*Where were most early mills built, and why were they built there?  (near rivers, for power)

*In America, the Industrial Revolution began in New England.  Why?  (poor soil meant people turned away from farming, so there were many potential workers; they had many rivers and access to Pennsylvania’s coal; New England had trading ties with England, wanted to copy them, and learned their secrets; New England had many ports from which to sell finished goods)

*It took a lot of money to build a factory.  How might people deal with that?  They formed corporations in which many people could invest their money (or capital); this is called capitalism.  The capitalists who invested in these factories got stock in return to show what share of control and profit they had.

*America also allowed free enterprise, meaning the government could not tell people how to work, or where, or (for the most part) what kind of business people could have.  In the south, of course, there were limits on free enterprise because slaves had little or no choice in what they did.

*One reason America was able to industrialise is that several important inventions were made in America or copied from Europe.  Free enterprise encouraged invention, as the inventors could profit from what they had made, particularly as the patent system made it illegal to copy someone’s idea for several years (although it was hard in those days to successfully sue someone who infringed on a patent).

*Textiles were the first major industry to become industrialized, and cotton was one of the most important fibres used in making textiles.  However, most of the cotton grown in America was full of seeds that were hard to pick out, so not much cotton was grown except along the coast (where a better kind could be grown).  In 1793, however, Eli Whitney, a northerner visiting friends in the south, patented a cotton engine (gin, for short), that combed the seeds out of the cotton.  This allowed one gin operator to process fifty times as much cotton per day as one person had been able to process by hand.

*What major change did this have in American culture and economics?  It made slavery profitable and more popular in the Deep South, as will be discussed further in two days.

*Being able to clean cotton was important, because America had just begun building textile mills.  The British had tried to keep their methods secret and even tried to keep workers from leaving the country, but in 1789 Samuel Slater began producing cotton thread using methods copied from the British. 

*Pass out cotton balls.  Students will see that these have already been picked and cleaned of seeds (the really hard parts).  They will need to separate the fibres, comb them straight, and spin them into thread.  How much easier would it be to process this with machinery powered by water?

*Still, most textiles were made in many different steps that were done in different places:  cotton might have been picked in one place, cleaned in another, spun into thread in a third place, woven in another, and perhaps dyed in another place.  This was inefficient, and in 1814, Francis Cabot Lowell and other investors introduced the factory system to the United States.  In the factory system, many of these steps were combined in one building (or at least one area). 

*Lowell employed mostly young women, because they would work for less and were not needed as much on farms.  They usually worked a few years, saved some money, and then got married.  Lowell’s company took care of the girls who worked there, but many later factories were very unpleasant places to work, with low pay, bad conditions, and little concern for workers’ safety.

*Manufacturing moved beyond textiles, too, in large part because of another invention introduced in America by Eli Whitney in 1798 (although a French inventor had developed it about ten years earlier).  This was the idea that all the parts for a finished product ought to be standardised so that a part made for one product could be used in any product of the same.  This made it possible to break things down into many small steps so workers needed less training to make or repair things.

*Many businessmen funded their new corporations through loans from the Second Bank of the United States, which Congress in chartered for 20 years, starting in 1816.  This helped strengthen America’s economy, but many smaller banks and farmers, particularly frontiersmen, felt that the Bank favoured rich businessmen who lived in large cities and were friends with the Bank’s managers. 

*Manufacturing also benefited from developments in transportation, as Americas found new ways to move around the country and transport goods to and from their factories.

---

This page last updated 8 February, 2009.