The Industrial Revolution in America Social relations transformed
I. The Great Transformation A.Cottage industry 1. Putting out 2. Home & work
B. “American System” of manufacturing 1. Samuel Slater Slater 2. War of John H. Hall - interchangeable parts
4. Textiles – “leading industry - production under one roof - control over mode of production - factory life and social change
II. New work, new workers Origins of the American working class
A. Decline of the artisan 1.Declining need for skilled labor 2.Production, place & control - new obligations
B. Finding workers 1.Company towns 2.Lowell girls
C. Immigration : 151, : 600, : + 1M Demographic growth, cultural revolution
2. Out of Ireland 3. German immigration
D. Survival strategies 1. (1 st / 2 nd generation) - tenements - religion - neighborhoods/ communities 2. Leisure
3. Nativism - racist - protestant “Know-Nothings”
E. “Blue collar” America 1.Factory discipline “ wage slaves” - working conditions - living conditions
F. Labor & republicanism 1.Free Labor Ideology “Eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, eight hours for what we will”
G. Alternatives to industrialization 1.Utopian Socialism – Robert Owen, Saint-Simone 2. Agrarian communalism 3. Romanticism
III. The Middle Class A.Bourgeois culture 1. Distinguish themselves 2. Pro-capitalist, concerned with abuses Liberalism
B. Home life and the Cult of Domesticity 1.Male & female “spheres”? 2.Empowerment, or “gilded cage”? She's only a bird in a gilded cage, A beautiful sight to see. You would think she was happy And free from care. She's not, though she seems to be. It's sad when you think of her wasted life, For Youth cannot mate with Age. And her beauty was sold For an old man's gold. She's a bird in a gilded cage.
C. Romanticization and separation of male/female culture 1.Marriage, motherhood 2.Women and Society 2 nd Great Awakening Temperance Abolition
D. Early feminism 1.Born in Abolitionist movement Eliz. Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott 2. Seneca Falls Conference Declaration of Sentiments
Reform born in industrial era increasingly intolerant of slavery… Transcendentalism/Romanticism 2 nd Great Awakening Free Labor Feminism Abolition