1. Industrial Revolution
Period 4
1800 – 1848

2. Division of Labor & the Factory
DoL increased output
Luxury items became part of everyday life
1830s – “mineral-based economy (coal & metals)

3. British Competition Britain America
Banned export of textile machinery & the emigration of mechanics
Low costs  low prices
Cheap labor w/ a larger population
Abundance of natural resources (water)
Protective tariffs (1816, 1824, 1828)
Recruited women from farm families (“raised” them)
For cheap labor, factories began to recruit women from farm families . Gave them rooms in boarding houses and with evening lectures and other cultural activities. To reassure parents about their daughters’ moral welfare, the mill owners enforced strict curfews, prohibited drinking and required regular church attendance. This gave the women a sense of independence.

4. Inventions Eli Whitney Samuel Morse Cotton gin 1793
Interchangeable parts 1798
Samuel Morse
Telegraph 1830s
Morse Code

5. Laborers
Artisan republicanism – production based on liberty & equality
Shifts to wage earners under the control of an employer (boss)
Unions - bargain for better wages & fewer hours
Govt made unions illegal – unlawfully interfered with a “master’s” authority
Commonwealth v. Hunt – upheld the right of workers to form unions
Labor theory of value – price of goods should reflect the labor required to make them, & the income should go to the producer, not the factory owner
As the IR gathered momentum, it changed the nature of workers’ lives.
Originally, workers were more independent. Not really working for someone else. Now with the IR and factory labor, you work for someone else (master/factory owner).
Women didn’t mind this form of labor so much because they got a sense of independence. Men on the other hand hated the idea of working for someone else. They rejected the terms master and servant and used the Dutch word boss to refer to their employer.
Labor unions were formed because workers resented how the long hours restricted their family life and educational opportunities.

6. Transportation Revolution
Development along the MS River
National Road (Cumberland Road)
Migration west
Erie Canal – 1819
Connected Hudson River to Lake Erie
Reduced travel time
Robert Fulton’s steamboat, the Clermont 1807
Toll roads and turnpikes are built to connect communities.
Construction of the Erie Canal altered the ecology of an entire region. Cut down massive amounts of trees to provide wood for houses and to open land for growing crops and grazing animals.
Erie Canal was completed in 1825.

7. Immigration Germans and Irish – settled in the NE
Avoided the South b/c they feared competition from slave labor
Nativist movement: anti-immigrants