1. US history survey
March 13, 2012
Market revolution: industrialization,
transportation, commercialization

2. announcements
• paper # 1, due Tuesday 27 March
• details on topic and guidelines at the end of
this power point.

3. Industrialization
• Rural & agricultural life based on
rhythm of seasons & sun.
• Industrial life based on clocks, rhythms of
machinery.
• Britain & US both began
machine-based manufac-
turing with textiles.

4. cotton
• Invention of cotton gin by Eli Whitney, 1793.
• Cleaned short staple cotton rapidly.
• Led to rapid growth of cotton production
across lower South, by slave labor.
• Primarily exported to English textile mills.

5. Northern investors, owners, inventors.
• Northern business
handled shipping,
insurance, brokerage of
S. cotton exports.
• International slave
trade financed 18th c.
development.
• Slave labor/cotton
financed 19th c.
industrial development.

6. cotton
• Slave labor grew cotton in S.
• Mill owners bought raw cotton.
• Picking, carding, spinning, warping, weaving –
elements of creating cloth, formerly done by
hand, now by machinery, under one roof.
• Created multiple types of cloth, including
“negro cloth,” rough cloth for
clothing slaves.

7. US industrialization relied on water power.

8. Lowell mills,
Massachusetts

9. Lowell in 1850
• A mile’s worth of factory buildings – 40 mill
buildings. Also machine shops.
• 6 miles of canals – machinery was powered by
the river’s power from waterfalls.
• 10,000 looms.
• 10,000 workers.
• Mills ran 12 hours daily, 6 days a week.
• Where could corporations find workers to
produce cotton textiles?

10. Labor force for textile mills
• Daughters of New England farmers.
• Typically 15 – 25, but began as young as 10.
• Mills provided boardinghouses for mill girls, so
parents would consent to their daughters’
working in mills: respectability & supervision.
• Mill girls required to live in boardinghouses &
to attend church on Sundays.
• Worked average 73 hours a week, 1830s &
1840s.

11. New England farms

12. Lowell,
Massachusetts
mill girls

13. Mill girls’ culture
• Published workers’ magazines.
• Protested against speed-up in work
& cuts in wages – 20% cut in 1842,
by walking out.
• Lowell Female Reform Association,
1844.
• New England Workingmen’s Assoc. --
efforts to limit workday to 10 hours.

15. Mill girls replaced by
• Irish immigrant families.
• Later Polish, French Canadian, Greek
immigrants.
• Cheap labor by immigrants – the ongoing rule
for profit-making in
US business, through
the present.

16. Q: where did technological knowledge
come from?
• A: stolen from Britain.
• Hamilton wanted to copy
British factories.
• Samuel Slater left England by disguising
himself & brought knowledge of factory
system & loom to US.
• Francis Cabot Lowell lived in England, toured
factories, wrote down technology every night,
& brought info back to US.

18. Market revolution,
1815 - 1860
1. improvements in transportation.
2. commercialization – consumer goods for sale
replace self-sufficiency & barter.
3. industrialization – power-driven machinery
produces goods formerly made by hand.

19. transportation
• natural transportation: Atlantic Ocean, Great
Lakes, & deep & powerful rivers.
• Canals connected
bodies of water.
• Roads & turnpikes.
• Railroads.
• Huge country, rapidly
growing population.

20. Funding transportation
• All agreed government had to help fund
transportation improvements.
• Disagreements over whether states or federal
government should pay.
• National Road – 1st federally funded highway,
1811 – 1834.

21. Erie Canal
1825

22. Erie Canal connected western
agriculture, eastern manufacturing, &
eastern ports.
• Funded by NY
legislature
passing a bond
issue.
• Major engineer-
ing accomplish-
ment - 83 locks.
• Irish immigrant
laborers.

23. steamboats
• Dangerous, but stimulated trade
on inland rivers.
• First regulation by federal govt.

24. railroads
• 1830 1st RR, Baltimore
& Ohio, 13 miles.
• By 1860, 31,000 miles
of track.
• Technological & supply
problems to be solved.
• Technological & • Stimulated iron industry
scientific development, & created locomotive
as well as large profits. industry.

25. RRs
• In 1860, 70% of
railroads were in the
North.
• Railroads were major
contribution to
industrialization in US.
Created many other
businesses.

26. legalities
• Supreme Court decisions encouraged
commercial enterprise, because they gave
federal government (not states) power over
interstate commerce.
• States passed laws creating incorporation of
businesses.

27. Other impacts of transportation
developments
• Oriented Americans away from
Atlantic/Europe & to own heartland. Pride &
American identity.
• Spirit of conquest of nature.
• Strengthened North by improving ties with
West, rather than with South.

28. paper # 1, due Tuesday 27 March
• Imagine that you are one of the following people (b. 1790).
– A member of the Lewis & Clark expedition.
– A New England farm widow.
– A Shawnee Indian.
– An enslaved person sold from Virginia to Alabama.
• Do as much internet research as you feel necessary to write
a convincing autobiography.
• Requirements:
– 3 – 4 paragraphs, typed, double-spaced.
– essay form: introduction, body, and conclusion.
– only typed papers will be accepted.
– name at top right of page.

29. Reading assignment for March 20
• Solomon Northrup, Twelve Years a Slave:
Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of
New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in
1841, and Rescued in 1853 (1853)
• http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/northup/northu
p.html
• chapter VIII, p. 105 – 117.