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Industrial Revolution in the US
1800-1860
- a. 1800: US= agrarian with no cities over 100,000 people and 6/7 were farmers
- b. 1860: growth from 5-30 million people, half in Appalachian Mountains
- i. 34 states; 9 cities with 100,000+; 50% farmers
- ii. Experienced Industrial Revolution and urbanization
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Machinery
- a. Machinery to production applied (borrowed from Brits)
- i. Brit immigrant: Samuel Slater
- 1. Established first textile factory using water powered spinning machines in Rhode Island in 1790
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1813
- i. 1813: factories with power looms adopted from British, but soon Americans surpassed them
- 1. Harpers Ferry arsenal built muskets with interchangeable parts
- a. Final product put together easily; cheaper
- b. Revolutionized production by saving labor
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Need for Transportation
- i. US=large
- ii. Lack of good internal transportation system limited economic development by making transport of goods expensive
- 1. Deficiency remedied by steamboat, railroad, and new roads and canals
- a. Steamboat eased transportation in Great Lakes, Atlantic Coastal Waters, and rivers
- i. Important to Mississippi valley
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Most important: railroad
- i. Most important: railroad: 100 miles (1830)-27000 (1860)
- 1. Transportation revolution turned US into single massive market for manufactured goods of Northeast, early center of American industrialization
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Labor Force
- i. Labor from rural areas
- ii. US didn’t have large amount of craftspeople, but had growing farming population, where there wasn’t enough land
- 1. Some of excess population went west, others went into factories of New England
- a. Women: more than 80% of work force
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Labor Force: Massachusetts
- a. In Massachusetts mill towns, company boarding houses gave rooms for women who worked several years before marriage
- b. Outside Mass., factory owners sought entire families
- i. When decline in rural births threatened to dry up labor pool in 1830s and ‘40s, European immigrants replaced women and children
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Unskilled women, children, and immigrants
- i. Women, children, and immigrants were all unskilled
- 1. This unskilled labor pushed American industrialization into capital- intensive pattern
- 2. Factory owners invested on machines that could produce in quantity at hands of untrained works
- a. In Britain, the pace was never rapid because Britain’s supply of skilled artisans made it more profitable to pursue labor intensive economy
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1860: US
- i. 1860: US on way to being industrial
- 1. NE: most industrialized section of the country; per capita income was 40% higher than national average
- a. Diets were better and more varied
- b. Machine-made clothing more abundant
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Industrialization
- i. Industrialization didn’t lessen economic disparities
- 1. Despite belief in myth of social mobility based on equality of economic opportunity, richest 10% of population held 70-80% wealth, unlike 1800 (50%)
- a. Although rich got richer, the poor didn’t get poorer
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