Industrialization after the Civil War
Thesis: Industrialization caused by the Civil War made huge changes in every sphere of the US life, beginning from social to industry and agriculture.
I. Changes made in different spheres of the US life.
A. Legislation.
1. Women suffrage
B. Development of the social structure.
1. Country free from slavery.
a. main aspects of former slaves’ life.
C. Economic changes.
1. Standards of living.
2. Mass production.
II. Impact of industrialization on social groups.
A. African Americans became free people.
1. Attempts to improve the literacy rate of African Americans.
2. Types of work they can do.
1. Children as workforce.
a. results of using children labor.
b. minimum age to be allowed to work.
2. School attendance.
C. The new role women play in the US society.
1. Woman's life purpose before the industrialization.
2. Opportunity to work outside the house.
3. Reasons why owners wanted to hire women.
D. New immigrants in the USA.
1. Influence on the economic situation in the country.
2. Immigration restriction legislation.
E. Middle and lower class creation.
III. Crucial changes in the life of the average working American over the period between 1865 and 1920.
A. Railway system improvement.
1. Accumulated migration to the west of the country.
2. Reasons for migration.
B. Public transit system development.
C. Electric bulb invention.
D. Labor conditions at the factories.
E. Rapid growth of urbanization.
1. Positive effects of the process.
2. Negative effects of the process.
The main result of the Civil War was the beginning of the industrialization. Only when the War had ended, the industrial processes took place in the country. Regarding the War, there were 3 main reasons for the Civil War to start. Among them are high taxes on the goods imported from different parts of Europe. North factories were producing enough goods for consumption in that region, but people from Southern part had to import them, which became very expensive. Another reason was different understanding of the states’ rights. Many people from South thought they were able to leave the US and create their own state, but people from the North thought this would make the country much weaker. The third reason was slavery. Northern states were against this and, firstly, they just published books and magazines to share their ideas with states from South. In conclusion, one can say, the main reason was different interests and ideas of the North and South of the USA (Meyer, 2003).
Industrialization stimulated a number of absolutely new inventions in the US. The best examples are electrical bulb, telegraph, telephone, new methods of coke-making and many others. For sure, this period can be called like the era of innovation.
The industrialization in the USA started long after it had happened in Great Britain. After the Civil War, the USA became united country with no more wars inside (Meyer, 2003). The Industrial Revolution changed everyone’s lives in the country. The main of them was the transformation of the USA from an agricultural country, dependent of Great Britain to the one of the world leaders.
Industrialization gave not only new technologies and machines, but also attempts of equality between men and women. One of them was achieving women’s suffrage. As a result, every woman in every state achieved this right in 1920. Before this, women could vote only in the local elections (Bensel, 2000). Interestingly, the Democrats were against women’s suffrage because it could destroy home and family values as the main basis of the political safety (Bensel, 2000).
Slavery was one of the reasons the Civil War started. Consequently, when the War ended the government accepted the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which banned slavery in all its forms. From this moment slavery was considered to be an act of barbarism (Bensel, 2000, p.183). As a result, a lot of people became unemployed, but the industrialization process started to provide them with workplaces. However, the work they do was very hard. For instance, former slaves worked in the naval stores industry, whose job was to tap the longleaf pine sap and boil it down into a product abled for usage (Rees, 2013).
Speaking about the changes in the US economy, the industrialization made much to improve it. For example, standards of living were raised and, also, home-based production was changed to the factory-based production. The invention of the assembly line led to mass production, which caused decrease of product deficit level (Rees, 2013).
One of the social patterns, ethnic group, was built in the southern part of the USA before the Civil War. It was called the Black Belt due to African Americans who settled this territory. Even though the process of industrialization evolved South was still considered to be an agricultural part of the country. After the industrialization process started, little has changed there, as it is still considered as an agricultural part of the country. A majority of African Americans was involved in agriculture, meaning sharecropping and tenant farming (Bensel, 2000).
Industrialization required high literacy rate for everyone who wanted to have a high-paid job. As it was not allowed for black people to study before the Civil War, their literacy rate was too low. Still, some schools were built especially for black people since the whites did not want their children to study with them. As a result, literacy rate of African-Americans grew from 10 per cent to 50 for over the period between 1880 and 1910 (Bensel, 2000).
With the development of the industrialization, children in the US were given an opportunity to work and earn money for their families. However, this led to terrible results as children stopped attending schools and there were a number of accidents in factories. In order to reduce that, a set of laws was accepted claiming that children under fourteen years old were prohibited to work. Regarding factory employment, children under fifteen were also not allowed to work. Still, every state could establish its own minimum age for children to work, hours of their workday, and compulsory education for children (Bensel, 2004).
Furthermore, the industrial process influenced the way children study at school. Only Native American children could enter the boarding school, where they learn different trade skills, for example, metalworking to increase their employability (Rees, 2013).
Industrialization made a great effect on the women’s role in the United States. Formerly, women’s job was to run house while husband was working. The Industrial Revolution has changed it considerably as women started to work outside their houses in different positions: printers, apothecaries, barbers, and others. This means that mostly educated women were taken for unskilled positions, such as to monitor weaving machines or water powered spinning. The reason why employers wanted women to work for them is that the level of their wages was much lower in comparison with the men’s one (Meyer, 2003). In addition, some jobs were considered to be only women’s.
Industrial Revolution led to the fast development in the industry, and as a result, many factories were built. Investment opportunities that had been provided led to forming middle and lower class of workers. The wages were low due to the high supply of workers. Also, there were many victims at factories, because of the poor conditions of working. Only at the end of the 19th century different labor unions were formed to protect the working class (Bensel, 2004).
The beginning of the industrialization meant the increase of migration flows in the USA. Immigrants offered cheap labor and factory owners could maximize their profits from the industrial processes. However, native-born Americans do not want a lot of immigrants to move to the country. The main reason for this is that migration had a negative effect on the US economy in general. As a result, the level of wages declined noticeably. Moreover, immigrants were ready to work longer and, consequently, the native-born American workers also had to work longer (Rees, 2013). This caused the support immigration restriction legislation by Americans, as it was considered to be easier to stop immigration than industrialization.
The American life was changed dramatically throughout the period from 1865 to 1920. One of the significant changes was an improvement of the railway system, which made access to east and west more convenient. Besides, the trip to different places in the country was less dangerous, time-consuming and costly. A lot of Americans migrated to the west and owned their own land due to the low prices on it. As a result, the entrepreneurship developed greatly because now people could build factories near raw materials and spend money only to transport end products already. Not only railroad system was improved, but also and public transit one, which allowed people live far from the factory in quiet suburbs with comparatively fresh air.
Invention of the electric bulb can be called with no doubt a breakthrough made by the American inventor Thomas Edison. From this moment, working process stopped depending on the daylight (Bensel, 2004). However, people started to work much longer, that ruined the work-life balance of almost every American.
Besides, these innovations made negative effect on workers lives. For instance, terrible conditions at factories led to high level of children and men mortality. Almost no one was insured that time and people had to risk their lives for low wages.
Industrialization accumulated such a process like urbanization, when the share of the working population in urban places in the USA rose considerably (Meyer, 2013). The feature of urbanization was unhealthy living conditions in many cities in the US, meaning there were problems with sanitation and fire safety. That was the growth of a number of factories that led to the rapid urbanization. It illustrated structural changes in the economy, as urbanization transformed settlements from rural to urban type. Industrialization inspires urbanization, therefore, it can, for sure, be connected with economic growth and structural change (Meyer, 2013).
References
Rees, Jonathan. (2013). Industrialization and the Transformation of American Life: A Brief Introduction. NY: M.E.Sharpe, Inc.
Bensel, Richard Franklin. (2004). The Political Economy of American Industrialization, 1877-1900. NY: Cambridge University Press.
Meyer, David R. (2003). The Roots of American Industrialization. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
