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Big History Project

Course: big history project   >   unit 9.

  • ACTIVITY: The Appetite for Energy
  • ACTIVITY: Unit 9 Vocab Tracking
  • ACTIVITY: DQ Notebook 9.1
  • WATCH: Coal, Steam, and the Industrial Revolution

READ: The Industrial Revolution

  • WATCH: How Did Change Accelerate?
  • READ: Acceleration
  • READ: George Washington Carver - Graphic Biography
  • ACTIVITY: Threshold Card — Threshold 8: The Modern Revolution
  • Quiz: Acceleration

Fossil Fuels, Steam Power, and the Rise of Manufacturing

The transformation of the world, early steam engines, why britain.

  • Shortage of wood and the abundance of convenient coal deposits
  • Commercial-minded aristocracy; limited monarchy
  • System of free enterprise; limited government involvement
  • Government support for commercial projects, for a strong navy to protect ships
  • Cheap cotton produced by slaves in North America
  • High literacy rates
  • Rule of law; protection of assets
  • Valuable immigrants (Dutch, Jews, Huguenots [French Protestants])
  • Location of China’s coal, which was in the north, while economic activity was centered in the south
  • Rapid growth of population in China, giving less incentive for machines and more for labor-intensive methods
  • Confucian ideals that valued stability and frowned upon experimentation and change
  • Lack of Chinese government support for maritime explorations, thinking its empire seemed large enough to provide everything needed
  • China’s focus on defending self from nomadic attacks from the north and west
  • Britain’s location on the Atlantic Ocean
  • British colonies in North America, which provided land, labor, and markets
  • Silver from the Americas, used in trade with China
  • Social and ideological conditions in Britain, and new thoughts about the economy, that encouraged an entrepreneurial spirit

The Spread of the Industrial Revolution

Consequences of the industrial revolution, for further discussion, want to join the conversation.

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History of Massachusetts Blog

The Industrial Revolution in America

The Industrial Revolution completely transformed the United States until it eventually grew into the largest economy in the world and became the most powerful global superpower.

The industrial revolution occurred in a number of places across the world including England, North America, Continental Europe, Eastern Europe and Asia.

While the first phase of the industrial revolution, which took place between 1750 and 1850, began in England and then spread to Continental Europe and North America, the second phase of the industrial revolution,  which took place between 1850 and 1914, began in America and then spread to Europe.

The following is an overview of the American Industrial Revolution:

When Was the Industrial Revolution in America?

Full-scale Industrialization didn’t occur in America until two textile manufacturers, Samuel Slater and Francis Cabot Lowell, introduced mechanized textile manufacturing to the United States in the late 1790s and early 1800s.

Where Did the Industrial Revolution Take Place in America?

The American industrial revolution began in New England. Several large-scale textiles mills were established in the region during the late 18th and early 19th century which quickly led to widespread industrialization in the region:

The Beverly Cotton Manufactury in Massachusetts in 1787 Slater Mill in Rhode Island in 1790 Waltham Mill in Massachusetts in 1814

Massachusetts’s role in the industrial revolution was pivotal, particularly because of its textile mills. As a result, it is often referred to as the “cradle of the American industrial revolution.”

Boston Manufacturing Company, 1813-1816, Waltham, Ma,

Boston Manufacturing Company, 1813-1816, Waltham, Ma, engraving by Elijah Smith circa 19th century

Although the early American industrial revolution was largely confined to New England, it eventually to spread to the West and then, after the second industrial revolution occurred in the late 19th century, spread to the South.

What Were the Causes of the Industrial Revolution in America?

The causes of the first industrial revolution in America were:

Embargo Act of 1807:

The Embargo Act of 1807 prohibited American merchant ships from leaving for foreign ports and prohibited foreign vessels from carrying American goods out of American ports.

The act was the result of the Napoleonic Wars between France and England and was intended to cut both England and France off from the American market. The hope was that England and France would suffer economically and would then cease to attack American merchant ships and stop blocking each other from trading with the Americans.

The act had no effect on the British or French economy but completely devastated the American economy. But the lack of access to foreign goods forced the Americans to begin producing more of their own goods.

War of 1812:

The War of 1812 led to a British blockade of the United States eastern coastline, which brought shipping and fishing to a halt. Cut off from the sea, Americans began focuses more heavily on manufacturing in order to make money and create the goods they couldn’t get through trade.

The causes of the second industrial revolution in America were:

Natural Resources:

The United States had a number of natural resources, such as timber, water, coal, iron, copper, silver and gold. Industries took advantage of these natural resources to manufacture a number of goods to put on the market.

Railroad networks in the U.S. promoted the growth of industries like coal and steel and sped up the transportation of goods to market thus encouraging mass production, mass consumption and economic specialization.

Abundant Labor Supply:

Railroad work also attracted a large number of immigrant workers to the United States which provide an abundant labor supply for growing businesses.

The immigrants who migrated to America were young, hard workers who were not afraid of risk and arrived determined to make something of themselves, according to Charles R. Morris in his book The Dawn of Innovation:

“Finally, the contribution of immigration to American population growth was generally strong in this era, and immigrants punched above their weight. They were disproportionately young adults with few dependents – adventurous risk takers who had come to work.”

Laizze-Fair Politics:

The lack of government regulation allowed businesses to flourish and grow at a rapid pace. Business owners had full control of their companies without government interference. Although this was good for business, it created widespread environmental problems and poor working conditions.

New Inventions:

In the second half of the 19th century, new inventions brought about even more industrialization.

For example, the invention of electricity and the light bulb allowed factories to stay open longer which vastly increased production volumes.

Textile mill working all night in New Bedford, Massachusetts, photo by Jack Delano, circa 1941

Textile mill working all night in New Bedford, Massachusetts, photo by Jack Delano, circa 1941

The invention of electricity also led to the invention of the electric motor, which greatly improved transportation and led the electric trolley and the electric subway train.

In addition, Henry Ford’s assembly line and the rise of mass production after the turn of the 20th century also spurred industrialization.

As a result, the total manufacturing output of the United States was 28 times higher in 1929 than it was in 1859.

What Happened During the American Industrial Revolution?

As Charles R. Morris states in his book The Dawn of Innovation: “The story of American development can be charted as an evolution from local to regional and finally to national networks.”

In the early 1800s, the Northeast started to develop strong regional economies.

By the 1820s, rural New England and the Middle Atlantic became heavily industrialized with clocks, textiles, shoes and cast-iron stoves becoming the predominant industries there.

As factories produced more goods, transporting these goods became important. In the 1820s and 30s, manufacturers began trying to find new ways to reach consumers in the West since transportation to this region at the time was virtually nonexistent.

To help reach these Western consumers, the Erie Canal, which cut across the state of New York and created a water route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, was completed in 1825. Shipping goods through the canal cut shipping costs to a fraction of what it used to be via ground transportation.

Erie Canal at Little Falls, NY, circa 1880-1897

Erie Canal at Little Falls, NY, circa 1880-1897

After the western steamboat was developed, around 1814, by Henry Shreve and Daniel French, it finally allowed for large cargo loads to be transported upstream even in shallow water, which helped spur industrialization in the West, according to Morris:

“Within a decade the region’s great grain, lumber, and meat animal enterprises were centralizing in Cincinnati, as a tight-knit riverine economy took shape within the Ohio, Missouri, and Mississippi valleys. Cincinnati invented the meatpacking ‘disassembly’ line later made famous by Chicago, and Cincinnati brothers-in-law Proctor and Gamble were innovators in America’s first chemical industry.”

In 1837, the Federal government completed a 620-mile national road from Maryland to Illinois in an effort to help manufacturers transport goods westward.

Then in the 1840s, 50s and 60s, newly established widespread railroad systems finally linked the Northeast and Midwest into an “intergrated commercial and industrial unit.” (Morris xii)

Celebration of the meeting of the Transcontinental railroad in Promontory Summit, Utah, May 1869

Celebration of the meeting of the Transcontinental railroad in Promontory Summit, Utah, May 1869

As a result, midwestern industries of coal, iron, food processing, lumber, furniture and glass increased sharply while Northeaster industries like clocks, textiles, and shoes grew to a global scale.

Due to all of this Northern and Midwestern industrialization, the South became a supplier of the raw materials necessary for industrialization, instead of developing its own industries, according to Morris:

“The South, in the meantime, slipped into the position of an internal colony, exploiting its slaves and being exploited in turn by the Northeast and Midwest. Boston and New York controlled much of the shipping, insurance, and brokerage earnings from the cotton trade, while the earnings left over went for midwestern food, tools, and engines, shipped down the Mississippi and its branches.”

In 1850, the second industrial revolution, which saw the rise in electricity, petroleum and steel, began in the United States and then spread to Europe and the rest of the world.

Industrialization increased greatly in the late 19th century and early 20th century due to technological advances, according to Jonathan Rees in his article, Industrialization and Urbanization in the United States, 1880-1929, on the Oxford Research Encyclopedias website:

“Before 1880, industrialization depended upon a prescribed division of labor—breaking most jobs up into smaller tasks, and assigning the same people to repeat one task indefinitely. After 1880, industrialization depended much more on mechanization—the replacement of people with machines—to increase production and maximize profits. The development of the modern electrical grid, starting in the early 1880s, facilitated such technological advances. Henry Ford’s assembly line and the rise of mass production after the turn of the 20th century only strengthened this effect. As a result, the total manufacturing output of the United States was twenty-eight times greater in 1929 than it was 1859.”

By the 1890s, the United States surpassed Britain for first place in manufacturing output and by the beginning of the 20th century, per capita incomes in the United States were double that of Germany and France, and 50% higher than Britain. The United States is now the largest economy in the world.

Inventions of the Industrial Revolution in America:

Cotton Gin, invented by Eli Whitney in 1793 McCormick Reaper, invented by Cyrus McCormick in 1831 Steel plow, invented by a blacksmith named John Deere in 1837 Telegraph, invented by Samuel Morse in 1844 Vulcanized rubber, invented by Charles Goodyear in 1844 Sewing machine, invented by Elias Howe in 1846 Safety break for elevators, invented by Elisah Otis in 1853 Bessemer process, invented by Henry Bessemer in 1856 First telephone, patented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876 First roller coaster, patented by Edwin Prescott in 1898 First airplane, Orville and Wilber Wright invented the first plane that was not powered by wind in 1903 Model T, Henry Ford invented the Ford Model T automobile in 1908

How the Industrial Revolution Changed America:

The industrial revolution caused rapid urbanization in America, with people moving from the countryside to the cities in droves. In 1800, only 6 percent of the population of America lived in cities but by 1900, that number had increased to 40 percent. By 1920, the vast majority of Americans lived in cities.

The industrial revolution also caused a rise in unskilled labor. Prior to the 19th century, most Americans who were not employed in agriculture performed a skilled trade. Industrialization made apprenticeships obsolete and commoditized labor itself.

The use of child labor also led to new labor laws, such as the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act.

Poor working conditions and low wages led to the growth of labor unions. These labor unions came about because workers had little political support due to the fact that many of them were immigrants and women who were not allowed to vote.

These new economic changes led to social and cultural transformations such as the formation of distinct social classes, in particular a new middle class/bourgeoisie which consisted of entrepreneurs, businessmen, law and medical professionals.

Each social class had its own specific culture and views and its own set of values and they would often clash as a result leading to more polarized political parties and factions.

To learn more about the industrial revolution, check out this article on the best books about the industrial revolution .

Sources: Matus, Douglas. “To What Extent Did the Industrial Revolution Change American Social, Economic & Political.” Seattle PI , education.seattlepi.com/extent-did-industrial-revolution-change-american-social-economic-political-life-6960.html Rees, Jonathan. “Industrialization and Urbanization in the United States, 1880-1929.” Oxford Research Encyclopedias , July 2016, americanhistory.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-327 Morris, Charles R. The Dawn of Innovation: The First American Industrial Revolution . Public Affairs, 2012. Smith, Robert W. Spotlight on America: Industrial Revolution . Teacher Created Resources, Inc, 2007. Engleman, Ryan. “The Second Industrial Revolution, 1870-1914.” U.S. History Scene , ushistoryscene.com/article/second-industrial-revolution/ “What Caused the American Industrial Revolution?” Investopedia , 23 Jan. 2018, www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042015/what-caused-american-industrial-revolution.asp

6 thoughts on “ The Industrial Revolution in America ”

This article is amazing and very helpful.

This is a very well written and helpful article! Thank you!

Thanks, for helping me on my essay!

Chattel Slavery +Cotton + Cotton Gin + Textile Mills = Industrial Revolution. Great Book to read: How the North Promoted, Prolonged and Profited from Slavery Complicity

A fascinating article, it helps me out a lot

This article helped me with my school project, so thank you.

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american industrial revolution essay

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Industrial Revolution

By: History.com Editors

Updated: March 27, 2023 | Original: October 29, 2009

The Iron Rolling Mill (Modern Cyclopes), 1873-1875. Artist: Menzel, Adolph Friedrich, von (1815-1905) Berlin.

The Industrial Revolution was a period of scientific and technological development in the 18th century that transformed largely rural, agrarian societies—especially in Europe and North America—into industrialized, urban ones. Goods that had once been painstakingly crafted by hand started to be produced in mass quantities by machines in factories, thanks to the introduction of new machines and techniques in textiles, iron making and other industries.

When Was the Industrial Revolution?

Though a few innovations were developed as early as the 1700s, the Industrial Revolution began in earnest by the 1830s and 1840s in Britain, and soon spread to the rest of the world, including the United States.

Modern historians often refer to this period as the First Industrial Revolution, to set it apart from a second period of industrialization that took place from the late 19th to early 20th centuries and saw rapid advances in the steel, electric and automobile industries. 

Spinning Jenny

Thanks in part to its damp climate, ideal for raising sheep, Britain had a long history of producing textiles like wool, linen and cotton. But prior to the Industrial Revolution, the British textile business was a true “cottage industry,” with the work performed in small workshops or even homes by individual spinners, weavers and dyers.

Starting in the mid-18th century, innovations like the spinning jenny (a wooden frame with multiple spindles), the flying shuttle, the water frame and the power loom made weaving cloth and spinning yarn and thread much easier. Producing cloth became faster and required less time and far less human labor.

More efficient, mechanized production meant Britain’s new textile factories could meet the growing demand for cloth both at home and abroad, where the British Empire’s many overseas colonies provided a captive market for its goods. In addition to textiles, the British iron industry also adopted new innovations.

Chief among the new techniques was the smelting of iron ore with coke (a material made by heating coal) instead of the traditional charcoal. This method was both cheaper and produced higher-quality material, enabling Britain’s iron and steel production to expand in response to demand created by the Napoleonic Wars (1803-15) and the later growth of the railroad industry. 

Impact of Steam Power 

An icon of the Industrial Revolution broke onto the scene in the early 1700s, when Thomas Newcomen designed the prototype for the first modern steam engine . Called the “atmospheric steam engine,” Newcomen’s invention was originally applied to power the machines used to pump water out of mine shafts.

In the 1760s, Scottish engineer James Watt began tinkering with one of Newcomen’s models, adding a separate water condenser that made it far more efficient. Watt later collaborated with Matthew Boulton to invent a steam engine with a rotary motion, a key innovation that would allow steam power to spread across British industries, including flour, paper, and cotton mills, iron works, distilleries, waterworks and canals.

Just as steam engines needed coal, steam power allowed miners to go deeper and extract more of this relatively cheap energy source. The demand for coal skyrocketed throughout the Industrial Revolution and beyond, as it would be needed to run not only the factories used to produce manufactured goods, but also the railroads and steamships used for transporting them.

Transportation During the Industrial Revolution

Britain’s road network, which had been relatively primitive prior to industrialization, soon saw substantial improvements, and more than 2,000 miles of canals were in use across Britain by 1815.

In the early 1800s, Richard Trevithick debuted a steam-powered locomotive, and in 1830 similar locomotives started transporting freight (and passengers) between the industrial hubs of Manchester and Liverpool. By that time, steam-powered boats and ships were already in wide use, carrying goods along Britain’s rivers and canals as well as across the Atlantic.

Banking and Communication in the Industrial Revolution

In 1776, Scottish social philosopher Adam Smith , who is regarded as the founder of modern economics, published The Wealth of Nations . In it, Smith promoted an economic system based on free enterprise, the private ownership of means of production, and lack of government interference.

Banks and industrial financiers soon rose to new prominence during this period, as well as a factory system dependent on owners and managers. A stock exchange was established in London in the 1770s; the New York Stock Exchange was founded in the early 1790s.

The latter part of the Industrial Revolution also saw key advances in communication methods, as people increasingly saw the need to communicate efficiently over long distances. In 1837, British inventors William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone patented the first commercial telegraphy system, even as Samuel Morse and other inventors worked on their own versions in the United States.

Cooke and Wheatstone’s system would be used for railroad signaling, as the speed of the new steam-powered trains created a need for more sophisticated means of communication.

Labor Movement 

Though many people in Britain had begun moving to the cities from rural areas before the Industrial Revolution, this process accelerated dramatically with industrialization, as the rise of large factories turned smaller towns into major cities over the span of decades. This rapid urbanization brought significant challenges, as overcrowded cities suffered from pollution, inadequate sanitation, miserable housing conditions and a lack of safe drinking water.

Meanwhile, even as industrialization increased economic output overall and improved the standard of living for the middle and upper classes, poor and working class people continued to struggle. The mechanization of labor created by technological innovation had made working in factories increasingly tedious (and sometimes dangerous), and many workers—including children—were forced to work long hours for pitifully low wages.

Such dramatic changes and abuses fueled opposition to industrialization worldwide, including the “ Luddites ,” known for their violent resistance to changes in Britain’s textile industry.

Did you know? The word "luddite" refers to a person who is opposed to technological change. The term is derived from a group of early 19th century English workers who attacked factories and destroyed machinery as a means of protest. They were supposedly led by a man named Ned Ludd, though he may have been an apocryphal figure.

In the decades to come, outrage over substandard working and living conditions would fuel the formation of labor unions , as well as the passage of new child labor laws and public health regulations in both Britain and the United States, all aimed at improving life for working class and poor citizens who had been negatively impacted by industrialization.

The Industrial Revolution in the United States

The beginning of industrialization in the United States is usually pegged to the opening of a textile mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1793 by the recent English immigrant Samuel Slater. Slater had worked at one of the mills opened by Richard Arkwright (inventor of the water frame) mills, and despite laws prohibiting the emigration of textile workers, he brought Arkwright’s designs across the Atlantic. He later built several other cotton mills in New England, and became known as the “Father of the American Industrial Revolution.”

The United States followed its own path to industrialization, spurred by innovations “borrowed” from Britain as well as by homegrown inventors like Eli Whitney . Whitney’s 1793 invention of the cotton gin (short for “engine”) revolutionized the nation’s cotton industry (and strengthened the hold of slavery over the cotton-producing South).

By the end of the 19th century, with the so-called Second Industrial Revolution underway, the United States would also transition from a largely agrarian society to an increasingly urbanized one, with all the attendant problems.

By the mid-19th century, industrialization was well-established throughout the western part of Europe and America’s northeastern region. By the early 20th century, the U.S. had become the world’s leading industrial nation.

Effects of the Industrial Revolution

Historians continue to debate many aspects of industrialization, including its exact timeline, why it began in Britain as opposed to other parts of the world and the idea that it was actually more of a gradual evolution than a revolution. The positives and negatives of the Industrial Revolution are complex.

On one hand, unsafe working conditions were rife and environmental pollution from coal and gas are legacies we still struggle with today. On the other, the move to cities and ingenious inventions that made clothing, communication and transportation more affordable and accessible to the masses changed the course of world history.

Regardless of these questions, the Industrial Revolution had a transformative economic, social and cultural impact, and played an integral role in laying the foundations for modern society. 

Photo Galleries

Lewis Hine Child Labor Photos

Robert C. Allen, The Industrial Revolution: A Very Short Introduction . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007  Claire Hopley, “A History of the British Cotton Industry.” British Heritage Travel , July 29, 2006 William Rosen, The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention . New York: Random House, 2010 Gavin Weightman, The Industrial Revolutionaries: The Making of the Modern World, 1776-1914 . New York: Grove Press, 2007 Matthew White, “Georgian Britain: The Industrial Revolution.” British Library , October 14, 2009 

american industrial revolution essay

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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Industrialization and conflict in america: 1840–1875.

The Falls of Niagara

The Falls of Niagara

Edward Hicks

View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow

View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow

Thomas Cole

The Raymond Children

The Raymond Children

Robert Peckham

A Mother's Pearls

A Mother's Pearls

Thomas Seir Cummings

Genius of Mirth

Genius of Mirth

Thomas Crawford

Taking the Census

Taking the Census

Francis William Edmonds

Fur Traders Descending the Missouri

Fur Traders Descending the Missouri

George Caleb Bingham

Sofa

John Henry Belter

Grace Hill for Edwin C. Litchfield, Brooklyn, New York (front elevation)

Grace Hill for Edwin C. Litchfield, Brooklyn, New York (front elevation)

Alexander Jackson Davis

California

Hiram Powers

Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer (Mariana Griswold)

Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer (Mariana Griswold)

Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Plums

John William Hill

The Freedman

The Freedman

John Quincy Adams Ward

David Jaffee Department of History, City College and Graduate Center, CUNY

Northern manufacturing extended the use of power-driven machines to a wider range of commodities in the middle decades of the century. By 1860, the United States was second only to Great Britain and France in manufacturing. Stationary steam engines powering advanced machinery allowed factories to set up in the nation’s largest cities ( 1999.396 ). Affordable books and color prints from the new printing presses disseminated new fashions and ideas connecting urban and rural, East and West. By 1850, nine out of every ten adult white Americans could read, and millions bought books. Women in particular became prodigious readers, as well as the authors of many books and magazine articles ( 17.104 ). The nation’s population nearly quadrupled between 1814 and 1860, to over 31 million, swelled by an influx of immigrants. Fleeing the potato famine in Ireland and revolutionary turmoil in the German states, foreign-born workers increasingly replaced native-born labor, toiling in factories and crowding into the working-class sections of expanding cities.

The telegraph (invented by Samuel F. B. Morse in 1844), and then the railroad, knit together the regions; the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869. City merchants built stores opulent enough to be dubbed “palaces of consumption.” Urban elites competed in a rivalry over the status of their cities, commissioning public sculptures of the nation’s leaders and heroes, therefore providing opportunities for sculptors ( 97.13.1 ). The availability of factory-produced goods such as parlor suites of furniture made the trappings of success affordable to the middle class. New forms of manufacture emerged: arms manufacturers and Connecticut clockmakers turned to standardized parts to speed production.

The rapid shift from an agrarian to industrial economy and the growth of the business sector, with their attendant social and economic dislocations, spurred the development of a powerful ideology in which private and public spheres were considered antithetical. The domestic sphere, the realm of home and family, no longer a site of production as in the eighteenth century , would now be seen as a haven against the impersonal, competitive forces of capitalism ( 66.242.27 ). Middle-class women would (and were expected to) retire from the workforce to their proper sphere and attend to their primary duties—child rearing and homemaking ( 28.148.1 ). This public/private divide was echoed in an idealization of nature and the rural against the noisome, polluted city and its expanding immigrant population. American architect and landscape designer Andrew Jackson Downing (1815–1852) proclaimed the home a “powerful means of civilization” and a remedy for social evils. In his many popular publications, including The Architecture of Country Houses (1850) and Horticulturalist Magazine , often illustrated by architect Alexander J. Davis (1803–1892), Downing recommended the building of country homes where one could cleanse the soul by escaping the psychologically and physically unhealthy aspects of urban life. Reflecting many of Downing’s ideas, the first suburban developments aspired to unify nature and architecture, offering a semi-rural retreat from blighted industrial areas ( 24.66.67 ).

Meanwhile, America’s artists, such as Thomas Cole (1801–1848), founder of the Hudson River School , exalted the national landscape in the midst of its very transformation ( 08.228 ). Natural wonders such as Niagara Falls ( 62.256.3 ) or wilderness areas such as the Hudson River Valley were popularized by the Hudson River School artists, and increasingly became accessible to travelers and tourists. The virtual nature worship indulged by American artists was nowhere more extremely expressed than in the intimate yet highly objective stipple watercolor style applied to still life and landscapes by American followers of the English critic John Ruskin (1819–1900), whose “truth to nature” aesthetic philosophy gained wide attention during the Civil War era ( 82.9.1 ). American genre painters focused on a nostalgic view of displaced American types ( 33.61 ). Some cultural commentators of the changing American landscape, like Cole, offered a pessimistic view of the changes wrought by technology; while other painters and writers joined most Americans in a celebration of national progress. Closer to home, urban planners and landscape architects such as Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) and Calvert Vaux (1824–1895) brought nature into the city by building urban parks such as New York’s Central Park; Vaux went on to design both The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1874–80) and the American Museum of Natural History (1874–77).

The dynamism of western expansion extended across the Plains to the Pacific Coast, accompanied by the continued removal of Native Americans from their lands and, in 1846–48, war with Mexico. Great finds of precious metals in the American West ( 72.3 ) transformed luxury goods, such as gold and silver jewelry . The annexation of western territories doomed earlier political compromises on the extension of slavery . Accelerated industrialization only accentuated sectionalism and the differences between North and South. Southern planters grew increasingly dependent upon slave labor for massive amounts of cotton production (the South accounted for two-thirds of the world’s cotton production in 1850), which fed the factories of the North and Great Britain. Slavery’s extension into western lands caused a great forced migration of African Americans. Debates over the future extension of slavery fractured the existing national party system along regional lines. The election of Republican Abraham Lincoln in 1860, with his vision of new lands being free of slavery, induced the southern states to secede from the Union, and the horrendous Civil War between North and South ensued. The North triumphed after four long years, due to its greater economic, material, and demographic resources. The era of Reconstruction introduced a period of debate over the political and economic rights of freed slaves ( 1979.394 ) and the role of federal power in the reunited states. The Civil War and its aftermath provided an opportunity for artists and photographers in the illustrated press and sculptors in the public sphere to commemorate the heroism and sacrifice of Abraham Lincoln and the common soldier alike.

Jaffee, David. “Industrialization and Conflict in America: 1840–1875.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/indu/hd_indu.htm (April 2007)

Further Reading

Grier, Katherine C. Culture & Comfort: Parlor Making and Middle Class Identity, 1850–1930 . Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997.

Savage, Kirk. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.

Voorsanger, Catherine Hoover, and John K. Howat, eds. Art and the Empire City: New York, 1825–1861 . Exhibition catalogue. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. See on MetPublications

Additional Essays by David Jaffee

  • Jaffee, David. “ America Comes of Age: 1876–1900 .” (April 2007)
  • Jaffee, David. “ Post-Revolutionary America: 1800–1840 .” (April 2007)
  • Jaffee, David. “ Art and Identity in the British North American Colonies, 1700–1776 .” (October 2004)
  • Jaffee, David. “ Art and Society of the New Republic, 1776–1800 .” (October 2004)
  • Jaffee, David. “ Religion and Culture in North America, 1600–1700 .” (October 2004)

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Industrialization and urbanization in the united states, 1880–1929.

  • Jonathan Rees Jonathan Rees Department of History, Colorado State University-Pueblo
  • https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.327
  • Published online: 07 July 2016

Between 1880 and 1929, industrialization and urbanization expanded in the United States faster than ever before. Industrialization, meaning manufacturing in factory settings using machines plus a labor force with unique, divided tasks to increase production, stimulated urbanization, meaning the growth of cities in both population and physical size. During this period, urbanization spread out into the countryside and up into the sky, thanks to new methods of building taller buildings. Having people concentrated into small areas accelerated economic activity, thereby producing more industrial growth. Industrialization and urbanization thus reinforced one another, augmenting the speed with which such growth would have otherwise occurred.

Industrialization and urbanization affected Americans everywhere, but especially in the Northeast and Midwest. Technological developments in construction, transportation, and illumination, all connected to industrialization, changed cities forever, most immediately those north of Washington, DC and east of Kansas City. Cities themselves fostered new kinds of industrial activity on large and small scales. Cities were also the places where businessmen raised the capital needed to industrialize the rest of the United States. Later changes in production and transportation made urbanization less acute by making it possible for people to buy cars and live further away from downtown areas in new suburban areas after World War II ended.

  • industrialization
  • urbanization
  • transportation
  • electricity
  • skyscrapers
  • assembly line
  • Andrew Carnegie

Industrialization and urbanization began long before the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but it accelerated greatly during this period because of technological innovations, social changes, and a political system increasingly apt to favor economic growth beyond any other concern. Before 1880 , industrialization depended upon a prescribed division of labor—breaking most jobs up into smaller tasks, and assigning the same people to repeat one task indefinitely. After 1880 , industrialization depended much more on mechanization—the replacement of people with machines—to increase production and maximize profits. The development of the modern electrical grid, starting in the early 1880s, facilitated such technological advances. Henry Ford’s assembly line and the rise of mass production after the turn of the 20th century only strengthened this effect. As a result, the total manufacturing output of the United States was twenty-eight times greater in 1929 than it was 1859 . Adjust that number for the growth in population over the same period, and it still multiplied seven times over. 1

Cities in America date back to the beginning of the colonial period, but the tendency for new industrial factories to be located in or near urban areas meant that cities grew much faster during the late 19th century than ever before. This trend was most apparent in large cities like New York, which expanded from approximately half a million to around 3.5 million people between 1850 and 1900 , and Philadelphia, which increased in size from slightly more than 100,000 inhabitants to more than 1.2 million people over the same period. During the last half of the late 19th century, Chicago proved to be the fastest growing city in the world. Overall, 15.3 percent of Americans lived in cities in 1850 . By 1900 , that percentage had increased to 39.7, and kept growing. The 1920 Census revealed that more Americans lived in cities than the countryside for the first time. 2

Not every city in the country developed as fast as the largest cities did. Important regional differences existed in urbanization because of differences in the nature of industrial growth. The largest cities in the Northeast were manufacturing powerhouses that contained everything, from large factories building railroad locomotives to small shops producing textiles in people’s apartments. The Northeast also gave rise to smaller cities that concentrated on particular industries, like Rochester, New York, which specialized in men’s clothing, boots, and shoes. Following on a tradition of manufacturing from earlier in the century, New Bedford and Fall River, Massachusetts increased in size because of their cotton textile factories. Other cities, like Elizabeth, New Jersey, grew as byproducts of the expansion of their larger neighbors.

Chicago, the largest city in the Midwest, made its name processing natural resources from the Western frontier before those resources traveled eastward as finished products. Grain and lumber—two industries that had been crucial for Chicago’s early growth—relied on Chicago for marketing and storage. With perfection of the refrigerated railroad car, meat processing became such an enormous industry that the vast majority of the meat that Americans ate was processed in the stockyards on that city’s south side. (That activity would disperse again, after the turn of the 20th century, to other cities like Fort Worth and Kansas City.) Smaller cities in America’s industrial heartland would grow around other manufacturing pursuits like steel in Youngstown, and machine tools and cash registers in Dayton, Ohio. 3

The South had lagged behind the rest of the country since before the Civil War. As a result, many advocates for outside investment in this region expanded their activities after the war. They were somewhat successful. While the rate of industrialization (and therefore urbanization) picked up in the South during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it still has not fully caught up with the rest of the country. Birmingham, Alabama, for example, founded in 1871 , flourished as a center for iron and steel manufacturing during the 1880s, when two railroads first linked that city to the region’s mineral resources. 4 The growth of cotton mills in the “upcountry” section of the Carolinas began during the 1870s. After the turn of the 20th century, this region became an important center of activity for the textile industry, in large part because of the cheap, nonunion labor available there.

What separates this period from earlier periods in urban and industrial history is that this was the first time in American history that cities had moved to the center of American life. Cities were where most of the new factories got built. Waves of immigrants settled in cities because that’s where the job openings in industrial factories were. Cities were also places where the effects of industrialization, especially the increased inequality of wealth, were most visible. That means that the problems of cities became the problems of America.

The Electrical Grid and Improvements in Transportation

One of the reasons that later industrialization progressed at such a greater pace than before was the improvement in power sources. The early industrial revolution depended upon steam engines and waterpower. The earliest engines were large and prohibitively expensive for all but the largest firms. Water wheels were a possibility for smaller concerns, but they could not perform nearly as much work as later power sources could. Between 1869 and 1929 , total available horsepower in the United States increased from 2.3 million to 43 million units. In factories, the greatest part of that growth came from a huge increase in the use of electricity. 5

Although factories had grown larger and more efficient over the entire 19th century, they grew particularly large after 1880 , as the power to run them became cheaper, cleaner, and more convenient to acquire. Starting in the late 1870s, Thomas Edison turned the attention of his extensive laboratory towards harnessing electricity to create affordable electric light. This achievement depended not only upon the creation of an efficient, inexpensive, incandescent light bulb, but also on the creation of an electrical system to power it—everything from generators, to electrical wires, to switches. Without a precedent for any of these things, the Edison Electric Company and many related subsidiaries (later gathered together under the umbrella of General Electric) had to manufacture just about everything to make the grid operate. “Since capital is timid, I will raise and supply it,” explained Edison to one of his investors. “The issue is factories or death!” 6 Other companies soon followed, because creating the central stations and the grid that eventually powered just about everything was so obviously lucrative.

Symbolizing the importance of capital to Edison’s efforts, the first person to have his home successfully wired for electricity was the banker J. P. Morgan, in 1882 . Despite setbacks, his experience with electric light encouraged him to invest further in Edison’s efforts. Edison built the first central generating station in New York City later that same year. The first area of Manhattan that Edison wired was a neighborhood filled with the homes and workplaces of those who operated the financial institutions he hoped to convince to invest in his enterprises, as well as two major newspapers that would publicize his achievements. By 1902 , there were 2,250 electrical generating stations in the United States. By 1920 , that number grew to just short of 4,000. 7 Electricity spread from large cities to small cities and eventually out into rural areas by the 1920s.

This kind of growth required substantial improvement beyond Edison’s initial vision of an electrical system. The effects of a reliable electric grid on the cities where it first appeared were numerous, ranging from less coal smoke in the air to new sounds produced by various electrical creations—everything from streetcars to arc lights. Early arc lights were so bright people thought they could stop crime and vice by exposing the people who perpetrated these crimes. In smaller cities, obtaining electric light was a sign of modernization, which implied future growth. Modern light in urban workplaces made office work easier by lessening strain on the eyes. As electric light companies moved in, the much-hated urban gas companies lost a considerable amount of economic power. Since people preferred electric light to gas, it became increasingly popular, as the grid expanded and the costs dropped. Electric light even changed the way people lived inside their houses. For example, children could now be trusted to put themselves to bed since there was no longer a fire risk from the open flames that were once needed to get to bed in the dark.

Nevertheless, the growing electrical grid created new urban dangers. High voltage electrical wires strung above ground joined other wires from telephones, telegraphs—even stock tickers—posed a new urban “wire menace.” Many came down in bad weather. They were a hazard for electric company employees and pedestrians alike. “The overhead system is a standing menace to health and life,” reported one medical journal in 1888 . 8 In 1889 , a fire caused by overheated electrical wires ignited a building full of dry goods and burned down much of downtown Boston.

The most noteworthy effect of high-quality, affordable lighting was the widespread practice of running factories twenty-four hours a day—which made them much more productive without any improvements in the technology of production. Replacing putrid gas lamps also made the smell of factories better for the workmen who worked there. As the electrical grid became more reliable, electric motors gradually began to replace steam engines as the source of power in manufacturing. Using small electric motors as a source of power freed factories from having to be located near water sources to feed boilers and made it possible for them to be smaller too.

Between 1880 and 1900 , factories tended to adopt electric lighting but kept using earlier sources of power for their operation. Electric power for factory operations came quickly between 1900 and 1930 . Both these developments (along with the large supply of immigrant workers) contributed to the industrialization of cities. The electrification of industrial facilities of all kinds proceeded quickly during the first two decades of the 20th century. Businesses got wired for electricity much faster than cities because they could make the most use of what started out as a relatively expensive service.

Because factories were concentrated in or near cities, it was a lot cheaper to wire them than it was to wire farms or even smaller cities away from electrical generating stations. Many of the new factories built during this later period appeared outside city limits, another new development. Electrification allowed managers to automate jobs once done by hand labor, thereby eliminating inefficiency, gaining greater control over the production process, and boosting overall productivity. New devices like time clocks and even new modes of production like the assembly line also depended upon electric power.

The advent of cheap and readily available electricity had a particularly important effect upon the physical layout of American cities during this period. Frank Sprague, an electrical engineer who had once worked for Thomas Edison, designed the first electric streetcar system for Richmond, Virginia, in 1888 . Such systems supplanted horse-drawn carriages, making it possible for people to travel further and faster than they would have otherwise. This gave rise to a burst of suburbanization, a spate of new towns on the outskirts of American cities where wealthy and middle-class people could move to escape from the difficulties of modern urban life but still be close enough to enjoy many of its advantages.

The new suburbanites often traveled to and from work via new electric streetcars. The electrical equipment manufacturer Westinghouse was one of the major manufacturers of vehicles powered by an overhead wire. Electric streetcars had the advantage over horses of not leaving manure or of dying in the streets. Streetcars were more popular during weekends than during the week as working class people took advantage of low fares to explore new neighborhoods or to visit amusement parks, like Coney Island, generally built at the end of these lines.

In the same way that employers and city planners depended upon streetcars to move people, manufacturers became more dependent upon railroads, after 1880 , to move their finished products. Railroad track mileage grew greatly after the Civil War, connecting cities and leading to the growth of new factories in places that were convenient to the necessary resources to make marketable goods. Eventually, mass distribution was a prerequisite to benefit from all that increased productivity. For all these reasons, separating the causes and effects of industrialization and urbanization is practically impossible.

Throughout the 19th century, factories usually had to be built near shipping ports or railroad stops because these were the easiest way to get factory products out to markets around the world. As more railroad tracks were built late in the 19th century, it became easier to locate factories outside of downtowns. Streetcars helped fill up the empty space downtown where factories would have gone. They made it easier to live further away from work and still commute to the heart of downtown, thereby making it possible for other kinds of businesses to locate there. One example would be the large urban department store, a phenomenon that predates 1880 , but grew into its own after that date. Such stores like Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia or Marshall Field’s in Chicago bought the products of industrialization in bulk and sold them at a discounted price to workers who might have had trouble getting access to them any other way.

Structural Steel and Skyscrapers

While retail emporiums could be blocks long and only a few stories tall, other business rented space in thinner buildings built much higher. By the late 1880s, structures that had once been built with iron began to be built with a structural steel—a new, stronger kind of steel. The practice had begun in Chicago, championed by the architect Louis Sullivan, who designed the first skyscrapers there. A skyscraper, Sullivan wrote, “must be every inch a tall and soaring thing, rising in sheer exultation that from bottom to top it is a unit without a single dissenting line.” 9 That kind of design required a skeleton of structural steel upon which other substances like brick or granite could hang. Even then, such skyscrapers had to be tapered; otherwise, the weight from the top floors could make the whole structure collapse.

Creating structural steel for skyscrapers required entirely different production methods than had been required to make Bessemer steel (which had been used primarily for railroad rails). Quantity and speed were the main requirements of producing Bessemer steel. Structural steel required a more carefully made product. The demands of structural steel encouraged steelmakers like Andrew Carnegie to redesign entire factories, most notably replacing older Bessemer converters with the open-hearth process. This new kind of steelmaking not only produced higher quality steel, it also required fewer skilled workers. This encouraged Carnegie’s company to lock out its union workforce at Homestead, Pennsylvania, in 1892 , so that it could save money by employing cheap replacement workers.

The other innovation that made skyscrapers possible was the electric elevator. Elisha Graves Otis designed the first reliable elevator in 1857 . With electric power, it became possible to rise sixty stories in a matter of seconds. Before the elevator, rental spaces in commercial buildings cost more on lower floors because people didn’t want to have to walk up stairs to get to the top. With elevators, tenants willing paid a premium in order to get better views out their windows. Without elevators, nobody would have bothered to erect a building taller than five stories. 10

The construction of skyscrapers was itself a terrific example of the industrial age coordination of labor and materials distribution. Steel skeletons meant that the unornamented higher sections of a building could be worked on even before the inevitable elaborate ornamental fringes on the lower part of the building were finished. This saved both time and money. When New York got so crowded that there was no space to store raw materials, the appearance of those materials would be carefully choreographed, and they would be taken directly off of flatbed trucks and placed in their exact positions near the tops of new buildings. Around the turn of the 20th century, a major skyscraper could be built in as little as one year. The faster a building could be built, the faster an owner could collect rents and begin to earn back construction expenses.

The great benefit of skyscrapers was the ability to compress economic activity into smaller areas. “The skyscraper,” explained one New Yorker in 1897 , “gathers into a single edifice an extraordinary number of activities, which otherwise would be widely separated. Each building is an almost complete city, often comprising within its walls, banks and insurance offices, post office and telegraph office, business exchanges restaurants, clubrooms and shops.” These same miniature cities also included numerous retail outlets, where the products of industrialized manufacturing could be purchased. 11 Shorter distances between these locations accelerated the pace of economic activity, which promoted further economic growth. However, large projects (like the many skyscrapers associated with the building of New York’s Grand Central Station) eliminated or at least obscured urban industrial areas.

Unburdened by the need to pay federal income tax, industrial titans from across the United States displayed their massive wealth by building lavish mansions along New York’s Fifth Avenue during the 1890s. By the 1920s, the value of land in Manhattan grew so fast because of its possible use for skyscrapers that second generation industrial families sold their mansions, since they no longer wanted to pay huge property taxes on them. Blocks of what was known as “Vanderbilt Alley,” named after the children of the steamship and railroad pioneer who had built mansions in the same area, were replaced by skyscrapers and high-end retail emporiums.

The same basic principles of skyscraper production—build it quick and large, and pack it with people—motivated the way that builders produced other kinds of urban domiciles. “Today, three-fourths of [New York City’s] people live in the tenements,” wrote the reformer Jacob Riis in his 1890 classic, How the Other Half Lives , “and the 19th-century drift of the population to the cities is sending ever-increasing multitudes to crowd them.” 12 The best-known tenement house design of this period was the dumbbell tenement of about five or six stories tall. They came about as the result of a design contest, but were generally so crowded that they did more harm than good to the people who lived in them. Four families might live on a single floor with only two bathrooms between them. Designed to let light and air into central courtyards (which explains why they were shaped like a dumbbell from above), stacked up back-to-back, one against the other they did neither. Widely copied, New York City actually outlawed this design for new buildings in 1901 —but the old structures remained.

Apartment houses made it easier to pack people into small urban areas and therefore live closer to where they worked. Wealthy people could buy space and separation from one’s neighbors, while those middle class people who could not afford to live in suburbs lost the space they had before urbanization accelerated. To counter these unequal tendencies, New Yorkers developed the idea of the cooperative, where many people bought a single building and managed it themselves. Lavish apartments became alternatives for mansions once Manhattan real estate became too expensive for all except those with huge fortunes.

The Assembly Line

The farther away that people lived from central business districts, the more they needed efficient transportation. Streetcars helped, to an extent, but passenger lines that centered on downtown neighborhoods left large areas that could be occupied with housing for a growing working population, provided that these residents had their own way to get around. “I will build a car for the great multitude,” declared Henry Ford in 1908 . “[I]t will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one.” 13 That car was the Model T, and it revolutionized both auto-making and the American landscape. It also revolutionized the entire concept of American production. Ford didn’t worry about whether his cars would have a market. He would make a market for his cars by producing them so cheaply that nearly every American could afford one.

Ford could achieve both quality and a low price at scale because of the assembly line. This particular conceptual breakthrough owed much to the “disassembly lines” that had been pioneered in the meatpacking industry during the previous century. In the same way that a single carcass was picked apart by men with specialized jobs as it moved along a line, mounted upon a hook, Ford arranged his new factory at Highland Park so that men with highly specialized assignments could build an automobile much faster than before. The assembly line moved work to the men rather than forcing men to move to the work, thereby saving valuable time and energy. It also extended the concept of the division of labor to its logical extreme so that workers would only perform one function in a much larger assembly process all day, every day. The applicability of these principles to the manufacturing of just about everything is what made Ford such an important figure in the history of industrialization. Mass production became possible for all kinds of things that had once seemed far removed from the automobile.

Ford built Model Ts at three different facilities over the entire history of that vehicle. He improved his production methods over time (which included introducing and improving upon the assembly line) so that he could produce them more cheaply and efficiently. Efficiency depended on speed, and speed depended upon the exact place in the factory where those machines were placed. Because Ford made only one car, he could employ single-purpose machine tools of extraordinarily high quality. The company also used lots of other automated manufacturing equipment, like gravity slides and conveyors, to get parts of the car from one place to another in its increasingly large, increasingly mechanized factories.

Because the assembly line moved the work to the men rather than the men to the work, the company could control the speed of the entire operation. Like earlier manufacturers, Ford depended upon standardized, identical parts to produce more cars for less, but the assembly line also made it possible to conserve labor—not by mechanizing jobs that had once been done by hand, but by mechanizing work processes and paying employees just to feed and tend to those machines. This was not fun work to do. “The chain system you have is a slave driver!” wrote an anonymous housewife based on her husband’s experience working on the assembly line. “My God! Mr. Ford. My husband has come home and thrown himself down and won’t eat his supper–so done out! Can’t it be remedied?” 14 Ford instituted an unprecedented wage of $5/day to keep workers on his assembly line, but this reward did not make the work any easier.

Before Ford came along, cars were boutique goods that only rich people could afford to operate. After Ford introduced the assembly line (actually a series of assembly lines for every part of the car), labor productivity improved to such a degree that mass production became possible. Perhaps more important than mass production was mass consumption, since continual productivity improvements meant that Ford could lower the price of the Model T every year, while simultaneously making small but significant changes that steadily improved the quality of the car. Mass production eliminated choice, since Ford produced no other car, but Ford built variations of the Model T, like the runabout with the same chassis, and owners retro-fitted their Model Ts for everything from camping to farming.

The increased number of automobiles on city streets further congested already congested downtown areas. Streetcars got blocked. Pedestrians died in gruesome traffic accidents. One of the basic requirements of having so many new cars on the roads was to improve the quality and quantity of roads. Local city planners tended to attack such problems on a case-by-case basis, laying pavement on well-traveled roads and widening them when appropriate. New traffic rules, such as the first one-way streets, appeared in an effort to alleviate these kinds of problems. Traffic control towers and traffic lights—the mechanical solution to a problem inspired by industrialization—also appeared for the first time during this era.

Cities grew when industries grew during this era. Since people had to live near where they worked (and few people lived in skyscrapers), many builders built out into undeveloped areas. If a city had annexed much of the land around it previous to these economic expansions (like Detroit), those areas became parts of a larger city. If they hadn’t, much of this growth occurred in new suburbs (like Philadelphia). Chicago was so confident of further growth during this period that it built streetcar lines into vacant fields. To meet rising demand for housing, homebuilders applied industrial principles to building—using standardized parts that were themselves the result of mass production techniques. By the 1920s, buying pre-cut mail order houses became big business.

The Origins of Mass Production

After 1880 , mechanization made factories even more productive thanks to technological improvements. This can be traced back to Thomas Edison’s labs in New Jersey, where he practiced systematic invention to exploit the great commercial opportunities that modern life created. The electrical and chemical industries formed the vanguard for the blending of science and the useful arts during this era. By the 1920s, engineers had been formally integrated into the management hierarchies of countless American industries.

Reorganization of production merged with technological improvement had made mass production possible long before Ford developed the assembly line. James Bonsack’s cigarette rolling machine, for example, patented in 1881 , could produce 70,000 cigarettes in a single ten-hour day. By the end of that decade, it could produce 120,000 cigarettes in a day. 15 When James “Buck” Duke bought exclusive rights to this machine in 1885 , it became the basis of his American Tobacco Company, which quickly controlled most of the industry.

By the 1920s, mass production had arrived in industries that produced goods that were much more expensive than cigarettes. Ford’s principles of mass production spread quickly throughout the manufacturing sector, to products of all kinds, because Henry Ford was so open about the way he designed his factories. Among the other manufacturers that used Fordist principles during the 1920s were the makers of home appliances, like refrigerators and radios. General Electric, for example, built an eighteen million dollar assembly line for its Monitor Top refrigerator and sold a million refrigerators just four years after its introduction in 1927 . 16

Even craft-dominated industries like furniture making came to depend upon mass production to make their products more available to the masses. People who moved from farms to cities desperately needed furniture for their new urban residences, but in industrial towns like Grand Rapids, Michigan, they could not afford pieces made by craftsman. New mass-produced models made with minimal carving and overlays, based on stylish patterns, found a market all over the country. It helped that companies like Bassett, founded in Virginia in 1902 , discouraged their workers from forming unions, just like Ford did. An unorganized workforce made it easier for industrialists to impose changes in the production process without resistance from employees.

The changeover from the Model T to the Model A, in 1927 , demonstrated the limits of industrialized mass production. The Model A was incredibly expensive, and Ford had to shut his main plant for months to retool the production line for his new models. While the new car sold well initially, sales dropped precipitously as the Depression deepened. “Mass production is not simply large-scale production,” wrote the department store magnate Edward Filene, in 1932 . “It is large-scale production based upon a clear understanding that increased production demands increased buying.” 17 Mass buying became difficult when people had little money with which to buy the products of industrialization. Urban building slowed precipitously during the Depression too. Since cities were the focal points of industrialization, urban citizens suffered disproportionately when production waned. Of course, when the United States sank into the economic downturn of the Great Depression, both urban and industrial growth decreased sharply.

Discussion of the Literature

It is difficult to cite previous scholarship on either industrialization or urbanization from precisely the 1880–1930 period because both these trends pre- and post-date this period. Equally importantly, both are so broad, in the sense that they encompass all kinds of industries and locations that they include a huge range of books and other sources. While none of the following suggestions are exact fits for these subjects during this time, they are all worth reading because they cast at least some light on industrialization and urbanization during this particular time period.

David Hounshell’s From the American System to Mass Production is simply the best comprehensive history of industrialization available. It covers a few very important industries in detail (like automobile manufacturing), but it is at its best when dealing with the similarities in production technologies from industry to industry. My own Industrialization and the Transformation of American Life is a simplified introduction to these principles and a summary of their effects on many aspects of American history during this period, including urbanization. 18

A number of excellent studies of important industries during this period show how industrialization progressed in some detail. Thomas Misa’s Nation of Steel is the definitive work on the technology of that essential industry. Ron Chernow’s Titan , a biography of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. will teach you everything you want to know about the oil industry during this period. Richard R. John’s Network Nation describes the intricacies of the telegraph and telephone industries. My own Refrigeration Nation is a close study of the American ice and refrigeration industries. 19

Sam Bass Warner Jr.’s The Urban Wilderness , an important history of urbanization throughout the United States, includes discussion of many problems unique to this time period. The best works of urban history published since then tend to deal with particular cities or with the relationship between cities and surrounding suburban communities. Warner’s Streetcar Suburbs , for example, covers the growth of Boston throughout the 19th century. Donald L. Miller’s Supreme City masterfully handles New York during the 1920s (and before, in order to set context). Miller’s City of the Century offers a similarly thorough treatment of Chicago during the 1890s. Perhaps the most-beloved work of urban history that covers cities around the country is Kenneth Jackson’s Crabgrass Frontier , which takes in both the growth of suburbia and the cities they surround throughout American history, but paying special attention to the years covered in this article. Building Suburbia by Dolores is a detailed work that covers a similar subject over the same time period. William Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West is the classic explanation of the relationship between the fastest-growing city of the late 19th century and all the natural resources that surrounded it. 20

The turn towards social history among historians since the 1960s has made studies of broad economic forces increasingly uncommon. Early labor history, for example, was often written by economists. Therefore, it showed a tendency towards looking at the effects of technological change upon workers. Early sociologists who practiced during this period used to do field work in the cities where their universities were located. While a return to this kind of study seems unlikely, more attempts to study the broader economic forces that made social change happen would likely be appreciated by scholars working in multiple disciplines.

Primary Sources and Links to Digital Materials

The best place to start any study of the 1880–1930 period is to look at the published literature during that time. Luckily, because any book or magazine published before 1923 is in the public domain, people searching in the United States can find primary sources on just about any topic by searching on Google Books , with their Advanced Book Search . Be sure to check the box that says “Full View Only” and narrow the publication date range to the exact years in which you are interested. A broad search will bury you in relevant material, so you may have to do a lot of reading before you find hits that match your topic exactly.

With respect to industrialization, trade journals, like Iron Age or Electrical World , are particular helpful for understanding the exact technological changes that took place during these years. Many such periodicals are available in full on Google Books, but to find articles on a particular topic can require enough patience to search inside the bound volumes of those journals one year at a time. Nevertheless, the fact that, only a few short years ago, one had to travel to a major research library in order to read them at all, demonstrates the wonders of digitization.

Chronicling America , the online repository of the Library of Congress for digitized American newspapers is a particularly important resource for studying urban history during this era. Begin with their Advanced Search tab, and you can limit the results to papers from the state or city of your choice. While they currently have few papers from a city as big as Chicago, they are strong on papers from New York City and Washington, D.C.

Anyone interested in urban history might consider perusing the digital collections of the New York Public Library before a trip there to see what isn’t available online. Among the online collections focusing on urban living are “Classic Six:” New York City Apartment Building Living, 1880s‐1910s and Photographic Negatives of the New York City Tenement House Department, 1902‐1914 .

The Encyclopedia of Chicago presents considerable materials from the online archives of the Chicago History Museum, and the Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy: 1921‐1929 is available online from the the Chicago Historical Society.

The excellent online resources of the Library of Congress include a collection of Panoramic Maps of cities and towns of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Two of the best business history archives in the United States are the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware and the Baker Library of the Harvard Business School. Search these excellent online resources at Hagley Digital Exhibits and at the Harvard Library Digital Collections .

American businesses, including those that go as far back as this period, tend to restrict access to their archives by outsiders for legal reasons. Even if you can see materials that no historian has seen before, there is a good chance that these materials will not be processed, which will make using them much harder. Therefore, many studies of industrialization on the ground during this era center on the few large companies whose records are available. These include the McCormick-International Harvester Collection curated by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, or the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company archives of the Steelworks Center of the West, Pueblo, Colorado.

Further Reading

  • Braverman, Harry . Labor and Monopoly Capitalism: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century . New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998.
  • Chandler, Alfred D., Jr. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977.
  • Cronon, William . Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West . New York: W. W. Norton, 1991.
  • Hayden, Dolores . Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820–2000 . New York: Random House, 2003.
  • Hays, Samuel P. The Response to Industrialism 1885–1914 . 2d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
  • Hounshell, David A. From the American System to Mass Production, 1800–1932 . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984.
  • Jackson, Kenneth T. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States . New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
  • Jonnes, Jill . Empires of Light: Edison, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World . New York: Random House, 2003.
  • Misa, Thomas J. A Nation of Steel: The Making of Modern America 1865–1925 . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.
  • Noble, David F. America by Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977.
  • Nye, David . Electrifying America: Social Meaning of a New Technology, 1880–1940 . Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990.
  • Porter, Glenn . The Rise of Big Business 1860–1920 . Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1992.
  • Rees, Jonathan . Industrialization and the Transformation of American Life: A Brief Introduction . Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2013.
  • Warner, Sam Bass, Jr. The Urban Wilderness: A History of the American City . New York: Harper & Row, 1972.

1. Chester W. Wright , Economic History of the United States (New York: McGraw Hill, 1941), 707 .

2. Jonathan Rees , Industrialization and the Transformation of American Life (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2013), 44 .

3. On regional differences see Sam Bass Warner Jr. , The Urban Wilderness: A History of the American City (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 87–88 .

4. Thomas J. Misa , A Nation of Steel: The Making of Modern America, 1865–1925 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 41 .

5. Wright, Economic History of the United States , 668.

6. Jill Jonnes , Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse and the Race to Electrify the World (New York: Random House, 2003), 76 .

7. Ruth Schwartz Cowan , A Social History of American Technology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 163 .

8. Ernest Freeberg , The Age of Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America (New York: Penguin, 2013), 81 .

9. Alice Sparberg Alexiou , The Flatiron: The New York City Landmark and the Incomparable City that Arose with It (New York: Thomas Dunne, 2010), 50 .

10. Misa, A Nation of Steel , 85.

11. Rees, Industrialization and the Transformation , 53.

12. Jacob A. Riis , How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York (New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1914), 2 .

13. Steven Watts , The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century (New York: Random House, 2005), 119 .

14. David A. Hounshell , From the American System to Mass Production, 1800–1932 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 259 .

15. Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. , The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1977), 249 .

16. Ruth Schwartz Cowan , More Work for Mother (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 136–138 .

17. Hounshell, From the American System , 307.

18. Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production ; and Rees, Industrialization and the Transformation of American Life .

19. See Misa, A Nation of Steel ; Ron Chernow , Titan (New York: Vintage, 2004) ; Richard R. John ’s Network Nation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2010) ; and Rees , Refrigeration Nation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2103) .

20. See Sam Bass Warner Jr. ’s The Urban Wilderness (New York: Harper & Row, 1972) ; Warner ’s Streetcar Suburbs (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978) ; Donald L. Miller ’s Supreme City (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014) ; Miller ’s City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America (Simon & Schuster, 1997) ; Kenneth Jackson , Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985) ; Dolores Hayden , Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820–2000 (New York: Random House, 2003) ; and William Cronon , Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991) .

Related Articles

  • Suburbanization in the United States before 1945
  • Streets, Roads, and Highways in the United States

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Immigration and the American Industrial Revolution From 1880 to 1920

Charles hirschman.

Department of Sociology and Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-3340

Elizabeth Mogford

Department of Sociology, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225-9081

In this study, we measure the contribution of immigrants and their descendents to the growth and industrial transformation of the American workforce in the age of mass immigration from 1880 to 1920. The size and selectivity of the immigrant community, as well as their disproportionate residence in large cities, meant they were the mainstay of the American industrial workforce. Immigrants and their children comprised over half of manufacturing workers in 1920, and if the third generation (the grandchildren of immigrants) are included, then more than two-thirds of workers in the manufacturing sector were of recent immigrant stock. Although higher wages and better working conditions might have encouraged more long-resident native-born workers to the industrial economy, the scale and pace of the American industrial revolution might well have slowed. The closing of the door to mass immigration in the 1920s did lead to increased recruitment of native born workers, particularly from the South, to northern industrial cities in the middle decades of the 20 th century.

1. Introduction

Within the span of a few decades from the late 19 th to the early 20 th century, the United States was transformed from a predominately rural agrarian society to an industrial economy centered in large metropolitan cities. Prior to the American industrial revolution, most Americans were reared in largely isolated agricultural households and small towns that were linked to the external world by horse drawn wagons ( Olmstead and Rhode 2000 : 711). Except for towns that were connected to railroads or water borne shipping, isolation and the costs of overland transportation meant that many rural communities were largely self sufficient in food, clothing, and many other essentials of everyday life. This changed dramatically in the early decades of the 20 th century, as the supply and lowered costs of manufactured goods created a consumer revolution for both urban and rural households. Many of these goods, which did not even exist a few decades earlier, were manufactured, marketed, and transported through a rapidly expanding national network of rail lines and highways. By 1920, one half of northern farms had automobiles and telephones ( Olmstead and Rhode 2000 : 712–713).

Theses changes were the direct result of the American industrial revolution that was founded on rising investment, employment, and productivity in the manufacturing sector. In 1880, when the agricultural frontier had largely disappeared, almost one-half of the American workers were still farmers and only one in seven workers (less than 15%) worked in manufacturing of any sort. The industrial sector, as late as 1870, consisted primarily of small firms and workshops that relied on artisan technology to produce tools, furniture, building materials, and other goods for local markets ( Abramovitz and David 2000 : 45). Many small industries, such as grain mills and sawmills, were often located in rural areas close to flowing rivers in order to power machinery. Following the technological revolutions of the early industrial age, workshops and small foundries were supplemented by large factories engaged in mass production. The development of commercial electricity at the end of the 19 th century allowed industries to take advantage of the labor supply in large cities. The scale of change is illustrated by the rise in the share of manufacturing horsepower generated by electrical motors from 23% in 1909 to 77% in 1929 ( Goldin and Katz 1998 : 712).

Enormous gains in industrial productivity, accompanied by institutional change and much lower transportation costs, created national markets with goods and people moving in every direction. Perhaps the most consequential change of the American industrial revolution was the increasing urbanization of society and the shift of labor from farms to factories and offices ( Guest 2005 ). In 1880, workers in agriculture outnumbered industrial workers three to one, but by 1920, the numbers were approximately equal. Employment in the manufacturing sector expanded four-fold from 2.5 to 10 million workers from 1880 to 1920. 1

The decades surrounding 1900 were not only the age of industrialization in the United States, but were also the age of urbanization and immigration. The 1880s were the first decade in American history, with the exception of the Civil War decade, when the urban population increased more than the rural population (in absolute numbers). From 1880 to 1920, population growth was concentrated in cities—the urban fraction expanded from a little more than one quarter of the national population to more than one half ( Carter et al. 2006 : 1–105).

The pace of rural to urban migration of the native born picked up during this era, but domestic urbanward migrants were dwarfed by the flood of immigrants coming to cities. From 1880 to 1920, the number of foreign born increased from almost 7 million to a little under 14 million ( Gibson and Jung 2006 : 26). These figures, however, underestimate the economic and demographic contribution of immigration ( Kuznets 1971b ). Immigrants inevitably lead to a second generation—the children of immigrants—whose social, cultural, and economic characteristics are heavily influenced by their origins. Counting the 23 million children of immigrants 2 , in addition to the 14 million immigrants, means that over one-third of the 105 million Americans in the 1920 population belonged to the “immigrant community,” defined as inclusive of the first and second generations.

1.1 Immigration, Urbanization, and Industrialization

Immigrants, as well as manufacturing enterprises, were concentrated in the rapidly growing cities of the Northeast and Midwest during the age of industrialization ( Gibson and Jung 2006 : 72). In 1900, about three-quarters of the populations of many large cities were composed of immigrants and their children, including New York, Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, San Francisco, Buffalo, Milwaukee, and Detroit ( Carpenter 1927 : 27). Immigration and industrialization were correlated, both spatially and temporally in American history ( Taeuber and Taeuber 1971 : 117), but is there a causal impact? Addressing this question, the objective of this analysis, requires consideration of the counterfactual of what would have been the course of the industrialization process in the United States if there had not been an immigrant workforce.

The most commonly cited reasons for the rapid American industrial revolution are the abundance of mineral resources, technological innovation, the evolution of the American system of manufacturing, railroads and lowered costs of transportation, education and human resources, and the rise of the managerial firm ( Abramovitz and David 2000 ; Chandler 1977 ; Denison 1974 ; Hounshell 1984 ; Wright 1990 ). Among the studies that address the relationship between immigration and industrialization, few go beyond a general or abstract discussion. In a classic survey of the literature on the American industrial revolution in the Cambridge Economic History of the United States , the role of immigration is summarized in a single paragraph, which simply notes the overrepresentation of immigrants in the manufacturing labor force ( Engerman and Sokoloff 2000 : 387). There are some studies that conclude that the flood of immigration in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries had an adverse impact on the per-capita economic growth, the wages of native workers, and diverted domestic migration away from industrializing cities ( Hatton and Williamson 1998 : Chapter 8; Goldin 1994 ). However, other researchers have questioned these conclusions and suggested that immigrants had a generally positive impact on the American economy and facilitated the economic mobility of native born workers during the age of industrialization ( Carter and Sutch 1999 ; Haines 2000 : 202; Muller 1993 : 83–85; Thomas 1973 : 174).

1.2 Research Objectives

In this study, we address two specific empirical questions, namely: “What was the role of immigration on changes in the industrial structure of the American economy from 1880 to 1920?”, and “How much did immigrants and their descendents (children and grandchildren) contribute to the manufacturing sector in 1920?” The findings reported here show that recent immigrants and their descendents were the primary workforce in the rapidly expanding manufacturing economy of the early 20 th century. Demographic and economic pressures on agricultural households in the late 19 th and early 20 th century pushed an increasing share of the children of farmers off the land, but only a minority were willing to join “the pool of eastern industrial and commercial labor” ( Atack, Bateman, and Parker 2000 : 322). When immigrant labor was cutoff in the 1920s, the native poor population, especially poor whites and blacks from the South, began migrating to northern industrial cities in much larger numbers. But in the early 20 th century, when manufacturing jobs were dirty, dangerous, and heavily regimented, immigrant workers were the mainstay of industrial employment.

Native born of native parentage (NBNP) Americans continued to be over-represented in the agricultural sector in the early 20 th century, but they were also well represented in many of the better jobs in the public and business sectors that were also expanding rapidly with the industrial economy. The managerial elite during the age of industrialization were almost exclusively native born whites ( Zunz 1982 : 2).

2. How Might Immigration Affect Industrialization

There is a long list of potential factors—variables or conditions—that might have caused the American industrial revolution, including the discovery or adoption of new technologies, the availability and mobility of capital, the expansion of markets as a result of new transportation systems, added demand from a growing population and the expansion of trade, increasing entrepreneurship, stable political and institutional systems that foster cheaper credit and the enforcement of contracts, improvements in human capital and meritocratic social mobility of talent, the increasing division of labor in production, and the specialization of enterprises (see Engerman and Gallman 2000 , especially volume 2). This list, which is neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive, does not specify which factors are exogenous nor does it address the question of which factors are absolutely necessary and which may simply facilitate economic growth and industrialization.

Without a comparative analysis across countries or regions, it is impossible to test which factors were necessary or sufficient conditions to cause industrialization. Such studies are not always definitive, however, because labor, capital, and other resources can flow across regions and countries. The analytical strategy adopted here is of a detailed case study of one country, the United States, with a primary focus on measuring the increasing share of immigrants and their descendents in the mobilization of labor during the American industrial revolution from 1880 to 1920. The counterfactual, namely whether the domestic labor supply would have been sufficient for rapid industrial development in the absence of immigration, cannot be directly observed. Our strategy, which draws on theory and prior research in addition to empirical analysis, cannot fully adjudicate between competing explanations. Our conclusion about the centrality of immigrant labor is based on the fact that recent immigrants and their descendents were not just the majority of industrial workers, but the overwhelming majority of workers in the emerging manufacturing sector in early 20 th century America.

2.1 Economic Theory

Labor is an indispensable source of economic production, and all other things being equal, more labor contributes to more economic production. The magnitude of the impact of immigration on economic growth and welfare depends on the availability of physical capital, the human capital of immigrants and natives, and assumptions about economies of scale ( Frieberg and Hunt 1995 : 39–42; Smith and Edmonston 1997 : chapter 4). Although there was neither a slackening of economic growth nor a slowdown in the trend of rising wages of native born workers during the age of mass immigration in the late 19 th and early 20 th century ( Carter and Sutch 1999 : 314–344; Rees 1961 ), Hatton and Williamson (1998 : chapter 8) argued that wages would have grown even faster in the absence of immigration. Differences in the interpretation (or speculation) of the economic impact of immigration are typically based on assumptions of possible effects rather than on measured differences. There is a wide range of mechanisms through which immigrants may affect labor markets and the economy, more generally.

One of the most fundamental effects of immigration is an increase in the number of workers relative to dependents in the population. Immigrants are generally concentrated in the younger working ages. Carter and Sutch (1999 : 326) observe that well over 70% of immigrants to the United States during the peak years of the age of mass immigration (1907 to 1910) were between age 18 and 40. Even within the working-age population, immigrants are more likely to participate in the labor force than the native born population. The age selectivity of immigrants reduces the costs of social reproduction for a given population size in the receiving society. Although the costs of support for the dependent population of children and the elderly are generally borne privately by families, there are also public subsidies for education and health care. The costs of rearing and educating persons who immigrate as young adults have been borne by their foreign-resident families and their countries of origin, and might be considered a transfer payment to the taxpayers of the receiving society. 3

In an ingenious analysis of the potential impact of the differing age composition of immigrants and the native born populations, Neal and Uselding (1972) estimate the savings received by the United States through immigration from 1790 to 1913 relative to the costs that would have been incurred if all immigrants were replaced by children of the native born population (this counterfactual is posed by the “Walker hypothesis” that posits that native born fertility was depressed by the arrival of immigrants). Assuming these savings had been invested (not consumed by social reproduction), Neal and Uselding (1972 : 87) conclude that immigration had contributed from 13 to 42 percent of the capital stock of the United States by 1912. Several analysts have noted that the large number of immigrants in the North in the 1860s provided the manpower surplus that allowed the Union to triumph in the Civil War ( Gallman 1977 : 31, Muller 1993 : 78–79).

2.2 Empirical Studies

In their study of the impact of immigration on American industrialization and native born workers, Hatton and Williamson (1998 : chapter 8) asked whether immigrants accelerated industrialization by solving labor bottlenecks by entering high-wage high-growth occupations faster than native born workers ( Hatton and Williamson 1998 : 161–164). Based on their findings that immigrants were more likely to be found in less skilled occupations and in slower growth occupations from 1890 to 1900, Hatton and Williamson conclude that immigration did not contribute to economic development and rapid industrialization. However, other analysts report that immigrants were no less skilled than native born workers ( Schachter 1972 ). The real question, in our judgment, is not the skill level of immigrants, but their role in filling the demand for labor in manufacturing and other key sectors of emerging industrial economy. The central element of the industrial revolution is most appropriately measured by shifts across industrial sectors – the rise of manufacturing, in particular.

The other problem with Hatton and Williamson’s account is their focus on relative growth as the index of labor demand. Starting from a small base (or zero), new industries may experience extraordinarily rapid relative growth, but the absolute number of added workers may be relatively small. For example, the telephone industry grew over 80 times faster than the workforce as a whole from 1880 to 1920, but the total growth was only a quarter of a million workers. On the other hand, the manufacturing sector grew much less rapidly—only about 2.4 times as fast as the work force as a whole, but added about 7.5 million workers. Are immigrant workers in manufacturing not to be considered part of the “shock troops of structural change” ( Hatton and Williamson 1998 : 161) simply because of their relative share in the growth in selected high demand occupations? The contribution of immigrants might be evaluated differently if the absolute numbers of workers in expanding industries were counted. In this analysis, we consider the contribution of immigrants to absolute and relative changes in the industrial structure.

One of the most important theoretical claims about the positive impact of immigration on industrialization centers on the creation of economies of scales—both in the production of and the demand for industrial goods ( Abramovitz and David. 2000 : 12; Carter and Sutch 1999 : 331–332; Romer 1996 ). The creation of economies of scale was possible only with the growth of cities and urban industries. Before the age of industrialization, per-capita productivity was rarely increased by having large numbers of workers concentrated in one location ( Ward 1971 : 90). Artisan labor in most industries, such as grain milling, iron working, and leather goods, did not rely on a complex division of labor. Overall, there were few advantages of locating a factory in large cities. The important considerations for site location were access to sources of raw materials, nearby flowing water, and transportation. There is some evidence that some “non-mechanized” factories in the mid 19 th century were more productive than artisan shops, but these factories were distinctive in employing women and children (e.g. textiles), and economies of scale were only significant for factories with about 20 or fewer employees ( Engerman and Sokoloff 2000 : 375).

With electricity to power machinery, it became possible to redesign the organization of factories to create an integrated flow of work (assembly lines) to take advantage of a larger number of workers in one location. Larger factories were located in cities where labor was more plentiful. And cities were disproportionately the home of immigrants. Even in 1850, when only 15% of the American population lived in cities, more than one-third of the population of most large American cities was foreign born. Assuming that second generation immigrants (the children of immigrants) were as numerous as the foreign born, it seems reasonable to conclude that almost all large American cities were predominantly composed of immigrants and their children as early as 1850 ( Gibson and Jung: 2006 : 82). 4

In the middle decades of the 19 th century, new immigrants were the ready source of labor to unload ships, to build roads and canals, and to transport goods ( Carter 2006 : I-590-591). With the growth of factories and the demand for unskilled labor, immigrants, primarily young men in the working years, continued to be the ideal source of labor. Immigrants were generally more willing to accept lower wages and inferior working conditions than native born workers ( Zolberg 2006 : 69). Great efficiencies in production led to higher profits that could be reinvested in new technology, which led to even more production and eventually higher wages for workers.

Although the demand for manufactured goods gradually grew to encompass the entire country, the initial demand was from the urban population. Unlike farm families that were largely self sufficient in food and made most of their clothing, urban families needed to purchase everything in the market. The large and growing urban populations, primarily fueled by immigration throughout the second half of the 19 th century and the first two decades of the 20 th century, created a huge demand for the increased production of the emerging industrial sector. Carter and Sutch (1999 : 330–331) claim that economies of scale in demand and production also stimulated inventive activity and the diffusion of technological knowledge and innovation. In his analysis of long swings, or Kuznets cycles, Easterlin (1968) found that immigration (and population growth) and subsequent family formation stimulated economic growth through increasing demand for housing, urban development, and other amenities. This association was strongest, Easterlin noted, in the century prior to World War II. In the post World War II era, the federal government assumed more responsibility for maintaining aggregate demand regardless of population dynamics.

If capital is fixed, additional immigrant labor would lead to lowered productivity as capital stocks are spread more thinly and as less capital is invested per worker (capital dilution). However, there is some evidence that capital follows the international movements of labor, especially in labor scarce economies ( Hatton and Williamson 1998 : 214–215). In addition to international capital flows, immigrants are thought to save a higher proportion of their incomes than native born workers. Much of this savings is remitted to family and kin in their countries of origin, but there is also evidence that immigrants purchase homes, open small businesses and invest heavily in the education of their children. These claims suggest that immigrants contribute to economic growth by increasing the supply of (or attracting) capital as well as the supply of labor. Rosenberg (1972 : 32–33) concludes that immigrants to the United States also brought European technology that increased the productivity of American industry.

Carter and Sutch (1999 : 323) review the historical evidence on the debate over immigration and capital dilution at the turn of the 20 th century, with a focus on the claim that immigrants increased the returns to capital (and hence capitalists), but harmed the economic fortunes of native born workers. They conclude that the division between capital and labor was not as clear cut as many assume. A substantial share of American workers owned capital through home ownership and as operators of farms and small shops. About half of American households in 1905 might have been considered as equity investors through their ownership of insurance policies that were self-financed pensions ( Ranson and Sutch 1987 cited in Carter and Sutch 1999 : 323).

3. Data and Measurement

The decennial census data analyzed here have been extracted from the IPUMS (Integrated Public Use Microdata Samples) files that have been produced and distributed by researchers at the University of Minnesota ( Ruggles et al. 2004 ). The IPUMS files are created by extracting samples of household records and all persons in sampled households from the original manuscript (microfilm) records. The samples of the IPUMS census files are sufficiently large to reproduce, within the range of sampling error, published figures in the original census reports. Moreover, the IPUMS files, with complete individual (and family) unit records, can be recoded and tabulated, limited only by the scope and detail of the original census questions and classifications. In addition to the standard census variables, the IPUMS files also contain many new recoded variables to facilitate comparisons across censuses ( Sobek 2001 ).

Although the classification of workers by industrial sectors is sometimes conflated with occupations, these two dimensions of work are conceptually distinct. Industries refer to product produced or service delivered (by a firm or family run enterprise) while occupations refer to actual work activities and skills of workers ( Sobek 2006 , Sutch 2006 ). There is overlap in some categories – most farmers (occupations) work in the agricultural sector, but there are significant differences in the wide range of occupations (e.g., unskilled labor, clerical workers, managers) for those who work in the manufacturing, construction, and retail trade sectors.

The process of industrialization is associated with industrial restructuring as well as changes in the skills and actual tasks performed by workers. We focus on the shifts in the industrial distribution of workers because technological and organizational change typically results in the origin, growth, decline, and disappearance of businesses and forms of production. As agricultural productivity increased, workers were drawn into manufacturing and services.

Shifts in occupations and the division of labor are likely to be derivative of the changes in industrial structure and technological change. As factories replaced farms (the prototypical shift in the organization of work), many new occupations were created. Aside from the link to industrial structure, there is less theoretical clarity in the expected changes in occupations with industrialization. A widespread assumption is that technological change leads to an upgrading of occupational skills. However, early mass production probably led to a replacement of skilled craft workers with unskilled production workers. Goldin and Katz (1998) argue that this process was reversed in the years around World War I when technological change may have had a pro skill bias. Regardless of changes in the content of nonfarm occupations, the shift from farming to factory work was probably not considered as a step upward, or to a more technologically challenging job, by farmers. 5 In addition to their autonomy, farmers have to master a number of trades including animal husbandry, crop management, and the entrepreneurial activities of buying and marketing. With our focus on industrial sectors, we attempt to capture the direct impact of industrialization on the structure of the labor force without additional assumptions of the skill levels or status of workers.

3.1 A Detailed Industrial Classification

For this analysis, we rely on the IPUMS variable “IND 1950,” which represents a recoding of the reported industries from each decennial census from 1850 to 2000 to the 1950 census industry classification (for additional details, see http://www.ipums.org/usa/pwork/ind1950a.html ). The industry question was first asked in the 1910 census. For prior censuses, IND 1950 was inferred from responses to the census question on occupations. The IND 1950 classification consists of 152 detailed (three-digit) categories plus “nonclassifiable” and “industry not reported” categories. 6 Detailed industrial categories are generally nested within primary (one digit) and secondary (two digit) categories. The classification includes some detailed industries that emerged from technological change over time. For example, the detailed category #376 “Motor vehicles and motor vehicle equipment” did not include any workers until the 1910 census.

Any study of industrial change must attempt to reconcile the need for detail revealed by the tertiary level categories with the need for parsimony evident in the broader categories. The summary industrial classification used here is ad hoc, reflecting elements of both principles with the objective of understanding the creation and expansion of specialized industries during the Age of Industrialization. Two major sectors, AGRICULTURE and CONSTRUCTION, are only reported at the primary level, while TRADE is shown for only the two major secondary levels: WHOLESALE TRADE and RETAIL TRADE. The other primary sectors are subdivided into their detailed (tertiary) industries, though quite a few of the detailed categories have been aggregated. Our primary emphasis is on the MANUFACTURING sector which includes all secondary level categories and most of the tertiary industries. Following Singlemann (1978 : 31), we reorganized the very heterogeneous SERVICE sector into three new major categories: BUSINESS SERVICES, PERSONAL SERVICES, and SOCIAL SERVICES. Our final classification is displayed in Appendix 1 .

4. Changes in the Industrial Structure and Immigrant Participation: 1880 to 1920

Our first objective is to describe changes in the industrial structure of the gainful workforce from 1880 to 1920, and the share of recent immigrants and their descendents in this industrial transformation. Figure 1 shows the dramatic changes in the structure of the workforce in 1880 and 1920 for the 9 major industrial sectors. The single most striking change was the decline in agriculture (from 48 to 25% of the workforce) and the rise of manufacturing employment (up from 14 to 25%). There are also significant increases in the proportions working in mining, transportation and utilities, trade, producer services and social services. There was relative stability (from 4.6 to 4.8%) in construction, and a relative decline of employment in personal services (from 11.5 to 9.5%).

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
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Industrial Structure of Workforce: 1880 & 1920

The source percentages in Figure 1 are presented for detailed industry categories in the first two columns in Table 1 , which provides an overview of the growth and transformation of the American workforce from 1880 to 1920. Columns 3 and 4 show the absolute and relative growth of workers in each industry over the forty years. Columns 5 and 6 show the immigrant share (both first and second generation) of each industrial sector. The final column shows the ratio of the growth of immigrant workers to the overall growth (or decline) of workers in each industry from 1880 to 1920.

Industrial Structure of the Work Force of Gainful Workers, by Immigrant (1st and 2nd Generation) Generation: United States, 1880 to 1920

Sources: 1880 and 1920 PUMS from Ruggles et al. (2004)

Notes: Gainful workers in 1880 not reporting an industry (codes 997/998) are disributed prorata by the industry of their reported occupation.

(1). Percentage by Major and Selected Industrial Sectors of Employment of 1880 Total Labor Force.

(2). Percentage by Major and Selected Industrial Sectors of Employment of 1920 Total Labor Force.

(3). Change (in thousands) in Absolute Number of Workers, by Industrial Sector from 1880 to 1920.

(4). Ratio of the Pecent Change from 1880 to 1920 of Each Industrial Sector to the Percent Change of the Total Work Force from 1880 to 1920 (123%).

(5). Percent Immigrant (first and second generation) of Workers, by Industrial Sector in 1880

(6). Percent Immigrant (first and second generation) of Workers, by Industrial Sector in 1920

(7). Ratio of the Change in the Absolute Number of Immigrants (first and second generation) to the Absolute Change of Workers in Each Industry from 1880 to 1920.

Although we consider these data comparable to the labor force during this period, technically, the data refer to gainful workers or all persons who reported a “gainful occupation” in the census enumeration ( Bancroft 1958 : Appendix C; Carter 2006 : 1–2 – 1–14). Accordingly, we refer to the gainful working population as the workforce, which does not connote the precision of the modern labor force concept and measurement.

Rapid growth and structural transformation are the two major trends in the American workforce from 1880 to 1920. The number of gainful workers in the United States more than doubled from 1880 to 1920 (18.1 to 40.5 million). 7 Even more significant was the shift from an employment structure centered on agriculture to a much more diversified industrial employment structure. These patterns are illustrated with summary measures of “absolute growth” (indexed by the increase in the number of workers in the industry from 1880 to 1920) and “relative growth” (indexed by dividing the absolute growth in each industry by the expected growth, assuming that every industry grew at the same rate as the national workforce). A relative growth index value of 1.0 means the particular industry grew at the same rate as the national workforce (which more than doubled). A value of less than 1.0 means the industry experienced a below-average growth rate, and values greater than 1.0 above-average growth for the sector.

In 1880, at the eve of the age of mass migration and when almost half of the workforce was in the agricultural sector, immigrants and their children comprised about one-third of all workers. We include the second generation (the children of immigrants) as part of the immigrant community because they are reared and socialized by their foreign born parents and would not have been in the United States except for the migration of their parents. 8 The immigrant share increased to 40 percent of the workforce in 1920. Almost half of the total growth of 22 million workers from 1880 to 1920 can be attributed to the increase of first and second generation immigrant workers (the last column of Table 1 ).

4.1 Agriculture

For the first century after the nation’s founding, the United States was an agricultural society, and most American farms were small scale household enterprises that relied on family labor. In the early 19 th century, upwards of two-thirds of the working population was employed in agriculture ( Taeuber and Taeuber 1971 : 175). At the turn of the twentieth century, nearly two-thirds of Americans lived on farms or in villages and towns of less than five thousand residents ( Katz and Stern 2006 : 8). Throughout the 19 th century, government priorities and spending reflected the dominance of rural and agricultural interests. One of the landmark expansions of the federal government was the Morrill Act of 1862, which created the Department of Agriculture and authorized the founding of land grant colleges ( Carter et al. 2006 : 4–24; Atack, Bateman, and Parker 2000 : 273).

From 1880 to 1920, agriculture added 2.1 million more workers (mostly prior to 1900), but the rate of growth in agriculture was only one-tenth (0.1) of the overall growth rate of the national workforce. By 1920, only one in four American workers remained in agriculture, and the American economy was increasingly centered in urban factories and offices rather than on farms. Although many immigrants were drawn to the agricultural frontier in the 18 th and 19 th centuries, only one of every five farmers was an immigrant or the child of an immigrant during the age of mass immigration from 1880 to 1920.

4.2 Manufacturing and Related Industries

The largest shift in the American workforce from 1880 to 1920 was the expansion of manufacturing employment from 14 to almost 25 percent of the workforce. If mining and construction were combined with manufacturing, one-third of Americans were industrial workers in 1920. Manufacturing employment grew more than twice as fast as the workforce as a whole from 1880 to 1920. In absolute terms, the manufacturing sector expanded from 2.5 to 10 million workers.

Within the manufacturing sector, the largest increases were registered in metals (iron and steel), which grew from 1.3 to 3.7% of the workforce, and in machinery, which grew from 0.7 to 5.0% of the workforce. Closely related to this was the expansion of coal mining (used to produce steel) from 0.5 to 2.1% of workers. More than one out of ten workers in the American economy in 1920 were producing steel, extracting the raw materials used to produce steel, or making machinery from steel (e.g., automobiles). 9 The Chemical/Petroleum/Rubber sector, which included the automobile related industries of tire manufacturing and gasoline production, grew from 0.2 to 1.6% of workers.

Another important shift was the rise in apparel (clothing) manufacturing from 0.3 to 1.1% of workers, which paralleled the decline of relative workers in dressmaking shops (listed under Personal Services) from 1.3 to 0.6% of the workforce. In the early 20 th century, American women and men were able for the first time to buy inexpensive manufactured (ready made) dresses, shirts, and suits, and there was less dependence on home made and hand tailored clothing. With less expensive ready made clothing, fashions changed as well. Men and women replaced simple cloaks with fitted coats ( Cahan 1917 ).

The rapid growth of manufacturing from 1880 to 1920 relied heavily on immigrant labor. In the latter part of the 19 th century, the cotton manufacturing industry and the iron and steel industry relied heavily on “old immigrants” from Great Britain and Northwestern Europe, but in the early decades of the 20 th century, the rapid growth of these industries became increasingly dependent on “new immigrants” from Southern and Eastern Europe ( Perry 1978 ).

More than one-half of the net growth of 7.5 million workers in manufacturing from 1880 to 1920 was due to the increase of first and second generation workers over this period. The immigrant share was significant in all manufacturing industries, but proportionally less in wood and mineral products and a few other categories. Immigrants provided the majority of added workers in the rapidly growing iron and steel industry, machinery manufacturing, and textiles and apparel. The dominance of the Eastern European immigrants in apparel manufacture (and trade) in New York City is well known ( Kahan 1978 ), but immigrants were also over-represented in mining and construction and throughout the heavy industries in the Northeast and Midwest.

4.3 Transportation, Communications, and Utilities

The consequences of expansion in the manufacturing sector rippled through other sectors. This led to major changes in the organization of the economy and the structure of employment. The distribution of goods from manufacturing plants to households also required massive investments and expansion in transportation, communications, retailing, and a supportive institutional structure for the expansion of business, and an increasingly urban society. A governmental bureaucracy was needed to build roads, manage cities, and to educate the population for employment in factories and offices.

The transportation and communication sector added more than 2.3 million workers from 1880 to 1920, of which 1.2 million were added to the railway and railroad sector alone. The two million workers employed in the railroads and railway sector in 1920 comprised 5% of the total workforce. The telegraph was the only means of rapid long-distance communication in 1880 and the small number of workers employed in the sector (about 27,000) reflected the limited role of long distance communications (there were an additional 26,000 workers employed in postal services). By 1920, a brand new communications industry—the telephone—grew from zero to 279,000 workers or about 0.7 of the 1920 workforce. 10

Immigrants played an important role in the growing transportation and communications sector, but their role was secondary to the 3 rd and higher generation population—the NBNP (Native Born of Native Parentage) population. For example, nearly two-thirds of the added workers in railroads were 3 rd and higher generation Americans. There was a great boom in railroad construction in late 19 th century America. By 1899, “every major city had a rail head that was connected to the national system” ( Cain 2006 : 4–771; also see Mayer 1989 : 928). The geographic dispersion of railroads, and relatively good wages in the industry, undoubtedly pulled many descendents of the native born workers into the railroad sector.

4.4 Wholesale and Retail Trade

The enormous outpouring of goods from the nation’s factories had to be distributed and sold, mostly to domestic markets. Wholesale trade added almost 600,000 workers from 1880 to 1920, and retail trade grew by almost 2.4 million workers. One of every eight American workers in 1920 was employed in retail or wholesale trade—about one-half of the size of the manufacturing sector.

The late 19 th century witnessed the beginnings of mass retailing and the emergence of department stores in large cities ( Ward 1971 : 94; Raff 2006 : 4–706). Although most studies in the business literature focus on larger firms, most retail enterprises were probably small family owned stores. As late as 1899, the number of proprietors in retail sales was approximately equal to the number of employees in the sector ( Carter et al. 2006 : 4–713). The rapid growth of workers in sales were most likely employed in very small shops or as peddlers who sold goods to farm families and other households in scattered rural communities. The availability of new manufactured goods, linked by an expanding transportation system and a network of wholesale and retail enterprises, created a national market for consumer goods that would gradually supplant home production

Immigrants, especially the second generation, provided for about half of the added workers in trade from 1880 to 1920, primarily in general merchandise, food, and apparel stores. Immigrant merchants were often reputed to create new markets through peddling goods to remote regions and in extending credit to people without accumulated savings.

4.4 Services

The very heterogeneous collection of service industries is reorganized here to emphasize the key distinctions between producer, personal, and social services ( Singlemann 1978 ). Producer services include banking, insurance, real estate, accounting, and other business services that play an important intermediary role in urban and industrial economies. Social services include education, health care, public administration, and other services that are generated by the government to meet the collective needs of communities and individuals. Personal services is the residual category and corresponds most closely to the image of service occupations, and it includes private household workers, dressmakers, and shoe repair shops. This sector also includes repair services (including auto repair), and entertainment services (including movie theaters and recreation). There is a certain amount of arbitrariness in all industrial classifications, including this one. Hotels and lodging places are classified as a personal service, but eating and drinking establishments are considered as part of the retail trade sector.

Concurrent with the creation of an industrial society from 1880 to 1920 was the expansion of business and the beginnings of public provision of education, health care, and welfare – these are evident in the increases of workers in producer services and social services. As business and social services expanded from 1880 to 1920, personal services declined. The decline of personal services was primarily of private household workers (domestics), which declined from 7 to just over 4% of workers from 1880 to 1920. There were also relative declines in some other traditional personal services (dressmaking and repair services), but increases in some “modern” personal services, such as auto repair services, hotels, and the theatre and motion picture industry.

Producer services grew almost 4 times as fast as the overall workforce from 1880 to 1920, and more than doubled their relative share from 1.6 to 4.1% of all workers. The largest components of the increase in producer services were in banking, insurance, real estate, and related business services ( Ward 1971 : 99). The absolute number of workers in these business industries is small, but rapid expansion reflects the increasing complexity of an industrial economy. The efficient management and coordination of large firms and corporations required a growing army of accountants, bookkeepers, and other office personnel.

The relative growth of social services from 3.2 to 6.9% was fueled by increasing numbers of teachers, health and hospital workers, and governmental employment at all levels, including postal workers. The expansion of government services was shaped by the increasing urbanization of the population. The concentration of people in cities made it easier to provide proximate access to schooling, health care, and other services including transportation, sanitation, and public safety. Custom, kinship networks, and voluntary associations are often sufficient to satisfy collective welfare needs in low density settlements and rural areas, but the growth of government appears to be an inevitable concomitant of an urban and industrial society. Government employment grew from 3 to 5 times faster than the workforce as a whole.

As the new service industries, including education, government employment, and business services, grew from 1880 to 1920, the second generation participated proportional to their numbers, but 3 rd and higher generation Americans were the majority of added workers. This was particularly true in social service fields such as health, education, the post office, and government employment more generally. By and large, these were good jobs that required educational credentials and social capital, which immigrants were much less likely to possess.

The growth of professional employment in the service economy was a natural accompaniment of the expansion and development. Perhaps, immigrants were more likely to “push up” native born workers than to crowd them out. Michael Haines (2000 : 202) observes that as immigrants occupied “a disproportionate share of the lower skill and lower status positions, they made possible, in some sense, the better-paid higher status occupations of the native white population.” This interpretation has also been made by Lieberson (1980 : chapter 10) in his theory of labor market queues. Lieberson’s focus was on the concentration of African Americans in the least desirable occupations in 1900, as they had few resources and encountered the greatest discrimination in northern labor markets. Although new immigrants were ahead of African Americans in most labor queues, the growth of the overall labor market through immigration created demand for managerial, professional, and clerical employment that was more likely to be filled by older stock white Americans than by immigrants or African Americans.

5. A Model to Estimate the 3rd Generation Immigrants by Industry

The underlying question that motivates this analysis is the impact of immigration on the transformation of the American economy from a primarily agrarian structure to one based on manufacturing and associated industries. Would it have been possible to have had the American industrial revolution without immigrants? Or alternatively, would the industrial revolution have been smaller, slower, or more costly? In the prior section, we focused on the magnitude and economic roles of the first and second generation immigrant population. In this section, we extend the analysis with an estimate of magnitude of 3 rd generation immigrants—the grandchildren of immigrants and their economic roles.

The grandchildren of immigrants are unlikely to have attachments to their ancestral homeland and are probably well assimilated into American society. If we desire to attribute the 3 rd generation as part of the immigrant contribution, the skeptical reader may wonder why we do not also count the 4 th and higher generations as also part of the immigrant share. Clearly, there is a thin line from “reasonable” assumptions to a reductio ad absurdum argument that the immigrant contribution includes all Americans. Our claim is that 3 rd generation immigrants in the early 20 th century are the recent descendants of European immigrants who were more likely to have settled in cities than to have moved to the agricultural frontier. In 1880, one-third of all workers were composed of first and second generation immigrants and most lived in cities. We assume that 3 rd generation immigrants were much more likely to have been exposed to emerging opportunities in the urban industrial economy than older stock native born Americans in the late 19 th and early 20 th century.

In this section, we present the methods and results of a “Shift-Share” estimation (akin to indirect standardization) of the industrial structure of the grandchildren of immigrants in 1920. There are two components to estimate: immigration generations and the industrial structure by immigrant generation. We first address the measurement of immigration generations.

The 1920 work force can be divided into two components: immigrants (counting both the foreign born and the second generation) and the native born of native parentage (NBNP). Although the NBNP population is typically assumed to reflect a society without immigration, the distinction between the immigrant and NBNP populations is not fixed, since the 3 rd and higher order generation descendents of immigrants are counted as part of the native born population. Since immigrants were disproportionately living in cities and held industrial jobs in 1880, it seems plausible to assume that their grandchildren are probably over-represented in industrial employment in 1920 relative to the grandchildren of the 1880 NBNP Population.

The logic of our analytical approach is diagrammed in Figure 2 . The two columns represent the 1880 and 1920 work force by immigrant generation. In both years, we can measure only three generational groupings: (1) the foreign born, (2) the second generation—the children of immigrants, and (3) third and higher generations—NBNP. The 1920 workforce is composed of some 1880 workers (those age 20 in 1880 would be age 60 in 1920), the descendants of the 1880 population, and recent immigrants and their descendants. It is impossible to make precise estimates of generational continuity and succession because of the complexity of demographic structure and changes, including variations in age structure, labor force exits and entries, mortality, and differential fertility ( Duncan 1966a ). Although most workers in 1880 would have retired (or died) before 1920, some are still working. Some 1880 workers have no children (or no working children) 40 years later, while other 1880 workers may have been “replaced” by one or more descendents.

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The Demographic Components of the 1920 Gainful Workforce

Nonetheless, we can provide a crude estimate of the contribution of recent immigration to the 1920 workforce with several simplifying assumptions. The first assumption is that the majority of the first and second generation workers in 1920 were recent immigrants. Some of these immigrants (or their parents) may well have arrived before 1880. Thus, the label of “recent immigrants” is somewhat broader than the 1880 to 1920 period. The estimation of the third generation requires even more heroic assumptions about the fraction of the 1920 third and higher generation workers (NBNP) that are descendents of immigrants in 1880.

The analytical task is illustrated in Figure 2 , by the dashed line that identifies the 1920 3 rd generation from the broader category of the 3 rd and higher generation population. To do this, we assume that the ratio of the 3 rd generation population (grandchildren of immigrants) to the 3 rd and higher generation population in 1920 is proportional to the ratio of the 2 nd generation to the 2 nd and higher generation population in 1880. We have three of the four numbers in this equation (1880 2 nd generation, 1880 2 nd and higher generations, and 1920 3 rd and higher generation populations), and it is straightforward to estimate the missing element—the 1920 3 rd generation. 1920 3 rd Gen = [1880 2 nd Gen/1880 2 nd & Higher Gen]* 1920 3 rd & Higher Gen

This equation assumes that the relative magnitude of 1920 3 rd generation is roughly comparable to the descendents of the 1880 2 nd generation. The demographic metabolism that leads to generational replacement over time is exceedingly complex, and our simple model does not directly measure these processes (for more discussion, see Blau and Duncan 1967 : 112). Our estimation rests on an assumption about proportionality—that the 1880 2 nd generation (relative to the 2 nd and higher generational total) is proportional to the 1920 3 rd generation (relative to the 3 rd and higher generational total). One virtue of this assumption is its transparency – it does not specify demographic mechanisms, but simply assumes that generational replacement over a 40 year period (from all mechanisms) is roughly proportional to the initial generational composition.

The next step is to measure the industrial composition of the 1920 labor force within each immigrant generation: 1 st , 2 nd , 3 rd , and 4 th and higher. The industrial composition of the 1 st and 2 nd generations is directly measured, but estimating the industrial classification of 1920 3 rd generation (and 4 th & higher) can be done with an adaptation of the standard “Shift-Share” model. The Shift-Share model is often used to measure the expected changes in a subset of the population (state or locality) by assuming that change (share) is proportional to the change in the total population (national). The difference between the expected distribution and the actual distribution for the local area is a residual (shift) that is due to local factors that are independent of the national trend.

In this analysis, we first estimate an expected distribution by industry assuming that the growth rate of workers in each industry from 1880 to 1920 is equal to the national growth rate of the workforce. The next step is to measure the difference between the expected and actual workers in each industry. The logic of the estimation of these two components of industrial transformation—Continuity and Shifts—is diagramed in Figure 3 .

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Estimating the Sources of Change in the Industrial Structure of the Gainful Workforce From 1880 to1920

Continuity is measured as the “expected 1920 work force by industry”, which assumes 1920 workers are distributed by industry proportional to the industry structure of their ancestors in the 1880 workforce. In other words, the expected workers in each industry in 1920 are assumed to increase at the same rate as “natural growth” of the workforce from 1880 to 1920. The natural growth of the workforce (excluding 1 st generation immigrants) “r” is measured as the ratio of the 3 rd and higher generation population in 1920 to the 2 nd and higher generation labor force in 1880. Specifically, we assume that 24.2 million 3 rd and higher generation workers in 1920 are (approximately) the descendents of the 12.9 million 2 nd and higher generation workers in 1880. This succession process or “continuity” includes a host of demographic processes including aging and the differential “replacement” of 1880 workers by their adult children and grandchildren in 1920. The multiplication of this ratio (approximately 1.9) times the number of 1880 2 nd and higher generation workers in each industry in 1880 yields an “expected” number of 1920 3 rd and higher generation workers in each industry.

5.1 Estimation of Expected Number of Workers by Industry and Generation

This formula assumes that the overall growth rate “r,” is the same across all industries. This formula can be extended to divide the 1920 3 rd & higher generation expected populations into two components: the expected 1920 3 rd generation population and the expected 1920 4 th & higher generation population.

The overall natural growth rate is assumed to be equivalent for the 3 rd generation population and the 4 th and higher generation population. The expected distributions of the labor force by industry (and generation) from 1880 to 1920 assume continuity—1920 workers followed their parents (or grandparents) in the same industries. This assumes that skills, preferences, and informal mechanisms of recruitment are passed along across generations. As measured by the index of dissimilarity, the industrial structure of the 1880 first generation is more similar to that of the 1920 second generation than to the 1920 3 rd and higher generations. Of course, workers change employment from time to time, and children do not always follow in the same line of work as their parents. The forces of supply and demand, technological change, and other market forces create pressures to which workers must respond. The measured differences between the “actual” 1920 workers in each industry and the “expected” number are labeled (net) “Shifts.”

The next step is to allocate the Shifts between industries to the 3 rd generation and the 4 th and higher generations in 1920. The overall Shift for the 3 rd and higher generations in 1920 is distributed proportional to the relative size of the 1880 generations. Specifically,

The results of this simple estimation of Continuity and Shifts are show in Table 2 .

Estimation of the Composition of the 1920 Industrial Structure by Immigraton Generation Based on Assumptions of Generational Replacement from 1880 to 1920

(1). The generational compostion of each industrial sector is estimated in two steps:

a) GROWTH: the expected 1920 workers in each industry is assumed to be proportional to the national growth rate appied to the number of 1880 workers in the industry:

-- the 1920 4th and higher generation is assumed to be the descendants of the 1880 3rd and higher generations in that industry

-- the 1920 3rd generation is assumed to be the descendants of the 1880 2nd generation in that industry

b) SHIFT: the difference between the actual 1920 3rd and higher number in each industry and the expected based on assumed GROWTH

-- the estimated SHIFT for the 1920 3rd and higher generations is allocated proportional to the relative size of the 3rd and higher and 2nd generations in 1880.

(2). Columns 1, 2, 3 and 4 are the actual number (in thousands) of gainful workers in each industry, by immigrant generation (3rd & higher, 2nd, and 1st) in 1920.

(3). Columns 5 and 6 are the expected number of gainful workers in each industry in 1920 assuming proportional change from the the 1880 2nd & higher gen in to the 1920 3rd and higher gen

a) Col 5: Expected 1920 gainful workers in each industry from 1880 3rd and higher gen workers = r * 1880 3rd and higher gen workers in the industry

b) Col 6: Expected 1920 gainful workers in each industry from 1880 2nd gen workers = r * 1880 2nd gen workers in the industry

where r = the ratio of total 3rd and higher gen wokers in 1920 to the 1880 total 2nd gen and higher workers

(4). Columns 7 and 8 are the Shift of Workers (Actual - Expected) from 1880 to 1920 in each industry, assuming that the 1920 3rd and higher gen workers “inherit” the industry composition of the 2nd & higher gen workers in 1880. The expected 1920 workers are distributed proportionally to the 1880 generations of 3rd and higher and 2nd.

a) Col 7: The proportional share of the 1920 3rd gen & higher actual workers in each industry minus the expected 1920 “descendants” of the 1880 2nd and higher generation workers

b) Col 8: The proportional share of the 1920 3rd gen and higher actual workers in each industry minus the expected 1920 “descendants” of the 1880 2nd and higher generation workers

Column 1 through 4 in Table 2 show the 1920 workforce by industrial sector for all workers and for each immigrant generation (3 rd and higher, 2 nd , and 1 st ). The next two columns show the estimated workforce for the 4 th and higher and the 3 rd generations by industry in 1920, assuming intergenerational continuity. The next columns show net shifts, or the differences between the actual and expected workforce by industry, for the same immigrant generations. Let’s consider the manufacturing sector as an example to illustrate these calculations.

5.2 The Contribution of the 3 rd Generation

There were a little more than 10 million workers in manufacturing in 1920—about one quarter of the total workforce. This figure is in the first column of Table 2 in the row labeled MANUFACTURING. The next three columns show the absolute number of workers in each industry by generation in 1920. First and second generation immigrants comprised 2.9 and 2.5 million workers in manufacturing –or about 53% of the 10 million workers in the sector in 1920 (as noted in Table 1 ). This figure, as large as it is, is an underestimate of the contribution of immigration to the manufacturing sector in 1920. Recall that 58% of 1880 immigrant workers (which included both 1 st and 2 nd generation) were employed in manufacturing ( Table 1 ). Some of the 1880 immigrants and their descendents are included in the 1 st and 2 nd generation in 1920, but many others have been absorbed into the NBNP (3 rd and higher generation).

Following the logic of the formulae presented above, Columns 5 and 6 show the expected numbers of 1920 workers in each industry for the 1920 4 th & higher generations and the 1920 3 rd generation, respectively. A shorthand designation of these calculations is that the expected 1920 4 th and higher workers are the descendents of the 1880 3 rd and higher generation workers and the expected 1920 3 rd generation are the descendents of the 1880 2 nd generation. However, descendents is only an approximate term, since there are multiple demographic mechanisms that might be responsible for the replacement of the 1880 workforce by workers in 1920, including some individuals who are in the workforce at both time points. The expected generational figures in each industry are generated by an assumption of intergenerational continuity whereby each generation follows their parents (or grandparents) in the same sector of the economy. The measurement of this process is generated by the assumption of proportionality—workers in 1920 by generation were distributed by industrial sector in similar proportions to the prior generation in 1880.

The next two columns, 7 and 8, in Table 2 show the net Shifts (for the 4 th and higher and the 3 rd generations) between the actual and expected numbers in 1920 workforce by industry. Although we have only the actual 1920 workforce for the 3 rd and higher generation, we can estimate shifts for the 4 th and higher and the 3 rd generation in 1920, by assuming proportionality with the 1880 generational composition (the 3 rd and higher generation and the 2 nd generation).

These estimates are combined in columns 9, 10, and 11, which show the percentage of 1920 workers in each industry that can be attributed to 1 st and 2 nd generation workers, 3 rd generation continuity, and 3 rd generation shift. These three components are totaled in column 12 to show our estimates of the share of 1920 workers that might be thought to be the result of recent immigration. The results of this exercise are summarized in Figure 4 , which shows the composition of the 9 major industrial sectors in 1920 by immigrant generation.

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Components of the 1920 Industrial Workforce

In the case of manufacturing, 53% of 1920 workers are immigrants (first and second generation), another 10% might be attributed to 3 rd generation continuity (based on the distribution of 2 nd generation workers in 1880), and the other 6% are estimated to be 3 rd generation shifts or the share of the descendents of 1880 2 nd generation workers who left their parental (grandparental) industry to become a worker in manufacturing. These estimates suggest that over two-thirds of manufacturing workers in 1920 are immigrants or the descendents of recent immigrants.

Most farmers in 1920 were the descendents of old stock Americans. Of the 10 million agricultural workers in 1920, only a quarter was first or second generation immigrants. There was a substantial exodus out of farming—the shift-share model estimates that 4 million 4 th (or higher) generation NBNP descendants of farmers were working in some other sector in 1920.

The mining sector, as shown in Table 1 , grew rapidly from 1880 to 1920 with relative decline in the immigrant share from 64 to 47%. The estimates (and assumptions) in Table 2 , show that all of the native born (NBNP) increase in mining is composed of the grandchildren of immigrants. This is also true of many other sectors in which it appears that the immigrant share declined from 1880 to 1920, such as railroad workers. Note, however, that the workforce in the new petroleum and natural gas industry was disproportionately composed of 4 th and higher generation Americans.

As noted earlier, almost 7 in 10 workers in manufacturing in 1920 were 1 st , 2 nd or 3 rd generation immigrants. This was particularly true in the growth sectors of iron and steel, machinery (but only one half of workers in the new motor vehicle industry), meat packing, and textiles and apparel. More than one half of railroad workers in 1920 had some foreign roots as did two thirds of workers in retail sales.

Although the addition of the 3 rd generation increases the participation of recent immigrants to the service sector, the role of immigrants in many of the relatively good jobs in teaching, health, the post office, and other government services is much lower than in manufacturing and other sectors with less desirable jobs. By virtue of their education and social connections, the descendents of long resident Americans had a leg up on entry into many of the better jobs in 1920. To the extent that there are differential intergenerational transition rates because of proximity, ethnic recruitment, and discrimination, these figures underestimate the advantages of long resident Americans relative to newcomers.

6. The Counterfactual

Would native born workers have been more willing to enter the industrial sector had immigrant labor not been available? Although it is impossible to answer this question definitively, we can review the potential labor reserves and speculate about their likely responses based the extensive research literature on domestic migration patterns.

The potential source of reserve labor in the United States in the late 19 th century and early 20 th century were the sons and daughters of small scale farmers in the Northeast, Midwest, and South. Many of these farms were relatively small and could barely support a family. With a growing population, many of the second and third sons of independent farmers had to descend to the ranks of tenancy or farm laborer, secure funds to purchase a farm (or marry a woman who was an heir to a farm), or seek their fortune elsewhere ( Wright 1988 ).

Some segments of the rural population were worse off than others. Over the last half of the 19 th century, a large fraction of Southern white famers had lost their land, and became tenant sharecroppers growing cotton on marginal lands ( Raper and Reid 1941 , Newby 1989 ). Even more precarious was the situation of African American tenant farmers, whose plight was comparable to those of persecuted peasantry ( Raper 1936 ). In addition to the economic privations shared by white and black sharecroppers, African Americans encountered omnipresent racism and rising violence in the Jim Crow South.

Poverty, even abject poverty, is not always an impetus to long distance migration. The thresholds that break the bonds of place vary across time and place. Depravation creates push factors but knowledge of opportunities in other locations, cultural preferences, and the support of family and friends in destination areas are also important ( Massey et al. 1993 ).

When mass migration from Europe was interrupted during World War I and then halted in the 1920s, Southern blacks migrated in large numbers to become industrial laborers in Northern cities. The African American Great Migration from the 1920s through the 1950s was an epochal movement ( Fligstein 1981 ; Tolnay 2003 ). The spread of the boll weevil and farm mechanization laid waste to even marginal employment in much of the rural South. There was a parallel trek of white workers from the South to northern cities ( Berry 2000 ; Gregory 2005 ; Kirby 1987 : Ch. 9). The destinations and timing of these domestic migrations suggest that Southern born blacks and whites were a partial substitute for European immigrant labor in industrializing cities of the North. Collins (1997) concludes that mass migration from Europe delayed the migration of black workers from the South.

The situation of white farmers outside the South, and their children, is more difficult to assess. A common presumption is that farming was a preferred way of life and migration, especially to the city, was the last resort even for the landless children of farmers. This assumption seems to be consistent with evidence on migration patterns. In the early decades of the twentieth century, the majority of the farm origin population remained on farms or in rural small town areas as adults, though not necessarily in their exact place of origin ( Taeuber 1967 : 25). Only a small percentage moved to large metropolitan cities.

This preference for an agricultural way of life was grounded in the historical settlement of the United States. Prior to the late 19 th century, cities were not engines of economic growth, but were primarily centers of commerce and administration and transportation hubs. For the first half of the 19 th century, over 90% of the American population lived in rural areas. Immigrants arrived in port cities, but most probably moved on as soon as they could. During the 18 th and the first half of the 19 th century, the shortage of land in eastern states impelled most immigrants as well as many of the children of older settlers to seek their fortunes on the American frontier, first in Appalachia, then in the Ohio Valley, and eventually in the Great Plains ( Ferrie 2006 : 1: 489). As the Eastern seaboard was filled in—at least in terms of agriculture—the western frontier was the source of land for agricultural settlement by immigrants and native born Americans without an inheritance ( Atack, Bateman, and Parker 2000 ).

The situation changed in the late 19 th century as most of the potential arable land on the American frontier was settled and the economic development of urban industries expanded employment opportunities in cities. With the development of the modern industrial economy, cities offered expanded employment in factories, commerce, and in offices. For persons with the right set of education, skills, and ambitions, the urban economy offered opportunities for social mobility that was impossible in any other location. There is evidence that the well educated sons of farmers were able to find well paid jobs as teachers, clerks, merchants, and in the skilled trades ( Wright 1988 : 201).

But for most white Americans with limited skills and ambitions, it was not obvious that menial factory or office work in a city was a step up from living on a farm or in a small town. Most factory jobs were probably not highly desirable. As the author of the 1920 census report on immigrants commented, “It would seem that, generally speaking, the foreign born population is engaged in more laborious, disagreeable, and probably, less skilled and less remunerative work than are the native born white” ( Carpenter 1927 : 271). One study reported that the accident rate for non English-speaking workers in one steel mill was twice the average for all workers and that one quarter of all recent immigrant steel workers were injured or killed ( Brody 1960 : 100–101). Most historical and comparative studies conclude that the process of industrialization was a profoundly alienating experience for most workers ( Kerr et al. 1964 : Chapter 6, Rodgers 1981 ). Factories that tried to impose industrial discipline were plagued by high rates of absenteeism and turnover.

The children of farmers who left farming were disproportionately represented in the lower rungs of the occupational hierarchy ( Freedman and Freedman 1956 , Blau and Duncan 1967 : 28). In addition to the loss of autonomy in factory employment, migrants from farm families had to give up the familiarity of family and friends and the economic security of food production. If forced to migrate, many native born white Americans from rural or small towns may have preferred to seek their fortune in the West than to join the ranks of the urban proletariat in industrializing cities. In the late 19 th and early 20 th century long distance (interstate) migration was much more likely to lead to greater occupational mobility than short distance moves ( Ferrie 2005 : 213).

Almost 90% of native-born white inter-state migrants went to rural areas during the 19 th century, and the proportion migrating to cities remained modest in the early decades of the 20 th century ( Hall and Ruggles 2004 ). Similar patterns are also evident in Table 3 , which shows net lifetime migration of African Americans and of whites by nativity for each decade from 1870 to 1950. The rapidly expanding industrial economy of the North and Midwest drew disproportionately on immigrant labor and then on African American workers from the South. From 1870 to 1920, the population growth of the Northeast and Midwest included almost 14 million immigrants, but there was negative net migration of 2.5 million native born whites out of the region. Following the closing of the immigration door, more than 2.5 million African American net migrants (from the South) were added to the population of the Northeast and Midwest from 1920 to 1950, while there was a continuing exodus of native born whites from the region (3.3 million from 1920 to 1950).

Net Migration (in thousands) of Native Whites, Foreign Born, and African Americans, 1870–80 to 1940–50.

Source: Eldridge and Thomas. 1964 . Tables 1 .21 and 1.27

Examining these data, Hatton and Williamson (1998 : 164–173) conclude that the competition with immigrants for jobs lowered the wages of the native born (or slowed their rate of increase) and that native born workers were crowded-out from urban labor markets in the Northeast and Midwest. In a detailed empirical study of the relationship between immigrant concentrations, manufacturing wages, and the inter-state (and inter-county) migration of the native born, Carter and Sutch (2006) find no support for Hatton and Williamson’s claims that the presence of immigrants lowered the wages and “crowded out” native born workers in industrial labor markets. 11 Wages, adjusted for cost of living, rose for manufacturing workers and unskilled workers during the age of immigration ( Rees 1961 ; Margo 2006 ). Moreover, Carter and Sutch (2006) show that there is a positive correlation between the destinations of immigrants and native born workers from 1900 to 1910. Rural laborers, both native-born and from abroad, were responding to declining prospects in their places of origin and to the new opportunities in the same destinations.

Many native born workers did go to the industrial cities, but many more sought their fortune in the West. The majority of immigrants, and the African Americans that followed them, settled in the industrial cities of the Northeast and Midwest. The willingness of immigrants and African Americans to work in the lowest rungs of urban employment may have been largely due to the lack of better alternatives. Most immigrants had been pushed out of their places of origin and had to brave considerable costs and hardship to emigrate to the United States. The fact that one-third of European immigrants from 1908 to 1923 returned to Europe is testimony of the difficulties of adjusting to life and of finding employment in industrializing America ( Wyman 1993 : 10).

Although industrial wages continued to rise during the age of industrialization and immigration, it seems that the prevailing wages, working conditions, and urban life were not sufficiently attractive to many native born workers who had social attachments and security, if not prosperity, in their places of origin. Immigrants and their children remained the mainstay of industrial labor until the 1920s. Perhaps higher wages and better working conditions were necessary to attract a sufficient supply of domestic labor to work in the steel mills, stockyards, and other sectors of the industrial economy in the middle decades of the 20 th century.

7. Discussion and Conclusions

As the American industrial revolution spread in the late 19 th century and the early decades of the 20 th century, the United States passed Great Britain to become the most productive industrial nation in the world ( Romer 1996 ). In one of the most widely cited studies of this transition, Wright (1990) identifies a number of factors, including the discovery and development of mineral resources (coal, iron, petroleum, copper, and others) and the export of high quality producer goods as key to the American industrial development and rapid economic growth. Other researchers have emphasized the significance of the early American investment in human capital and the spread of public schooling as the primary reason for the ascendance of the American economy during the age of industrialization. In an interesting aside, Wright (1990 : 662) notes that most of the workers in the heavy industries were not well educated native born Americans, but immigrants who were not particularly well educated by world standards. He goes on to say, “Key industries like iron and steel and motor vehicles paid high wages to unskilled workers (who were nonetheless much cheaper than the skilled craft workers used with older technologies) presumably because it was rough, disagreeable, demanding work, and because it was vital to have an ample excess labor supply available” ( Wright 1990 : 662).

In this study, we have estimated the representation of the immigrant population, including the children and grandchildren of immigrants, in the industrial transformation of the American workforce from 1880 to 1920. This exercise involves a number of assumptions, mostly about the relative proportionality of the 3 rd generation in 1920 to the 2 nd generation in 1880. There are also many other potential problems of measurement, including inferring industry from occupational reports and unclear boundaries of the gainful worker population. Although we make no claims to exactitude, there is little doubt that the American workforce was heavily dependent on immigrant labor in the early 20 th century, and the manufacturing workforce was almost completely dependent on immigrant workers. Most prior studies of the role of industrial labor during these years have acknowledged the centrality of immigrant labor, but they underestimated their numbers because second and third generation immigrants were counted as part of the native born workforce.

Adjusting the immigrant share to include second generation workers is straightforward because parental birthplace was routinely measured in American censuses. Adding the 3 rd generation required a more complicated estimation procedure that relied on fairly crude assumptions. Our estimates of the 3 rd generation add another 15 to 20 percentage points to the prior estimates that about 50% of workers in most manufacturing industries were of immigrant stock. The results presented here show that 1 st , 2 nd and 3 rd generation immigrants comprised 70 to 80% in several core manufacturing industries.

These are conservative estimates (which would underestimate the true level of the 3 rd generation in manufacturing) because third generation immigrant workers are assumed to be no more likely to shift to the manufacturing sector than the workforce as a whole. We expect that the children and grandchildren of urban residents from the mid 19 th century would have been much more likely to have entered industrial employment than the descendents of farmers. In 1880, even before industrialization was in full swing, 1 st and 2 nd generation immigrants comprised over one-third of the American workforce. Almost two-thirds of all miners, 41% of construction workers, 57% of manufacturing workers, 41% of railway workers, and 49% of retail sales workers in 1880 were immigrants or the children of immigrants.

The disproportionate concentration of the immigrant community in cities and nonagricultural employment in 1880 meant that their progeny were proximate to the exploding growth of employment in factories, offices, and retail trade in the late 19 th and early 20 th century. The 3 rd generation immigrants, with their American education, were probably able to rise above the less desirable jobs on the factory floor and found employment as foremen and even in the front office.

If we assume that the urban children and grandchildren of immigrants were prone to find employment in the industrial economy, can we also assume that the children of farmers were motivated to avoid industrial employment? We do not have direct measures on preferences, but over 50% of the sons of farmers found their first job in agriculture circa 1920 and about 40% were still in agricultural jobs several decades later ( Blau and Duncan 1967 : Tables 3.3 and 3.8). Most of the decline in agricultural employment over the first half of the 20 th century was a result of inter-cohort shifts rather than intra-cohort changes ( Duncan 1966b ). These figures suggest that, in spite of the economic pressures on farmers, the primary reasons for departure were the lack of an inheritance rather than discouragement with farming as a way of life. Most of the farm origin migrants in the early 20 th century went to rural areas or small towns and relatively few moved to large metropolitan cities ( Taeuber 1967 : 25). As noted earlier, there was substantial net lifetime out-migration of native born whites during the age of industrialization from the Northeast and Midwest to the West.

This avoidance of large cities, and industrial employment, by old stock white Americans who were reared in rural areas and small towns was probably reinforced by popular culture. For most of American history, cities, where most immigrants settled, were derided and feared as places filled with dangerous people and radical ideas ( Hawley 1972 : 521). 12 Popular beliefs about the natural superiority of a rural way of life were intertwined with ethnic stereotypes of urban residents and the corruption of people who moved to cities. These stereotypes probably discouraged the children of farmers in the late 19 th century and early 20 th century from migrating to cities and taking the unskilled jobs in the industrial economy.

The continued demand for unskilled labor in industrial cities after the cutoff of immigration in the 1920s certainly played a major role in continuing, if not originating, the African American Great Migration from the 1920s to the 1960s ( Collins 1997 ; Tolnay 2003 ). There was also a parallel wave of Southern white labor to Northern industrial cities that began during World War I and grew during the 1920s, 1940s, and 1950s ( Berry 2000 ; Gregory 2005 ). If there had not been the massive wave of European immigration from 1880 to 1920, the demand for labor may have started earlier and drew even larger numbers from the dispossessed Southern peasantry. There is substantial literature on the poverty and hardships of sharecroppers and tenant farmers, both black and white in the rural south ( Raper 1936 , 1943 ; Raper and Reid. 1941 ).

However, the scale of the demand for industrial employment from 1880 to 1920 might have overwhelmed the potential labor reserves. For readers who may not accept the assumptions used to pad our estimate of the impact of immigration with 2.8 million 3 rd generation workers in 1920, there were still 5.3 million 1 st and 2 nd generation workers in manufacturing (directly measured in the 1920 census). Replacing these 5.3 million immigrant workers in manufacturing would have required shifting one-quarter of all 3 rd and higher generation workers in 1920 from other sectors to manufacturing. 13 To accomplish even some fraction of this would have required much greater incentives, both in terms of pay and working conditions, than those offered to immigrants. Without immigrant labor, it seems unlikely that the American industrial revolution would have been achieved at the same pace, scale, and profitability that it did. Our claim is not that immigrant labor caused the American industrial revolution; there were a number of factors that played an important role in this epochal process. Immigrant labor, however, may well have been a necessary condition for the pace and scale of the rise of the manufacturing sector from 1880 to 1920.

Acknowledgments

The authors are deeply indebted to Patty Glynn for her statistical advice and assistance and to Brian Gatton, Avery Guest, Matthew Sobek, Stewart Tolnay, and the anonymous reviewers for their detailed criticisms and comments of earlier visions of this paper. All remaining errors are the responsibility of authors.

Appendix 1. Industry classification used in this study

AGRICULTURE

206 Metal mining

216 Coal mining

226 Crude petroleum and natural gas extraction

236 Nonmettalic mining and quarrying, except fuel

246 CONSTRUCTION

MANUFACTURING

306–326 Wood and Mineral Products (incl. logging/sawmills)

Metals (Steel and Iron)

336 Blast furnaces, steel works, & rolling mills

337 Other primary iron and steel industries

338 Primary nonferrous industries

346 Fabricated steel products

347 Fabricated nonferrous metal products

348 Not specified metal industries

356 Agricultural machinery and tractors

357 Office and store machines

358 Misc machinery

367 Electrical machinery, equipment and supplies

376 Motor vehicles and motor vehicle equipment

378 Ship and boat building and repairing

379 Railroad and misc transportation equipment

406–429 Food & Tobacco

Textiles/Footwear/Leather

436 Knitting mills

437 Dyeing and finishing textiles, except knit goods

438 Carpets, rugs, and other floor coverings

439 Yarn, thread, and fabric

446 Misc textile mill products

448 Apparel and accessories

449 Misc fabricated textile products

487 Leather: tanned, curried, and finished

488 Footwear, except rubber

489 Leather products, except footwear

457–459 Paper and Printing

466–478 Chemical/Petro/Rubber

387–399 & 499 Miscellaneous

TRANSPORTATION, COMMUNICATION AND UTILITIES

506 Railroads and railway

516 Street railways and bus lines

526 Trucking service

527 Warehousing and storage

536 Taxicab service

546 Water transportation

578 Telephone

579 Telegraph

586 Electric light and power

587 Gas and steam supply systems

WHOLESALE AND RETAIL TRADE

606–627 Wholesale

636–699 Retail

PRODUCER SERVICES

716 Banking and credit

726 Security and commodity brokerage and invest companies

736 Insurance

746 Real estate

806 Advertising

807 Accounting, auditing, and bookkeeping services

808 Misc business services

879 Legal services

898 Engineering and architectural services

PERSONAL SERVICES

816 Auto repair services and garages

817 Misc repair services

826 Private households

836 Hotels and lodging places

846 Laundering, cleaning, and dyeing

847 Dressmaking shops

848 Shoe repair shops

849 Misc personal services

857 Theaters and motion pictures

858 Bowling alleys, and billiard and pool parlors

859 Misc entertainment and recreation services

SOCIAL SERVICES

868 Medical and other health services, except hospitals

869 Hospitals

888 Educational services

896 Welfare and religious services

897 Nonprofit membership organizs.

899 Misc professional and related

906 Postal service

916 Federal public administration

926 State public administration

936 Local public administration

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 2006 annual meetings of the Population Association of America and at colloquia at the Department of Sociology, University of British Columbia, the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, University of Washington, and the Minnesota Population Center at the University of Minnesota.

1 Industrial production experienced an almost five-fold expansion of value added in manufacturing and mining from 1880 to 1915 ( Davis 2006 : 3-23-24 and 3-25). Manufacturing’s share of value added in commodity production rose more rapidly from 1879 to 1894 than in any other period of the 19 th century ( Fogel 1964 : 121).

2 The children of immigrants includes native born persons who have at least one foreign born parent.

3 “Considering the magnitude and duration of this movement, it is difficult to exaggerate its importance as a factor in the economic growth of the United States. Since immigration brought in a large labor force, the cost of whose rearing and training was borne elsewhere, it clearly represented an enormous capital investment that dwarfed any capital inflows of the more orthodox type—a conclusion that stands with any reasonable estimate we can make of the money value of labor.” ( Kuznets 1971a : 357).

4 The major exceptions were Charlestown, South Carolina and Washington, DC.

5 Occupational prestige scales rank farmers above unskilled workers, while occupational socioeconomic scales consider them about the same, see Duncan 1961 .

6 About 13% of workers in the 1880 census IPUMS file did not have a known industry (codes 997 and 998). However, almost all did have a reported occupation (most were laborers), and this allowed us to impute industries based on the distribution of industries for those with a known occupation. We are grateful to Matthew Sobek who suggested this method.

7 This fast pace of growth has not slackened. The U.S. labor force also doubled from about 70 to 140 million workers from 1960 to 2000 ( Carter et al. 2006 : 2: 83–86).

8 The second generation is defined by census practice to include those with two foreign born parents and those with one foreign born parent.

9 This is the sum of coal mining, metals (iron and steel) manufacturing, and machinery manufacturing.

10 The absolute figures are not reported in Table 1 , but can be obtained by multiplying the proportion in the industry by the total workforce.

11 A less technical version of Carter and Sutch’s working paper is available from the Social Science Research Council website ( Carter and Sutch 2007 ).

12 Henry Ford, who as much as anyone created the American automobile age, “looked upon big cities as cesspools of iniquity, soulless, and artificial” ( Higham 1988 : 283).

13 There were 24.3 million NBNP workers in 1920 and 4.7 were already employed in manufacturing. The 5.3 million immigrant (1 st and 2 nd generation) workers in manufacturing are 27.2 % of the 19.5 million non-manufacturing NBNP workers.

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Contributor Information

Charles Hirschman, Department of Sociology and Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-3340.

Elizabeth Mogford, Department of Sociology, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225-9081.

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american industrial revolution essay

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8 Crucial Inventions of the American Industrial Revolution

american industrial revolution essay

Shannon Callahan

02 mar 2022.

american industrial revolution essay

In the late 18th and 19th centuries, Great Britain underwent an industrial revolution with innovations that still impact social, cultural and economic conditions today. This period of innovation and invention spread, and throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, the United States experienced its own industrial revolution.

In that period, America made great strides in agriculture and textile manufacturing, communications and other technology. Though there were many new inventions that changed living and working conditions from this time, a few inventions had a particularly profound impact.

Here are 8 of the most important inventions and innovations of the American Industrial Revolution .

1. The icebox

The first wooden icebox was created by Thomas Moore in Maryland in 1802. This box was lined with insulating materials like tin and zinc with a large block of iced stored in a compartment at the top. The exterior was lined with fur or other insulating fabrics.

Iceboxes allowed perishable foods to be kept fresh for longer without it needing to be smoked, dried or canned. It also changed the ways that people could prepare food before the invention of the modern freezer.

2. The cotton gin

american industrial revolution essay

African American slaves using the first cotton gin, 1790-1800, drawn by William L. Sheppard. Illustration in Harper’s Weekly, 1869.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Invented by Eli Whitney in Georgia in 1793, the cotton gin machine was used to separate cotton seeds from raw cotton. This machine allowed for much faster production times for cleaning cotton, which had previously been done by enslaved people .

When done by hand, it could take an entire day to clean one pound of cotton, but with the cotton gin, 51 pounds of cotton could be cleaned per day. This invention paved the way for the mass production of cotton-based products. 

3. The steel plough

In 1837, a blacksmith in Illinois called John Deere invented the steel plough. Previously, farmers had used cast iron ploughs, which would easily get caked in soil, making them cumbersome to work with and in need of constant cleaning. The steel plough could be polished so that soil did not stick to it.

Like the cotton gin, the invention was a commercial success, and it made for more efficient farming practices. In fact, the John Deere company still makes farming and agriculture equipment to this day which is used across the world. 

4. The aeroplane

Though a manned glider was invented by George Cayley in 1853, Orville and Wilbur Wright would invent the first plane not powered by wind in 1903. Orville Wright flew a gas-motored plane for 12 seconds over a beach in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on 17 December, and the aeroplane was born.

american industrial revolution essay

This aeroplane had a wooden frame covered in cotton cloth and sealed, and the engine was powerful enough to fly the plane without weighing it down. The invention of the aeroplane has since had a profound impact on warfare, travel and the environment.

5. The sewing machine

Though he did not invent the sewing machine, Elias Howe patented the first sewing machine in 1846, which improved upon an earlier version invented by Walter Hunt. This new machine used a lock-stitch, pulling thread from two different sources to reinforce the stitches.

In 1855, Isaac Singer would motorise the sewing machine, making it adaptable for home use and revolutionising the clothing and shoe industry.

american industrial revolution essay

Woman sewing with a Singer sewing machine, between 1917 and 1918.

6. The telephone

Scottish-born American inventor Alexander Graham Bell was one of several working on transmitting sound through electric current in the late 1800s, but Bell was the first to patent the telephone and commercialise it.

Bell’s telephone model was invented in Boston in 1875 and patented in 1876. It worked using metallic reeds and electromagnetic coils to transmit sound. At first, it was used mainly by the rich. However, it became a common household item by the mid-1900s and went on to transform communication systems across the US.

7. The phonograph

In New Jersey in 1877, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph. This device could record and play sounds. To record, you spoke into a cylinder attached to the device, and the sound waves moved a needle in the device which created a groove on a piece of tin foil. Sound could be then played back by a stylus that traced the groove, causing it to reproduce the sound. This early record player still impacts the music business and the way we listen to music.

american industrial revolution essay

Pope Leo XIII, seated with Msgr Satolli, speaks a message into a phonograph, 1893.

8. The incandescent lightbulb

After inventing the phonograph in 1877, Thomas Edison would go on to patent the first practical incandescent light bulb in 1880. Like other inventors on this list, Edison was not the first to create a lightbulb, but his invention drastically improved the practicality of the object which made it a commercial success.

In his design, Edison used a carbon filament so that the bulb would last longer. Moreover, it did not require a high electric current to operate, making it easier to install and use and cheaper to manufacture. Edison’s invention was so successful that he created the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of New York in 1880. Several other inventors working on lightbulb inventions at the time would merge their companies with his, forming General Electric.

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American Industrial Revolution

The American Industrial Revolution occurred between 1820 and 1870 and characterized with a rapid growth of industries. The mechanization of agricultural and textile manufacture, as well as a power revolution involving steamships and railroads, influenced social, cultural, and economic situations during this time. Most Americans were living as farmers and lived in rural villages prior to the revolution. For the first time people started to work for enterprises headquartered in urban areas as industries advanced. Wages were frequently poor, and working conditions were brutal, yet working for a company paid better than farming.

The Industrial Revolution’s technology was incorporated into a new type of commercial economy by Americans. Steam power, which powered steamboats and railroads, spurred the expansion of the industry by generating mills and igniting new national transportation networks, resulting in the “market revolution” (Arehart et al., 2018). Such a rapid growth and changes in people’s labour gave a rise for cities and factories across the country.

The market revolution ushered in unprecedented economic expansion and personal prosperity, but it also ushered in a growing population of landless labourers and a series of severe depressions known as “panics” (Arehart et al., 2018). Many Americans were forced to work for minimal wage and got imprisoned in the cycle of poverty. Some workers, mostly women from other countries, worked thirteen hours a day, six days a week (Arehart et al., 2018). Others worked as slaves and did not receive any payment. Although northern states abolished slavery, their factories drove a need for slave-grown southern cotton, and their banks provided the funding that ensured the American slave system’s profitability and continuous survival.

Overall, the American Industrial Revolution and the Market Revolution provided a new direction for the US to further exploit people and their labor for a lower price although the country was free from slavery.

Works Cited

Kelly Arehart et al., “Market Revolution,” Jane Fiegen Green, ed., in The American Yawp , eds. Joseph Locke and Ben Wright. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018.

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Home — Essay Samples — History — History of the United States — Industrial Revolution

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Essays on Industrial Revolution

Industrial revolution essay topics and outline examples, essay title 1: the industrial revolution: catalyst for economic transformation and social change.

Thesis Statement: This essay explores the Industrial Revolution as a pivotal period in history, analyzing its role as a catalyst for economic transformation, technological innovation, and significant societal changes in labor, urbanization, and living conditions.

  • Introduction
  • The Emergence of Industrialization: Transition from Agrarian to Industrial Society
  • Technological Advancements: Inventions and Their Impact on Production
  • Factory System and Labor: The Changing Nature of Work
  • Urbanization and Its Consequences: The Growth of Industrial Cities
  • Social Reforms and Challenges: Responses to Inequities and Labor Conditions
  • Legacy of the Industrial Revolution: Long-Term Effects on Modern Society

Essay Title 2: The Dark Side of Progress: Environmental Consequences and Labor Exploitation during the Industrial Revolution

Thesis Statement: This essay critically examines the Industrial Revolution, shedding light on its environmental consequences, the exploitation of laborers, and the ethical dilemmas that arose as a result of rapid industrialization.

  • Environmental Impact: Pollution, Deforestation, and Resource Depletion
  • Factory Conditions and Child Labor: The Human Cost of Industrialization
  • Ethical Considerations: Debates on Economic Gain vs. Social Welfare
  • Worker Movements and Labor Reforms: Struggles for Workers' Rights
  • The Industrial Revolution and Globalization: Impact Beyond Borders
  • Reevaluating Progress: Lessons for Sustainable Development

Essay Title 3: The Industrial Revolution and Its Influence on Modern Economic Systems and Technological Advancements

Thesis Statement: This essay analyzes the profound influence of the Industrial Revolution on contemporary economic systems, technological innovations, and the enduring legacy of industrialization in shaping our modern world.

  • Capitalism and Industrialization: The Birth of Modern Economic Systems
  • Technological Breakthroughs: The Impact of the Steam Engine, Textile Industry, and More
  • The Role of Industrial Giants: Key Figures and Their Contributions
  • Globalization and Trade Networks: Connecting Continents and Markets
  • Innovation and the Information Age: Tracing Technological Progress
  • Contemporary Challenges and Opportunities: Navigating the Post-Industrial World

Prompt Examples for Industrial Revolution Essays

The impact of industrialization on society.

Examine the social consequences of the Industrial Revolution. How did the shift from agrarian economies to industrialized societies affect the lives of individuals, families, and communities? Discuss changes in work, living conditions, and social structures.

The Role of Technological Advancements

Analyze the technological innovations that drove the Industrial Revolution. Explore the inventions and advancements in industry, transportation, and communication that transformed economies and societies. Discuss their significance and long-term effects.

Economic Transformation and Capitalism

Discuss the economic aspects of the Industrial Revolution. How did the rise of industrial capitalism reshape economic systems and create new opportunities and challenges for businesses and workers? Analyze the growth of factories, trade, and global markets.

Labor Movements and Workers' Rights

Examine the emergence of labor movements and workers' rights during the Industrial Revolution. Discuss the conditions and struggles faced by laborers and the efforts to improve working conditions, wages, and labor laws. Explore the role of unions and collective action.

Urbanization and the Growth of Cities

Explore the process of urbanization and the rapid growth of cities during the Industrial Revolution. Discuss the challenges and opportunities presented by urban life, including issues of overcrowding, sanitation, and social inequality.

Environmental Impacts and Sustainability

Analyze the environmental impacts of industrialization. How did the Industrial Revolution contribute to pollution, resource depletion, and environmental degradation? Discuss the early awareness of these issues and the emergence of sustainability concerns.

The Industrial Revolution in The UK , Europe and North America

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An Overview of The Changes During The Industrial Revolution

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Advancements in Agriculture as Factors in The Emergence of Industrial Revolution

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Development of Industrial Revolution of Europe

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1733 - 1913

The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain in the mid-18th century. The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States. The beginning of industrialization in the United States is started with the opening of a textile mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1793 by Samuel Slater.

There was a few reasons of the beginning of Industrial Revolution: shortage of wood and the abundance of convenient coal deposits; high literacy rates; cheap cotton produced by slaves in North America; system of free enterprise.

Samuel Slater is most associated with starting up the textiles industry in the U.S. An early English-American industrialist known as the "Father of the American Industrial Revolution" and the "Father of the American Factory System". He opened a textile mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1793.

There were many improvements in technology and manufacturing fundamentals that improved overall production and economic growth in the United States. Several great American inventions affected manufacturing, communications, transportation, and commercial agriculture.

The Industrial Revolution resulted in greater wealth and a larger population in Europe as well as in the United States. From 1700 to 1900, there was huge migration of people living in villages to moving into towns and cities for work. The Industrial Revolution marked a major turning point in history. During the Industrial Revolution, environmental pollution increased.

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american industrial revolution essay

American Industrial Revolution: Economic Ideas Essay

Introduction.

At the second half of the 19 th century, industrial revolution started to spawn in the American West. Before that, it was only land that functioned as the source of wealth. However, the industrial revolution changed all that. It required that certain individuals and institutions to give substantial risks in order to finance new inventions, machinery, and business enterprises. Eventually, bankers, industrialists, and other holders of large sums of money replaced landowners as the most powerful economic force. These people invested their funds in the hope of realizing even greater profits and thereby became owners of property and business firms. The transition to private ownership of business was accompanied by the emergence of the capitalist economic system. Thus, capitalism became an economic system in which the means of production are held largely in private hands, and the main incentive for economic activity is the accumulation of profits.

In this regard, laissez-faire became one type of capitalism that operated during those times. Coming from the French word that means “to let act” or “let them do”, British economist Adam Smith (1723–1790) first used the term to indicate how people could compete freely, with minimal government intervention in the economy. Laissez-faire is essentially “an economic doctrine that holds that the economic activity of self-interested individuals in a competitive marketplace maximizes national wealth and social welfare” (Calhoun, 2002). In this concept, there is “a minimal role for the government and for centralized decision making. Intervention by the state in matters of economic and (for some advocates) social policy reduces growth by misdirecting resources” and “an ideal laissez-faire government is limited to creating a proper legal framework for safeguarding property rights, providing for national defense, and maintaining competitive markets by combating noncompetitive and monopolistic practices”.

Together with the term “laissez-faire”, social Darwinism also evolved in the second half of the 19 th century. British philosopher Herbert Spencer was the first and most important proponent of this theory. Society, he argued, benefited from the elimination of the unfit and the survival of the strong and talented. Social Darwinists “believed that that natural selection entails the elimination of weak societies, or people, by strong ones” (Halliday and McLean, 2003). Spencer’s counterpart in America was William Graham Sumner, who supported the fact that “distinctions of wealth and status among men were the direct result of inherently different capacities” and “that this stratifying tendency worked to the good of society by eliminating weaker and encouraging stronger strains”, related to how Charles Darwin applied his concept on plants and animals (Schultz, 1999). Thus, we can also relate the belief that social Darwinists are defenders of the concept of laissez-faire because of their support in hedging “the free play of economic forces and personal abilities”.

Another term that emerged during the industrial revolution was “Horatio Alger myth”. This term arose from the famous writer named Horatio Alger whose stories featured Raggedy Dick . From this story, tales about “rags to riches” came into the picture as his story goes that “Dick is living on the street, selling newspapers and shining shoes” and eventually became rich through honest means (Garcia and Hendler, 2004). Alger placed great emphasis on the moral qualities of his heroes and he made sure that their success was a reward for their virtue. But many of his readers ignored the moral message and clung simply to the image of sudden and dramatic success. After Alger’s death, his publishers responded to that yearning by abridging many of Alger’s works to eliminate the parts of his stories where the heroes do good deeds. Instead, they emphasized the success of Alger’s heroes in rising in the world. This is why when businessmen argued about laissez-faire, they often refer to the Horatio Alger myth, where they attained wealth as self-made men.

Ultimately, laissez-faire, social Darwinism and the Horatio Alger myth are some of the concepts that we can connect to the rise of industrial revolution in the late 19 th century. During these times, America’s economy, and along with it the nation’s society and culture, were being profoundly transformed because of a new economic trend that was happening. Industrialists did their part to create a rationale for their power and to persuade the public that everyone had something to gain from it. But, many Americans remained skeptical of modern capitalism. The conflicts that was created by the rise capitalism during the industrial revolution later on defined what happened to America’s economy as what it is at present.

Works Cited

Calhoun, Craig (Ed.). “Laissez faire”. Dictionary of the Social Sciences . UK: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Garcia, Angela M. and Hendler, Glenn. “Alger, Horatio”, The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature . UK: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Halliday, John and McLean, Iain. “Social Darwinism”, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics . UK: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Schultz, Stanley K. American History 102: Civil War to the Present . 2008. Web.

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1. IvyPanda . "American Industrial Revolution: Economic Ideas." September 27, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/american-industrial-revolution-economic-ideas/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "American Industrial Revolution: Economic Ideas." September 27, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/american-industrial-revolution-economic-ideas/.

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Descriptive Essay: The Industrial Revolution and its Effects

The Industrial Revolution was a time of great age throughout the world. It represented major change from 1760 to the period 1820-1840. The movement originated in Great Britain and affected everything from industrial manufacturing processes to the daily life of the average citizen. I will discuss the Industrial Revolution and the effects it had on the world as a whole.

The primary industry of the time was the textiles industry. It had the most employees, output value, and invested capital. It was the first to take on new modern production methods. The transition to machine power drastically increased productivity and efficiency. This extended to iron production and chemical production.

It started in Great Britain and soon expanded into Western Europe and to the United States. The actual effects of the revolution on different sections of society differed. They manifested themselves at different times. The ‘trickle down’ effect whereby the benefits of the revolution helped the lower classes didn’t happen until towards the 1830s and 1840s. Initially, machines like the Watt Steam Engine and the Spinning Jenny only benefited the rich industrialists.

The effects on the general population, when they did come, were major. Prior to the revolution, most cotton spinning was done with a wheel in the home. These advances allowed families to increase their productivity and output. It gave them more disposable income and enabled them to facilitate the growth of a larger consumer goods market. The lower classes were able to spend. For the first time in history, the masses had a sustained growth in living standards.

Social historians noted the change in where people lived. Industrialists wanted more workers and the new technology largely confined itself to large factories in the cities. Thousands of people who lived in the countryside migrated to the cities permanently. It led to the growth of cities across the world, including London, Manchester, and Boston. The permanent shift from rural living to city living has endured to the present day.

Trade between nations increased as they often had massive surpluses of consumer goods they couldn’t sell in the domestic market. The rate of trade increased and made nations like Great Britain and the United States richer than ever before. Naturally, this translated to military power and the ability to sustain worldwide trade networks and colonies.

On the other hand, the Industrial Revolution and migration led to the mass exploitation of workers and slums. To counter this, workers formed trade unions. They fought back against employers to win rights for themselves and their families. The formation of trade unions and the collective unity of workers across industries are still existent today. It was the first time workers could make demands of their employers. It enfranchised them and gave them rights to upset the status quo and force employers to view their workers as human beings like them.

Overall, the Industrial Revolution was one of the single biggest events in human history. It launched the modern age and drove industrial technology forward at a faster rate than ever before. Even contemporary economics experts failed to predict the extent of the revolution and its effects on world history. It shows why the Industrial Revolution played such a vital role in the building of the United States of today.

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American Industrial Revolution

The American Industrial Revolution was a worldwide event that started in the United Kingdom and later spread to Europe and reached America in the early 19 th  Century.

This revolution began around 1760s involved changes in agricultural practices, manufacturing methods, technology, mineral extraction, transportation, and cultural activities.

Before the onset of the Industrial Revolution, agriculture was the main economic activity for the people of America. People could engage in small-scale farming of food crops to sustain their food needs.

Basic tools and items such as clothing, furniture, and handmade tools were common to be made and used by the American people. They engaged in barter trade for crops they could not produce or items they could not make.

Most of the people did supplement their income by manufacturing excess goods, such as woven fabrics and spun thread, which they sold to nearby merchants and neighbors in exchange for the raw materials needed for their final products.

The 19th century saw the main start of the American industrial revolution through New England’s textile mills.

In the United States, the Industrial Revolution significantly brought changes to the society. It should be known that urbanization and the fast-rising population were directly caused by industrialization, as more and more people migrated from rural to urban areas in search of jobs or available housing. Most people become extremely wealthy, yet other people lead miserable lives in appalling circumstances.

People relied on traditional equipment such as grill mist to process flour before the development of an advanced flour miller by Oliver Evans in the 1780s. This machine was useful to flour industries and most of the breweries back then. High-pressure steam engines and workshops to repair this machine were additional inventions by Evans during the end of the 17 th  Century. Afterward, cotton fiber and short fiber separating the machine was invented and generated huge amounts of profits for cotton farmers in the southern part of America. Industrial advances in agricultural machinery led to a high need for water to generate hose power for machinery thus leading to heavy industrialization along rivers in New England and Northeast United States (Rees, 2016). Between 1800 and 1820 there was the introduction of more industrial tools that were fuel and coal-powered which improved the efficiency of manufacturing.

Robert Fulton constructed the first steamboat for commercial use linking Albany and New York City in 1807. Steamboat technology became essential to U.S. domestic freight shipments as new canal routes proliferated in the 1820s and 1830s. There was a decrease in subsistence farming and an increase in consumer items available. Towns and cities saw a significant population migration from the countryside because of the shift from an agriculturally oriented economy to one centered on machine manufacturing.

The Industrial Revolution brought changes to communication, which was key in transforming business and fostering community connections. The American electrical telegraph system was created in 1836 by Samuel F. B. Morse and Alfred Vail. It used electric current pulses to send messages over large distances through wires. “Morse code,” a signaling alphabet, was used to transcribe messages.

The American Industrial Revolution had many impacts on the culture and social well-being of people. The Industrial Revolution also allowed people to find cheaper items, live in nicer housing, and eat healthier meals. The benefits of the Industrial Revolution were instantly felt by the middle class and upper class, while the working class created unions and fought for better pay and working conditions, reaping the gains as well (Allen, 2017).

Negative outcomes did occur, though. For example, a wealthy class of industrialists, merchants, and ship owners came to dominate and amass enormous money, while the working class lived in substandard conditions and cramped quarters. Children were made to work in factories against their will, where they were abused and exploited, while women’s lives drastically changed because of leaving their families to work in domestic settings and textile factories. The middle class, which benefited more from riches than the working class, was developed during this period (Licht, 1995).

Despite the revolution leading to the growth of industries, it had adverse effects on the environment. Due to the reliance on fuel and coal in the manufacturing industries, air pollution increased severely, and this forced cities such as Chicago to enact laws governing air pollution.

Similarly, industrialization resulted in overcrowding and poor sanitation in urban areas thus contributing to the spread of diseases such as typhoid and cholera. People depended on contaminated wells within city confines for drinking water supplies.

Furthermore, environments around cities faced major challenges from untreated human waste which accumulated as cities had no sewage systems. Many towns constructed centralized water delivery systems in the middle of the 1800s as it was determined that tainted water was linked to illness. However, public health officials believed that rivers, lakes, and the sea were capable of self-purifying, hence wastewater continued to be released without treatment.

The growth and development of industries led to a high labor requirement in industries, farms, and various sectors.

Immigration played a great role in the industrial revolution of America and up to date immigrants make up a bigger population of the American urban parts.

There is a connection between Immigration and industrialization since American manufacturing companies relied on immigrant labor for their labor. Labor was a valuable source of economic production; as more immigrants arrived in the country, they made greater contributions to economic output, which in turn fueled the country’s economic expansion (Hirschman and Mogford, 2009). Since most immigrants were young, active men, they had a favorable effect on both immigration and the industrial revolution.

In a nutshell, the American Industrial Revolution had both positive and negative impacts on the growth and development of the United States of America. More jobs, cheaper commodities, higher living standards, and greater wealth were all brought about by the revolution. However, it also harmed society because it led to the creation of social classes, with the upper class growing richer and the working class falling behind. Immigration to America was beneficial to the American Industrial Revolution because most of its workers were foreign-born.

Rees, J. (2016, July 7).  Industrialization and urbanization in the United States, 1880–1929 . Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. https://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-327 ‘

Allen, R. C. (2017). The Industrial Revolution: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hirschman, C., & Mogford, E. (2009). Immigration and the American Industrial Revolution from 1880 to 1920. Social science research, 38(4), 897-920.

Licht, W. (1995). Industrializing America: The nineteenth century. Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University.

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american industrial revolution essay

Industrial Revolution Essay

500+ words industrial revolution essay it’s history, the impact and pros and cons of industrial revolution.

The Industrial revolution was a period of major changes, which transformed the largely handicraft and agriculture based economy to machine manufacturing. European and American society was completely dependent on agriculture, hand production methods, which meant lower production. But in the latter half of the 18th century, the introduction of mass producing machines and industrialization changed this. This modern method of production led to mass production, which brought about major changes in the economy.

The industrial revolution brought about several social changes too. It led to new job opportunities, lowered prices, better quality of life and communication. But it wasn’t all good, the industrial revolution had its disadvantages too. While it did improve the quality of life with a better economy, it also led to harsh working conditions. Industrialization also led to pollution, lower pay and in some cases, unemployment too.

Learn more about the history, the impact and the pros and cons of the industrial revolution in this industrial revolution essay.

Industrial Revolution Essay: History Of Industrial Revolution

Before the industrial revolution, the economy was completely dependent on agriculture and handmade products. This meant fewer products were produced and the cost of production and the goods were higher too. But all this changed with the introduction of machines and factories in the late 1700s and mid 1800s. The industrial revolution transformed the largely rural and agriculture based society into urban, machine-powered factories. It began in Britain and soon spread to America, Japan and other European countries.

The industrial revolution brought about several economic and social changes across the world. Learn more about how the industrial revolution impacted society and its advantages and disadvantages. 

Also explore: Read more essays on related topics like technology essay and pollution essay .

Industrial Revolution Essay: The Impact Of The Industrial Revolution

The industrial revolution led to several important developments. First, the textile industry was changed. Machines were invented to make the cleaning, gathering, spinning and weaving processes easy. With modern methods of production, large amounts of cloth could be produced at once. The invention of the steam engine further improved the production. Gradually, industrialization spread to all kinds of industries like farming, transportation, communication, banking etc.

The Advantages Of The Industrial Revolution

  • Ease Of Production: Industrialization made way for cheaper and more efficient production. Additionally, it made production quicker and easier.
  • Innovation and development: The industrial revolution made way for innovation and development in several fields like communication, transportation, farming etc.
  • Better job opportunities: The advent of machines and factories made way for jobs with specialized skills, which created new job opportunities. With better economic opportunities, the quality of life also improved. 
  • Improved healthcare: The industrial revolution also helped make several advancements in the field of healthcare. Medical equipment and medicines could be manufactured easily and innovated, which resulted in better healthcare.

But while it had several advantages, the industrial revolution had several disadvantages too. Learn more about the cons in this industrial revolution essay.

The Disadvantages Of The Industrial Revolution

  • Unemployment: With the advent of machines, several particular jobs became obsolete. People and families that performed these jobs were left without jobs or income. This led to unemployment and poverty.
  • Overcrowding of cities: With more and more people from rural areas moving to the cities hoping for better wages, cities became overcrowded. The sudden influx of migrants in poorly planned cities and towns led to unsanitary living conditions and spread diseases.
  • Harsh working conditions: With factories churning out products in mass quantities, factory owners prized profit over everything else. The workers were underpaid and forced to overwork with no concern for their safety. The dirt, the soot, smoke and chemicals expelled from the factories made working conditions in the factories unsanitary and hazardous to the workers’ health too. This resulted in accidents, the workers getting injured and even death in certain cases. 
  • Pollution: One of the greatest ills that the industrial revolution brought about is the pollution and environmental ills that it caused. The factories also used natural resources endlessly, which led to global warming and other ecological problems. 
  • Economic gap:  The factory and industry owners looked at their gain above all else. So, the workers were exploited and forced to overwork in unsanitary conditions for low wages. As a result, the factory owners got richer, while the workers stayed poor. This unequal distribution of wealth created an economic gap. 

The industrial revolution has its advantages and disadvantages, but our society wouldn’t be the same without it. Nonetheless, we can continue to enjoy the benefits by focusing on innovation without compromising on safety and equality.

We hope you found this industrial revolution essay helpful. Osmo has several essays on a wide variety of topics. For more information, check essays for kids .

Frequently Asked Questions On Industrial Revolution

What is the industrial revolution.

Industrial revolution was a period during which the largely rural, agricultural and hand produced economy shifted to modern, machine based manufacturing.

What are some advantages of the industrial revolution?

Industrialization and urbanization made way for mass production, innovation and development, better job opportunities and improved quality of life, cheaper products etc.

What are some cons of the industrial revolution?

Industrialization led to unemployment, depletion of natural resources, pollution, harsh working conditions, overpopulation and unequal distribution of wealth.

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