History
American Industrialism
American Industrialism refers to the period of rapid economic growth and industrial development in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was characterized by the rise of large-scale manufacturing, technological innovation, and the expansion of transportation and infrastructure. American Industrialism transformed the nation's economy, society, and culture, leading to urbanization and significant changes in labor and production.
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7 Key excerpts on "American Industrialism"
eBook - PDFThe Industrial Revolution in America
Communications, Agriculture and Meatpacking, Overview/Comparison [3 volumes]
- Kevin Hillstrom, Laurie Collier Hillstrom, Kevin Hillstrom, Laurie Collier Hillstrom(Authors)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- ABC-CLIO(Publisher)
It also casts a discerning eye on the various ways in which these industries shaped U.S. politics, corporate practices, philosophies of natural resource use and stewardship, and cultural development. Coverage in The Industrial Revolution in America is broken down into the following subject-specific volumes: Iron and Steel. These are the most formidable of all the manufacturing industries that transformed American life in the second half of the nineteenth century. Steel production provided the United States with the infrastructure necessary to transform itself into an industrial superpower. Railroads. The rise of the so-called Iron Horse drove the nation’s breathtaking economic and geographic expansion, providing Americans with the means to harvest and market the continent’s remarkable bounty of natural resources. In the process, it became an iconic image of the American conquest of the frontier. Steam Shipping. A uniquely American contribution to modern technology, steam shipping was the first major transportation innovation that facilitated economic expansion across the United States in the nineteenth century. Textiles. When textile production began in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the northeastern United States— boosted in large measure by abundant cotton crops from the Deep South—it marked the nation’s first successful parlay of technological innovation into mass production. Mining and Petroleum. U.S. extraction of coal, iron ore, gold, silver, oil, copper, and other minerals became increasingly sophisticated and profitable during the late nineteenth century, providing industries with the raw materials they needed to dramatically expand production. Automobiles. The last of the great technological innovations of the American Industrial Revolution, the advent of the automobile viii • Series Introduction wrought enormous changes in U.S. commerce—and even greater changes in the country’s social fabric.
- G. Zanda(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
The Second Industrial Revolution 53 In the last 30 years of the 19th century, industrial capitalism became almost dominant in England. However, it encountered difficulty in France, where it suffered because of its alliance with the lower middle class and small farmers. In Germany, industrial capitalism progressed at a slow pace as it had to make itself acceptable to the landowning nobil- ity and obtain help from the State. In the USA, development continued and increased decisively after the American Civil War. 1 With the so-called Great Depression (1873–1895) and later, up to the Great War, there was a marked slowing down of British capitalism and equally remarkable growth in Germany and America. French capitalism followed slowly. The ten-year growth rates of pro-capita production, from 1885–1894 to 1905–1914, were 11.4 per cent, 13.5 per cent, 17 per cent and 20.1 per cent respectively for Great Britain, France, Germany and the United States. 2 Global industrial production shares of the main indus- trialized countries between 1870 and 1913 changed as follows: Great Britain from 32 per cent to 14 per cent; France from 10 to 6 per cent; Germany from 13 to 16 per cent; the United States from 23 to 38 per cent; Russia from 4 to 6 per cent; Italy from 2 to 3 per cent. 3 4.2 The use of electricity and increase in productivity As was seen in Chapter 3, the efficiency and the capacity of expansion of industrial processes during the First Industrial Revolution were highly dependent on the use of iron or steel machines in place of wooden ones and by the use of energy derived from steam in place of water power. Productivity, therefore, increased significantly and the profits derived from these innovations increased investments, causing a positive cycle of wealth development. In the last decades of the 1800s an important innovation transformed the socio-economic environment: the use of electrical energy in workshops and homes.
eBook - PDFThe American Work Ethic and the Changing Work Force
An Historical Perspective
- Herbert Applebaum(Author)
- 1998(Publication Date)
- Praeger(Publisher)
This expansion of resources was accompanied by an expansion of values and ideology, along with a geographi- cal expansion westward and an opening of opportunities for new avenues to wealth. Eventually, the process led to a capitalist society in which wage earners would be more prominent than farmers and artisans and manufacturing more significant in its economic power than farming. When and how this transformation began to occur is a matter of interpretation, and a good survey of the literature and the ideas associated with this transformation can be found in Michael Merrill, "Putting Capitalism in Its Place: A Review of Recent Literature," William and Mary Quarterly 52, no. 2 (April 1995), 315-326. For an overview of the social and economic transformations that occurred during the nineteenth century between the presidencies of Thomas Jefferson and that of William McKinley, see Walter Licht, Industrializing America: The Nineteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995). Licht focuses on industrialization as both a product and an agent of change leading to the development of a new political and economic order put into place by the start of the twentieth century. Henry Steele Commager draws a comprehensive picture of nineteenth-century American values and culture in "The Nine- teenth-Century American," in The American MW(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1959), 3-40. For a review of the attitudes toward work and workers in the nineteenth century before the Civil War, see Nicholas K. Bromell, By the Sweat of the Brow: Literature and Labor in Antebellum America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), especially 15-60. Afine, short introduction to the study of work and workers in the nineteenth century is contained in an article by Merritt Roe Smith, "Industry, Technology, and the 'Labor Question' in 19th-century America: Seeking Synthesis," Technology and Culture 32, no. 3 (July 1991),
eBook - PDFAmerican Life
A Chinese Historian's Perspective
- Cho-yun Hsu(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- The Chinese University of Hong Kong(Publisher)
These similar phenomena seem to suggest that the rise of an industrial economy must wait for sufficient capital to accumulate in the market before it can break free of the cyclical nature 1 Guo Weidong, “The Sequel to the Silk Road: The Sale of ‘Nankeen Fabric’ Overseas,” Journal of Zhejiang University [Humanities and Social Sciences], 47, no. 3 [in Chinese]. IV. The Industrialization of the US | 61 of agricultural production, and give shape to a system with year-round demand for capital and production of raw materials. American industrialization achieved considerable heights in its first step due to the development of the interior. The American economy had sufficient capital to support the needs of industrialization. Furthermore, the development of its vast territories attracted innumerable immigrants from Europe. As the pace of the American expansion gradually slowed, laborers came to the United States with nothing, becoming propertied farm owners, or independent technicians in possession of special skills. These people constituted the backbone of industrialization, while also providing a market for industrial products. * * * As noted in the previous chapter, the development of the American interior and the construction of the railway network proceeded concurrently. The construction of railroads, bridges, and roadbeds, with the accompanying production of rails, all required iron and steel. The trains ran on tracks and the locomotive engine itself was made of cast iron; thus, although a fair number of the railroad cars were constructed of wood, their overall struc-ture was composed of iron and steel products. The US required massive amounts of iron and steel solely to feed the construction of the railroads, which served as the first step in the development of American heavy industry, as well as the raison d’être for iron casting and steelmaking.
- William J. Duiker, Jackson Spielvogel(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
P A R T IV Modern Patterns of World History (1800–1945) 19 T HE B EGINNINGS OF M ODERNIZATION : I NDUSTRIALIZATION AND N ATIONALISM IN THE N INETEENTH C ENTURY 20 T HE A MERICAS AND S OCIETY AND C ULTURE IN THE W EST 21 T HE H IGH T IDE OF I MPERIALISM 22 S HADOWS OVER THE P ACIFIC : E AST A SIA U NDER C HALLENGE 23 T HE B EGINNING OF THE T WENTIETH -C ENTURY C RISIS : W AR AND R EVOLUTION 24 N ATIONALISM , R EVOLUTION , AND D ICTATORSHIP : A SIA , THE M IDDLE E AST , AND L ATIN A MERICA FROM 1919 TO 1939 25 T HE C RISIS D EEPENS : W ORLD W AR II T HE PERIOD OF WORLD HISTORY from 1800 to 1945 was characterized by three major developments: the growth of industrialization, the rise of nationalism, and Western domination of the world. The three develop-ments were, of course, interconnected. The Industrial Revolution became one of the major forces of change in the nineteenth century as it led Western civilization into the industrial era that has characterized the modern world. Beginning in Britain, it spread to the European continent and the Western Hemisphere in the course of the nineteenth century. At the same time, the Industrial Revolution created the technological means, including new weapons, by which the West achieved domination over much of the rest of the world by the end of the nineteenth century. Moreover, the existence of competi-tive European nation-states after 1870 was undoubtedly a major determinant in the European states’ intense scram-ble for overseas territory. The advent of the industrial age had a number of lasting consequences for the modern world. On the one hand, the nations that successfully passed through the process experienced a significant increase in material wealth. In many cases, the creation of advanced industrial societies led to stronger democratic institutions and enabled the majority of the population to enjoy a higher standard of living. On the other hand, not all the conse-quences of the Industrial Revolution were beneficial.
eBook - PDF- Frank Kidner, Maria Bucur, Ralph Mathisen, Sally McKee(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
In many ways the world we know—running by the clock, fast paced, full of mass-pro-duced consumer goods, accepting constant change as normal—is a direct outcome of the Industrial Revolution, which began in the late eighteenth century and continued throughout the nineteenth century. Industrialization rearranged economies, altered the rhythm of daily life, and changed attitudes, first in Europe and North America, then around the world. establish control over a great deal of the world in the new imperialism. The initial effects of industrialization were usually horrible—pollution, crowded and unsanitary cities, and the disruption of family life. Peasants had lived by the natural rhythms of the seasons, sunrise, and sun-set, but the clock and precisely measured time ruled over the industrial world. By the mid-nineteenth cen-tury, some benefits of industrialization were evident— an increase in affordable consumer goods, the growth of middle-class prosperity, and, in some cases, even higher wages for industrial workers. Thus, in just half a century, industrialization altered both lifestyles and attitudes, sometimes positively, often negatively, but always permanently. 21-1a Industrialization on the European Continent In the late eighteenth century, as Britain’s manufac-tured goods began to enter continental European markets in increasing numbers, European states became alarmed. Believing that a strong economy was the basis of political power, France restricted British imports until the Eden Treaty of 1786, after which British cloth swamped the French market. Eden Treaty Treaty between France and Great Britain in 1786 permitting the import of British manufactured goods into France. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
eBook - PDF- William Duiker, Jackson Spielvogel(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. abundance of raw materials, and an elaborate transportation system turned the United States into the world’s second largest industrial nation by the end of the nineteenth century. 19–1c Limiting the Spread of Industrialization in the Rest of the World Before 1870, the industrialization that was transforming west- ern and central Europe and the United States did not extend in any significant way to the rest of the world (see Comparative Essay “The Industrial Revolution”). Even in eastern Europe, in- dustrialization lagged far behind. Russia, for example, was still largely rural and agricultural, ruled by an autocratic regime that preferred to keep the peasants in serfdom. In other parts of the world, the newly industrialized Eu- ropean states pursued a deliberate policy of preventing the growth of mechanized industry in the areas where they had established control (see Chapter 21). India provides an excel- lent example. In the eighteenth century, India had become one of the world’s greatest exporters of cotton cloth produced by COMPARATIVE ESSAY The Industrial Revolution Science & Technology Why some societies were able to embark on the road to industrialization during the nineteenth century and others were not has long been debated. Some historians have found an answer in the cultural characteristics of individual societies, such as the Protestant work ethic in parts of Europe or the tradition of social discipline and class hierarchy in Japan. Others have placed more emphasis on practical reasons. To historian Peter Stearns, for example, the availability of capital, natural resources, a network of trade relations, and navigable rivers all helped stimulate industrial growth in nineteenth-century Britain.
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