By: Jonathan Wanzer ORCiD 0009-0004-9275-7410
Submitted on: December 2, 2024
Submitted to: Dr. McGinniss – Liberty University
Course: HIST 706 Digital History
Chicago Citation:
Wanzer, Jonathan. “The Start of the Industrial Revolution in America.” Paper. Historical Interpretations. Jonathan Wanzer, December 2, 2024. http://wanzer.org/the-start-of-the-industrial-revolution-in-america/.
Notes: This paper is the research on the early Industrial Revolution that would be developed into a timeline project and eventually a mapping project of the same name. The Start of the Industrial Revolution: ArcGIS StoryMap is the final mapping project utilizing this data.
Introduction
The Industrial Revolution in The United States is a period generally agreed to be from the 1760s to the 1890s. Exact dates are still debated among historians due to the complex nature of the Industrial Revolution and its overlapping with several other periods. It can justifiably be claimed that the Industrial Revolution extended into the early 20th century.
This map is a representation of some of the key events that solidified the start of the Industrial Revolution in America beginning with Samual Slater’s immigration from England in 1790. Slater is often referred to as the father of the American Industrial Revolution, which is not unfounded, but revolutions do not occur in a vacuum, these events and people were important to the development and growth of the Industrial Revolution in America.
Technologies of Change
Three key technologies would make the rapid expansion of industrialization possible: power systems, transportation systems, and communications systems. Two of these technologies would be closely related, power and transportation, they would both rely heavily on Steam Power in the early years of the Industrial Revolution. Stationary built-in steam engines, with belt-driven traction systems, would supplant the waterwheel to power industrial equipment and eventually power electrical generators. Chasse-mounted steam engines would drive the powerful steam locomotives that would supplant river and canal boats, plying the rails up and down the eastern seaboard and expanding in 1869 when coast-to-coast routes would open.
Steam energy has been in use since Hero of Alexandria in 200 BCE with the first viable commercial application of the steam engine in 1712 built by Thomas Newcomen, but it wasn’t until James Watt’s high-pressure “double acting” steam engine was designed and continuously upgraded between 1776 and 1781[1] that the steam engine would be ready for rail service. Suitable steam engines for transportation were available by 1829 and suitable fixed engines for industrial use by 1832.[2] The Industrial Revolution would need reliable, powerful engines to move raw materials and finished products. It would need similar engines to power the processing of those raw materials and the manufacture of finished goods.
The third technology, though not represented in the map, was also critical to the rapid growth of the industry is communication. While mail service speed increased considerably with the advent of rail service, it would be the introduction of the telegraph by Samual Morse in 1844 over the first telegraph line from Baltimore, MD to Washington, DC that would accelerate the Industrial Revolution. In 1861 telegraph lines connected the east and west coasts and in 1866 the first transatlantic cable connected America and Europe providing near-instant communications.[3]
At first used primarily by governments and the press, the industry quickly realized how useful near-instant communications could be.[4] Arranging the transport of raw materials from a Virginia plantation to mills in Pawtucket, RI where they would be processed and woven into bolts of fabric then transported to an exporter in Providence and shipped to a waiting importer in Bristol, UK for the buyer. This could all be arranged in one day. Without the telegraph, making these arrangements by post could take months. It was clear that reliable, nearly instant communications would change the speed and responsiveness of industry and bring about changes in the way industry functioned.
Water Power
Water-powered mills have been around for nearly 2,000 years, some of the earliest can be found in China dating back to the first century CE. Water-powered mills were in use in the Roman Empire,[5] however, these mills were a direct drive, meaning the waterwheel was directly connected to the milling stone by gears. The innovation of the traction system allowed power from the waterwheel to be applied to a main drive shaft. The shaft could power many tools or pieces of equipment with belts that could be powered on or off as needed by lowering them onto the shaft or lifting them off respectively. Samual Slater, who had apprenticed in England before emigrating to America (Map Point 1) in 1790 had been trained in mill operations and management and knew how traction mills worked both mechanically and practically.
When Samual arrived in Pawtucket, RI he met Moses Brown and his partner William Almy. They had a mill, but it functioned poorly and was difficult to keep running. Slater inspected the equipment and found it to be outdated and poorly maintained. Brown and Almy weren’t sure if Slater could deliver on his promises of fixing the mill so they made an offer that if he could get the mill running smoothly, they would consider hiring him.[6] After proving his mechanical skills, Slater was contracted by Brown and Almy to manage and maintain the first fully mechanized American textile mill ushering America into the Industrial Revolution.
Steam Power
Slater was an innovator; in 1799 he broke away from Brown and Almy and formed his own company. The new company, Samuel Slater & Co. included Slater and his new partners Oziel Wilkinson, William Wilkinson, and Timothy Greene. (Map Point 4) After a few short years, the new company was producing at full capacity in the Blackstone River mill. In 1827 Slater & Co. built a mill in Providence, Rhode Island, but this mill was different, it was not dependent on the river to power its operations. The Providence mill would be one of the first stationary steam engine-powered mills in America. (Map Point 6) The use of steam-powered mills meant that mechanized manufacturing could be independent of river systems.[7] Mills and plants could be built closer to distribution hubs, reducing transportation times. Fixed-location steam engines would start to power a wide range of industrial mills, electrical power plants, and sawmills. We can still see steam-powered sawmills in operation today.
Steam power would eventually be supplanted in the mills by electrical motors that were more convenient, easier to maintain, much smaller, and safer but that didn’t mean steam power went away. With improvements in steam engines like the automatic cutoff invented by George Corliss in 1849 (Map Point 15) and other innovations like the flyball governor, the efficiency of steam engines increased and made them safer to operate with fewer attendants. Their biggest detractors were their size and cost. Because of their reliability and availability, they were well suited to be placed in power plants to generate the electricity needed by the now-electrified mills. Steam engines continued improving regularly and would power much of the nation into the twentieth century.
Transportation by Water
Merchants began proposing a canal to move goods when the first mills opened. The Blackstone River Valley had no easy to traverse roads and as the mills began to produce ever-growing amounts of textiles, carriage was becoming more difficult. (Map Point 3) During the wet season, the roads could be impassable for wagons. A solution was needed and in 1825 after years of opposition from Boston industrialists afraid of competition, and with the success of the Eri Canal, the Worchester to Providence Canal project was approved.[8] The canal would take three years to complete, but it would result in a dramatic reduction in the time it took to get goods to distribution points in the port cities and railheads. The canal, completed in 1828, would be a huge success. The success of the canals would be relatively short-lived however, as the mills grew, the need to move more and more raw materials to the mills and finished materials and products to distribution centers, creating a need for even more capacity, a problem that would be solved by trains.
Railroad Service
The first railroad to serve the Blackstone River Valley industrial corridor was the Boston and Worcester Railroad in 1835. (Map Point 10) This service considerably reduced the cost of transporting goods and the time in transit. This brought in raw materials arriving faster and in greater quantities allowing the mills to produce more finished materials and get them out to market faster. With the completion of the Boston Providence Railroad in 1835,[9] the second railroad to serve the Blackstone River Valley, the canal service became all but obsolete. (Map Point 11) The canals continued to operate with declining use and profitability, languishing for another 13 years. After more than a decade of decline in the Blackstone River Valley, canal services closed permanently in 1848. (Map Point 14) The canal service, though short-lived, proved that with reliable transportation industry could thrive. It was a successful venture until the railroads entered service providing greater speed and carrying larger loads. Rail freight services continue to move millions of tons of goods across America every day.
Cultural Shifts
The Industrial Revolution was able to take root in America because of several cultural shifts in American society. The first was a general slow shift from an agrarian-based society to a more urban and consumer-based society. It would take several decades for this to apply to a majority of the population in practice, but it was the mindset that would aid in the rapid growth of the industrial age. The second was the wide acceptance of the idea that with enough money one could change their social status, in part creating a desire for monetary wealth. At the outset of the Industrial Revolution, most people in America were subsistence farmers, they had a job locally doing some trade that brought in some money, but they produced their food and likely made their clothes, they would make basic furnishings, make repairs on their homes, and to their equipment with little reliance on purchased goods. As they began to take mill jobs, subsistence farming became more difficult.[10] They would spend much of their time going to and from work and a 12-hour workday which left little time for farm chores, or anything else.[11] This condition in part contributed to the founding of Mill Villages.
One of Slater, Brown, and Almy’s contributions to the Industrial Revolution was the introduction of the mill village. The mill owner would build housing and the necessary support buildings in a small village next to the mill. Employees could leave their homes with land and move to the mill village. (Map Point 2) This would mean they would need to pay rent for their home to the mill from their pay. The mill village homes were small, and most didn’t have any land for kitchen gardens so the employees would also need to buy supplies from the mill store. With only one person in a family working at the mill, now paying rent and having to buy supplies, owing the mill money on payday was common. Families began to work at the mill, husbands, wives, and children over six years of age might be working at the mill just scraping by, and maybe even owing money on paydays.
The Brown Almy mill was a multi-process mill with machines to card, spin, and dye fibers. The mill and its operations grew to several buildings and required many employees to manage the mills. This also required housing all the support staff to provide meals and clerk the stores to supply the people, all of which were owned by the company. Slaterville was the first company town, or mill village, an idea that would catch on quickly with mill and factory owners.[12] By 1831 Lonsdale Water & Power Co. had several mills either operational or under construction. The concept of the mill town had caught on, and Brown & Ives, the founders, and senior partners, were keen to develop the concept further. (Map Point 8) The mill village would become a full-service community for the employees of the mill. Employees could buy food and supplies from the Mill Store and get just about everything they needed. The mill villages would eventually have a church, reflecting the denomination of the mill owner, and in some cases, the employees would be required to attend services. Mill villages would also often have a school that would keep smaller children out of the mill while the rest of the family worked. The mill schools would monitor the children’s progress and aptitudes “graduating” the average students to work in the mill when they were old enough. Those with specific aptitudes would either stay in school to learn additional skills beneficial to the mill owner or until an apprenticeship could be arranged for especially bright and talented children.
New Business Models
There were several innovations to the way business was conducted that began around this period, one that developed early on was made-to-stock manufacturing. Samual Slater was a proponent, and this was the impetus for his separation from Brown and Almy in 1799. (Map Point 4) Up to this point, most goods were produced on demand after an order was received.[13] Having goods to ship at the time of order meant the customer got their goods sooner but required warehousing, it also had the risk of an item not being purchased. With the textile mills, most of the goods produced were threads, yarns, and standard fabrics which minimized the risk.
Speculative buying was considered risky at the time, a majority of speculative business was in shipping goods to an arranged buyer overseas. Speculative investment in ideas was almost unheard of except among members of the family, and even then, it was rare. Nicholas Brown, John Carter Brown, Thomas Poynton Ives, Moses Brown Ives, and Robert Hale Ives began buying water rights along the Blackstone River near Smithfield and Cumberland in 1825 as Lonsdale Water & Power Co.[14] (Map Point 5) Seeking speculative investment to build mills that would use the water rights purchased was very risky. They did however succeed in attracting funding and in 1834 they incorporated as the Lonsdale Company. (Map Point 9) The company would expand its holdings in mills and mill villages.
In 1839 Brown & Ives bought Phenix(sic) Mill Estate and focused solely on cotton textiles. This allowed them to streamline the operation to just the equipment specifically for cotton. (Map Point 12) Cotton had become inexpensive to buy in bulk and could now be transported in tonnage loads to the mills. The cotton gin made it relatively easy to mechanically process the cotton and prepare it for additional processes. In 1844 they expanded operations by adding a bleachery and dye works to their mill taking raw cotton in bulk and processing it to a finished yarn or thread. (Map Point 13) Narrow product line manufacturing and branding would see Bown & Ives continue operating their mills and manage several other companies for more than 100 years, well into the 20th century.
Conclusion & Summary
Critical technologies needed to be ready for practical use for the Industrial Revolution to have begun. Advances in power generation, transportation systems, and communications had already begun and were at a point in their development that they could be utilized in an industrial environment. Steam power would start the revolution and while its position would change, it remained important well into the 20th century and continues to find new life in the 21st combined with solar furnaces. Trains would supplant river and barge boats in the end, and they too would continue into the 20th century, while only a part of the larger transportation picture they continue to serve in the 21st. The telegraph would evolve into radiotelegraphy and eventually be replaced by the telephone. Though the telegraph is no longer used commercially, radiotelegraphy, Morse code, can still be heard over the airwaves kept alive by amateur radio operators. The social and cultural changes, the transition by many people from an agrarian life to an urban life, a willingness to move to company towns, and a willingness to participate in a consumer economy would all shape America of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. America would become a substantially urban consumer society by the mid-20th century. Worker safety and rights would become the next phase in America’s social and political reform in the 1900s. The changes in technology and society facilitated the new business models conceived of by mill owners and operators that maximized profit, often on the backs of the laborer. In time made-to-stock would fall to just-in-time manufacturing, and manufacturing in large part would be outsourced overseas in the late 20th century only to start returning in the early 21st century.
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Boucher, Susan Marie. The History of Pawtucket: 1635-1986. Commemorative Edition. Pawtucket, RI: Pawtucket Public Library, 1976.
Chafee, John H., ed. Landscape of Industry: An Industrial History of the Blackstone Valley. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2009.
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[1] Wikipedia, “Watt steam engine,” Accessed December 2, 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt_steam_engine.
[2] Linda Hall Library, “Locomotives,” Accessed December 2, 2024, https://www.lindahall.org/experience/digital-exhibitions/the-transcontinental-railroad/04-locomotives/.
[3] National Park Service, “The Transcontinental Telegraph,” Accessed December 2, 2024, https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-transcontinental-telegraph.htm.
[4] Elon University, “Imagining the Internet: 1830s – 1860s: Telegraph,” Accessed December 2, 2024, https://www.elon.edu/u/imagining/time-capsule/150-years/back-1830-1860/.
[5] Scholarly Community Encyclopedia, “Water Mills,” Accessed December 2, 2024, https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/42299.
[6] Susan Marie Boucher, The History of Pawtucket: 1635-1986, Commemorative Edition, Pawtucket, RI: Pawtucket Public Library, 1976.
[7] Christopher Simonds, Samuel Slater’s Mill and the Industrial Revolution, Turning Points in American History, Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Silver Burdett Press, 1990.
[8] John H. Chafee, ed. Landscape of Industry: An Industrial History of the Blackstone Valley, Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2009.
[9] Susan Marie Boucher, The History of Pawtucket: 1635-1986, Commemorative Edition, Pawtucket, RI: Pawtucket Public Library, 1976.
[10] Kevin Hillstrom, ed., The Industrial Revolution in America: Overview/Comparison, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2007.
[11] Kevin Hillstrom, ed., The Industrial Revolution in America: Agriculture and Meatpacking, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2007.
[12] John H. Chafee, ed., Landscape of Industry: An Industrial History of the Blackstone Valley, Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2009.
[13] Library of Congress, “The Industrial Revolution in the United States,” Accessed November 22, 2024, https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/industrial-revolution-in-the-united-states/.
[14] John H. Chafee, ed., Landscape of Industry: An Industrial History of the Blackstone Valley, Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2009.