{"id":33422,"date":"2020-01-17T23:50:28","date_gmt":"2020-01-18T04:50:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.myedme.com\/login\/?p=33422"},"modified":"2020-01-17T23:50:56","modified_gmt":"2020-01-18T04:50:56","slug":"introducing-the-growing-industrial-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myedme.com\/login\/introducing-the-growing-industrial-age\/","title":{"rendered":"Introducing the Growing Industrial Age"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

From:<\/strong> Openstax College Textbook on U.S. History<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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OpenStax’s Timeline of Critical Industrialization Events<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The late nineteenth century was an energetic era of inventions and entrepreneurial spirit. Building upon the mid-century Industrial Revolution in Great Britain, as well as answering the increasing call from Americans for efficiency and comfort, the country found itself in the grip of invention fever, with more people working on their big ideas than ever before. In retrospect, harnessing the power of steam and then electricity in the nineteenth century vastly increased the power of man and machine, thus making other advances possible as the century progressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facing an increasingly complex everyday life, \nAmericans sought the means by which to cope with it. Inventions often \nprovided the answers, even as the inventors themselves remained largely \nunaware of the life-changing nature of their ideas. To understand the \nscope of this zeal for creation, consider the U.S. Patent Office, which,\n in 1790\u2014its first decade of existence\u2014recorded only 276 inventions. By \n1860, the office had issued a total of 60,000 patents. But between 1860 \nand 1890, that number exploded to nearly 450,000, with another 235,000 \nin the last decade of the century. While many of these patents came to \nnaught, some inventions became lynchpins in the rise of big business and\n the country\u2019s move towards an industrial-based economy, in which the \ndesire for efficiency, comfort, and abundance could be more fully \nrealized by most Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AN EXPLOSION OF INVENTIVE ENERGY<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

From corrugated rollers that could crack hard, homestead-grown wheat into flour to refrigerated train cars and garment-sewing machines, new inventions fueled industrial growth around the country. As late as 1880, fully one-half of all Americans still lived and worked on farms, whereas fewer than one in seven\u2014mostly men, except for long-established textile factories in which female employees tended to dominate\u2014were employed in factories. However, the development of commercial electricity by the close of the century, to complement the steam engines that already existed in many larger factories, permitted more industries to concentrate in cities, away from the previously essential water power. In turn, newly arrived immigrants sought employment in new urban factories. Immigration, urbanization, and industrialization coincided to transform the face of American society from primarily rural to significantly urban. From 1880 to 1920, the number of industrial workers in the nation quadrupled from 2.5 million to over 10 million, while over the same period urban populations doubled, to reach one-half of the country\u2019s total population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Advertisements of the late nineteenth century promoted the higher quality and lower prices that people could expect from new inventions. Here, a knitting factory promotes the fact that its machines make seamless hose, while still acknowledging the traditional role of women in the garment industry, from grandmothers who used to sew by hand to young women who now used machines.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In offices, worker productivity benefited from \nthe typewriter, invented in 1867, the cash register, invented in 1879, \nand the adding machine, invented in 1885. These tools made it easier \nthan ever to keep up with the rapid pace of business growth. Inventions \nalso slowly transformed home life. The vacuum cleaner arrived during \nthis era, as well as the flush toilet. These indoor \u201cwater closets\u201d \nimproved public health through the reduction in contamination associated\n with outhouses and their proximity to water supplies and homes. Tin \ncans and, later, Clarence Birdseye\u2019s experiments with frozen food, \neventually changed how women shopped for, and prepared, food for their \nfamilies, despite initial health concerns over preserved foods. With the\n advent of more easily prepared food, women gained valuable time in \ntheir daily schedules, a step that partially laid the groundwork for the\n modern women\u2019s movement. Women who had the means to purchase such items\n could use their time to seek other employment outside of the home, as \nwell as broaden their knowledge through education and reading. Such a \ntransformation did not occur overnight, as these inventions also \nincreased expectations for women to remain tied to the home and their \ndomestic chores; slowly, the culture of domesticity changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps the most important industrial advancement \nof the era came in the production of steel. Manufacturers and builders \npreferred steel to iron, due to its increased strength and durability. \nAfter the Civil War, two new processes allowed for the creation of \nfurnaces large enough and hot enough to melt the wrought iron needed to \nproduce large quantities of steel at increasingly cheaper prices. The \nBessemer process, named for English inventor Henry Bessemer, and the \nopen-hearth process, changed the way the United States produced steel \nand, in doing so, led the country into a new industrialized age. As the \nnew material became more available, builders eagerly sought it out, a \ndemand that steel mill owners were happy to supply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1860, the country produced thirteen thousand tons of steel. By 1879, American furnaces were producing over one million tons per year; by 1900, this figure had risen to ten million. Just ten years later, the United States was the top steel producer in the world, at over twenty-four million tons annually. As production increased to match the overwhelming demand, the price of steel dropped by over 80 percent. When quality steel became cheaper and more readily available, other industries relied upon it more heavily as a key to their growth and development, including construction and, later, the automotive industry. As a result, the steel industry rapidly became the cornerstone of the American economy, remaining the primary indicator of industrial growth and stability through the end of World War II.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Questions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From: Openstax College Textbook on U.S. History The late nineteenth century was an energetic era of inventions and entrepreneurial spirit. Building upon the mid-century Industrial Revolution in Great Britain, as well as answering the increasing call from Americans for efficiency and comfort, the country found itself in the grip of invention fever, with more people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myedme.com\/login\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myedme.com\/login\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myedme.com\/login\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myedme.com\/login\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myedme.com\/login\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33422"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/myedme.com\/login\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33429,"href":"https:\/\/myedme.com\/login\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33422\/revisions\/33429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myedme.com\/login\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myedme.com\/login\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myedme.com\/login\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}