Ch.13, Sec.1- The Industrial Revolution and America

The Industrial Revolution At the beginning of the 1700s, most people in Europe and the U.S. were farmers. By the mid-1700s, cities and populations grew. Traditional manufacturing methods could not produce enough goods to meet everyone’s needs. People began looking for ways to use machines to make items quickly and efficiently. This led to the Industrial Revolution, which is a period of rapid growth in the use of machines in manufacturing and production. The first major change took place in how textiles, or cloth items, were made. Before the Industrial Revolution, it took a long time to spin the thread and several workers. In 1770, James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny, which a worker could produce many threads at the same time.

The Industrial Revolution cont. In 1769, Richard Arkwright invented the water frame that ran on waterpower. His invention created dozens of threads at one time. This Machine lowered the cost of cotton cloth and increased the speed of production. This was also the first machine that could make high-quality thread. Because of the large size of this machine, it was used in textile mills.

Slater and His Secrets Samuel Slater immigrated to the U.S. to build the same machines that were being built in Britain to bring the Industrial Revolution to the U.S. In 1790, he teamed up with Smith Brown and William Almy to build the first mill in the U.S. in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. This lead to many more textile mills opening in the U.S., particularly in the Northeast.

A Manufacturing Breakthrough In the late 1790s, the U.S. government was worried they might go to war with France, and they needed more muskets for the army. At the time, a skilled worker made each part of the musket by hand, and each part was therefore different. In 1798, Eli Whitney came up with the idea of interchangeable parts. This would make each piece exactly alike, making it easier to assemble and replace broken parts. Whitney promised he could build 10,000 muskets in 2 years. The federal government gave him money to build a factory. However, it took longer than he expected to train the workers and design the machines. After 2 years, he had not produced a single musket, so he demonstrated his idea in 1801 in D.C. before Jefferson and John Adams. He brought parts for 10 different guns and quickly assembled them.

Sec.2- Changes in Working Life

Factory Families Samuel Slater started a system that became known as the Rhode Island system, where he would hire entire families to work in the mills.

The Lowell System Francis Cabot Lowell started his own type of system where he hired young, unmarried women to work in the mills. This system was called the Lowell system. The girls that worked in his mills were called Lowell girls. They paid them $2-4 each week. The workers paid $1.25 for room and board. These wages were considered good at that time for women. The typical Lowell girl worked in the mills for about 4 years. They worked hours a day, and the rooms were filled with cotton dust, which led to many health problems.

Workers Organize Immigrants began coming into the U.S. and working for less money, which took jobs from the mill workers, including the Lowell girls. This led to the formation of trade unions, which tried to improve pay and working conditions for their members. If the employers didn’t meet their demands, they then went on strike, or refusing to work until the employers meet their demands.

Labor Reform Efforts Sarah G. Bagley founded the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association in She fought for shorter working hours, which in 1840, President Martin Van Buren granted a 10 hour workday to many federal employees. In 1845, she was elected vice president of the New England Workingmen’s Association, making her the first woman to hold such a high ranking position in the American labor movement. However, companies could often avoid the new laws by making workers sign special contracts agreeing to work longer hours.

New Ways to Travel During the 1800s, the U.S. experienced a Transportation Revolution, or a period of rapid growth in the speed and convenience of travel. The 2 new forms of transportation were the steamboat and the railroad.

The Steamboat Robert Fulton tested a model steamboat design in 1803 in France. Several years later, he tested a full size commercial steamboat in the U.S. called the Clermont. On August 9, 1807, it sailed up the Hudson River without any trouble. This style of traveling was dangerous though, with the engines sometimes building up too much pressure and exploding.

Gibbons v. Ogden Thomas Gibbons was operating his steamboats between New Jersey and Manhattan using a federal license. However, he did not have a state license to travel in New York waters. New York had already given Aaron Ogden a monopoly on the steamboat business. When Ogden sued Gibbons and won, Gibbons appealed. The case of Gibbons v. Ogden reached the Supreme Court in The Court ruled that Gibbons had the right to operate in New York. Chief Justice John Marshall explained that the federal law overruled the state law. In 1830, Peter Cooper built the first locomotive in the U.S. called the Tom Thumb.

Sec.4- More Technological Advances

Messages by Wire In 1832, Samuel F.B. Morse invented the telegraph, which could send information over wires across great distances. The telegraph sent pulses of electric current through a wire. The telegraph operator tapped a bar, called a telegraph key, that controlled the length of each pulse. At the other end of the wire, these pulses were changes into clicking sounds. A short click was called a dash. Morse’s assistant, Alfred Lewis Vail, developed a system known as Morse code. In Morse code, different combinations of dots and dashes are used to stand for letters of the alphabet. For example, dot dot dot, dash dash dash, dot dot dot is the call for SOS. Around 1800, Italian scientist Alessandro Volta built the first battery.

Better Farm Equipment By 1860, New England alone had as many factories as the entire South. In 1837, John Deere saw that farmers in Illinois were having problems plowing the thick soil because the dirt stuck to their iron plows. Deere thought that a steel blade could do the job better. By 1846, he was selling 1,000 plows per year. Cyrus McCormick created the mechanical reaper, which cut down wheat quickly and efficiently. Elias Howe invented the first sewing machine. Isaac Singer, however, made improvements to it, and by the 1860s, Singer’s company was the world’s largest maker of sewing machines.