Conservative innovators and military small arms: An industrial history of the Springfield Armory, 1794-1968
Raber MS, Malone PM, Gordon RB, Cooper CC, Raber Associates. 1989. Conservative innovators and military small arms: An industrial history of the Springfield Armory, 1794-1968
This report is perhaps best described as a case study in American industrial history, treating the Springfield Armory as a very unusual factory system. Through most of its history, the Armory had one customer and one principal job: to supply the U.S. Army with reliable, powerful shoulder arms. In this role, Springfield's longstanding—if uneven—federal funding through many economic crises, the peculiarities of Army small arms demands, and, perhaps, the power of Armory workers in shop management all contrast with the histories of most private industries. If unusual, however, the Armory was hardly irrelevant or tangential to the development of American industry, especially prior to the Civil War. Historians have long recognized this government factory's central place in economic and industrial history, and if anything have often overstated the case. The lack of any comprehensive study of Springfield Armory has therefore been something of a gap in that history, a gap which we are bridging—although not filling--with this report.