This transformation was the INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
- changed economy, culture, social life, and politics
Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain in 1700s with steam powered machines
- tried to limit the expansion of this technology
Samuel Slater did bring textile machinery knowledge to US and built first water powered textile mill in 1793.
- used family system of labor
Francis Cabot Lowell
- gathered information from Great Britain
- created company called Boston Associates
- 1813- built first mill in Waltham, Massachusetts
- Performed ALL operations in the production of thread
- Lowell Girls were young, single girls that worked hard in the factories
Factory works was very different – unskilled labor cheaper
Inventions of the early 1800s
- interchangeable parts – Eli Whitney
- Sewing Machine – Elias Howe and Isaac Singer
- Telegraph – Samuel F.B. Morse (1837)
o By 1860- 50,000 miles of telegraph lines
- Steel Plow – John Deere
- Mechanical Reaper – Cyrus McCormick
Sectional Differences
Industrialization occurred mainly in the North
Cotton boom in the south further deepened the slave labor force
Between 1815 and 1860 an industrial sector formed
Why did Industrialization spread?
- Embargo of 1807
o Cut off access to British manufactured goods
- War of 1812
o Also…cut off access to British manufactured goods
- Tariff of 1816
o Intended to protect American industry
o Helped industry, but hurt farmers
Why did manufacturing begin in the North?
- access to capital money to build factories
o the south invested their capital in land and slaves
- more cheap labor to work in factories in North
- more swift rivers in North for water power in factories
Social Changes in the North
Industry reduced the skill required for many jobs
Workers organized
- sought free public education
- limit workday to 10 hours from standard 12
- labor unions
o Lowell Girls strikes of 1834 and 1836
Middle class emerged
Emigration from Ireland and Germany
- surge from these areas due to political, economic, and famine problems
- by 1860, 40% of New York City population – immigrants
- few immigrants went south because there were no jobs
Southern Agricultural Economy and Society
Slavery became more profitable as cotton became South’s leading crop.
Reasons why cotton prospered
- cotton gin – Eli Whitney (1793)
- planters moved west
- cotton supply filled the demand from northern textile factories
Cotton and cotton textiles
- over ½ value of all US exports
- King Cotton
Demand for slaves soared even though overseas slave trade abolished in 1808
- far from ending, slaver was more deeply entrenched
Most of the South became too dependent on one crop
Plantations dispersed populations and limited growth of cities
Northern population grew much faster than southern population
- North had twice as many free people as the South in 1850
- Affected House of Representatives
Illiteracy 3 times higher in South
Although central to life in the south, only ¼ of white men owned slaves in south
- of those, ¾ held fewer than 10 slaves
- only 3000 white men owned more than 100 slaves
Why then was slavery so vigorously defended?
- aspirations of common farmer
- fear that freed slaves would seek revenge
- racial bond
- said it was a positive good – not necessary evil
o slavery kinder to African Americans than industrial life was to white workers