The Industrial Revolution The Invention of the Machine

1. The Industrial RevolutionThe Invention of the Machine Pgs. 431-438

2. Industry Comes to the U.S. • Before and after the War of 1812, the economy of the United States had been growing. • New inventions changed the way goods were made. • People began using machines instead of hand tools. • This brought great changes in the way people lived, worked, and traveled.

3. England Leads the Way • In 1789 England was the only country in the world with a spinning machine. • This machine was used to weave cotton and wool fibers into cloth, or textiles. • Textile mills were factories where cloth was made from cotton or wool. • England guarded the design of the spinning machine closely. • Anyone caught leaving England with machine designs was put in jail.

4. Samuel Slater • Samuel Slater worked in a textile mill and studied the new spinning machine until he could remember exactly how each iron gear and wooden spool worked. • Samuel broke British law and took his knowledge to the United States.

5. Samuel Slater and Moses Brown • When Samuel arrived in the United States in 1790, he built a spinning machine for Moses Brown. • Brown and Slater built a textile mill in Rhode Island. • It was America’s first factory.

6. Mass Production • An inventor named Eli Whitney thought of a new way of manufacturing that could produce large amounts of goods at one time. • His idea was called mass production. • Before this time, a craftsman would produce one item from start to finish making all the parts and putting them together.

7. Mass Production • With mass production, identical copies of the same item could be produced using machines and untrained workers in factories. • Whitney created interchangeable parts that could be used to repair a broken item. • Machines could put the parts together very quickly.

8. The Lowell System • Francis Lowell of Massachusetts invented a system where all the steps of creating a product could be completed at the same factory. • For example: spinning, dyeing, and weaving were combined in one factory. • Raw cotton went into the factory and finished cloth came out.

9. Working Conditions • A typical work day was 14 or 15 hours. • There were dangerous working conditions. • The pay was low. Around 80¢ a day. • Men, women and children often worked in factories. • Factory owners provided living quarters (boarding house) for workers. • Most factory workers were immigrants.

10. The Melting Pot • 1820 – 8,835 workers • 1825 – 10,199 workers • 1830 – 23,322 workers • 1835 – 45,374 workers • 1840 – 84, 066 workers • 1845 – 114,371 workers • Almost half of the immigrants were from Ireland. Others came from Germany, Poland, and other parts of northern and central Europe.

13. Manufacturing Cities • By the 1840s thousands of immigrants were coming to America to take jobs in the new factories. • The populations of manufacturing cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore grew rapidly.

14. Transportation Improvements • The Erie Canal was built to link Lake Erie and the city of Buffalo, New York to the Hudson River. • The National Road was built linking the Atlantic coast to Ohio. • The steamboat was invented by Robert Fulton in 1807. • The first locomotive was invented in 1830. By 1850 about 9,000 miles of track crossed the United States mostly near the Atlantic coast.