1. The Industrial & Agricultural North

2. Early Textile Manufacturing
1789 Samuel Slater arrives in America
Slater builds 1st textile mill in 1790
1807 Jefferson’s Embargo stimulates domestic production
War of 1812 restricts imports and encourages growth of manufacturing
By 1815 textile mills numbered in the hundreds

3. The Factory System
a new way of organizing labor because of machines which were too large to house in a worker's home
replaced the home-based system of the early 1800s
spread rapidly in the 1820s and again between 1840 and 1860

4. Production and location
first impact- textile industry: New England
moves to shoe industry: E. Mass
By 1830s
- moves to other industries
- moves to other areas of Northeast
Northeast = over ½ of industries ,2/3 of production, and ¾ of workers

5. Technology By 1830s overtakes GB
- Europeans travel to US to study new techniques
development of machine tools
interchangeable parts revolutionize machinery

6. Industry needs Labor Why is there a labor shortage?
How can the factory owners solve the labor shortage?

7. #1: The Family System Hiring an entire family - men for heavy labor
- women and children for lighter work
Families lived in tenements or mill villages

8. #2: The Lowell System found in Waltham Mass. begins 1813
paternalistic textile factory system
employed mainly young women [age 15-35]
- from New England farms
Emphasis was placed on mechanization and standardization
- will be used as a model

9. View of Lowell, 1834, from across the Merrimack River showing the housing and the mills of the Merrimack Manufacturing Company before the construction of the Boott Mills

11. Why Employ Women? traditionally employed in home textile work
not expected to support families and so could be paid less
women were never expected to be independent, equal citizens--they could not vote, after all--and so unlike male artisans, they had no independence to lose when they became factory hands
“a father’s debts…to be paid, an aged mother to be supported, a brother’s ambition to be aided”

13. Conditions emphasized the maintenance of a proper environment:
1. enforced curfews
2. encouraged church attendance
3. maintained a high degree of cleanliness
living conditions good, wage fair

14. Conditions free of the filth, poverty, and social disorder
supervised on the job and at home

15. One of Lowell's few remaining blocks of company boarding houses

18. Lowell System Decline
high standards were difficult to sustain and keep production costs low
- wages decline
- hours lengthen
- conditions deteriorate
1834 Factory Girls Association Union
- strike 2 times for better wages and lower rent: fail
- form Female Labor Reform Association demanding help from legislation

19. Replaced by Irish Immigrants

20. #3: Immigrant Labor Force
major labor pop after 1840
accelerated deterioration of working conditions
unskilled labor
low wages $1-$6 a week
horrible living conditions
12-14 hr work day

21. Labor Responds Mass. 1842 Commonwealth v. Hunt - Unions are lawful
- strikes are legal
Unions of 1840s and 1850s ineffective!
- not large enough or strong enough
- too many immigrants!
Craft Unions (skilled) more successful

22. Northeast Agriculture
no longer profitable
- move west
- move to city
some stay and supply cities
- vegetables
- fruit
- dairy farming

23. Old Northwest industrial growth 1840-1860 - based on agriculture
- flour milling
- meat packing
- whiskey
Agriculture is Supreme!
- average person owner of prosperous farm

24. Sectionalism Northwest sells products to Northeast
Eastern industry sells to the west
STRONG ECONOMIC BOND!!!
The south is becoming more isolated

25. Farming Technology
steel plows John Deere factory

26. Farming Technology McCormick Reaper allows 6 men to do the work of 15
quicker harvest

28. Farming Technology Threshing Machine
Jerome I. Case factory Racine Wisconsin
no longer flailing grain by hand saves time
- 25 bushels an hour