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

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

     Dropping 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

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

Lowell panorama 1840

Women at Lowell

Women at Lowell