Us History 13rd March, 2012

US history survey

March 13, 2012Market revolution: industrialization,

transportation, commercialization

announcements

• paper # 1, due Tuesday 27 March

• details on topic and guidelines at the end of this power point.

Industrialization

• Rural & agricultural life based on rhythm of seasons & sun.• Industrial life based on clocks, rhythms of

machinery. • Britain & US both began machine-based manufac- turing with textiles.

cotton

• Invention of cotton gin by Eli Whitney, 1793.• Cleaned short staple cotton rapidly.• Led to rapid growth of cotton production

across lower South, by slave labor. • Primarily exported to English textile mills.

Northern investors, owners, inventors.

• Northern business handled shipping, insurance, brokerage of S. cotton exports.

• International slave trade financed 18th c. development.

• Slave labor/cotton financed 19th c. industrial development.

cotton

• Slave labor grew cotton in S. • Mill owners bought raw cotton.• Picking, carding, spinning, warping, weaving –

elements of creating cloth, formerly done by hand, now by machinery, under one roof.

• Created multiple types of cloth, including “negro cloth,” rough cloth for

clothing slaves.

US industrialization relied on water power.

Lowell mills,Massachusetts

Lowell in 1850

• A mile’s worth of factory buildings – 40 mill buildings. Also machine shops.

• 6 miles of canals – machinery was powered by the river’s power from waterfalls.

• 10,000 looms.• 10,000 workers.• Mills ran 12 hours daily, 6 days a week.

• Where could corporations find workers to produce cotton textiles?

Labor force for textile mills

• Daughters of New England farmers.• Typically 15 – 25, but began as young as 10. • Mills provided boardinghouses for mill girls, so

parents would consent to their daughters’ working in mills: respectability & supervision.

• Mill girls required to live in boardinghouses & to attend church on Sundays.

• Worked average 73 hours a week, 1830s & 1840s.

New England farms

Lowell, Massachusetts

mill girls

Mill girls’ culture

• Published workers’ magazines.• Protested against speed-up in work & cuts in wages – 20% cut in 1842, by walking out.• Lowell Female Reform Association, 1844.• New England Workingmen’s Assoc. -- efforts to limit workday to 10 hours.

Mill girls replaced by

• Irish immigrant families.• Later Polish, French Canadian, Greek

immigrants.• Cheap labor by immigrants – the ongoing rule

for profit-making in US business, through the present.

Q: where did technological knowledge come from?

• A: stolen from Britain.• Hamilton wanted to copy British factories.• Samuel Slater left England by disguising himself

& brought knowledge of factory system & loom to US.

• Francis Cabot Lowell lived in England, toured factories, wrote down technology every night, & brought info back to US.

Market revolution,1815 - 1860

1. improvements in transportation.2. commercialization – consumer goods for sale replace self-sufficiency & barter.3. industrialization – power-driven machinery produces goods formerly made by hand.

transportation

• natural transportation: Atlantic Ocean, Great Lakes, & deep & powerful rivers.

• Canals connected bodies of water.• Roads & turnpikes. • Railroads. • Huge country, rapidly growing population.

Funding transportation

• All agreed government had to help fund transportation improvements.

• Disagreements over whether states or federal government should pay.

• National Road – 1st federally funded highway, 1811 – 1834.

Erie Canal1825

Erie Canal connected western agriculture, eastern manufacturing, & eastern ports.

• Funded by NY legislature

passing a bond issue.• Major engineer- ing accomplish- ment - 83 locks.• Irish immigrant

laborers.

steamboats

• Dangerous, but stimulated trade on inland rivers.• First regulation by federal govt.

railroads

• Technological & scientific development, as well as large profits.

• 1830 1st RR, Baltimore & Ohio, 13 miles.

• By 1860, 31,000 miles of track.

• Technological & supply problems to be solved.

• Stimulated iron industry & created locomotive industry.

RRs

• In 1860, 70% of railroads were in the North.

• Railroads were major contribution to industrialization in US. Created many other businesses.

legalities

• Supreme Court decisions encouraged commercial enterprise, because they gave federal government (not states) power over interstate commerce.

• States passed laws creating incorporation of businesses.

Other impacts of transportation developments

• Oriented Americans away from Atlantic/Europe & to own heartland. Pride & American identity.

• Spirit of conquest of nature.• Strengthened North by improving ties with

West, rather than with South.

paper # 1, due Tuesday 27 March

• Imagine that you are one of the following people (b. 1790). – A member of the Lewis & Clark expedition.– A New England farm widow.– A Shawnee Indian.– An enslaved person sold from Virginia to Alabama.

• Do as much internet research as you feel necessary to write a convincing autobiography.

• Requirements:– 3 – 4 paragraphs, typed, double-spaced. – essay form: introduction, body, and conclusion.– only typed papers will be accepted.– name at top right of page.

Reading assignment for March 20

• Solomon Northrup, Twelve Years a Slave:Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853 (1853)

• http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/northup/northup.html

• chapter VIII, p. 105 – 117.