Download Chapter 7 Section 1 Industry and Transportation

Chapter 7 Section 1
Industry and Transportation
How did transportation developments and industrialization affect the nation’s economy?
• New technology changed the way Americans lived and worked.
• The United States was set on a course of industrialization.
The major settlements in the U.S. originally developed along the rivers & harbors of the Atlantic coast.
 Water was the most efficient way to move people and goods.
 Overland transportation was expensive whether by cart, wagon, sleigh, stagecoach, horse or oxen.
 Moving freight a few dozen miles by land cost as much as shipping the same items across the ocean.
States chartered toll roads called turnpikes.
• Profits were supposed to be used for road improvements but most roads remained in poor condition.
• Few turnpikes made a profit or really improved the cost or speed of transportation.
• An exception was the National Road. This route of crushed stone extended from Maryland to the
Ohio River in 1818.
Water travel was revolutionized by the steamboat.
• In 1807, the first practical steamboat, the Clermont, began sailing from New York City.
• Steamboats shortened a trip up the Mississippi from New Orleans to Louisville from months to mere
days.
Canals linked farms and cities.
• In 1825, the 363-mile Erie Canal connected Lake Erie to the Hudson River.
• Shipping costs between Buffalo and New York City plummeted from $100 to $4 per ton.
• The resulting rise in commerce pushed New York City’s population to 800,000 by 1860.
• Now linked to markets in the East, Midwest farmers experienced tremendous growth.
Introduction of railroads provided the most dramatic transportation growth.
• The first railroads started in Britain in the 1820s.
• The United States had 13 miles of track in 1830 and 31,000 miles by 1860.
• A trip from Detroit to New York City that took 28 days in 1800 took just 2 days by train in 1857.
The Industrial Revolution
• In the 1700s, British factories began using machines powered by steam or water to spin thread or
weave cloth. This was the start of the Industrial Revolution.
• Britain tried to prohibit the export of industrial technology.
• In 1793, Samuel Slater, an English emigrant, built a water-powered mill from memory in
Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
The Industrial Revolution soon transformed the American economy.
• Several mills used the family system that employed parents and children who lived in a
companyowned village.
• In 1813, Francis Cabot Lowell combined all of the steps to manufacture cloth in one location in
Waltham, Massachusetts.
• In the 1820s, Lowell built his own factory town of Lowell, Massachusetts.
• He employed young single girls from area farms.
• Lowell girls lived in closely supervised boarding houses with strict rules. After several years, most
married.
Technology changed how people worked and lived.
• Work was divided into small tasks, reducing the level of skill or training needed for many jobs.
• Factory owners profited because unskilled workers were more numerous and could be paid less.
• In some industries, owners profited by dividing labor even without using new machines.
Interchangeable parts improved efficiency.
• Rather than a skilled artisan making a single clock or musket, workers made individual components
that were later assembled.
• Eli Whitney produced muskets with standardized parts. A component from one gun fit any other gun.
• Elias Howe and Isaac Singer also used interchangeable parts to build sewing machines.
In 1837 Samuel F.B. Morse revolutionized communications with his invention the electric telegraph.
• The telegraph sent electrical pulses along metal wires.
• “Morse Code” used dots and dashes to instantly send information for miles.
• By 1860, the United States had 50,000 miles of telegraph line.
Agriculture remained America’s chief industry but innovations made farms more productive.
New methods
More efficient ways to plant, tend, and harvest crops and raise livestock.
New inventions
John Deere’s steel plow and Cyrus McCormick’s mechanical reaper
helped double farm productivity by 1860.
New farmland
More fertile farms in the Midwest raised production.