Between 1790 and 1860 the United States became the industrial nation.
Although 90 percent of the nation’s factories were located in the North by 1860 industry
had gained a foothold in the South as well.
Industry grew even more after the Civil War.
By 1900 the United States was the number one industrial nation in the world.
While industrialization over the course of the 19th century had a profound impact on
the United States, it’s important to understand that industrialization
was hardly limited to the United States.
This video will explore the origins of the Industrial Revolution and will place industrialization
in the United States within a broader global context.
The Industrial Revolution that gave rise to modern industry began in Great Britain in
the 1780s.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, goods all over the world were either made at home
or made by skilled artisans in workshops.
Goods were expensive and people owned fewer of them, with most people living in rural
areas.
After the Industrial Revolution, many goods were made in factories.
As industrialization led to huge gains in productivity, more goods became available
and prices fell.
Because industry was located in cities, industrialization and urbanization also went hand in hand.
Britain had not only led the world in terms of industry in the first half of the 19th
century, but by 1850 Britain became the first nation in the history of humanity to have
a majority of its population live in cities.
The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain in the 1780s for a number of reasons.
First, prior to the industrialization, Britain had rural forms of agriculture in which farmers
worked part time, often in the winter, to produce textiles in cottages with merchants
paying farmers a flat rate for each piece of textile produced.
This is where the term ‘cottage industry’ comes from.
Historians have called the development of rural textile industries, proto-industrialization
– as it led to the creation of new production techniques and commercial links that were
important precursors of Britain’s textile industry.
Many of these techniques helped pave the way for the division-of-labor concept that describes
how factory and assembly lines came to operate.
Scottish economist, Adam Smith, who was widely considered as the theoretical ‘founding
father’ of modern industrial capitalism used the example of a pin factory to describe
the division of labor.
In Smith’s pin factory example, workers in a pin factory break the process of making
pins down to its simplest element, with each worker focusing only on one task in the process.
For Smith, this vastly increased his productivity and the concept of the division of labor was
both a new and more productive way of working that became crucial to industrialization.
Second, Britain experienced massive population growth, with its population over tripling
from 7.5 million people in 1780 to 27 million in 1850.
Improvements in agriculture in Britain prior to the Industrial Revolution meant that people
had better diets, which in turn meant a healthier and growing population.
Britain’s growing population was an essential component of industrialization because the
nation came to have a larger pull of people from rural areas, who could leave farms to
go work in factories; mills; and mines in the cities.
In addition to providing a large workforce, Britain’s growing population also meant
it had more consumers to purchase the goods made in factories.
Next, Britain had large coal resources.
Throughout the 19th century as well as into the 20th century, coal was the main fuel used
to power engines that ran factories; railroads; and steamships – not to mention used for
heating of buildings and making steel.
Obviously, the fact that Britain had considerable coal deposits within its own country gave
it a major advantage in industrialization.
Historian Kenneth Pomerantz has even argued that one of the main reasons that Britain
became an industrial nation in the 19th century and China did not was because China lacked
the kinds of rich coal deposits that Britain had.
In other matters, Britain had a social; political; and business climate that was favorable to
new industry.
British society did not look down upon the success of business or starting new business
– nor was taxation or government regulation excessive, especially in ways that prevented
success in business.
Likewise, Britain had a long-standing financial institution – such as the Bank of England
– that made it easier to access the capital necessary to start a new business.
Britain’s financial institutions not only provided capital to new British industry but
invested in new American industry as well.
Britain’s business climate also included access to extensive overseas trade networks
and Britain’s colonial empire.
Finally, from 1780 until 1850, Britain led the world in inventors and new inventions.
New technology and new machines were key to the Industrial Revolution.
New engines ran factories; mills; and mines as well as powering faster transportation
for goods and passengers.
A few examples of British inventors during the Industrial Revolution include James Watt’s
invention of the steam engine; George Stephenson’s invention of the railroad; and James Hargreaves
invention of the spinning jenny, an important machine used in textile mills.
Britain was so famous for its inventors; engineers; and mechanics that the British government
even tried to forbid them from exporting British machine technology or even leaving the country.
Alexander Hamilton even purposely recruited British mechanics to come to the United States
to help early American industry.
Thousands of skilled British workers did, in fact, immigrate to the United States during
the first half of the 19th century, a development that boosted early American industry.
Industrialization not only spread from Britain to the United States, where it took a life
of its own, but also from Britain to other nations in Europe such as Belgium; the Netherlands;
France; as well as some of the German states; and some of the Italian states.
Many of these Western European nations that industrialized during the 19th century had
large coal deposits like Britain.
The most important industries in Britain during the first half of the 19th century were the
iron and textile industries.
The British textile industry helped make it possible for cotton production to take off
in the South because the British textile industry was one of the most important purchasers of
Southern cotton.
Besides the British textile industry, by 1860 the French textile industry was likewise a
major purchaser of Southern cotton.
In conclusion, industrialization in early America did not occur in a vacuum, rather
it took place as part of the broader Industrial Revolution that began in Great Britain and
was pioneered by the British, and just as industrialization spread from Britain to the
United States, it also spread to many nations in Western Europe and Japan, who likewise
became industrial nations in their own right during the 19th century.
Industrialization in the United States was part of a major economic global development
during the 19th century.
I’ll stop with that observation.
Thanks for watching.