I. The American Industrial Revolution
A. The Division of Labor and the Factory
1. Labor
a) Mass production of luxury items
b) Lynn, Massachusetts shoe industry
a) introduced an outwork system with a division of labor
2. The factory
a) Concentrated production in one building
b) Cincinnati built slaughterhouses
c) Use of water power 1780s
d) 1830s, factories used minerals such as
coal instead of water.
I. The American Industrial Revolution
B. The Textile Industry and British Competition
1. American and British Advantages
a) British feared US manufacturers
b) Mechanics can’t leave-secrets of industry
c) Samuel Slater built a mill in Rhode Island credited with
starting the Industrial Revolution
d) British-advantage of inexpensive shipping, low interest
rates, cheap labor from large population
e) Americans help from tariff bills aimed at driving up the
costs of imports.
2. Better Machines, Cheaper Workers
2. Better Machines, Cheaper Workers
a) Americans improved upon British technology
and recruited young women from farm families
as laborers
b) Lowell, MA, had boardinghouses for the girls
with cultural events, moral instruction, and strict
rules—known as the Waltham-Lowell System
c) women had decent living conditions compared
to farm life
I. The American Industrial Revolution
C. American Mechanics and Technological Innovation
1. Mechanics
a)
b)
c)
Developing innovative factory technology, not educated, skillful
Sellars Family-machine to twist yarn, weave wire sieves, built fire hoses,
papermaking equipment, trains,
Founded the Fraklin Institute in Philadelphia
2. Tools
a) American craftsmen pioneered the development of machine
tool
b) Eli Whitney
a)
b)
c)
Cotton Gin-Devised from women’s hair pins
Interchangeable musket parts
lathes, planers, and boring machines; these inventions helped to
increase output beyond the British system.
I. The American Industrial Revolution
D. Wageworkers and the Labor Movement
1. Free Workers Form Unions
a) Craft workers replaced, wages and directions from
employer
b) Refused to call employers masters, Dutch word-BOSS
c) Artisans leave cities to avoid factory jobs
d) Unionization considered illegal
2. Labor Ideology
• During the 1830s, shoemakers in Lynn, MA, who were not
allowed to organize formed a mutual benefit society
• in 1834, National Trade Union formed as first regional
union of different trades
• Commonwealth v. Hunt (1842), Supreme Court ruled that
unions were not illegal and workers could unionize and
strike to enforce a closed-shop agreement
• Anti-employer sentiments
• Under this theory, the price of goods should reflect the cost of the
labor required to make them, and the income from their sale should
go primarily to the producers
– 1836-50 strikes, workers replaced by women, poor
immigrants
II. The Market Revolution
A. The Transportation Revolution Forges Regional Ties
1. Canals and Steamboats Shrink Distance
a) Toll roads
b) 1806-Congress appropriates compacted gravel road
a)
c)
Began 1811 (Maryland), reached Illinois 1839
Water travel was faster
d) Erie Canal-huge economic success that encouraged
further building of canals in the nation, steamboats
2. Railroads Link the North and
Midwest
• New York, Boston, and London capitalists
invested in the railroad industry
• Chicago grew as a result of ability to transport
goods produced in the Midwest via railroad
• Midwestern farmers could export their crops to
the East and to Europe
• John Deere’s manufacturing of farming
equipment grew in the region
• Northeast and Midwest had diverse economies,
while the South remained tied to agriculture.
II. The Market Revolution
B. The Growth of Cities and Towns
1. West and Midwest
a) Urban population grows, around factories
b) Manufacturing and Transit centers
2. Atlantic coastal cities
a) Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore
remained important for import/export but also
became financial centers
b) Populations grew as a result of immigration to port
cities
c) New York became the hub for exporting cargo, mail,
and people to Liverpool and London, England.
III. New Social Classes and Cultures
A. The Business Elite
1. Before industrialization
a) Rank families
b) Rural family affiliation despite economic status
2. The urban wealthy
a)
b)
c)
d)
Industrialization changes everything
By 1860, 10% of the population owned 70% of the wealth
Taxes paid by consumption of products
No federal taxes on individual, corporate income
e) cities became divided by class, race, and ethnicity
III. New Social Classes and Cultures
B. The Middle Class
1. Who they were
a) farmers, mechanics, manufacturers, traders,
contractors, lawyers, surveyors, business owners,
and clerks—Live in NE, some in South
b) Men work to supply family with comfortability
c) women had help in the household and time to read
books, play piano, decorate their homes; focused on
moral and mental discipline (against carnivals,
festivals); stressed schooling and hard work
2. The self-made man
• Idea that one’s hard work could lead to wealth
• Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography (1818)
emphasized the importance of being
industrious, which became a central theme
of popular culture
• Tier-system of the workforce
III. New Social Classes and Cultures
C. Urban Workers and the Poor
1. Laborers (1/2 of the population work for someone
else)
a) Dangerous/temp jobs, didn’t cover cost of food/rent
b) Children work instead of school
c) Unsanitary housing
2. Alcohol
a)
b)
c)
d)
Solace in alcohol
Increase beer/rum sales
Men drank during workday, fights-robberies-brawls
Police unable to control
III. New Social Classes and Cultures
D. The Benevolent Empire
1. Conservative social reform
a) Congregational and Presbyterian ministers led
benevolence organizations
b) Alcohol, adultery, prostitution, crime
c) Not just sermons, groups-Prison Discipline
Society, American Society for the Promotion of
Temperance
2. Discipline
a)
b)
c)
d)
“regular habits”
Ban drinking at public events, control the unruly
Working on Sundays was part of society’s decline, boycott
Southerners oppose that slave be taught Christian religion.
III. New Social Classes and Cultures
E. Charles Grandison Finney: Revivalism and Reform
1. Evangelical Beliefs
a) Part of the 2nd Great Awakening--“God has made man a
moral free agent” with the ability to choose salvation,
free will
b) Conversion of all people, rich and poor
c) Preached daily in Rochester, NY
2. Temperance
a)
b)
c)
d)
most successful evangelical social reform effort
American Temperance Society-200,000 members
Revivals, group prayers
Alcohol consumption down by 1845
III. New Social Classes and Cultures
F. Immigration and Cultural Conflict
1. Irish Poverty
a)
b)
c)
d)
Immigrants avoid south
Irish fleeing Ireland due to Potato Famine
Settle in NE, poor areas of NYC
Catholics build orphanages, schools, political org…
2. Nativism
a) Xenophobia due to anti-immigrant sentiments
b) Samuel F. B. Morse’s Foreign Conspiracy Against the
Liberties of the United States argued that Catholics
would obey the pope and not the republican
government