capitalism” from A History of America in Ten Strikes: “When Christopher Columbus stumbled across the Americas in 1492, he had specific ideas about work, who would do it, and who would benefit.”[11] So did the Boston Associates, a loose-linked group of wealthy barons who created the Lowell Mills, whose workers suffered horrible wages, grueling hours and unsafe working conditions for the owners economic benefit.[12] Or, as the AFL-CIO puts it, Lowell was a “living hell” against which the famous Lowell Mill Girls stuck.[13]
But the textile world which the Rulons supplied with dyestuffs and other materials in Philadelphia has a different origin story not as marred by the spectre of inhuman industrial capitalism—though the J. W. Rulon was certainly an opportunist in his choice of merchandise as we’ve seen. As Lowell picked up its pace, small manufacturing companies set up by families were popping up as a rule rather than an exception in the Rockdale area of Delaware County for example, southwest of Philadelphia in the 1830s, opening and shutting down in rented factories which changed hands often.[14] At the same time, the Rulon import business was undergoing transformations rapidly as previously mentioned, reincorporating twice from 1829 to 1840. In this way, the textile industry’s history in Philadelphia and the story of the Rulon businesses follow a linked pattern of growth and change—the latter responding to the former. Sometime at the beginning of 1823 or before, John West Rulon married Ann Burr, with whom he had 6 children and two sons—Samuel Archer Rulon in 1827 and John West Rulon Jr. in 1832. These boys are the “and Sons” which appear on the 1866 entry of merchandise.[15]
This fractured system of local business gave way to what Philip Scranton calls the crystallized “Philadelphia format,” or a diversified, skills-based and smaller-scale operation working with a diverse group of immigrant and local workers—and by the 1850s, that was the settled path of Philadelphia textiles and the Rulon family business itself.[16] In 1851, John W. Rulon incorporated with his two sons just a year after John Jr. turned 18.[17] This practice of family capitalism was a key to success across the textile industry in Philadelphia for families like the Rulons and others like the Schofields who worked in tight manufacturing communities like Manayunk, establishing control across weaving and dyeing after the Civil War by consolidating the smaller businesses of the 1830-1850s like the Blantyre Mills built in 1847 (fig. 4).[18] The time period of this particular 1866 entry of merchandise suggests that like Manayunk textile manufacturing, John W. Rulon and Sons survived the Civil War’s market depression with its family values intact.[19]This ability to ebb and flow with shifts in the industry provided the groundwork for Rulon to be able to do the same in regards to indigo imports suggesting that sometimes, business and family do mix.
Notes
[1] Rulon, John C.. The Rulon Family and Their Descendants. (Lineaweaver & Wallace, Printers, Philadelphia, 1870): 3-4.
[2] Rulon, John C.. The Rulon Family and Their Descendants. (Lineaweaver & Wallace, Printers, Philadelphia, 1870). 4.
[3] Smith, Steven. Collection 1691: John W. Rulon (1799-1872) Papers. Philadelphia, PA: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, August, 2003: 3.
[4] Smith, Steven. Collection 1691: John W. Rulon (1799-1872) Papers: 2.
[5] Smith, Steven. Collection 1691: John W. Rulon (1799-1872) Papers: 3.
[6] Bhattacharya, Subhas. “The Indigo Revolt of Bengal,” Social Scientist 5, no. 12 (July 1977):13, https://doi.org/10.2307/3516809.
[7] Subhas Bhattacharya, “The Indigo Revolt of Bengal,” Social Scientist 5, no. 12 (July 1977): 13. https://doi.org/10.2307/3516809.
[8] Asiaticus. “The Rise and Fall of the Indigo Industry in India.” The Economic Journal 22, no. 86 (1912): 244-45. https://doi.org/10.2307/2221777.
[9] Asiaticus. “The Rise and Fall of the Indigo Industry in India”. 245.
[10] Ghildiyal, Sanjay. “Moral Economy and the Indigo Movement.” Economic and Political Weekly 45, no. 8 (2010): 67–72. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25664144.
[11] Loomis, Eric. “Lowell Mill Girls and the Development of American Capitalism” in A History of America in Ten Strikes. (2018). 12. Loomis doesn’t touch much on Pennsylvania other than to say that Benjamin Franklin famously ran away to Philadelphia; However, there is a synergy in industrial approaches between cities like New York, Paterson, New Jersey, and Boston which leaves Philadelphia somewhat remarkable. Perhaps this is due to Philadelphia not residing on the coast or in connection to coastal cities, residing on the Delaware River rather than the Hudson with its northern connectivity via canals.
[12] Scranton, Philip. “Textile Manufacture in Corporate Lowell and Rural Rockdale” in Proprietary Capitalism: The Textile Manufacture at Philadelphia, 1800-1885.
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 12-20.
[13]AFL-CIO, “Lowell Mill Women Create the First Union of Working Women | AFL-CIO,” Aflcio.org, 2009, https://aflcio.org/about/history/labor-history-events/lowell-mill-women-form-union.
[14] Scranton. “Textile Manufacture in Corporate Lowell and Rural Rockdale”. 36-37.
[15] Rulon, John C.. The Rulon Family and Their Descendants. (Lineaweaver & Wallace, Printers, Philadelphia, 1870): 13. John West Rulon was a fourth generation Rulon of the Philadelphia-based branch of the family which also had members in New Jersey around Trenton, where the John C. Rulon House in Swedesboro, Gloucester County is now part of the National Register of Historic Places.
[16] Scranton. “Textile Manufacture in Corporate Lowell and Rural Rockdale”. 41.
[17] Smith, Steven. Collection 1691: John W. Rulon (1799-1872) Papers: 1.
[18] John R. Bowie, “Blantyre Mills,” Workshopoftheworld.com (Oliver Evans Press, 2007), https://www.workshopoftheworld.com/manayunk/blantyre.html. This website comprises a digitally adapted version of WORKSHOP OF THE WORLD—A Selective Guide to the Industrial Archeology of Philadelphia © Oliver Evans Press, 1990, edited by John R. Bowie.
[19] Scranton. “Textile Manufacture in Corporate Lowell and Rural Rockdale”. 41, 246.
[20] Scranton. “Sevill Schofield and the networks of family capitalism”. 56.
Bibliography
Asiaticus. “The Rise and Fall of the Indigo Industry in India.” The Economic Journal 22, no. 86 (1912): 237–47. https://doi.org/10.2307/2221777.
Bhattacharya, Subhas. “The Indigo Revolt of Bengal.” Social Scientist 5, no. 12 (July 1977): 13-23. https://doi.org/10.2307/3516809.
Gandhi, Gopalkrishna. “The Colour Blue.” India International Centre Quarterly 35, no. 1 (2008): 1–9. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23006282.
Ghildiyal, Sanjay. “Moral Economy and the Indigo Movement.” Economic and Political Weekly 45, no. 8 (2010): 67–72. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25664144.
Kumar, Prakash. “Plantation Science: Improving Natural Indigo in Colonial India, 1860–1913.” The British Journal for the History of Science 40, no. 4 (2007): 537–65. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087407000027.
Loomis, Eric. “Lowell Mill Girls and the Development of American Capitalism” in A History of America in Ten Strikes. (2018).
Philadelphia Custom House Records, 1779-1934, undated, 1.. Philadelphia Custom House records, MSS 0781. University of Delaware Library Special Collections. https://findingaids.lib.udel.edu/repositories/2/resources/1598
Ritter, Abraham. Philadelphia and Her Merchants. Philadelphia, 1860. https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735056285319
Rulon, John C.. The Rulon Family and Their Descendants. Lineweaver & Wallace, Printers, Philadelphia, 1870. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Rulon_Family_and_Their_Descendants/D7FOAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA13&printsec=frontcover
University of Pittsburgh. “Benjamin Morgan Brackenridge from John W. Rulon (LB# 7).” In Henry Marie Brackenridge and Family Papers. December 18, 1852.
Scranton, Philip. Proprietary Capitalism: The Textile Manufacture at Philadelphia, 1800-1885.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
https://archive.org/details/proprietarycapit0000scra/page/n7/mode/2up.
Smith, S. D. “The Market for Manufactures in the Thirteen Continental Colonies, 1698-1776.” The Economic History Review 51, no. 4 (1998): 676–708. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2599568.
Smith, Steven. Collection 1691: John W. Rulon (1799-1872) Papers. Philadelphia, PA: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, August, 2003. https://hsp.org/sites/default/files/legacy_files/migrated/findingaid1691rulon.pdf
Figure 1: Front view, December 16th, 1866 Madras indigo entry of merchandise by J.W. Rulon & Sons. It features the name of the document supplier, John C. Clark & Son, which was filled out by John West Rulon, as it is signed by the proprietor on the reverse. It is folded in several places, once in half vertically and twice thereafter, forming a slip with this documentation on the interior, despite the fact that it appears to have been folded incorrectly at some point as visible at the seams. The entry accounts for “10 Chests Madras Indigo” for what appears to be a price of “£230.15.10” and would have corresponded to the pre-decimal currency system used by the United Kingdom until 1971. It is not clear whether this is the paid price, as further numbers are listed as “111.90” at the bottom right quadrant of the entry. However, as the ship arrived from Liverpool, England and carried merchandise from British India, it makes sense that the transaction would have been recorded in Pounds, not dollars.
Figure 2: Reverse view, December 16th, 1866 Madras indigo entry of merchandise by J.W. Rulon & Sons. At the reverse of the document, a bottom center panel lists what appears to be a transaction identification, followed by the ship’s name, called Propontis, the company name, “Cash”, and further identifying numbers. This appears on the face of the document which would have been left out after folding, despite the fact that it would appear to be interior upon folding. This is because in its present state, the fold along the middle of the document is reversed to what it would have been as evident based on viewing in person—the darkness in the centerfold suggests exposure as an exterior edge versus an interior fold as seen on the same fold at the front view of the document. Written details also confirm that the Propontis was a steam ship.
Figure 3: Close up, December 16th, 1866 Madras indigo entry of merchandise by J.W. Rulon & Sons. A reverse center panel close-up, showing the details which would have been visible for recordkeeping when folded properly. This text also aided in confirming the name of the company as its “J.W. Rulon & Sons” script is far clearer and larger than the examples at other parts of the document on both front and back. The darkened edges from exposure via folding are clearer here at the folds and in the crease.
Figure 4: Hexamer General Survey #1410 (1879), "Blantyre Mills, Sevill Schofield." This plan details an expansion and redevelopment of the Manayunk located Blantyre Mills which Schofield purchased a year after this document’s commission, in 1880. Schofield came up in the 1850s as the Philadelphia format was solidified and participated in the repurposing of older, smaller enterprises by bringing in English machine looms and working across the production process of textiles from weaving to dyeing.[20]
Thank you to textile historian Sarah Byrd for allowing me to view and study this object in her collection while at NYU.