The Economic Revolution 1820

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The Economic Revolution18201860
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• How did industrialization affect the economy?
• How and why did a transportation revolution occur
  before 1860?
• Why did Americans both migrate westward and move
  to cities during the first half of the nineteenth
  century?
• How did the rise of factories affect the social
  relationships of Americans?

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• In America, a French visitor remarked in 1839,
  all is circulation, motion, and boiling
  agitation. Enterprise follows enterprise and
  riches and poverty follow. Indeed, society was
  changing in basic ways.
• In 1820, the United States was predominately an
  agricultural nation by 1877, it boasted one of
  the worlds most powerful manufacturing
  economies. This profound transformation affected
  every aspect of life in the northern and
  mid-western states and brought important changes
  to the agricultural states of the south as well.

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• People often have difficulty understanding how
  technological innovation developed. We can,
  perhaps understand this by looking at the
  contributions and careers of individuals such as
  Eli Whitney (In 1793 Eli finished his first model
  of the cotton gin (gin is short for engine).
  http//www.troop100.org/whitney.htm

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• The entire country profited greatly from Eli
  Whitney's idea and ability. The north profited
  through the growth of it's cotton manufacturing
  industry. The south particularly benefited it now
  had a crop it could export which supported the
  planters and helped to raise the standard of
  living for it's people. Everyone was beginning to
  make money.

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• standard of living for it's people. Everyone was
  beginning to make money.
• In 1800 Eli Whitney began to make muskets with
  the threat of war with France. He did this
  outside of Springfield on the Mill River which he
  used to power the plant. ) and Robert Fulton.

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• In 1802 he contracted to build a steamboat for
  Robert R. Livingston, who held a monopoly on
  steamboat navigation on the Hudson. In 1807 the
  Clermont, equipped with an English engine, was
  launched.
• A number of men had built steamboats before
  Fulton, including John Fitch and William
  Symington. Fulton's steamship, however, was the
  first to be commercially successful in American
  waters, and Fulton was therefore popularly
  considered the inventor of the steamboat. He also
  designed other vessels, among them a steam
  warship.

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• Of course we need to understand technological
  innovation as a process of borrowing and creative
  adaptation, and in this vein we need to be aware
  of Britains contribution to Americas Industrial
  Revolution.

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Economy

• Two revolutions in industrial production and the
  market system transformed the nations economy
• Factory owners used high-speed machines and a new
  system of labor discipline to boost production,
  and enterprising merchants employed a newly built
  network of canals and railroads to create a vast
  national market.
• The manufacturing sector produced an
  ever-increasing share of the countrys wealth
  from less than 5 percent in 1820 to more than 30
  percent in 1877.

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The Coming of Industry Northeastern Manufacturing

• Between 1820 and 1860, the United States
  experienced an industrial and a market revolution
  that created a new economic structure.
• Merchants and manufacturers organized
  increasingly efficient systems of production and,
  aided by skilled mechanics, introduced water- and
  steam-powered machines to turn out huge
  quantities of goods.
• Simultaneously, merchants, traders, and
  shopkeepers created a vast market system in which
  they exchanged these manufactures for grain,
  meat, cotton, leather, and wool produced by a
  rapidly growing and westward-moving farm
  population.

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Division of Labor and the Factory

• Industrialization came to the United States after
  1790 as merchants and manufacturers increased
  output of goods by reorganizing work and building
  factories.
• The outwork system was a more efficient
  division of labor and lowered the price of goods,
  but it eroded workers control over the pace and
  conditions of work.
• For tasks not suited to outwork, factories were
  created where work was concentrated under one
  roof and divided into specialized tasks.

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• Manufacturers used newly improved stationary
  steam engines to power their mills and used
  power-driven machines and assembly lines to
  produce new types of products.
• Some Britons feared that American manufacturers
  would become exporters not only to foreign
  countries but even to England.

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• British textile manufacturers were able to
  out-compete American manufacturers
• The Americans' only advantage early in the
  nineteenth century was having abundant raw
  materials such as cotton. The British had cheaper
  labor, lower interest rates, and less-expensive
  shipping than the United States and used them
  effectively to keep prices lower than the prices
  of their American rivals.

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The Textile Industry and British Competition

• British textile manufacturers were particularly
  worried about American competition Britain
  prohibited the export of textile machinery and
  the emigration of mechanics who knew how to build
  it, but many mechanics disguised themselves as
  ordinary laborers and set sail.
• Samuel Slater brought to America a design for an
  advanced cotton spinner the opening of his
  factory in 1790 marked the advent of the American
  Industrial Revolution.

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• The Americans' only advantage early in the
  nineteenth century was having abundant raw
  materials such as cotton. The British had cheaper
  labor, lower interest rates, and less-expensive
  shipping than the United States and used them
  effectively to keep prices lower than the prices
  of their American rivals.

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Samuel Slater is a major figure in American
history and has been called both the "Father of
American Industry" and the "Founder of the
American Industrial Revolution."
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• Congress passed protective legislation in 1816
  and 1824 levying high taxes on imported goods
  tariffs were reduced again in 1833, and some
  textile firms went out of business.
• American producers used two other strategies to
  compete with their British rivals. First, they
  improved on British technology, and second, they
  found less expensive workers.
• By copying the machines of British textile mills,
  Francis Cabot Lowells Boston Manufacturing
• Company was able to build the Waltham factory,
  the first American factory to perform all the
  operations of cloth making under one roof at
  higher speeds than British mills and with fewer
  workers.

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• The Boston Manufacturing Company pioneered a
  labor system that became known as the Waltham
  plan, in which the company recruited farm women
  and girls as textile workers who would work for
  low wages.
• By the early 1830s, more than 40,000 New England
  women worked in textile mills women often found
  this work oppressive, but many gained a new sense
  of freedom and autonomy.
• By combining improved technology, female labor,
  and tariff protection, the Boston Manufacturing
  Company sold textiles more cheaply than did the
  British.

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• The Waltham plan found a solution to competing
  with cheap British imports by hiring women and
  girls who could be paid less than men. The
  Waltham factory used waterpower--but was not the
  first to do so--and hired mostly unskilled labor,
  not skilled mechanics. It was a textile mill and
  did not produce flour.

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Productivity

• Productivity is defined as output per worker.
  Division of labor means that each worker was
  given one job within the production process,
  which improved productivity in American
  factories. Cheap labor and low wages are
  essentially the same thing, and, like cheap raw
  materials, they decrease costs rather than
  increase productivity.

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American Mechanics and Technological Innovation

• By the 1820s, American-born craftsmen had
  replaced British immigrants at the cutting edge
  of technological innovation.
• The most important inventors in the Philadelphia
  region were members of the Sellars family, who
  helped found the Franklin Institute of
  Philadelphia in 1824.
• Mechanic institutes were established in other
  states, which disseminated technical knowledge
  and encouraged innovation in 1820, the U.S.
  Patent Office issued about two hundred patents
  each year, but by 1860, it was awarding four
  thousand patents annually.

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• American mechanics pioneered the development of
  machine tools, thus fueling the spread of the
  Industrial Revolution.
• In the firearms industry, Eli Whitney and others
  developed interchangeable and precision-crafted
  parts that enabled largescale production.
• The expansion in the availability of machines
  allowed the American Industrial Revolution to
  come of age the volume and availability of
  output caused some products Remington rifles,
  Singer sewing machines, and Yale locksto become
  household names.
• After the 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition in
  London, Americans built factories in Britain and
  soon dominated many European markets.

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• The development of machine tools is significant
  because they. Machine tools reproduced
  standardized parts for other machines quickly at
  a relatively low cost. They did not make repair
  of complicated equipment easier, however, and
  were used by mechanics, who were usually men, not
  women or children. The British had no such
  similar equipment.

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Wage Workers and the Labor Movement

• The Industrial Revolution changed the nature of
  work and workers lives as more and more white
  Americans left self-employment and became wage
  earners though they had little job security or
  control over their working conditions.
• Some journeymen formed unions and bargained with
  their employers, particularly in hopes of setting
  a ten-hour workday.
• The Working Mens Party, founded in 1828, called
  for the abolition of banks, equal taxation, and a
  system of public education.

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• By the mid-1830s, building-trades workers had won
  a ten-hour workday from many employers and from
  the federal government.
• Artisans whose occupations were threatened by
  industrializationshoemakers, printers, etc.were
  less successful, and some left their employers
  and set up specialized shops.
• The new industrial system divided the traditional
  artisan class into two groups self-employed
  craftsmen and wage-earning craftsmen.
• Under English and American common law, it was
  illegal for workers to organize themselves for
  the purpose of raising wages because they
  prevented other workers from hiring themselves
  out for whatever wages they wished.

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• In 1830, factory workers banded together to form
  the Mutual Benefit Society to seek higher pay and
  better conditions, and in 1834, the National
  Trades Union was founded.
• Union leaders devised a labor theory of value
  and organized strikes for higher wages similar
  labor actions were taken by women textile workers
  as well.
• By the 1850s, labor supply exceeded demand, and
  unemployment rose to 10 percent, resulting in a
  major recession and the Panic of 1857.

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The Market Revolution
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• Three streams of migrants moved into the West,
  transplanting the cultures of the plantation
  South and yeoman New England in the Old
  Southwest, the Ohio River Valley, and the Old
  Northwest. State governments promoted this
  westward movement and the creation of regional
  and national markets by subsidizing the building
  of roads, canals, and railroads.
• This infrastructure created a transportation
  system that was unprecedented in size and
  complexity. As domestic markets and production
  grew, urbanization accelerated in the Northeast,
  where industrial towns dotted the landscape, and
  New York City became the nations largest city
  and leading trading center.

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Migration to the Southwest and the Midwest

• People migrated to the West for several reasons
  some were looking for land for their children,
  others hoped for greater profits from the western
  soil.
• By 1840, about 5 million people lived west of the
  Appalachians.

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• Migration occurred in three great streams
  southern plantation owners moved into the Old
  Southwest small-scale farmers from the upper
  South moved into the Northwest Territory and
  crowded New Englanders flowed into New York and
  the Great Lakes Basin.
• Congress reduced the price of federal land in
  1820, and by 1860 the population center of
  America had shifted significantly to the West.

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The Transportation Revolution Forges Regional
Ties

• The National Road and other interregional,
  government-funded highways were too slow and
  expensive to transport goods and crops
  efficiently.
• Americans developed a water-borne transportation
  system of unprecedented size, beginning with the
  government-subsidized Erie Canal.
• The canal had three things in its favor the
  support of city merchants, the backing of the
  governor, and the gentleness of the terrain west
  of Albany.

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• The Erie Canal altered the ecology and economy of
  the entire region.
• The Erie Canal brought prosperity to central and
  western New York, linked the economies of the
  Northeast and Midwest, and prompted a national
  canal boom.
• The invention of the steamboat by Robert Fulton
  ensured the success of the waterborne
  transportation system.

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• The national government played a key role in the
  creation of this interregional system of
  transportation and communication the passage of
  the Post Office Act of 1792 allowed letters and
  banknotes to be carried from one end of the
  country to the other and the Supreme Court
  encouraged interstate trade by striking down
  state restrictions on commerce in Gibbons v.
  Ogden (1824).

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• The development of the railroad created ties
  between the Northeast and the Midwest, and by the
  1850s, railroads became the main carriers of
  freight.
• By the 1830s,Midwestern entrepreneurs were
  producing goods that vastly increased outputJohn
  Deere plows, McCormick and Hussey reapersto
  replace the ones Americans had been importing
  from Britain.

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Cyrus McCormick
John Deere
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McCormick Reaper
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John Deere Plow
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• Southern investors concentrated their resources
  in cotton and slaves, preferring to buy
  manufactures from the Northeast and Britain.
• The Southern economy remained predominantly
  agricultural and generated less per capita income
  for Southerners than did the more industrial
  Northern economy.

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The Growth of Cities and Towns

• Due to the expansion of industry and trade, the
  urban population grew fourfold between 1820 and
  1840.
• The most rapid growth occurred in the new
  industrial towns that sprang up along the fall
  line for example Lowell, Massachusetts
  Hartford, Connecticut Trenton, New Jersey and
  Wilmington, Delaware.

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• Western commercial cities such as New Orleans,
  Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Louisville grew
  almost as rapidly because of their location at
  points where goods were transferred from one mode
  of transport to another.
• By 1860, the largest cities in the United States
  were New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and
  Chicago, in that order.

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• The old Atlantic seaportsBoston, Philadelphia,
  Baltimore, Charleston, and especially New York
  Cityremained important for their foreign
  commerce and, increasingly, as centers of finance
  and manufacturing.
• New Yorks growth stemmed primarily from its
  control of foreign trade by 1840, New York
  handled almost two-thirds of foreign imports and
  almost half of all foreign trade.

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Changes in the Social Structure

• Economic growth prompted the delineation of the
  urban populace according to social class a
  wealthy urban business elite of merchants and
  manufacturers a prosperous, educated, and
  well-housed middle class and a mass of
  wage-earning laborers with little or no property.
  
• Some artisans and workers formed trade unions in
  generally unsuccessful efforts to improve their
  economic welfare. Other working people,
  especially those without skills and those who
  could not obtain steady employment, lived in
  poverty.

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The Business Elite

• The Industrial Revolution shattered the
  traditional rural social order and created a
  society composed of distinct regions, classes,
  and cultures.
• In the large cities, the richest 1 percent of the
  population owned 40 percent of all tangible
  property and an even larger share of the stocks
  and bonds.

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• The government taxed tangible property but almost
  never taxed stocks, bonds, or inheritances thus
  government policies allowed the richest to
  accumulate even more wealth at the expense of
  poorer men.
• The wealthiest families began to consciously set
  themselves apart, and many American cities became
  segregated communities divided geographically
  along the lines of class, race, and ethnicity.

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The Middle Class

• A distinct middle-class culture emerged as the
  per capita income of Americans rose about 2.5
  percent per year between 1830 and the Panic of
  1857.
• Middle-class Americans secured material comfort
  for themselves and education for their children,
  and they stressed discipline, morality, and hard
  work.

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• The business elite and the middle class
  celebrated work as the key to a higher standard
  of living for the nation and social mobility for
  the individual.
• The ideal of the self-made man became a central
  theme of American popular culture.

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Urban Workers and the Poor

• The bottom 10 percent of the labor force, the
  casual workers, owned little or no property, and
  their jobs were unpredictable, seasonal, and
  dangerous.
• Other laborers had greater job security, but few
  prospered many families sent their children out
  to work, and the death of one parent often sent
  the family into dire poverty.

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• By the 1830s, urban factory workers and unskilled
  laborers lived in well-defined neighborhoods of
  crowded boardinghouses or tiny apartments, often
  with filthy conditions.
• Many wage earners turned to alcohol as a form of
  solace grogshops and tippling houses appeared on
  almost every block in working-class districts,
  and police were unable to contain the lawlessness
  that erupted.

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The Benevolent Empire

• During the 1820s, Congregational and Presbyterian
  ministers linked with merchants and their wives
  to launch a program of social reform and
  regulation.
• The Benevolent Empire targeted drunkenness and
  other social ills, but it also set out to
  institutionalize charity and combat evil in a
  systematic fashion.

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• The benevolent groups encouraged people to live
  well-disciplined lives, and they established
  institutions to assist those in need and to
  control people who were threats to society.
• Upper-class women were an important part of the
  Benevolent Empire through sponsorship of
  charitable organizations.
• Some reformers believed that one of the greatest
  threats to morality was the decline of the
  traditional Sabbath.
• Popular resistance or indifference limited the
  success of the Benevolent Empire.

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Revivalism and Reform
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• To improve the living conditions and to balance
  the vices of the poor, upper-class Americans
  formed benevolent reform societies that promoted
  temperance, dispensed charity, and encouraged
  respect for the Christian Sabbath.
• Simultaneously, Charles Grandison Finney and
  other evangelical clergymen gave new life to the
  Second Great Awakening, enlisting missions of
  propertied farmers and middle-class Americans in
  a massive religious revival movement.

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• Protestant evangelicalism heightened the cultural
  conflict between native-born Americans and
  millions of Catholic immigrants from Ireland and
  Germany.

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• Nativist writers attacked Irish Catholics as
  anti-republican, and American workers blamed
  immigrant labor for their economic woesattitudes
  that led to ethnic riots in many northern cities.
  
• By 1860, the United States was a more prosperous
  society than ever before, but also one exhibiting
  numerous social and economic divisions

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• Presbyterian minister Charles Grandison Finney
  conducted emotional revivals that stressed
  conversion rather than instruction Finneys
  ministry drew on and accelerated the Second Great
  Awakening.
• Finneys message that man was able to choose
  salvation was particularly attractive to the
  middle class.

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• Finney wanted to humble the pride of the rich and
  relieve the shame of the poor by celebrating
  their common fellowship in Christ.
• The business elite joined the Cold Water
  movement, establishing savings banks and Sunday
  schools for the poor and helping to provide
  relief for the unemployed.
• The initiatives to create a harmonious community
  of morally disciplined Christians were not
  altogether effective skilled workers argued for
  higher wages more than sermons and prayers and
  Finneys revival seldom attracted poor people,
  especially Irish Catholics.

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• Revivalists from New England to the Midwest
  copied Finneys evangelical message and
  techniques and the movement swept through
  Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Tennessee, and
  Indiana.
• The temperance movement proved to be the most
  effective arena for evangelical social reform
  the American Temperance Society adapted methods
  that worked well in the revivals and helped the
  consumption of spirits to fall dramatically.

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• Evangelical reformers celebrated religion as the
  moral foundation of the American work ethic
  religion and the ideology of social mobility
  served as a cement that held society together in
  the face of the disarray created by the market
  economy, industrial enterprise, and cultural
  diversity.

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Immigration and Cultural Conflict

• Between 1840 and 1860, millions of immigrants
  Irish, Germans, and Britons poured into the
  United States.
• Most avoided the South, and many Germans moved to
  states in the Midwest, while other Germans and
  most of the Irish settled in the Northeast.
• The most prosperous immigrants were the British,
  followed by the Germans the poorest were from
  Ireland.

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• Many Germans and most Irish were Catholics and
  fueled the growth of the Catholic Church in
  America.
• Because of the Protestant religious fervor
  stirred up by the Second Great Awakening,
  Catholic immigrants met with widespread
  hostility in 1834, Samuel F. B.Morse published
  Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties of the
  United States, which warned of a Catholic threat
  to American republican institutions.

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• Anti-Catholic sentiment intensified mobs of
  unemployed workers attacked Catholics, and the
  Native American Clubs called for limits on
  immigration.
• Social reformers often supported the anti-
  Catholic movement because they wanted to prevent
  the diversion of tax resources to Catholic
  schools and to oppose alcohol abuse by Irish men.

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• In most large northeastern cities, differences of
  class and culture led to violence and split the
  North in the same way that race and class divided
  the South.