THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN THE UNITED STATES

The economic successes of the British soon led other nations to try to follow the same path. In northern Europe, mechanics and investors in France, Belgium, Holland, and some of the German states set out to imitate Britain’s successful example. In the young United States, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton called for an Industrial Revolution in his Report on Manufactures (1791). Many Americans felt that the United States had to become economically strong in order to maintain its recently won independence from Great Britain. In cities up and down the Atlantic Coast, leading citizens organized associations devoted to the encouragement of manufactures.

The Industrial Revolution unfolded in the United States even more vigorously than it had in Great Britain. The young nation began as a weak, loose association of former colonies with a traditional economy. More than three-quarters of the labor force worked in agriculture in 1790. Americans soon enjoyed striking success in mechanization, however. This was clear in 1851 when producers from many nations gathered to display their industrial triumphs at the first World’s Fair, at the Crystal Palace in London. There, it was the work of Americans that attracted the most attention. Shortly after that, the British government dispatched a special committee to the United States to study the manufacturing accomplishments of its former colonies. By the end of the century, the United States was the world leader in manufacturing, unfolding what became known as the Second Industrial Revolution. The American economy had emerged as the largest and most productive on the globe.

A

American Advantages

The United States enjoyed many advantages that made it fertile ground for an Industrial Revolution. A rich, sparsely inhabited continent lay open to exploitation and development. It proved relatively easy for the United States government to buy or seize vast lands across North America from Native Americans, from European nations, and from Mexico. In addition, the American population was highly literate, and most felt that economic growth was desirable. With settlement stretched across the continent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, the United States enjoyed a huge internal market. Within its distant borders there was remarkably free movement of goods, people, capital, and ideas.

The young nation also inherited many advantages from Great Britain. The stable legal and political systems that had encouraged enterprise and rewarded initiative in Great Britain also did so, with minor variations, in the United States. No nation was more open to social mobility, at least for white male Protestants. Others—particularly African Americans, Native Americans, other minorities, and women—found the atmosphere much more difficult. In the context of the times, however, the United States was relatively open to change. It quickly adopted many of the technologies, forms of organization, and attitudes shaping the new industrial world, and then proceeded to generate its own advances.

One initial American advantage was the fact that the United States shared the language and much of the culture of Great Britain, the pioneering industrial nation. This helped Americans transfer technology to the United States. As descriptions of new machines and processes appeared in print, Americans read about them eagerly and tried their own versions of the inventions sweeping Britain.

Critical to furthering industrialization in the United States were machines and knowledgeable people. Although the British tried to prevent skilled mechanics from leaving Britain and advanced machines from being exported, those efforts mostly proved ineffective. Americans worked actively to encourage such transfers, even offering bounties (special monetary rewards) to encourage people with knowledge of the latest methods and devices to move to the United States.

The most dramatic early example of a successful technical transfer is the case of Samuel Slater. Slater was an important figure in a leading British textile firm who sailed to the United States masquerading as a farmer. He eventually moved to Rhode Island, where he worked with mechanics, machine builders, and merchants to create the first important textile mill in the United States. Slater had worked as an apprentice under Richard Arkwright, and Slater’s mill used Arkwright’s innovative system of mechanized spinning. The firm of Almy, Brown, and Slater inspired many imitators and gave birth to a vast textile industry in New England.

The lure of the open, growing United States was strong. Its opportunities attracted knowledgeable, ambitious individuals not only from Britain but from other European countries as well. In 1800, for example, a young Frenchman named Eleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours brought to the United States his knowledge of the latest French advances in chemistry and gunpowder making. In 1802 he founded what would become one of the largest and most successful American businesses, E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, better known simply as DuPont.

B

American Challenges

Soon the United States was pioneering on its own. Because local circumstances and conditions in the United States were somewhat different than those in Britain, industrialization also developed somewhat differently. Although the United States had many natural resources in abundance, some were more plentiful than others. The profusion of wood in North America, for example, led Americans to use that material much more than Europeans did. They burned wood widely as fuel and also made use of it in machinery and in construction. Taking advantage of the vast forest resources in their country, Americans built the world’s best woodworking machines.

Transportation and communication were special challenges in a nation that stretched across the North American continent. Economic growth depended on tying together the resources, markets, and people of this large area. Despite the general conviction that private enterprise was best, the government played an active role in uniting the country, particularly by building roads. From 1815 to 1860 state and local governments also provided almost three-quarters of the financing for canal construction and related improvements to waterways.

When the British began building railroads, Americans embraced this new technology eagerly, and substantial public money was invested in rail systems. By 1860 more than half the railroad tracks in the world were in the United States. The most critical 19th-century improvement in communication, the telegraph, was invented by American Samuel F. B. Morse. The telegraph allowed messages to be sent long distances almost instantly by using a code of electronic pulses passing over a wire. The railroad and the telegraph spread across North America and helped create a national market, which in turn encouraged additional improvements in transportation and communication.

Another challenge in the United States was a relative shortage of labor. Much more than in continental Europe or in Britain, labor was in chronically short supply in the United States. This led industrialists to develop machinery to replace human labor.

C

Changes in Industry

Americans soon demonstrated a great talent for mechanization. Famed American arms maker Samuel Colt summarized his fellow citizens’ faith in technology when he declared in 1851, “There is nothing that cannot be produced by machinery.”

C1

Continuous-Process Manufacturing

An important American development was continuous-process manufacturing. In continuous-process manufacturing, large quantities of the same product, such as cigarettes or canned food, are made in a nonstop operation. The process runs continuously, except for repairs to or maintenance of the machinery used. In the late 18th century, inventor Oliver Evans of Delaware created a remarkable water-powered flour mill. In Evans’s mill, machinery elevated the grain to the top of the mill and then moved it mechanically through various processing steps, eventually producing flour at the bottom of the mill. The process greatly reduced the need for manual labor and cut milling costs dramatically. Mills modeled after Evans’s were built along the Delaware and Brandywine rivers and Chesapeake Bay, and by the time of the American Revolution (1775-1783) they were arguably the most productive in the world. Similar milling technology was also used to grind snuff and other tobacco products in the same region.

As the 19th century passed, Americans improved continuous-process technology and expanded its use. The basic principle of utilizing gravity-powered and mechanized systems to move and process materials proved applicable in many settings. The meatpacking industry in the Midwest employed a form of this technology, as did many industries using distilling and refining processes. Items made using continuous-process manufacturing included kerosene, gasoline, and other petroleum products, as well as many processed foods. Mechanized, continuous processing yielded uniform quantity production with a minimum need for human labor.

C2

The American System

In a closely related development, by the mid-19th century American manufacturers shaped a set of techniques later known as the American system of production. This system involved using special-purpose machines to produce large quantities of similar, sometimes interchangeable, parts that would then be assembled into a finished product. The American system extended the idea of division of labor from workers to specialized machines. Instead of a worker making a small part of a finished product, a machine made the part, speeding the process and allowing manufacturers to produce goods more quickly. This method also enabled goods of much more uniform quality than those made by hand labor. The American system appeared first in New England in the manufacture of clocks, locks, axes, and shovels. Around the same time, the federal armories used an advanced version of this same system to produce large numbers of firearms, coining the term armory practice.

Soon a group of knowledgeable mechanics and engineers spread the American system. Many industries began to use special-purpose machines to produce large quantities of similar or even interchangeable parts for assembly into finished goods. The American system was used by inventor and manufacturer Cyrus Hall McCormick to produce his innovative reapers; Samuel Colt used it to make revolver pistols; and inventor Isaac Merrit Singer produced his popular sewing machines using this system. These kinds of products won prizes and attracted much attention at the Crystal Palace exhibition of 1851.

D

The Second Industrial Revolution

As American manufacturing technology spread to new industries, it ushered in what many have called the Second Industrial Revolution. The first had come on a wave of new inventions in iron making, in textiles, in the centrally powered factory, and in new ways of organizing business and work. In the latter 19th century, a second wave of technical and organizational advances carried industrial society to new levels. While Great Britain had been the birthplace of the first revolution, the second occurred most powerfully in the United States.

With the second revolution came many new processes. Iron and steel manufacturing was transformed in the 1850s and 1860s by vastly more productive technologies, the Bessemer process and the open-hearth furnace. The Bessemer process, developed by British inventor Henry Bessemer, enabled steel to be produced more efficiently by using blasts of air to convert crude iron into steel. The open-hearth furnace, created by German-born British inventor William Siemens, allowed steelmakers to achieve temperatures high enough to burn away impurities in crude iron.

In addition, factories and their production output became much larger than they had been in the first stage of the Industrial Revolution. Some industries concentrated production in fewer but bigger and more productive facilities. In addition, some industries boosted production in existing (not necessarily larger) factories. This growth was enabled by a variety of factors, including technological and scientific progress; improved management; and expanding markets due to larger populations, rising incomes, and better transportation and communications.

American industrialist Andrew Carnegie built a giant iron and steel empire using huge new plants. John D. Rockefeller, another American industrialist, did the same in petroleum refining. Soon there were enormous advances in science-based industries—for example, chemicals, electrical power, and electrical machinery. Just as in the first revolution, these changes prompted further innovations, which led to further economic growth.

It was in the automobile industry that continuous-process methods and the American system combined to greatest effect. In 1903 American industrialist Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Company. His production innovation was the moving assembly line, which brought together many mass-produced parts to create automobiles. Ford’s moving assembly line gave the world the fullest expression yet of the Second Industrial Revolution, and his production triumphs in the second decade of the 20th century signaled the crest of the new industrial age.

D1

Organization and Work

Just as important as advances in manufacturing technology was a wave of changes in how business was structured and work was organized. Beginning with the large railroad companies, business leaders learned how to operate and coordinate many different economic activities across broad geographic areas. During the first phase of the Industrial Revolution, many factories had grown into large organizations, but even by 1875 few firms coordinated production and marketing across many business units. Leaders such as Carnegie and Rockefeller changed this, and firms grew much larger in numerous industries, giving birth to the modern corporation.

Within the business unit, Americans pioneered novel ways of organizing work. Engineers studied and modified production, seeking the most efficient ways to lay out a factory, move materials, route jobs, and control work through precise scheduling. Industrial engineer Frederick W. Taylor and his followers sought both efficiency and contented workers. They believed that they could achieve those results through precise measurement and analysis of each aspect of a job. Taylor’s The Principles of Scientific Management (1911) became the most influential book of the Second Industrial Revolution. By the early 20th century, Ford’s mass production techniques and Taylor’s scientific management principles had come to symbolize America’s place as the leading industrial nation.

D2

Changes in Agriculture

As it had done in Britain, industrialization brought deep and often distressing shifts to American society. The influence of rural life declined, and the relative economic importance of agriculture dwindled. Although the amount of land under cultivation and the number of people earning a living from agriculture expanded, the growth of commerce, manufacturing, and the service industries steadily eclipsed farming’s significance. The proportion of the work force dependent on agriculture shrank constantly from the time of the first federal census in 1790. From that time until the end of the 19th century, farm workers dropped from about 75 percent of the work force to about 40 percent.

New technology was introduced in agriculture. The scarcity of labor and the growth of markets for agricultural products encouraged the introduction of machinery to the farms. Machinery increased productivity so that fewer hands could produce more food per acre. New plows, seed drills, cultivators, mowers, and threshers, as well as the reaper, all appeared by 1860. After that, better harvesters and binding machines came into use, as did the harvester-threshers known as combines. Farmers also used limited steam power in the late 19th century, and by about 1905 they began using gasoline-powered tractors. At about the same time, Americans began to apply science systematically to agriculture, such as by using genetics as a basis for plant breeding. These techniques, plus fertilizers and pesticides, helped to increase farm productivity.

E

Changes in Society

As in Britain, the Industrial Revolution in the United States led to major social changes. Urban population grew, rural population declined, and the nature of labor changed dramatically.

E1

Growth of Cities

As a result of the shift in economic importance from agriculture to manufacturing, American cities grew both in number and in population. From 1860 to 1900 the number of urban areas in the United States expanded fivefold. Even more striking was the explosion in the growth of big cities. In 1860 there were only 9 American cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants; by 1900 there were 38. Like the British critics of the preceding century, many Americans viewed these industrial and commercial centers as dark and dirty places crowded with exploited workers. But whatever the drawbacks of city life, urban growth in the United States was unstoppable, fueled both by the movement of rural Americans and a swelling tide of immigrants from Europe. In 1790 only about 5 percent of the American population lived in cities; today more than 75 percent does. This long-term trend is characteristic of societies experiencing industrialization and is evident today in regions of Asia and Latin America that are now undergoing an industrial revolution.

E2

Effects on Labor

Industrialization brought to the United States conflicts and stresses similar to the ones encountered in Britain and in Europe. Those who had a stake in the traditional economy lost ground as mechanized production replaced household manufacturing. Often, skilled workers found their income and their status under attack from the new machines and the relentless division of labor. Businesses had always enjoyed considerable power in their relationships with the labor force, but the balance tipped even more in their favor as firms grew larger.

In order to counter the power of business, workers tried to form trade unions to represent them and bargain for rights. Initially they had only limited success. Occasional strikes, sometimes violent, appeared as signs of underlying tensions. Until the Great Depression of the 1930s, skilled craft workers were almost the only groups able to sustain unions. The most successful of these unions were those in the American Federation of Labor. They did not seek fundamental social or economic change, such as socialists advocated; instead they accepted industrial society and concentrated on improving the wages and working conditions of their members.

Eventually the United States digested the tensions and dislocations caused by the coming of industry and the growth of cities. The government began to enact regulations and antitrust laws to counter the worst excesses of big business. The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 was created to prevent corporate trusts, monopoly enterprises formed to reduce competition and allow essentially a single business firm to control the price of a product. Laws such as the Fair Labor Standards Act, enacted in 1938, mandated worker protections, including the maximum 8-hour workday and 40-hour workweek. Above all, the rising incomes and high rates of economic growth proved calming. Material progress convinced most Americans that industrialization had been a positive development, although the challenge of balancing business growth and worker rights remains an issue to this day.