America’s First Industrialization

1. America’s First Industrialization The Consequences of History

2. Historical events do not occur in a vacuum: While the south and west developed the agricultural basis for the national economy, the northeast was laying the foundations for an industrial revolution.

3. Flow Chart of Consequences

4. Causes of Industrialization What caused all of this commotion?

5. Major Causes of the Industrial Revolution • Henry Clay’s American System • Jefferson’s Embargo • The War of 1812 • New Technology • Transportation Revolution • Improved Manufacturing Techniques • Dysfunctional Farm Dynamics

6. The American System • Economic Nationalism • The strength of the country depended on the maintenance of a strong economy • Trinity of Economic Nationalism • Bank of US • Strengthen finances, create stable currency, stabilize the economy • Protective Tariff • Protect domestic industry, create economic independence • Internal Improvements • Improve commerce and national defense

7. The Embargo • Cut off trade with all foreign nations in an attempt at “peaceable coercion” • No exports or ships going to foreign ports • Was an abject FAILURE – hurt America more than anyone else • Non-Intercourse Act (1808) • Would allow trade with all nations except Britain and France • Result • Instead of helping foster an agrarian Utopia, the law(s) helped ignite American industry as access to foreign goods dried up

8. The War of 1812 • Cut off Americans from cheap British goods • Helped foster a movement toward national self-sufficiency • At a higher cost than previous trade • Victory helped foster a sense of nationalism that entrenched the idea that America needed to be totally self-sufficient • Irony of Jackson’s battle of New Orleans

9. Johnny Horton Perpetuates a Myth

10. Johnny’s Record What he got wrong What he got correct In late 1814 Jackson did take an army to New Orleans The British did keep attacking Large cotton bales were used for protection The American artillery distinguished itself • Colonel Jackson • Down the mighty Mississipp • Caught the British in New Orleans • British began a’ running • Take them by surprise • Opened up our squirrel guns • British ended in rout

11. Why is this important? • Two main reasons: • 1. perpetuates the myth of the efficacy of militia in dealing with national crises • 2. Negates the impact of embryonic industry and its impact on the development of the nation

12. Technology Maybe the Chicken and Egg theory here • Cotton Gin • Cotton had been a rich-man’s product b/c of time and effort to de-seed (1 day’s work = 1 pound of cotton cleaned) • Cotton now profitable and dying slavery is reinvigorated and economies of north and south become tied together • The Mechanical Reaper • Allowed fewer laborers to harvest entire crops • Made “industrial farming” possible in the west to help feed the east • The Telegraph • Real-time communications

13. Transportation Revolution • “The great evil … under which the inhabitants of the western country labor, arises from the want of a market … They have no vent for their produce at home and … such is the difficulty and expense of transporting their produce to an Atlantic port that little benefit is realized from that quarter.” • - Rep Peter Porter (1810) • The so-called transportation revolution tied together old communities and penetrated isolated ones • National Road linking east and west • Steamboats allowed full use of waterways • Canals connected east and west as well as dropping transportation costs • Railroads In essence the transportation revolution brought about dramatic reductions in the time and money it took to move goods and materials to markets

14. New Manufacturing Techniques • Interchangeable Parts • Use machine-made parts created efficiency and interchangeability • By 1850 the process was widely adopted and became the basis of mass production • Waltham Plan / Lowell System • Factories as mechanized as possible leaving little need for skilled labor • Operatives were usually young, single women recruited from the New England area • Power • Harness the power of fast-moving rivers and streams to power machinery

15. Farm Dynamics • Population grew greater than the ability of the land to support it • Farmers adapted to this to survive • Plant a staple crop that could be locally turned into a product (broom straw, flax into linen) • Boom and Bust cycles • Need for cheap labor • Females were in some ways a drain on the farm • Appeal of a steady wage

16. Industrialization The Reaction -

17. In the 1820s and 1830s, America became the world's leader in adopting mechanization, standardization, and mass production. Manufacturers began to adopt labor-saving machinery that allowed workers to produce more goods at lower costs. So impressed were foreigners with these methods of manufacture that they called them the "American system of production." Many industries soon adopted the "American system of manufacturing." As early as 1800 manufacturers of wooden clocks began to use interchangeable parts. Makers of sewing machines used mass production techniques as early as 1846, and the next year, manufacturers mechanized the production of farm machinery. From www.digitalhistory.uh.edu – Roots of American Economic Growth

18. Innovation was not confined to manufacturing. During the years following the War of 1812, American agriculture underwent a transformation nearly as profound and far-reaching as the revolution taking place in industry. During the eighteenth century, most farm families were largely self-sufficient. They raised their own food, made their own clothes and shoes, and built their own furniture. Cut off from markets by the high cost of transportation, farmers sold only a few items, like whiskey, corn, and hogs, in exchange for such necessities as salt and iron goods. Farming methods were primitive. With the exception of plowing and furrowing, most farm work was performed by hand. European travelers deplored the backwardness of American farmers, their ignorance of the principles of scientific farming, their lack of labor-saving machinery, and their wastefulness of natural resources. Few farmers applied manure to their fields as fertilizer or practiced crop rotation. As a result, soil erosion and soil exhaustion were commonplace. Commented one observer: "Agriculture in the South does not consist so much in cultivating land as in killing it." From www.digitalhistory.uh.edu – Roots of American Economic Growth

19. As production for the market increased, farmers began to demand improved farm technology. In 1793 Charles Newbold, a New Jersey farmer, spent his entire fortune of $30,000 developing an efficient cast-iron plow. Farmers refused to use it, fearing that iron would poison the soil and cause weeds to grow. Twenty years later, a Scipio, New York, farmer named Jethro Wood patented an improved iron plow made out of interchangeable parts. Unlike wooden plows, which required two men and four oxen to plow an acre in a day, Wood's cast-iron plow allowed one man and one yoke of oxen to plow the same area. Demand was so great that manufacturers infringed on Wood's patents and produced thousands of copies of this new plow yearly. By 1830 the roots of America's future industrial growth had been firmly planted. Back in 1807, the nation had just 15 or 20 cotton mills, containing approximately 8000 spindles. By 1831 the number of spindles in use totaled nearly a million and a quarter. By 1830 Pittsburgh produced 100 steam engines a year; Cincinnati, 150. Factory production had made household manufacture of shoes, clothing, textiles, and farm implement obsolete. The United States was well on its way to becoming one of the world's leading manufacturing nations. From www.digitalhistory.uh.edu – Roots of American Economic Growth

20. Intended Consequences What was supposed to have taken place

21. What was supposed to have happened • A growing economy • One that was impervious to British interference and created prosperity • Interdependence of the three economies • The north would provide industrial products for the south and west • The south would provide northern factories with raw materials • The west would provide eastern cities and factories with foodstuffs • Growth of cities • Cities would grow in relation to the growth of industries and associated workers • Steady wages for workers • A wage that allowed families to prosper and live comfortably

22. Did these things actually happen? • A growing economy • Wholesale prices dropped by 45% as manufacturing increased creating an economy of scale • Economic interdependence • Southern cotton fueled northern textile mills • Western wheat and grain fed eastern cities • Roads, canals, and railroads connected the areas to each other • Growth of cities • Grew 3x faster than rural population • Went from 6% of population to 20% by 1860 • Steady wages for workers • No specifics available but high wages for skilled workers was one of the reasons behind the Waltham plan

27. Unintended Consequences Things that weren’t supposed to happen, but did

28. What was not supposed to happen • Wage slavery • Growing uneven distribution of wealth • Abuse of female workers • Child labor • Dangerous working conditions • Massive immigration • Labor unrest

29. Wage Slavery In January of 1850, police arrested John McFeaing in Newburyport, Massachusetts, for stealing wood from the wharves. McFeaing pleaded necessity and a public investigation was conducted. Investigators found McFeaing's wife and four children living "in the extremity of misery. The children were all scantily supplied with clothing and not one had a shoe to his feet. There was not a stick of firewood or scarcely a morsel of food in the house, and everything betokened the most abject want and misery." • David Riccardo / Thomas Malthus - “Iron Law of Wages” • “The slave was precious to his master because of the money he had cost him…” • Mechanization created less of a need for high-wage skilled labor • Wages dropped as mechanization and immigration increased • Created a situation where children and women had to work • Became “slaves” to the factory $10.37 was needed per week in NYC to live (rent, fuel, food, clothing) The average shoemaker = $6 per, Textile operative = $6.50, Unskilled labor = $1 per

30. Growing Unequal Distribution of Wealth • The Rich • Those who attained great wealth started out relatively wealthy • Boston in 1848 – richest 4% owned 49% of the city’s wealth • Tocqueville: “the wealthiest and most enlightened live among themselves” • The Poor • Most lived close to the edge of misery • Relied heavily on child labor to make ends meet • Frequently unemployed • Became a class that simply could not escape poverty

31. Abuse of Female Workers The operatives work thirteen hours a day in the summer time, and from daylight to dark in the winter. At half past four in the morning the factory bell rings, and at five the girls must be in the mills....So fatigued...are numbers of girls that they go to bed soon after their evening meal, and endeavor by a comparatively long sleep to resuscitate their weakened frames for the toil of the coming day. The Harbinger, 1846 We could show him many females who have had corporeal punishment inflicted upon them; one girl eleven years of age who had her leg broken with a billet of wood; another who had a board split over her head by a heartless monster … Seth Luther in testimony before Massachusetts assembly

32. Child Labor • By 1820 more than ½ of all factory workers were children • Many children were mentally blighted and emotionally starved • Physical growth was stunted • Subjected to special “whipping rooms”

33. Dangerous Conditions A huge factory, long notoriously insecure and ill-built, requiring to be patched and bandaged up with iron plates and braces to stand the introduction of its machinery, suddenly collapsed into a heap of ruins yesterday afternoon without the smallest provocation. Some five or six hundred operatives went down with it… An hour later while people were working frantically to dig out some two hundred still under the ruins, many of them alive and calling for help… fire caught in the great pile of debris, and these prisoners were roasted. Diary of George Templeton Strong • Factories: • Climate control • Machinery • Heat • Mines: • Shafts • Workload • Cave-ins • Asphyxiation

34. Immigration Two major ethnic groups: Irish: Germans: Largely staid to themselves Were actually from many old world areas (Germany didn’t exist) Were generally wealthier than the Irish Most went westward, owned small farms and built communities • Shoved to America b/c of economic hardship and the famous Potato Blight • Were mostly poor and staid in the eastern cities • Found menial jobs • Were Roman Catholic • Drank and brawled • Scared Americans into thinking their society was being over-run

35. Labor Unrest • Began as protests to changing working conditions • Morphed into workers banding together to protest employer practices that were undermining the independence of workers, reducing them to the status of "a humiliating servile dependency, incompatible with the inherent natural equality of men.“ • Included: • Wage reductions • Declining quality • Use of unskilled labor • Encountered BITTER employer opposition and legal bars • Commonwealth v. Hunt in Massachusetts

36. Long-Term Consequences

37. A Generation Beyond • North continues to industrialize while the south obstinately clings to an agrarian economy • North’s industrial might conquers the south in the Civil War • Cities continue to grow • Immigration actually increases during the Civil War • Iron and textiles get replaced by steam and steel • New industrial inventions boost the economy and the standard of living • Labor unions become major players in industry

38. Continued Consequences • America becomes an industrial GIANT • By World War I America has the greatest industrial capacity of any nation in the world • The problems between business and labor still erupt into violence • Cycles of industrial boom and bust are as acute if not more acute than those that accompanied agriculture • New waves of immigration (eastern Europe, southern Europe, and Asia) poured into America

39. If you have any questions or comments about The Consequences of History, or about how I integrated the method into this content please contact me at: rbrown@aihe.info