Early Industrializationin the North

HIS 103

Copyright 2000, Bedford/St. Martin's

Travel Times from New York City in 1800

Transportation Revolution Turnpikes

built & operated by private companies (300 by 1810)

Mostly in New England & Middle States

Canals Erie Canal (1817-1825)

cut shipping costs from $100/ton to under $9/ton

Carried $15 million worth of freight annually

Delaware & Hudson Canal (1828) connected Pennsylvania coalfields to New York City

Transportation Routes, 1840Copyright 2000, Bedford./St. Martin’s

Erie Canal Map

Transportation Revolution (cont.)

Steamships Robert Fulton & Robert

Livingston’s Clermont (1807) 1st successful commercial steamship

Supreme Court ruled in Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) that state licenses couldn’t invalidate federal ones

Packet service Black Ball Line (NYC –

Liverpool) was 1st (1818) 52 lines by 1845

Railroads Railroads take over beginning

in 1840s Baltimore & Ohio Railroad est.

in 1827 to compete against NYC & Erie Canal

3,328 miles of track by 1840 30,626 miles of track by 1860;

2/3 in the North Reduced transportation costs by

$150-175 million 1859: 2 billion tons shipped by

rail; 1.6 billion by canal

Panic of 1837 partly due to states’ heavy investment in railroads & canals

Railroads in 1860Copyright 2000, Bedford./St. Martin’s

Baltimore & Ohio Railroad

Charles Carroll laying the Corner-stone, July 4, 1828 Strap iron rails

Replica of Peter

Cooper’s “Tom

Thumb” engine

Baltimore & Ohio Railroad

Carrollton Viaduct, Carrollton, MD

Communication Revolution U.S. Postal Service est. network of post offices

& post roads, & provided stage transportation 104,521 miles of post roads by 1829 Rates varied by mileage: 6 – 25 cents (1825-38)

Cheap printing Telegraph

Samuel F. B. Morse invented it in 1832 1st commercial line established in 1844 between

Baltimore & Washington, D.C. Western Union & American Telegraph Co. created

national networks in the 1850s San Francisco connected by 1861

Samuel Morse & the Telegraph

Two-Stage Process of Industrialization

1st Stage = Involution (1790s - 1820s) Intensification of local, traditional practices Merchants needed to introduce cash to bridge gap

between local barter economy & international cash/credit economy

Young, unmarried women take in “out-work”

2nd Stage = Revolution (1830s - 1860s) Long-distance, capitalist practices take over Merchants invest capital in new factories Young, unmarried women move to factories

Early Factories Samuel Slater est. 1st power loom

at Pawtucket, RI in Dec. 1790 Boston Manufacturing Co.

opened 1st full cotton textile factory at Waltham, Mass. in 1813

Woolen mills opened in Lowell (1830) & Lawrence (1845)

Conn. gunmakers Eli Whitney & Simeon North introduced use of machine-made interchangeable parts

Conversion from water to steam (powered by coal), 1830-50

Value of industrial products exceeded value of agricultural products for 1st time in 1859

Slater & his mill

The Lowell System

Merrimack Mills & Boarding Houses, Lowell, Mass.

Boott Cotton Mill, Lowell National Historical Park

Exterior – canal

Weave room

No Marxist “Class Consciousness”

Work in factories offered independence from family control

Wages were low, & kept down by influx of cheaper immigrant labor

Factory workers insisted on middle-class identity as “producers”

Factory owners also claimed to be middle-class producers Many had been former master craftsmen Way of reducing class conflict

Fueled by Consumerism More widespread desire to

imitate genteel lifestyle Gentility now associated with

middle class, rather than aristocracy

Link between morality & respectability tied evangelicals to material culture

Factory goods seen as superior to, as well as cheaper than, home-made

Women played increasing role as consumers, creating “tastes” & “styles”

Ackerman FashionPlate, 1821

1840s Advertising

Changed Spatial & Social Relationships

Work separated from home Women less likely to learn & participate in business Instead, became moral guardians in domestic sphere

Production separated from management and retail space Located in different buildings, in different parts of city

Housing clustered around jobs, creating class segregation Had to live within walking distance of work Ethnic enclaves further segregate working class