Post-Civil War Industrialization in the United States: The 2 nd Industrial Revolution The Rise of Technology, Heavy Industry, Industrial Empires.

Post-Civil War Industrialization in the United

States: The 2nd Industrial Revolution

The Rise of Technology, Heavy Industry, Industrial Empires

Natural Resources

• Vast supply of natural resources of the country were exploited for economic gain: coal; timber; iron ore; copper; lead; riverways; and…OIL!

• Titusville, PA: Edwin Drake drilled the world’s first oil well in 1859.

A Huge Potential Workforce

• Huge numbers of European (and Asian) immigrants:

1881: 750,000 immigrants

1905: 1,000,000 immigrants

• Farmers driven off the land in the 1890’s, due to droughts and foreign competition

Entrepreneurs

• Capitalism and free enterprise encouraged entrepreneurs, people who invest in a new product or enterprise.

• Fueled by “rags to riches” stories by people like Horatio Alger.

The Government Encouraged Enterpreneurism and Free

Enterprise Through:

• Protective Tariffs: taxes on imported goods to increase the cost of foreign products

• Laissez Faire policies: Businesses should be allowed to do what they want with limited government regulation to get in the way

• US tradition of strong private property rights

• Example: land grants to private transcontinental railroads

Innovation and Invention Drove the Economy

• Number of patents increased incredibly rapidly during this time (440,000+ from 1860-1890)

• Included some very famous inventions…

Edison's U.S. Patents by Execution Date This graph shows the annual number of successful U.S. patent applications Edison executed (that is, signed in preparation for filing at the U.S. Patent Office). In 1882, at the height of his work on electric light and power, he completed 106 successful applications.

This graph shows the annual number of successful U.S. patent applications Edison executed (that is, signed in preparation for filing at the U.S. Patent Office). In 1882, at the height of his work on electric light and power, he completed 106 successful applications…1,093 successful U.S. patent applications in total!

Electricity

• Light bulb invented in 1880 by Thomas Edison and his research team (in his Menlo Park, NJ research lab.)

• George Westinghouse’s transformer made it possible to send electricity over long distances.

The Bessemer Process• Steel- lighter and stronger than

iron.• Bessemer Process: A new,

fast, cheap way to make high quality steel (by blasting air through molten iron).

• Developed in the 1850s in the UK. By 1890, the US was out-producing UK

• Great Lakes region – coal and iron reserves – became the center of steel production.

Telegraph and Telephone• 100,000 miles of telegraph

lines across US by 1900• 1866 – Improvement of the

transatlantic cable (Cyrus Field) linked continents.

• 1896 - Wireless telegraph invented by Guglielmo Marconi (aka father of radio)

• 1876 - Telephone invented by Alexander Graham Bell

• By 1900, 1,000,000+ telephones in the US.

Mass Production• Factory system using

machines to carry out tasks once done by hand.

• Labor as the machine working machines – “scientific management”

• Assembly lines; interchangeable parts; wages as cost of production are all part of the Factory system

The Effects of Industrialization on the US• Globalization: By the

1880’s, the US exported huge amounts of food and goods, especially grain, steel , and textiles.

• This economic wealth began to equate to political power within the US.

• Likewise, during this time period the US started to become a major world power.

Changing Life for Americans• Dramatic increase in the size of cities and in the

amount of goods available, especially to city-dwellers.

• By 1900, 2/3 of working Americans were (low) wage earners, working 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. (One out of 5 women worked as wage earners)

• Expansion of middle class (white collar workers)

• Concentration of wealth into top 10% of US population, who own 90% of US wealth!

• An ever-widening divide between wealthy, the middle class, and the working poor.

The Environment• During this time the

environment began to rapidly degrade across the nation…

ENTRY #20

Name and discuss three ways in which the environment may have suffered from US industrialization and western expansion after the Civil War.