Early 19c Industrialization in America Originally Created by: Susan Pojer Adapted by: Steve Fitzgerald

ESSENTIAL QUESTION: What were the results of early 19c industrialization in America?

The Transportation Revolution

First Turnpike- 1790 Lancaster, PA By 1832, nearly 2400 mi. of road connected most major cities.

Cumberland (National Road), 1811

Conestoga Covered Wagons Conestoga Trail, 1820s

Erie Canal System

Erie Canal, 1820s Begun in 1817; completed in 1825

Principal Canals in 1840

Robert Fulton & the Steamboat 1807: The Clermont

Clipper Ships

The “Iron Horse” Wins! (1830) 1830  13 miles of track built by Baltimore & Ohio RR By 1850  9000 mi. of RR track [1860  31,000 mi.]

The Railroad Revolution, 1850s Immigrant labor built the No. RRs. Slave labor built the So. RRs.

Inland Freight Rates

Question: What were some of the impacts of the Transportation Revolution on American economic activity?

New Inventions: "Yankee Ingenuity"

Resourcefulness & Experimentation Americans were willing to try anything. They were first copiers, then innovators. 1800  41 patents were approved. 1860  4,357 “ “ “

Eli Whitney’s Cotton Gin, 1791 Actually invented by a woman/slave?

Eli Whitney’s Gun Factory Interchangeable Parts Rifle

First prototype of the locomotive Oliver Evans First automated flour mill First prototype of the locomotive

John Deere & the Steel Plow (1837)

Cyrus McCormick & the Mechanical Reaper: 1831

Samuel F. B. Morse 1840 – Telegraph

Elias Howe & Isaac Singer 1840s Sewing Machine

The Northern Industrial "Juggernaut"

Creating a Business-Friendly Climate Supreme Court Rulings: * Fletcher v. Peck (1810) * Dartmouth v. Woodward (1819) * McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) * Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) * Charles Rivers Bridge v. Warren Bridge (1835) General Incorporation Law  passed in New York, 1848. Laissez faire  BUT, govt. did much to assist capitalism!

Samuel Slater (“Father of the Factory System”) Illegally brought British textile technology to the US Used it to establish the US textile industry in Rhode Island

The Lowell/Waltham System: First Dual-Purpose Textile Plant Francis Cabot Lowell’s town - 1814

Lowell in 1850

Early Textile Loom

New England Dominance in Textiles

The Beginning of ‘Wage Labor’ Lowell Girls The Beginning of ‘Wage Labor’

Lowell Girl Letters Doc 1 “I want you to consent to let me to go to Lowell if you can. I think it would be much better for me than to stay around here. I can earn more to begin with than I can anywhere about here. I am in need of clothes that I cannot get if I stay here and for that reason I want to go to Lowell or some place else. We all think if I could go with some steady girl that I might do well. I want you to think of it and make up your mind.” Mary Paul, Excerpt from letter to her father, 9/13/1845 Doc 2 “The Larcom sisters grew up in the Massachusetts seaport of Beverly, north of Boston. Their father, Benjamin Larcom, was a sea captain, and the ten Larcom children were raised primarily by their mother, Lois Barrett Larcom. The death of their father in 1832 undermined the economic stability of the family, and in 1835 Lois Larcom took her younger children with her to the mill town of Lowell, where she took charge of a boardinghouse for the Lawrence Manufacturing Company.” Thomas Dublin “Farm to Factory – Women’s Letters, 1830 – 1860” (1993)

Irish Immigrant Girls at Lowell

Lowell Mills Time Table

Lowell Boarding Houses

Early “Union” Newsletter

The Southern "King" Cotton

“King” Cotton Use the attached charts (on next slide) to answer the following questions: The chart refers to the slave population in the Americas during the 18th Century (True/False) As slave population increased so to did the production of cotton. (true/false) Cotton accounted for what % of US exports in 1820? 1860? Determine the ratio of slaves to cotton produced in 1840 and 1860. What do you think accounted for the change? In what way might this chart indicate an increase in the growth of sectionalism?

“King” Cotton

What's Happening in America by the 1850s?

Regional Specialization EAST  Industrial SOUTH  Cotton & Slavery WEST  The Nation’s “Breadbasket” Henry Clay’s “American System” was proposed to bring all these regions together economically to allow the US to become self sufficient

Distribution of Wealth During the American Revolution, 45% of all wealth in the top 10% of the population. 1845 Boston  top 4% owned over 65% of the wealth. 1860 Philadelphia  top 1% owned over 50% of the wealth. The gap between rich and poor was widening!

American Population Centers in 1820

American Population Centers in 1860

National Origin of Immigrants: 1820 - 1860 Why now?

Changing Occupation Distributions: 1820 - 1860