Chapter 12

The North

Essential Questions

• How did the Industrial Revolution transform the way goods were produced?

• How did new forms of transportation improve business, travel, and communication?

I. The Industrial Revolution

• Beginning of 1700s, most people were farmers and made goods by hand – changed by mid 1700s

• Industrial Revolution: a period of rapid growth in using machines for manufacturing and production– Textiles:

New Machines and Processes

• British Parliament made it illegal for machine plans to leave country

• Samuel Slater: British mechanic who memorized every detail of textile mill machines – 1793 opened first mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island

A Manufacturing Breakthrough

• Technology: tools used to produce items or to do work

• Eli Whitney: 1798 – made muskets for the U.S. Army using interchangeable parts – parts of a machine that are identical

• Mass Production:

Manufacturing Grows Slowly

• Grew slowly because most people chose to own a farm, instead of working for low wages – British goods were cheaper

• War of 1812:

II. Changes in Working Life

• Workers no longer needed specific skills of crafts people to run machines – “unskilled”

• Rhode Island System:

• Chance to work in a factory to earn money and learn a new skill

• Lowell System: Francis Cabot Lowell – 1814– Water powered mills that hired young, unmarried women

– Long work days (14 hours)

Workers Organize

• Factories produced goods quickly, but workers not paid well

• 1840’s immigrants willing to work for less

• Trade Unions: groups that tried to improve pay and working conditions

• Strikes:

III. Transportation Revolution • Transportation Revolution:

period of rapid growth in the speed and convenience of travel– Steamboat: Robert Fulton

– 1807 – could move upriver and did not rely on wind power

– Gibbons v. Ogden – 1824 – Supreme Court reinforced federal power to regulate trade between states

– Railroads: 1830 – 1860 –

Transportation Revolution Changes

• Goods could get to distant markets

• Population growth – Cities grow• Coal replaced wood as source of power

• Lumber and logging - deforestation

IV. More Technological Advances

• 1832 – Samuel Morse perfects telegraph: a device that could send information over wires across great distances – “Morse Code”

• Steam power grows

Farm and Home Changes

• 1831 – Cyrus McCormick develops the mechanical reaper to cut wheat quicker

• 1840 - Isaac Singer improves sewing machine