Industrial Revolution · CHAPTER 9 ·
Industrial Revolution in America
Chapter 9 of The Industrial Revolution, 1750–1914: “America Industrialises”
Between the Civil War and the First World War the United States became the world’s largest industrial economy, drawing on a protected market, vast resources and immigrant labour. The first transcontinental railway was completed at Promontory Summit, Utah, on 10 May 1869, its western section built largely by Chinese workers.
Chapter 9 is included with every paid plan. WW2 is free in full, and chapter 1 of every atlas is free. A free account opens 3 more chapters a day. Starter, at $9 a month, opens all 21 with no daily limit — see the plans.
Free printable Industrial Revolution study guide, sent by email ↓
The map above is the world of The industrial world, 1890 — America overtakes Britain.
Every state on the map that year: The world in 1900 · Europe in 1900.
Part of IB History: The Industrial Revolution →
SHORT EXPLANATION
By the First World War, the United States had become the world's largest industrial economy. The country possessed coal, iron ore, oil, timber and farmland in enormous quantities; high tariffs made imported goods dearer, protecting a vast home market. Millions of immigrants came to work in that economy. Its earlier growth had depended on slavery: before 1861 cotton grown by enslaved people was America's greatest export, feeding mills in Lancashire and New England. From 1823 Lowell became the model American factory town.
The Civil War of 1861–65 ended slavery, and railways subsequently joined markets across the continent. The first transcontinental line met at Promontory Summit, Utah, in 1869. Much of the western section had been built eastward from Sacramento by Chinese workers, most from Guangdong. A producer could now reach customers from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Large enterprises made use of that reach. The Scottish-born Andrew Carnegie's steelworks near Pittsburgh drew on ore shipped across the Great Lakes, while Chicago slaughterhouses passed carcasses along overhead lines to rows of workers. In 1913 Henry Ford's moving line at Highland Park cut assembly of a car chassis—frame, engine and wheels—from about twelve and a half hours to one and a half. Such mass production made identical goods cheaply on standardized lines; a factory could supply millions, as it still can today.
The map shows the United States turning charcoal and arrows bringing immigrants through New York's station at Ellis Island. About 22 million immigrants arrived between 1880 and 1914. Growth brought wealth first to owners of land, mills and railways, while workers fought violent strikes, Chinese workers faced exclusion by law, and the South remained poor after slavery.
The full story
Long before the United States led the world in manufacturing, its cotton industry connected British machinery to the labor of enslaved people. Samuel Slater memorized Richard Arkwright's spinning machines in England and began spinning cotton in Rhode Island in 1790. In 1823 Boston merchants opened mills in the planned Massachusetts town of Lowell. They hired young women from New England farms; those women struck against wage cuts in 1834 and again in 1836.
The cotton came from the slave South. Its enslaved population grew from about 700,000 in 1790 to almost four million in 1860. During the Civil War of 1861–65, the North's factories and railways outproduced the South's, confirming the power of the industrial North. The war destroyed slavery and freed four million people. Yet most remained poor farm workers or sharecroppers, paying rent with a share of their crop in a South marked by poverty and segregation.
After the war, a manufacturer could contemplate selling across a much larger territory. Congress gave land grants and loans to the Union Pacific and Central Pacific, whose tracks met at Promontory Summit on 10 May 1869. The Central Pacific had built east from Sacramento, across the Sierra Nevada. It employed 10,000 to 15,000 Chinese workers at a time; in 1867 they formed about 90 percent of its workforce and received less pay than white workers. Deaths were never reliably counted: estimates range from about fifty to over a thousand.
Four more transcontinental lines followed by 1893. Railways could carry goods from a Pittsburgh or Chicago factory to customers far beyond its own city, permitting firms to grow beyond the size a local market could support. Running the railroads also required large businesses with professional managers. Yet the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred workers of the nationality that had done so much to build the first line.
Steel gave the expanding railways their rails. At Carnegie's Edgar Thomson works near Pittsburgh, opened in 1875, ore arrived across the Great Lakes and the Bessemer process sent air through molten iron to burn out impurities in minutes. American steel production passed Britain's around 1886. By the 1890s steel, mass production and immigration had made the United States the leading industrial power.
Another way of organizing work appeared in Chicago's meat-packing plants, where overhead lines carried carcasses past workers who each removed a part. Henry Ford said this disassembly line inspired his moving assembly line at Highland Park, where the product passed workers repeating individual tasks. About 22 million immigrants entered between 1880 and 1914, many through Ellis Island, New York's immigration station, after it opened in 1892.
The expansion also provoked struggles over who would share its rewards. At Carnegie's Homestead steelworks in 1892, strikers fought private guards; seven workers and three guards died, and the union was broken. By 1913 American factories made about a third of the world's manufactured goods, more than Britain and Germany together. The country where industrialization began had been surpassed by an economy able to draw on a continent.
FULL EXPLANATION
Why America grew so large so fast
A continent rich in minerals and forests offered American manufacturers materials on an unusual scale. In 1990 economic historian Gavin Wright showed how much that mattered: before the First World War, American manufactured exports used unusually large quantities of natural resources, including coal, copper, oil and timber. Geology helped shape what American industry could produce. Resources found an expanding market. The population rose from about 31 million in 1860 to 92 million in 1910. Railways connected customers, and tariffs—taxes on imports—protected producers from foreign rivals. From the Civil War onward those tariffs were among the industrial world's highest. A plant serving this market could operate on a scale that a smaller market could not sustain. Economic historian H. J. Habakkuk proposed another connection in 1962: scarce, expensive labor encouraged firms to adopt labor-saving machinery. They could draw on the American system of manufactures, developed first in government arms factories, which made interchangeable parts to fit any copy of a gun or machine. At the same time immigration supplied vast numbers of workers and British capital financed many railroads. Such large operations needed coordination. In The Visible Hand (1977), business historian Alfred Chandler argued that railroads created the first modern enterprises run by layers of salaried managers; steel, oil and meat-packing firms copied the model. Resources, customers, labor, capital and management worked together as railways connected the continent.
Chinese workers and the politics of exclusion
The Central Pacific's Chinese workers built the western half of the first transcontinental railroad, but left almost no written accounts. To learn about them, historians use company payrolls, newspapers and archaeology. Stanford University's Chinese Railroad Workers project estimates that 10,000 to 15,000 worked on the line at any one time. Most came from Guangdong in southern China. They earned less than white workers and had to buy their own food. In June 1867 several thousand struck in the Sierra Nevada, seeking equal pay and shorter hours. The company cut off their food supplies; after about a week the strike ended. Blasting, avalanches and accidents killed workers, but nobody counted the dead. Once the line was complete, hostility grew. White workers and politicians blamed Chinese workers for low wages. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 became the first federal law to bar immigrants by nationality and was renewed until 1943. At Rock Springs, Wyoming, in 1885, a white mob killed at least 28 Chinese miners. The labor that helped build industrial America did not protect these workers from exclusion or violence.
Capital, labour and the Gilded Age
Mark Twain called the decades after the Civil War the Gilded Age: the name suggested cheap metal covered in gold. Enormous fortunes appeared alongside bitter disputes over work. In 1877 a railroad strike spread across the nation before troops crushed it. Workers organized on a national scale too. The Knights of Labor, open to almost all workers, reached about 700,000 members by 1886. That year a bomb at a rally in Chicago's Haymarket Square and the police gunfire that followed killed seven officers and at least four civilians. Four anarchists, opponents of all government, were later hanged on weak evidence. At Carnegie's Homestead steelworks a lockout in 1892 shut workers out in an attempt to break their union. Federal troops broke the 1894 strike against the Pullman sleeping-car company. These conflicts showed the strength employers could draw from courts and the state. Meanwhile, between 1895 and 1904, competitors combined into giant corporations. US Steel, formed in 1901, became the first company valued at over a billion dollars. How should we judge the builders of these fortunes? Journalist Matthew Josephson called them robber barons in 1934; historian Allan Nevins defended them as industrial statesmen. Historian Richard White's Railroaded (2011) argues that the transcontinental railroads were overbuilt, badly run and sustained by government favors. The question is whether rapid growth required its costs, or whether political favor helped produce them.
Key places on the map
On this day
Why it happened
A continent of resources. Pennsylvania's coalfields and the Lake Superior iron ranges appear as hatched patches on the map; their resources fed Pittsburgh's industry. Coal, iron ore, copper and oil were present in some of the world's largest deposits. Vast forests and farmland, taken from Native American nations by treaty and war, added to this abundance. Cheap materials encouraged technologies that consumed them freely, making American industry especially hungry for energy and resources.
A huge protected market. A large plant needs many buyers. The American population grew from about 31 million in 1860 to 92 million in 1910, and railways connected those buyers without taxes on trade between states. Manufacturers could spread the costs of enormous plants across millions of customers. They also benefited from protection against British and German competitors. High tariffs, or taxes on imports, rose during the Civil War and remained afterward. This was the kind of shelter for young industries that the German economist Friedrich List had recommended for Germany.
Immigrant and coerced labour. Mines, mills and railways drew workers from Europe, China, Mexico and the American countryside, often at low wages and in dangerous conditions. Immigration kept wages lower than they otherwise would have been, though they remained higher than in Europe and continued to attract migrants. In the South, Black people freed from slavery grew cotton that remained a leading export; debt and segregation constrained their lives and work.
Capital, organisation and the state. Building railroads required money before the lines could earn it. British and European investors supplied capital, while federal loans and land grants reduced companies' risks. Railroads also pioneered firms managed by salaried employees. Alfred Chandler called their coordination the visible hand: managers planned activities previously coordinated by markets. Steel, oil and meat firms copied the organization. Government affected the distribution of gains as well. Courts and officials generally sided with employers, issuing injunctions—court orders banning strikes—and sending troops. Such support helped hold down labor costs and maintain profits, creating conditions in which private enterprise could flourish.
THE TURNING POINT
Promontory Summit, 10 May 1869. At Promontory Summit the meeting tracks joined the Atlantic and Pacific economies. Goods, settlers and migrants could now cross in about a week instead of months. Four more lines followed within twenty-five years. This connection brought the Great Plains grasslands into the world market and opened the West to farms, ranches and mines. It also accelerated the destruction of Native American nations and the bison herds on which they lived. Chinese and Irish workers built much of the line, creating wealth for a country that did not always welcome them.
What it changed
America overtakes Britain. American steel output passed Britain's around 1886; by 1913 the United States made about a third of the world's manufactured goods. Its production methods traveled beyond its borders. In the twentieth century Europe and Japan adopted interchangeable parts—standard components that fit any copy of a product—and the assembly line. Americans, earning the world's highest wages, became the first mass market for cars and electrical goods. The lead in mass production had crossed the Atlantic from Britain's workshop of the world.
Grain and migrants remake Europe. From the 1870s railways and steamships delivered cheap American grain to Europe. Lower bread prices helped workers, but many farmers were ruined and millions of rural Europeans were pushed to emigrate. Germany and France protected farmers with tariffs on imported grain; Britain maintained free trade and allowed its farming to shrink. Ships and railways carried grain east and migrants west, linking the two changes.
The labour question goes national. At Homestead in 1892 strikers fought off guards from the Pinkerton detective agency, but Pennsylvania's state militia broke the strike. Federal troops broke the Pullman railway-car strike in 1894. Such confrontations made corporate power a national political question. Progressive Era reformers in the 1900s and 1910s sought to curb that power. Laws addressed monopolies, firms dominating a whole market, and unsafe food; states restricted child labor, while unions grew slowly. Political action had become part of the response to industrial power.
DISCUSSION QUESTION — Was America’s industrial success built more on its resources or on its people?
The resources set the direction of much American industry. Coal, ore, oil, timber and land, much taken from Native American nations, supplied cheap inputs; Gavin Wright's evidence shows their importance in manufactured exports. Yet deposits and forests could not extract or transport themselves. Inventors and managers organized large corporations, and about 22 million immigrants arrived between 1880 and 1914. Chinese workers built railways and were later barred from the country. Formerly enslaved people and their children grew cotton that remained a leading export. Institutions shaped the rewards of their work: import taxes, federal land grants and employer-friendly courts directed wealth toward industry and held down labor costs, amid fierce conflict. Abundant resources helped determine the direction of technology; access to labor and capital from across the world helped determine the speed of growth. Both mattered, and exclusion and conflict reveal how unevenly the costs and gains were shared.
An interesting fact
A traveler consulting American railroad timetables before 1883 encountered dozens of local times. On Sunday 18 November that year, railroads in the United States and Canada switched to standard time zones, four across the United States. Many eastern towns set their clocks back, so noon struck twice: it became known as the day of two noons. Most towns adopted railway time immediately, but Congress made the zones law only in 1918. For thirty-five years a private industry had set the nation's clocks.
Related
THE FREE PRINTABLE STUDY GUIDE
Get the printable study guide for The Industrial Revolution free. I’ll send you a few short letters, then one when a new atlas opens. That’s all. — Paul
NO TRACKING · YOUR ADDRESS IS USED FOR THE DISPATCH AND NOTHING ELSE · UNSUBSCRIBE ANYTIME