Building the canal was difficult and dangerous.  Canal beds collapsed, burying diggers.  Blasting accidents killed other workers.  In 1819 alone more than 1,000 men were stricken with diseases contracted in the swamps through which they dug.  Here, one investor coldly complains that the number of deaths is raising costs:

“In consequence of the sickness that prevailed in this section and its vicinity, we were under the necessity of raising wages from twelve to fourteen and some as high as seventeen dollars per month for common Labourers, and pay Physicians for atten[d]ing to the sick, purchase Coffins and grave clothes, and attend with Hands to bury the Dead.”

—quoted in The Artificial River

A Revolution in Transportation

Despite the dangers they faced, the canal workers pressed on and completed the immense project in 1825.  The Erie Canal was a striking example of a revolution in transportation that swept through the Northern states in the early 1800s.  This revolution led to dramatic social and economic changes.

Roads and Turnpikes

As early as 1806, the nation took the first steps toward a transportation revolution when Congress funded the building of a major east–west highway, the National Road.  In 1811 laborers started cutting the roadbed westward from the Potomac River at Cumberland, Maryland.  By 1818 the roadway had reached Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia) on the Ohio River.  Conestoga wagons drawn by teams of oxen or mules carried migrating pioneers west on this road, while livestock and wagon-loads of farm produce traveled the opposite way, toward the markets of the East.

Rather than marking the start of a federal campaign to improve transportation, the National Road turned out to be the only great federally funded transportation project of its time.  Jefferson and his successors believed in a strict interpretation of the Constitution and doubted that the federal government had the power to fund roads and other “internal improvements.”

Instead, states, localities, and private businesses took the initiative.  Private companies laid down hundreds of miles of toll roads.  By 1821, some 4,000 miles (6,400 km) of toll roads had been built, mainly to connect eastern cities, where heavy traffic made the roads extremely profitable.  Even so, major roads west had also been built, connecting Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Buffalo, New York, to eastern markets.

Steamboats and Canals

Rivers offered a far faster, more efficient, and cheaper way to move goods than did roads, which were often little more than wide paths.  A barge could hold many wagon-loads of grain or coal.  Loaded boats and barges, however, could usually travel only downstream, as moving against the current with heavy cargoes proved difficult.

The steamboat changed all that.  In 1807 Robert Fulton and Robert R.  Livingston stunned the nation when the Clermont chugged 150 miles up the Hudson River from New York City to Albany in just 32 hours.  The steamboat made river travel more reliable and upstream travel easier.  By 1850 over 700 steamboats, also called riverboats, traveled along the nation’s waterways.

The growth of river travel—and the success of the Erie Canal—spurred a wave of canal building throughout the country.  By 1840 more than 3,300 miles of canals snaked through the nation, increasing trade and stimulating new economic growth.

The “Iron Horse”

Another mode of transportation—railroads—also appeared in the early 1800s.  A wealthy, self-educated industrialist named Peter Cooper built an American engine based on the ones developed in Great Britain.  In 1830 Cooper’s tiny but powerful locomotive Tom Thumb pulled the nation’s first load of train passengers.  Forty adventuresome men and women traveled at the then incredible speed of 10 miles per hour along 13 miles of track between Baltimore and Ellicott City, Maryland.  The railroad era had dawned.

The new machines did not win universal favor.  Some said they were not only dangerous and uncomfortable but dirty and ugly as well.  “It is the Devil’s own invention,” declared one critic, “compounded of fire, smoke, soot, and dirt, spreading its infernal poison throughout the fair countryside.”

Others responded to the train’s awesome presence.  “When I hear the iron horse make the hills echo with his snort like thunder, shaking the earth with his feet, and breathing fire and smoke from his nostrils,” wrote the poet Henry David Thoreau, “it seems as if the earth had got a race now worthy to inhabit it.”

The advantages of train travel soon became apparent to almost everyone.  Trains traveled much faster than stagecoaches or wagons, and unlike steamboats, they could go nearly anywhere track was laid.  Perhaps more than any other kind of transportation, trains helped settle the West and expand trade between the nation’s different regions.

As railroads expanded, they created national markets for many goods by making transportation cheaper.  They increased the demand for iron and coal even more directly.  Between 1830 and 1861, the United States built more than 30,000 miles of railroads—so it needed 60,000 miles of iron rail.  Since mills used coal to make iron, the need for rails added to the increasing demand for coal.  Coal production shot up from 50,000 tons in 1820 to 14 million tons in 1860.

Evaluating
What were two advantages of trains over other kinds of transportation in the 1800s?
 

A New System of Production

Along with dramatic changes in transportation, a revolution occurred in business and industry.  The Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain in the middle 1700s, consisted of several basic developments.  Manufacturing shifted from hand tools to large, complex machines.  Skilled artisans gave way to workers, organized by specific tasks, and often unskilled.  Factories, some housing hundreds of machines and workers, replaced home-based workshops.  Manufacturers sold their wares nationwide or abroad instead of just locally.

ECONOMICS
Industrialization Sweeps the North

Industry developed quickly in the United States in the early 1800s for several reasons.  Perhaps the most important factor was the American system of free enterprise based on private property rights.  Individuals could acquire capital and make their own choices about how to use it, without strict government controls.

The free enterprise system also encouraged industrialization because companies in competition with each other were always willing to experiment with new technologies to make goods cheaper and to transport them faster.  The era’s low taxes also meant that entrepreneurs had more money to invest.

Beginning in the 1830s, many states encouraged industrialization by passing general incorporation laws.  These laws allowed companies to become corporations and to raise money by issuing stock without having to obtain a charter from the state legislature.  These laws also limited liability.  If a person bought stock in a company and it went bankrupt, the person risked losing his or her investment but was not responsible for the company’s debts.  By limiting liability, the new state laws encouraged people to invest money, spurring economic growth.

Industrialization began in the Northeast, where many swift-flowing streams provided factories with waterpower.  The region was also home to many entrepreneurs and merchants who were willing to invest in British industrial techniques.

At first, importing British technology was not easy.  Britain had passed strict laws with harsh penalties for anyone passing on its industrial know-how to foreigners.  A young English textile worker named Samuel Slater was willing to take the risk.  In 1789 he moved to Rhode Island, where he reconstructed the British water frame from memory.  The frame stretched and spun raw cotton fiber into cotton thread.

Taking matters a key step further was Francis C.  Lowell, who opened a series of mills in northeastern Massachusetts beginning in 1814.  Using machinery he built after touring British textile mills, Lowell introduced mass production of cotton cloth to the United States.  His Boston Manufacturing Company built residences for workers in a new town named after Lowell.  The company employed thousands of workers—mostly women and children, who would work for lower wages than men.

By 1840, scores of textile factories had been built in the Northeast.  Industrialists soon applied factory techniques to the production of lumber, shoes, leather, wagons, and other products.

Technological Advances

A wave of inventions and technological innovations spurred the nation’s industrial growth.  An ingenious young New Englander named Eli Whitney popularized the concept of interchangeable parts, transforming gun-making from a one-by-one process into a factory process.  Using this process, machines turned out large quantities of identical pieces that workers assembled into finished weapons.

Communications improved as well.  American inventor Samuel F.B.  Morse began work on the telegraph in 1832 and developed the Morse code for sending messages.  In 1844 the first long-distance telegraph line connected Washington, D.C., and Baltimore.  Morse publicly demonstrated the device, tapping out in code the words “What hath God wrought?” From Baltimore came a return message:  “What is the news from Washington?”

Journalists saw the telegraph as a tool for speedy transmission of the news.  In 1848 a group of newspapers pooled their resources to collect and share news over the wires.  This organization was the Associated Press.  Spurred by journalists and other users of the telegraph, more than 50,000 miles of telegraph wire connected most parts of the country by 1860.

Summarizing
Name two reasons the factory system began in the Northeast.
 

The Rise of Large Cities

The industrialization of the United States drew thousands of people from farms and villages to towns in search of factory jobs with higher wages.  Many city populations doubled or tripled.  In 1820 only one American city boasted more than 100,000 residents.  By 1860, eight cities had reached that size.

The growing cities provided opportunities for many different kinds of occupations.  One group was printers and publishers, who shared the goal of keeping the public informed.  America had always claimed a high literacy rate, and by 1840, over 75 percent of the total population and over 90 percent of the white population could read.  The publishing industry arose to satisfy the growing demand for reading materials.

Many of the early writers, editors, and teachers were educated women.  Sarah Buell Hale and Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney were leading editors and literary figures of their day.  Unlike women who worked in factories, women in publishing generally came from the young Republic’s growing middle class.

Describing
How did industrialization affect cities?

Workers Begin to Organize

The industrial boom created a new kind of laborer, the factory worker, whose ranks swelled to 1.3 million by 1860.  While early factory mills stressed a paternalistic concern for their workers, the relationship between management and labor became more strained when prices slumped and wages dropped.  Eleven-year-old Lucy Larcom went to work at the Lowell Mills after her father’s death left her family in financial hardship.  Although at first she felt excited by the change from farm life, she soon came to dread the drudgery of her work:

“I know that sometimes the confinement of the mill became very wearisome to me.  In the sweet June weather I would lean far out of the window, and try not to hear the unceasing clash of the sound inside.  Looking away to the hills, my whole stifled being would cry out, ‘Oh, that I had wings!’”

—quoted in Ordinary Americans

Hoping to help improve working conditions, some workers began to join together in labor unions.  During the late 1820s and early 1830s about 300,000 men and women belonged to some form of union.  Most of the organizations were local and focused on a single trade, such as printing or shoemaking.  Although these unions worked separately, they began pushing for similar changes, such as higher wages or a shorter 10-hour workday.

During this time, unions had little success.  Most employers refused to recognize or bargain with them.  Unions also had little power or money to support strikes, or work stoppages, to achieve their goals.

The courts often ruled against early unions, seeing them as unlawful conspiracies that limited free enterprise.  “Competition is the life of trade,” a New York court declared in an 1835 case involving a union’s demand that its workers be paid at least one dollar to make a pair of shoes.  “If the defendants cannot make coarse boots for less than one dollar per pair, let them refuse to do so:  but let them not directly or indirectly undertake to say that others shall not do the same work for less price.”

Unions did make some gains, however.  In 1840 President Martin Van Buren showed his gratitude for labor’s political support by reducing the workday for federal employees to 10 hours.  Two years later, in Commonwealth v.  Hunt, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that union strikes were legal.  Still, decades would pass before organized labor achieved real influence.

Explaining
What was life like for a factory worker in the early 1820s?

The Family Farm

Even though industry and cities expanded in the Northeast during the early 1800s, agriculture remained the country’s leading economic activity.  Until late in the century, farming employed more people and produced more wealth than any other kind of work.

Northern farmers produced enough to sell their surplus in eastern cities and towns.  The profit was often used to buy machinery and other items.  Thus, their labor not only helped feed the population but nourished the region’s economy as well.

In the first half of the century, the North had more than a million farms.  Northern farmers and their families worked long, hard days raising livestock and crops—mostly corn, wheat, and other grains—for the nation’s growing population.  A reporter traveling through Ohio in 1841 described a scene that resembled much of the North at that time:

“As far as the eye can stretch in the distance nothing but corn and wheat fields are to be seen; and on some points in the Scioto Valley as high as a thousand acres of corn may be seen in adjoining fields, belonging to some eight or ten different proprietors.”

—from A History of the United States
In the summer of 1817, explosions suddenly began disturbing the peace and quiet of rural upstate New York.  What had started was not a war but a great engineering challenge:  a canal, 40 feet (12.2 m) wide and 4 feet (1.2 m) deep, to be built from the Hudson River at Albany to Lake Erie at Buffalo.  The longest canal in the nation at that time ran almost 28 miles (45 km) .  The new canal would be a colossal 363 miles (584.1 km) long.

Building the canal was difficult and dangerous.  Canal beds collapsed, burying diggers.  Blasting accidents killed other workers.  In 1819 alone more than 1,000 men were stricken with diseases contracted in the swamps through which they dug.  Here, one investor coldly complains that the number of deaths is raising costs:

“In consequence of the sickness that prevailed in this section and its vicinity, we were under the necessity of raising wages from twelve to fourteen and some as high as seventeen dollars per month for common Labourers, and pay Physicians for atten[d]ing to the sick, purchase Coffins and grave clothes, and attend with Hands to bury the Dead.”

—quoted in The Artificial River

A Revolution in Transportation

Despite the dangers they faced, the canal workers pressed on and completed the immense project in 1825.  The Erie Canal was a striking example of a revolution in transportation that swept through the Northern states in the early 1800s.  This revolution led to dramatic social and economic changes.

Roads and Turnpikes

As early as 1806, the nation took the first steps toward a transportation revolution when Congress funded the building of a major east–west highway, the National Road.  In 1811 laborers started cutting the roadbed westward from the Potomac River at Cumberland, Maryland.  By 1818 the roadway had reached Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia) on the Ohio River.  Conestoga wagons drawn by teams of oxen or mules carried migrating pioneers west on this road, while livestock and wagon-loads of farm produce traveled the opposite way, toward the markets of the East.

Rather than marking the start of a federal campaign to improve transportation, the National Road turned out to be the only great federally funded transportation project of its time.  Jefferson and his successors believed in a strict interpretation of the Constitution and doubted that the federal government had the power to fund roads and other “internal improvements.”

Instead, states, localities, and private businesses took the initiative.  Private companies laid down hundreds of miles of toll roads.  By 1821, some 4,000 miles (6,400 km) of toll roads had been built, mainly to connect eastern cities, where heavy traffic made the roads extremely profitable.  Even so, major roads west had also been built, connecting Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Buffalo, New York, to eastern markets.

Steamboats and Canals

Rivers offered a far faster, more efficient, and cheaper way to move goods than did roads, which were often little more than wide paths.  A barge could hold many wagon-loads of grain or coal.  Loaded boats and barges, however, could usually travel only downstream, as moving against the current with heavy cargoes proved difficult.

The steamboat changed all that.  In 1807 Robert Fulton and Robert R.  Livingston stunned the nation when the Clermont chugged 150 miles up the Hudson River from New York City to Albany in just 32 hours.  The steamboat made river travel more reliable and upstream travel easier.  By 1850 over 700 steamboats, also called riverboats, traveled along the nation’s waterways.

The growth of river travel—and the success of the Erie Canal—spurred a wave of canal building throughout the country.  By 1840 more than 3,300 miles of canals snaked through the nation, increasing trade and stimulating new economic growth.

The “Iron Horse”

Another mode of transportation—railroads—also appeared in the early 1800s.  A wealthy, self-educated industrialist named Peter Cooper built an American engine based on the ones developed in Great Britain.  In 1830 Cooper’s tiny but powerful locomotive Tom Thumb pulled the nation’s first load of train passengers.  Forty adventuresome men and women traveled at the then incredible speed of 10 miles per hour along 13 miles of track between Baltimore and Ellicott City, Maryland.  The railroad era had dawned.

The new machines did not win universal favor.  Some said they were not only dangerous and uncomfortable but dirty and ugly as well.  “It is the Devil’s own invention,” declared one critic, “compounded of fire, smoke, soot, and dirt, spreading its infernal poison throughout the fair countryside.”

Others responded to the train’s awesome presence.  “When I hear the iron horse make the hills echo with his snort like thunder, shaking the earth with his feet, and breathing fire and smoke from his nostrils,” wrote the poet Henry David Thoreau, “it seems as if the earth had got a race now worthy to inhabit it.”

The advantages of train travel soon became apparent to almost everyone.  Trains traveled much faster than stagecoaches or wagons, and unlike steamboats, they could go nearly anywhere track was laid.  Perhaps more than any other kind of transportation, trains helped settle the West and expand trade between the nation’s different regions.

As railroads expanded, they created national markets for many goods by making transportation cheaper.  They increased the demand for iron and coal even more directly.  Between 1830 and 1861, the United States built more than 30,000 miles of railroads—so it needed 60,000 miles of iron rail.  Since mills used coal to make iron, the need for rails added to the increasing demand for coal.  Coal production shot up from 50,000 tons in 1820 to 14 million tons in 1860.

Evaluating
What were two advantages of trains over other kinds of transportation in the 1800s?
 

A New System of Production

Along with dramatic changes in transportation, a revolution occurred in business and industry.  The Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain in the middle 1700s, consisted of several basic developments.  Manufacturing shifted from hand tools to large, complex machines.  Skilled artisans gave way to workers, organized by specific tasks, and often unskilled.  Factories, some housing hundreds of machines and workers, replaced home-based workshops.  Manufacturers sold their wares nationwide or abroad instead of just locally.

ECONOMICS
Industrialization Sweeps the North

Industry developed quickly in the United States in the early 1800s for several reasons.  Perhaps the most important factor was the American system of free enterprise based on private property rights.  Individuals could acquire capital and make their own choices about how to use it, without strict government controls.

The free enterprise system also encouraged industrialization because companies in competition with each other were always willing to experiment with new technologies to make goods cheaper and to transport them faster.  The era’s low taxes also meant that entrepreneurs had more money to invest.

Beginning in the 1830s, many states encouraged industrialization by passing general incorporation laws.  These laws allowed companies to become corporations and to raise money by issuing stock without having to obtain a charter from the state legislature.  These laws also limited liability.  If a person bought stock in a company and it went bankrupt, the person risked losing his or her investment but was not responsible for the company’s debts.  By limiting liability, the new state laws encouraged people to invest money, spurring economic growth.

Industrialization began in the Northeast, where many swift-flowing streams provided factories with waterpower.  The region was also home to many entrepreneurs and merchants who were willing to invest in British industrial techniques.

At first, importing British technology was not easy.  Britain had passed strict laws with harsh penalties for anyone passing on its industrial know-how to foreigners.  A young English textile worker named Samuel Slater was willing to take the risk.  In 1789 he moved to Rhode Island, where he reconstructed the British water frame from memory.  The frame stretched and spun raw cotton fiber into cotton thread.

Taking matters a key step further was Francis C.  Lowell, who opened a series of mills in northeastern Massachusetts beginning in 1814.  Using machinery he built after touring British textile mills, Lowell introduced mass production of cotton cloth to the United States.  His Boston Manufacturing Company built residences for workers in a new town named after Lowell.  The company employed thousands of workers—mostly women and children, who would work for lower wages than men.

By 1840, scores of textile factories had been built in the Northeast.  Industrialists soon applied factory techniques to the production of lumber, shoes, leather, wagons, and other products.

Technological Advances

A wave of inventions and technological innovations spurred the nation’s industrial growth.  An ingenious young New Englander named Eli Whitney popularized the concept of interchangeable parts, transforming gun-making from a one-by-one process into a factory process.  Using this process, machines turned out large quantities of identical pieces that workers assembled into finished weapons.

Communications improved as well.  American inventor Samuel F.B.  Morse began work on the telegraph in 1832 and developed the Morse code for sending messages.  In 1844 the first long-distance telegraph line connected Washington, D.C., and Baltimore.  Morse publicly demonstrated the device, tapping out in code the words “What hath God wrought?” From Baltimore came a return message:  “What is the news from Washington?”

Journalists saw the telegraph as a tool for speedy transmission of the news.  In 1848 a group of newspapers pooled their resources to collect and share news over the wires.  This organization was the Associated Press.  Spurred by journalists and other users of the telegraph, more than 50,000 miles of telegraph wire connected most parts of the country by 1860.

Summarizing
Name two reasons the factory system began in the Northeast.
 

The Rise of Large Cities

The industrialization of the United States drew thousands of people from farms and villages to towns in search of factory jobs with higher wages.  Many city populations doubled or tripled.  In 1820 only one American city boasted more than 100,000 residents.  By 1860, eight cities had reached that size.

The growing cities provided opportunities for many different kinds of occupations.  One group was printers and publishers, who shared the goal of keeping the public informed.  America had always claimed a high literacy rate, and by 1840, over 75 percent of the total population and over 90 percent of the white population could read.  The publishing industry arose to satisfy the growing demand for reading materials.

Many of the early writers, editors, and teachers were educated women.  Sarah Buell Hale and Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney were leading editors and literary figures of their day.  Unlike women who worked in factories, women in publishing generally came from the young Republic’s growing middle class.

Describing
How did industrialization affect cities?

Workers Begin to Organize

The industrial boom created a new kind of laborer, the factory worker, whose ranks swelled to 1.3 million by 1860.  While early factory mills stressed a paternalistic concern for their workers, the relationship between management and labor became more strained when prices slumped and wages dropped.  Eleven-year-old Lucy Larcom went to work at the Lowell Mills after her father’s death left her family in financial hardship.  Although at first she felt excited by the change from farm life, she soon came to dread the drudgery of her work:

“I know that sometimes the confinement of the mill became very wearisome to me.  In the sweet June weather I would lean far out of the window, and try not to hear the unceasing clash of the sound inside.  Looking away to the hills, my whole stifled being would cry out, ‘Oh, that I had wings!’”

—quoted in Ordinary Americans

Hoping to help improve working conditions, some workers began to join together in labor unions.  During the late 1820s and early 1830s about 300,000 men and women belonged to some form of union.  Most of the organizations were local and focused on a single trade, such as printing or shoemaking.  Although these unions worked separately, they began pushing for similar changes, such as higher wages or a shorter 10-hour workday.

During this time, unions had little success.  Most employers refused to recognize or bargain with them.  Unions also had little power or money to support strikes, or work stoppages, to achieve their goals.

The courts often ruled against early unions, seeing them as unlawful conspiracies that limited free enterprise.  “Competition is the life of trade,” a New York court declared in an 1835 case involving a union’s demand that its workers be paid at least one dollar to make a pair of shoes.  “If the defendants cannot make coarse boots for less than one dollar per pair, let them refuse to do so:  but let them not directly or indirectly undertake to say that others shall not do the same work for less price.”

Unions did make some gains, however.  In 1840 President Martin Van Buren showed his gratitude for labor’s political support by reducing the workday for federal employees to 10 hours.  Two years later, in Commonwealth v.  Hunt, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that union strikes were legal.  Still, decades would pass before organized labor achieved real influence.

Explaining
What was life like for a factory worker in the early 1820s?

The Family Farm

Even though industry and cities expanded in the Northeast during the early 1800s, agriculture remained the country’s leading economic activity.  Until late in the century, farming employed more people and produced more wealth than any other kind of work.

Northern farmers produced enough to sell their surplus in eastern cities and towns.  The profit was often used to buy machinery and other items.  Thus, their labor not only helped feed the population but nourished the region’s economy as well.

In the first half of the century, the North had more than a million farms.  Northern farmers and their families worked long, hard days raising livestock and crops—mostly corn, wheat, and other grains—for the nation’s growing population.  A reporter traveling through Ohio in 1841 described a scene that resembled much of the North at that time:

“As far as the eye can stretch in the distance nothing but corn and wheat fields are to be seen; and on some points in the Scioto Valley as high as a thousand acres of corn may be seen in adjoining fields, belonging to some eight or ten different proprietors.”

—from A History of the United States

Farming was even more important in the South, which had few cities and less industry.  As parts of the North began concentrating on manufacturing, the South continued to tie its fortunes to agriculture—and to the institution of slavery.

Comparing
Why was farming more important in the South than in the North?
 

REVIEW & DO NOW Answer the following questions:
?	.