The Industrial Revolution

U.S. History until 1877

Growth and optimism

◦ 1790: 4,000,000

◦ 1860: 31,000,000

Cities 1790, all under 35,000

Cities 1860: 8 over 150,000

The “Transportation Revolution”

Erie Canal

Erie Canal

Shipping

Steamboats: Robert Fulton, 1817

Railroads

Railroads

Travel Time, 1800

Travel Time, 1830

Travel Time, 1857

A Rage for Business

◦ National market

◦ Samuel F. B. Morse invents telegraph, 1837

◦ Regional specialization

◦ Farmers: subsistence to market

◦ Shift from local markets to distant urban markets

◦ Competition with virgin land in the West

◦ A decade of high yields with no fertilization

◦ Falling agricultural prices force Eastern farmers to move west or to cities

◦ Family farm more or less in crisis ever since

The Industrial
Revolution

◦ English origins

◦ Water powered factories

◦ The New England advantage

◦ The South lags

◦ The role of government

◦ Active state involvement

◦ Education & the tariff

◦ Constitutional protection

◦ No internal tariffs

◦ Pro-business Supreme Court

Lowell panorama 1840

Industrialization in a republic

◦ Social impact

◦ Regional variation

◦ Standard of living

◦ Social stratification

◦ Decline of the yeoman farmer

◦ Industrial republicanism

◦ Challenge to republican ideals

◦ Competitive individualism & free labor

◦ Problem of factories: the Lowell system

◦ Paternalism & women laborers

Women at Lowell

Women at Lowell