Expansion (continued)

Expansion (continued)

Chapter 2:Water and Industry

Production Efficiency

Achieved through new forms of tillage, better tools, better seeds and increasing specialization.
Introduction of water power.
Towns developed around factories which were on (or next to) a rushing stream.
These cities were built on rocky cliffs and ledges. Roads and navigation were poor.

Entrepreneurs

Emerged with the introduction of water mills. Dams and canals were built.
A controlling of the environment emerged.
The emergence of a water-powered factory was a revolution in financial and social organization.
Technologies emerged. Intricate types of machinery evolved. Their complexity required full-time specialists (maintenance, construction, etc.).

New England's Industrial Expansion

Merrimack River system provided 900 mills with 80,000 horsepower (or the equivalent of 800,000 men).
Factories were dictated by the power technology.
Cotton cloth and wool goods were among the first mass-produced products.
Sold in all parts of the United States.
A replacement of the handmade with the mass-produced.
Monopolies emerged.
Thousands of men and women were drawn off the farms and to the factories.
Work was now measured by the clock instead of human rhythms and seasonal variations.
Bells signaled when to arrive, eat, break, etc.
However, once the clock had been accepted, work was interrupted by summer dry spells or winter freezing.

A Nation becomes Divided

Industrial water-power gradually divided the nation. Larger factories were common only in the North.
Geographical explanation: The North was situated to exploit water-power.
The South contains rivers where the runoff is less gradual.
The North had many banks and large markets. Contrastly, the South lacked investors for development.
As late as 1880, the South utilized only 23 percent of the power available.

The Economics of Slavery

Factories in the South employed both wage labor and slave labor.
Slave labor undercut free labor, consequently angering white working men.
Northern workers feared that they could not compete with low-cost slave labor. (Similar to today's contemporary wage issues)
Southern factories relied on unskilled and uneducated workers.
Northern factories relied on better skilled and better educated workers.

A Developing Infrastructure

The federal government fostered industrialization through high tariffs to foreign countries.
Roads, canals and railroads emerged to bring goods nationwide.
Northern cities exceeded the South in terms of production by building strong links to the Midwest.
Railroads became popular. But they were all privately owned, and thus more expensive to move freight than by the traditional method of water transport.
As water driven factories multiplied, the cost of transportation dropped.
Goods and services of all varieties reached the American home.

An Emerging Class System

A World Power: But Is It Healthy For America?

By 1850, the U.S. the English in terms of manufacturing power.
Yet, not everyone agreed that industrialization was healthy for America.
Concern grew about the social effects of a shift away from a local agricultural economy.
Henry Thoreau attacked "the curse of the trade. The Working man has no time to be anything but a machine."
Workers were now producing for consumerism.]

Chapter 3