AMERICA’S ECONOMIC
REVOLUTION
APUSH
Lecture 3B
(covers Ch. 10)
Mrs. Kray
IMPACT OF THE EARLY INDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION ON AMERICA
 The early Industrial Revolution occurred primarily
in the North states and sharpened the division
between the North and South
 Causes of the “market revolution”
 Large supply of labor
 Improvements in transportation
 Development of corporations
 Mechanical innovations
 Development of the factory system
THE CHANGING
AMERICAN POPULATION
POPULATION SURGE
Causes
High birth rate**
After 1830,
immigration
increasingly important
 45% of immigrants Irish
 Came b/c of potato famine
 Low skill, poor, settled in eastern
cities
 20% of immigrants German
 Drawn by Revolution of 1848
 Middle class, educated, many
settled in Midwest, anti-slavery
A steadily increasing population meant a
steady supply of new labor for the
factories and new consumers for the
products those factories made.
RISE IN NATIVISM
Nativism = movement hostile to foreigners
and their culture
Recurring theme in American history
Know-Nothing Party
Did well in the election of 1854
TRANSPORTATION,
COMMUNICATIONS, AND
TECHNOLOGY
GROWTH OF TURNPIKES
 1790s-1820s = Turnpike
Era
 Cumberland Road,
Lancaster Turnpike
Cumberland
Road
Lancaster
Turnpike
aka National Road
 By mid-1820s these
short roads connected
most of the nation’s
cities
 Supporters of states’
rights blocked spending
of federal funds on
internal improvements
 Monroe’s vetoes, Jackson’s
Maysville Road veto
ERIE CANAL, 1825
 It’s successful completion stimulated a canal
building craze from 1820s-1830s.
 Linked western farms more closely to eastern
cities
RAILROAD BOOM
 After the 1830s, railroad became the main form of
transportation for people and products
 Impact of all these transportation improvements:
 Lower food prices
 More westward migration
 Closer link between West and North
NEW TECHNOLOGIES STIMULATE
INDUSTRIALIZATION
Robert Fulton’s steam engine
Eli Whitney’s cotton
gin and
interchangeable
parts
COMMERCE AND
INDUSTRY
COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY
 The emerging capitalist economy produced enormous
wealth which affected groups differently
 Innovative entrepreneurs organized businesses more
productively
 Created corporations
 Allowed businesses to pool resources
 Limited liability – stock holders only risked
losing the money they had invested
 Retail stores began to specialize
 Lack of government regulation led to bank failures
and financial instability throughout the period
THE FACTORY SYSTEM
 Focused in the Northeast
 First textile factory established 1791
 Samuel Slater secretly smuggled the plans in from Britain
 The Factory System grows
 Embargo of 1807 and War of 1812 stimulated domestic manufacturing
 Protective tariffs allowed domestic manufacturing to prosper
 Growth of factories stimulated the growth of other industries like
banking and insurance
 Industrial capitalists replaced merchant capitalists as
America’s new upper class
MEN AND WOMEN AT
WORK
FINDING WORKERS FOR THE
FACTORIES
 Most factory workers were
originally farmers
 More productive Midwestern farms
and improved transportation
pushed people out of farming in
less productive areas like the
Northeast
 2 patterns emerged:
 Families might work in factories
 introduced child labor with
parental supervision
 The Lowell System
 The early factories relied heavily
on women and children
A CLOSER LOOK AT THE
LOWELL SYSTEM
 System began in Mass.
 Employed young, single farm women
 worked in the factories and lived in
boarding houses
 Worked several years, saved wages,
returned home to marry
 Factory owners tried to provide a “clean
moral environment”
 Work was difficult and wages and
working conditions steadily declined
 Women eventually replaced by
immigrant workers
LIFE IN THE FACTORIES
 Widespread worker discontent with long hours, low
pay, and dangerous working conditions
 After 1840, immigrants provided large pool of cheap
labor for growing factory economy and internal
improvement projects
 Irish immigrants flooded New England -- With few skills and
plagued by anti-Irish prejudice, they worked for low wages and
under poor conditions which further deteriorated the already poor
general working conditions
THE BIRTH OF LABOR UNIONS
 Trade unions had been around
since the 1790s
 Skilled artisans saw their
economic and social positions
decline as less expensive
manufactured goods replaced
hand-crafted ones
 Organized into unions to defend
their status
 Major goal of was a 10-hour
work day
 Early unions saw little success
OBSTACLES TO UNION SUCCESS
State laws outlawed unions
• 1842: Commonwealth v. Hunt – Mass. Supreme
Court declared unions were lawful & strikes legal
Immigrant replacement workers available
• Unions often excluded women & immigrants
Frequent economic depressions with high
unemployment weakened the movement
• Panic of 1837
PATTERNS OF
INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
THE END OF SELF-SUFFICIENCY
 Specialization on the farm, the growth of cities,
industrialization, & the development of modern
capitalism meant a growing interdependence among
people
Workers
provided farmers
with mass
produced goods
Farmers
fed the
workers in
the cities
Specialization on the farm, the growth of cities,
industrialization, and the development of modern capitalism
meant a growing interdependence among people
Workers provided
farmers with
mass produced
goods
Farmers
fed the
workers in
the cities
THE RICH AND THE POOR
 Income increased dramatically for all Americans but
income distribution remained unequal
 1860: 5% of families owned 50% of the nation’s wealth
 Immigrant groups and free blacks faced prejudice
 “Last hired, first fired”; Used as strikebreakers
 Absolute standard of living for most workers improved
 Middle-class expanded; avoided social unrest found in Europe
 Greater chance for economic & social mobility than in
Europe
 Western lands provided a safety value
CHARACTERISTICS OF WORKINGCLASS NEIGHBORHOODS
Crowded
Unsanitary
High Crime
Diseases
THE CHANGING FAMILY
 Declining economic role
 Urban household not a center of
economic production anymore
 Middle-class culture developed around
a household divorced from the
workplace
 Patriarchal system weakened
 In the past, fathers had controlled
children’s future by controlling land
distribution
 Now, children would leave the family in
search of work in the cities
 Fewer children
WOMEN AND
THE “CULT OF DOMESTICITY”
 Opportunities for women continued to be restricted
 Legal rights restricted, especially after marriage
 Less access to education than men; mostly elementary level
 Separate Spheres and the “Cult of Domesticity”
 Growing distinction between public and private spheres,
especially among the middle class
 Women expected to remain at home and create a moral and
virtuous household to balance their husbands’ secular business
influence
 Married women expected to not work
 Female jobs: domestic service, nursing, and teaching