Powerpoint lecture on the rise of modernity in America. Features transportation and industrial revolutions, market revolution that follows, and social reaction.
2. Industrial Revolution
Cotton Gin Steam Engine
Textiles Production Factories
Coal Mechanics
One Result: New dynamic in Workplace Relations.
3. Example: The Shoe Industry
The old way: Apprentice – Journeyman – Master Cobbler
Artisan Pride
One shop makes the entire shoe.
The Outwork System: 1820s and 1830s
Division of production into separate parts.
Journeymen as wage-laborers.
The Result: The “Shoe Boss”
4.
5. Other Examples
Factory = Power-driven machines turn out large quantities.
1782 – Oliver Evans builds water-powered flour mill.
Lifted Grain, cleaned it as it fell, ground into flour.
Then conveyed flour back to the top to allow it to cool.
Six men could mill 100,000 bushels a year.
By 1838, America has 2000 steam engines.
Glass Industry Sawmills
Machine Shops Iron-Rolling Mills
“Porkopolis”
6.
7.
8. Resulting Trends
More goods and Cheaper goods. Luxury items now cost less.
A modern Middle Class begins to grow, as more families can afford to
live like the Upper Class.
But also a growing wealth gap.
% of wealth concentrated in the top Ten Percent Income Bracket
1800: 40%
1860: 70%
Today? Still 70%
But,
Top 1% control 35% of the nation’s wealth.
36. The Transportation Revolution:
The country gets Smaller as it gets Larger.
Travel time from NYC to Charleston:
1800 = 2 weeks 1857 = 2 days.
Lowers the Price of Goods
And, also leads to spread of Information and People
37. The Market Revolution:
A product of the Transport
and the Industrial Revolutions
More goods, in a greater variety, at lower prices, results in
the growth of a self-conscious Middle Class.
America develops inter-regional domestic markets.
(States trade with other states and across the nation).
Combined with the ability to move food quickly over great distances,
this leads to REGIONAL SPECIALIZATION
