America Takes different Paths

Industrial Revolution

Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the socioeconomic and cultural conditions of the times

Textiles –

Cotton spinning using Richard Arkwright's water frame, James Hargreaves's Spinning Jenny, and Samuel Crompton's Spinning Mule (a combination of the Spinning Jenny and the Water Frame). This was patented in 1769 and so came out of patent in 1783. The end of the patent was rapidly followed by the erection of many cotton mills. Similar technology was subsequently applied to spinning worsted yarn for various textiles and flax for linen.

Spinning Mule

The spinning mule was invented in 1779 by Samuel Crompton. It spins textile fibers into yarn by an intermittent process in the draw stroke, the roving is pulled through and twisted; on the return it is wrapped onto the spindle.

Steam Power

The improved steam engine invented by James Watt and patented in 1775 was initially mainly used to power pumps for pumping water out of mines, but from the 1780s was applied to power other types of machines. This enabled rapid development of efficient semi-automated factories on a previously unimaginable scale in places where waterpower was not available.

Iron making

Iron making – In the Iron industry, coke was finally applied to all stages of iron smelting, replacing charcoal.

Samuel Slater

Samuel Slater (1768–1835) is the founder of the Slater Mill. "Father of the American Industrial Revolution" or the "Father of the American Factory System" because he brought British textile technology to America. Slater founded Slater's Mill at Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1793. He went on to own thirteen textile mills.

Lowell Mills

While on a trip to England in 1810, Newburyport merchant Francis Cabot Lowell was allowed to tour the British textile factories, but not take notes. Realising the War of 1812 had ruined his import business but that a market for domestic finished cloth was emerging in America, he memorised the design of textile machines, and on his return to the United States, he set up the Boston Manufacturing Company. Lowell and his partners built America's second cotton-to-cloth textile mill at Waltham, Massachusetts

Lowell Girls

During the first half of the nineteenth century, farm girls and young women from throughout New England were recruited to work in the textile factories in Lowell, Massachusetts. 

The Lowell textile mills employed a workforce which was about three quarters female; this characteristic (unique at the time) caused two social effects: a close examination of the women's moral behavior, and a form of labor agitation..

The Lowell female textile workers wrote and published several literary magazines, including the Lowell Offering, which featured essays, poetry and fiction written by female textile workers. They also actively participated in early labor reform through legislative petitions, forming labor organizations, contributing essays and articles to a pro-labor newspaper the Voice of Industry and protesting through "turn-outs" or strikes.

Lowell System

The Lowell System combined large-scale mechanization with an attempt to improve the stature of its female workforce and workers. A few girls who came with their mothers or older sisters were as young as ten years old, some were middle-aged, but the average age was about 24. Usually hired for contracts of one year (the average stay was about four years), new employees were given assorted tasks as sparehands and paid a fixed daily wage while more experienced loom operators would be paid by the piece. They were paired with more experienced women, who trained them in the ways of the factory

Working Conditions

Conditions in the Lowell mills were severe by modern American standards. Employees worked from five am until seven pm, for an average 73 hours per week.Each room usually had 80 women working at machines, with two male overseers managing the operation. The noise of the machines was described by one worker as "something frightful and infernal", and although the rooms were hot, windows were often kept closed during the summer so that conditions for thread work remained optimal. The air, meanwhile, was filled with particles of thread and cloth

Living Conditions

The investors or factory owners built hundreds of boarding houses near the mills, where textile workers lived year-round. A curfew of 10 pm was common, and men were generally not allowed inside. About 25 women lived in each boardinghouse, with up to six sharing a bedroom. One worker described her quarters as "a small, comfortless, half-ventilated apartment containing some half a dozen occupants". Trips away from the boardinghouse were uncommon; the Lowell girls worked and ate together. However, half-days and short paid vacations were possible due to the nature of the piece-work; one girl would work the machines of another in addition to her own such that no wages would be lost.

Expectations

The Lowell girls were expected to attend church and demonstrate morals befitting proper society. The 1848 Handbook to Lowell proclaimed that "The company will not employ anyone who is habitually absent from public worship on the Sabbath, or known to be guilty of immorality

Mass Production

is the production of large amounts of standardized products, including and especially on assembly lines.

Interchangeable parts

Interchangeable parts are parts that are, for practical purposes, identical. They are made to specifications that ensure that they are so nearly identical that they will fit into any device of the same type. One such part can freely replace another, without any custom fitting .This interchangeability allows easy assembly of new devices, and easier repair of existing devices, while minimizing both the time and skill required of the person doing the assembly or repair.

Eli Whitney

In the U.S., Eli Whitney saw the potential benefit of developing "interchangeable parts" for the firearms of the United States military, and thus, July 1801, he built ten guns, all containing the same exact parts and mechanisms, and disassembled them before the United States Congress. He placed the parts in a large mixed pile and, with help, reassembled all of the weapons right in front of Congress

Telegraph

Samuel Morse proved that signals could be transmitted by wire. He used pulses of current to deflect an electromagnet, which moved a marker to produce written codes on a strip of paper - the invention of Morse Code

Telegraph

Samuel Morse received a patent for the telegraph in 1847

Cyrus Mc Cormick The McCormick design was pulled and cut

the grain to one side. One of the first public demonstrations by McCormick of mechanical reaping was at the nearby village of Steeles Tavern, Virginia in 1831. McCormick claimed he developed a final version of the reaper in 18 months. The young McCormick was granted a patent on the reaper on June 21, 1834.

Elias Howe

In the early 1800s, clothing was made by hand, families sewed their pants, shirts, and dresses using a needle and thread. But in 1846 Elias Howe changed all that, he came up with another way to make clothes, he patented the first practical sewing machine.The sewing machine industry based on his original invention made possible the mass production of clothing on a much larger scale than had ever been possible with hand-stitching.  Howe’s " process used thread from two different sources." Elias Howe's machine had a needle with an eye at the point. The needle was pushed through the cloth and created a loop on the other side; a shuttle on a track then slipped the second thread through the loop, creating what is called the lockstitch.

Elias Howe - Isaac Singer

Sewing machines did not go into mass production until the 1850's, when Isaac Singer built the first commercially successful machine. Singer built the first sewing machine where the needle moved up and down rather than the side-to-side and the needle was powered by a foot treadle. Previous machines were all hand-cranked. However, Isaac Singer's machine used the same lockstitch that Howe had patented. Elias Howe sued Isaac Singer for patent infringement and won in 1854

After successfully defending his right to a share in the profits of his invention, Elias Howe saw his annual income jump from three hundred to more than two hundred thousand dollars a year. Between 1854 and 1867, Howe earned close to two million dollars from his invention

Robert Fulton Steamboat In 1807, Fulton and Livingston

together built the first commercial steamboat, the North River Steamboat (later known as the Clermont), which carried passengers between New York City and Albany, New York. The Clermont was able to make the 300 mile trip in 32 hours.

Cleremont Her original dimensions were 130 feet (40 m) long x 16 feet (4.9 m) wide x 7 feet (2.1 m) deep. The ship had a paddle wheel on each side, but also masts and sails. Skeptics called her "Fulton's Folly".

Railroads

The United States started developing steam locomotives in 1829 with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Tom Thumb. This was the first locomotive to run in America, although it was intended as a demonstration of the potential of steam traction, rather than as a revenue-earning locomotive. The first successful steam railway in the US was the South Carolina Railroad whose inaugural train ran on 25 December 1830 hauled by the Best Friend of Charleston

Tom Thumb

Tom Thumb was designed by Peter Cooper as a four-wheel locomotive with a vertical boiler and vertically mounted cylinders that drove the wheels on one of the axles.

Peter Cooper

First American Made steam Locomotive

Cooper put together the Tom Thumb steam locomotive for B&O in 1830 from various old parts, including musket barrels, and some small-scale steam engines he had fiddled with back in New York. The engine was a rousing success, prompting investors to buy stock in B&O, which enabled the company to buy Cooper's iron rails, making him what would be his first fortune

Immigration

Populations were on the move in the 1800s, and the population of the New World increased dramatically as millions of immigrants arrived.

The Irish and Germans both were motivated to travel to America due to the hopes of a promising dream-like society full of prosperity and equality. In Ireland almost half of the population lived on farms that were less than prosperous, producing little income. Because of their poverty, most Irish people depended on potatoes for food. When this crop failed three years in a row, it led to a great famine with horrendous consequences. Over 750,000 people starved to death. Over two million Irish eventually moved to the United States seeking relief from their desolated country.

Germans

On the contrary, more than a million Germans fled to the United States to escape political hardship. They sought to escape the political unrest caused by riots, rebellion and eventually a revolution in 1848. The Germans had little choice as few countries allowed German immigration. Both sought the American dream, however, the Irish sought to escape famine and economic hardship while the Germans sought to escape riots and political hardships.

Nativist

Nativism is favoring the interests of established inhabitants over those of immigrants.

Arriving at Ellis Island