Secondary Source: The Industrial Revolution

Before the year 1750, the majority of Americans were farmers living on farms spread throughout the eastern part of the United States. Americans made many of the items they needed by hand. Most of the power to perform work was provided by either human or animal muscle. Plowing a field meant that a farmer needed to own an ox or mule that could pull a plow. The farmer would need to grow crops to feed the animal, build a plow, and strain themselves to control both the animal and the plow in the field. Cutting wood to build a house took an incredible amount of time and effort, each tree had to be cut down by hand, sawed into manageable pieces, and split into rails or boards. Life before the Industrial Revolution was tough, and even the simplest of tasks took an incredible amount of effort.

The Industrial Revolution was different, mainly because people performed work differently. The Industrial Revolution is the term given to the slow process in which new sources of power such as water mills and steam engines replaced human and animal power. In time, new power sources like the combustion engine that run on fossil fuels and electricity generated from coal and diesel will expand the available power sources. While most Americans were content with living on farms living a simple life, small pockets of America began to transform itself.

For hundreds of years before 1750, people wanting to make cloth spent much of their time spinning one thread at a time on a simple spinning wheel. In 1764, James Hargreaves developed a spinning jenny, which was a machine that could spin multiple threads at the same time. In 1769, a barber named Richard Arkwright figured out how to hook up a new spinning machine to a water wheel. By 1774, the inventor Samuel Crompton, combined the spinning and weaving process into a single machine called the spinning mule. By 1785, Edmund Cartwright was able to build a loom that was powered by a water wheel. This water wheel was housed in a large building near a stream. Water flowed past the building, through a device that channeled the water to flow over a large wheel beneath a waterfall. That wheel then turned a series of pulleys that powered the textile making machines. These buildings became the first factories.

To build these factories it took large amounts of capital or money raised for a business venture. Men and women began to realize that it would be more profitable if they could bring everyone together in one place to make textiles. Capitalists who had money began to invest in these businesses in order to make a profit. Capitalists, would then build the factories and hire workers to work a set number of hours each day. These early factories were places where people would come to work, producing a good, in order to make a wage. A wage is a term used to describe the money an employer pays an employee, or worker, to do a job.

Although the Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain, it soon spread to the United States. After the American Revolution and the new Constitution was created, the United States began to grow rapidly. The United States was the perfect place for Capitalism to spread. In America, people could own their own land, property, and had the protections of the Constitution. There was a strong belief in natural rights in the United States, and that each individual had the right to live their life, have the liberty to do what they wanted, and work to make themselves happy. For many, the pursuit of happiness meant becoming wealthy. These beliefs were the perfect recipe for people to become motivated to increase their wealth. Americans began working to copy Great Britain, and some even went as far as stealing technology and ideas.

Great Britain worked very hard to prevent any of the new technology from leaving the country. In 1789, Samuel Slater smuggled the designs for an industrial factory by memory out of Britain and into the United States. Slater went on to assist Moses Brown, a Quaker capitalist who owned a mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Slater assisted him in modernizing his factory and by 1793 he owned one of the first successful textile mills in the United States. By 1812 Francis Cabot Lowell actually improved upon the British factory plans and combined the cleaning, spinning, and weaving machines to produce textiles in just one building. In 1821, following his death, Lowell's partners constructed a model factory town called Lowell Massachusetts.

As the Industrial Revolution spread throughout the United States, many began working in the factories for a wage. Although factory work was done by both men and women, young and old, the more popular group of workers were young women. Young women who hoped to escape the farm life, or wished to make their own money flocked to the early factories. The promise of a wage was a big draw. Many of these women wanted to earn extra money for their family that stayed to work on the farms. While others earned a wage from factory work in order to escape farm life or sometimes even arranged marriages.

Daily life in the factories was not the most comfortable of life. Workers often worked about 12 hours a day, 6 days a week nearly all year long. Many factory workers did not mind the long hours, because farming life also required long hours. Many people did not see much difference in children working on the farm and in the factory, and as a result, factory owners would often hire children as well. WIthout childcare or public education, many parents welcomed the additional wages their child could earn. Smaller children were actually in great demand since their smaller bodies and hands meant they could move around the machinery better. Sadly, injuries were common.

The Industrial Revolution was changing the way people lived. More and more families were leaving the farm to work in factories. Poorer families would often send our younger daughters and wives to work in factories while husbands and sons continued to farm. Towns sprang up all across the country, and what were once small villages became large towns as more and more factories were built. Machinery powered by water mills, and later steam engines, increased productivity and as production increased prices of goods dropped. Across the nation, people were able to buy goods cheaper and raise their standard of living. The Industrial Revolution would not be without its problems, but for many, the cost was worth the change.