World’s FairsFound, not built?
HypothesesWhere were the skilled hands?

Hypothesis #15 of 20

Where were the skilled hands?

Emerging14 supporting entries

Strength is how much of our gathered material lines up with the pattern. It is not the odds that the idea is true.

The working idea

Where the record does name the workforce, it keeps saying the same thing: the skills had to be imported (Scottish granite cutters, German and Irish masons) or forced (convicts). Yet the same decades are credited with thousands of carved stone buildings across small towns. Common sense: if Texas had to send to Scotland for 86 stonecutters, who was cutting stone for every county courthouse and capitol at the same time? One possibility is that far fewer buildings were cut new than the record implies, and many crews were finishing, repairing or refacing existing stonework.

Strongest examples

Texas State CapitolCutters from Scotland and convict labour, on the record.Alexander Column600 tonnes stood upright in under two hours in 1832.Horse teams and about 30 workersAbout 30 workers and a few horse teams in front of a palace-scale building.

The evidence

Workforce, material or tonnage facts on record that strain a local workforce

14

14 entries

'Does it add up?' scores with a mason factor

Texas masons 7 → 9 and Biltmore 3 → 4 under the proposed census sub-rule (see mismatchUpdates); Trans-Allegheny unchanged at 4

3 entries

Recorded crews against the census

Texas: 86 Scottish cutters = 5.2% of all 1,668 masons and stonecutters in Texas (1880), and 20.2% of the state's 426 marble and stone cutters in 1900. Biltmore: 60 stonemasons = 3.4% of North Carolina's 1,756 masons (1900).

2 entries

Brick arithmetic (cited rate: 800 to 1,000 common bricks per mason per day)

Fort Pulaski 25 million bricks = 25,000–31,250 mason-days of laying; 1,389–1,736 mason-days a year if spread evenly over 18 years. Fort Jefferson 16 million = 16,000–20,000 mason-days of laying; 552–690 mason-days a year if spread evenly over 29 years.

Laying only; see laborEstimates for what this leaves out.

2 entries

Stonecutters are the thin trade, not masons

Among the pair states in 1900, marble and stone cutters number 41 (Mississippi), 44 (Idaho), 138 (Montana), 155 (Oregon), 238 (Washington), 426 (Texas), against 186 (Idaho) to 1,909 (Texas) 'masons' proper in the same six states. The 1880 tables don't separate them.

1 entries
  • Occupations/1900-Table-32US Census

What the census says

Counts of carpenters, masons, stonecutters, plasterers and iron workers, read from the printed US Census occupation tables. State counts cover the whole state, not the town.

Where it cuts against the hypothesis

  • Still emerging (14). The census adds context rather than support: masons were plentiful at state level; the open part is skilled cutting and carving, and town-level crews.
  • State census counts already show large pools of masons (hundreds to tens of thousands per state, 1880 and 1900) and carpenters, so a general shortage of builders is not supported at state level.
  • Where a crew is recorded (Texas, Biltmore) it is a small share of the state's masons, and the brick arithmetic for the two big forts works out to a modest crew over the recorded years.

Crews and the census

Brick rate used: A mason in one day will lay from 800 to 1,000 common bricks, or 300 to 400 face bricks. Source ↗

  • Fort PulaskiCockspur Island, Georgia

    25,000–31,250 mason-days of laying; 1,389–1,736 mason-days a year if spread evenly over 18 years.

    On the brick count alone the job is large but not beyond a modest crew over the recorded years. The open questions for these forts are the sites (marsh island, coral key 70 miles out) and where the bricks were made, not the laying rate.

    Counts laying only, at the common-brick rate. It leaves out brickmaking, shipping, mortar, foundations, arches and the labourer each mason needs. No working-days-per-year figure is applied, so this is not turned into a crew size. Census counts of masons in Georgia (1829–47) and Florida (1846–75) were not sourced, so no local comparison is made.

  • Fort JeffersonDry Tortugas, Florida

    16,000–20,000 mason-days of laying; 552–690 mason-days a year if spread evenly over 29 years.

    On the brick count alone the job is large but not beyond a modest crew over the recorded years. The open questions for these forts are the sites (marsh island, coral key 70 miles out) and where the bricks were made, not the laying rate.

    Counts laying only, at the common-brick rate. It leaves out brickmaking, shipping, mortar, foundations, arches and the labourer each mason needs. No working-days-per-year figure is applied, so this is not turned into a crew size. Census counts of masons in Georgia (1829–47) and Florida (1846–75) were not sourced, so no local comparison is made.

  • Texas State CapitolAustin
    • Texas, 1880: 1,668 brick and stone masons, marble and stone cutters in the whole state (1880 Table XXXIV, printed p. 847). 86 imported cutters = 5.2% of that count.
    • Texas, 1900: 426 marble and stone cutters statewide (1900 Table 32). 86 = 20.2% of the 1900 cutters, twelve years after the capitol was finished.

    Texas did have stoneworkers (1,668 masons and cutters in 1880), yet the builders still brought 86 cutters from Scotland. That fits a shortage of granite cutters specifically, not of masons in general.

  • Biltmore HouseAsheville, North Carolina
    • North Carolina, 1900: 1,756 masons (brick and stone) and 415 marble and stone cutters statewide (1900 Table 32). 60 stonemasons = 3.4% of the state's 1900 masons. (1890 North Carolina figures not sourced.)
    • Biltmore is Indiana limestone, not brick, so no brick-rate estimate is made.

    A crew of 60 is a small share of the state's masons.

  • Trans-Allegheny Lunatic AsylumWeston, West Virginia
    • West Virginia, 1880: 1,059 brick and stone masons, marble and stone cutters statewide; Weston itself had 1,516 people (1880 census, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weston,_West_Virginia). Weston town counts not sourced.
    • West Virginia, 1900: 1,626 masons and 499 marble and stone cutters statewide.

    No crew size is recorded, so no ratio can be made.

  • Trans-Mississippi and International ExpositionOmaha 1898
    • Omaha city, 1900 (males): 1,364 carpenters and joiners, 423 masons (brick and stone), 139 plasterers, 94 marble and stone cutters, 244 iron and steel workers (1900 Table 43, printed pp. 664 and 666).
    • Nebraska, 1900: 7,329 carpenters, 1,701 masons, 692 plasterers statewide.

    The fair palaces were staff (plaster and fibre) over frames, so carpenters and plasterers are the relevant trades. Without a recorded crew size there is nothing to divide.

31 census counts, by state and city
What the census volumes could not tell us

  • Town- or county-level counts for the small towns (Weston, Athens, Fergus Falls, Traverse City, Ovid/Willard, Napa, Salem OR, Milledgeville, Lansing, Austin, Jackson, Boise, Olympia, Helena, Frankfort, Jefferson City, Leadville, Asheville) in any year 1850–1900

    The printed census volumes only break occupations down by city for the largest cities (1870 and 1880: 50 principal cities; 1890: cities of 25,000+ in Table 118; 1900: cities of 25,000+ in Table 42). None of these towns was big enough. County counts would need IPUMS full-count microdata, which needs an account, so they are left blank.

  • 1850, 1860 and 1870 state counts

    The 1870 census.gov PDFs we downloaded (1870a-34 to 40) have no text layer and were not read page by page in this pass; 1850 and 1860 volumes were not downloaded. Left blank.

  • 1890 state and city counts

    The 1890 Population Part II volumes were downloaded, but their state occupation tables did not come through in the text layer and were not read from images in this pass. Table 118 (cities of 50,000+) is in section 5; of the pair towns only Omaha and Lincoln were that size in 1890, and the table was not read from images in this pass. Left blank.

  • Seattle 1900 city counts; Springfield 1900 carpenters

    Too faint in the census.gov scan to read every digit (see 'legibility').

  • Stone carvers and bricklayers as separate trades

    Neither is its own line in these tables: bricklayers fall inside 'Masons (brick and stone)', and carvers are not split out from 'Marble and stone cutters'. Left blank rather than guessed.

  • UK and Canada equivalents (e.g. Holloway Sanatorium, Colney Hatch, Ottawa, Victoria BC)

    Not sourced in this pass. Left blank.

Open questions

  • State counts are now in. What were the town and county counts of masons, stonecutters and carvers in the build years (IPUMS full-count data)?
  • Where were the training yards for the carvers of 250 City Hall sculptures?
  • Why do the few named workforces look so small for the job?

What would support it

  • Town or county occupation counts far below what the square footage needs, with no record of camps or imported crews.
  • Few or no apprenticeship and guild records for carvers in the towns that got the most ornate buildings.
  • Stonecutter counts (the thin trade in 1900) that stay small through the years when the most carved stone went up.

What would rule it out

  • State census counts already show large pools of masons (hundreds to tens of thousands per state, 1880 and 1900) and carpenters, so a general shortage of builders is not supported at state level.
  • Where a crew is recorded (Texas, Biltmore) it is a small share of the state's masons, and the brick arithmetic for the two big forts works out to a modest crew over the recorded years.
  • Well-documented travelling contractors and pre-cut stone shipped by rail from big quarry towns.

Selection bias

Medium: workforce facts are only recorded for some buildings, so this is a sample of the cases where someone wrote it down.

The rating counts how much of our gathered material lines up with the pattern. It is not a probability that the hypothesis is true, and every count is limited by which buildings were picked for the app (see 'selectionBias' on each card).

Next hypothesis

Emerging13 entries#16The records go with the fireAgain and again, the fire that takes a building also takes the papers: city archives, land records, a state library, a nation's record office, the census for the fair years. Common sense says if you wanted to know who held the land, who lived there and who built what, these are exactly the records you'd need, and they're exactly the ones that are gone. The possibility is that the gaps in the record are not random.

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