Debbie Arthur

Writing Assignment # 5
A Maturing Industrial Society
The industrialization of the American economy was started by Samuel
Slater, now known as the Father of the Industrial Revolution. With small changes
to one machine a whole different process would be initiated and a different product
could be made faster or invented. 1 It was a time for new technologies the rise of
big business mainly in the North and capitalism. With the output of more products
at a faster rate, consumers demand grew and this created many new jobs. People
started to migrate to the city to find jobs. With the mass production of steel came
better building structures and cities now needed to accommodate the increase of
the population. 2
This period witnessed the growth of gigantic corporations that dominated
key industries. Through strategies such as vertical integration, horizontal
integration, and hard competition, industrialists such as Andrew Carnegie in steel
and J.D. Rockefeller in oil built enormous economic empires, with control
centralized in their hands. Numerous industries were affected by this trend,
as more and more economic power was wielded by fewer and fewer people. This
1. James West Davidson, Experience History: Interpreting Americas Past
Vol. 1 Salt Lake Community College (The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 2011), pg.262-263
2. Ben Goold; Live Schreiber; Kathryn Taylor, America: the Story of Us (A&E Television Networks)

concentration of power alarmed many Americans and sparked cries for

reform.3Progress reform movements started to happen; strikes for better work
environments, workers joined unions and laws were passed to protect workers.
There are some consequences to urbanization, either people couldnt afford
to rent a place or just didnt have the means to do it, slums start appearing in
different cities, crime increases as well. The cities are not prepared for this many
people so soon. Waste accumulates on streets; living conditions are very ugly for
many people. Economically as a country we were on top or our game but socially
we were on bad shape. Filth accounted for 40,000 deaths in New York City.4
There was such a big movement of blacks to the North, that it became
known as the Great Migration; even though the North had emancipated them there
was racial tension. Many whites saw them as coming and taking their jobs, kind of
what is happening today with Hispanics. Henry Ford offered equal pay for whites
and blacks but that did not mean equal treatment. Ethnic divisions were apparent
too, Chinese turned to laundries they preferred to be self-employed, Scandinavians
worked at the lumber yards in Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota. 5
3. www.westga.edu
4. Ben Goold; Live Schreiber; Kathryn Taylor, America: the Story of Us (A&E Television
Networks)
5. Ibid.

America emerges as a world power by 1914 for many different reasons. Our
transportation system was very well planned, as a country we were connected with
each other. Many of our inventions push us forward to a better quality of life.
The balance of trade shifted from imports to exports around 1880.
Agricultural products averaged 70 percent; we had the land to grow massive
amounts of foods. Manufactured goods grew from 4.7 percent of the nation's
exports in the first decade to 16.2 percent in the last. In 1900, America exported
$1.4 billion in goods and imported only $850 million. With the mass production of
steel it was it because one of our top exports accounting for 9 percent of the
value. 6
I think that steel changed the face of the planet, we can build up instead of
just horizontally; we had the man power thanks to immigration. But without our
inventions we would not have gotten as fast or far as were we were during this
time. I am shocked at the rate we advanced, it was like under every rock was just
something waiting to be discover or invented. Americans were striving for
greatness since the very beginning and they might not have been aware of it while
it was happening. Our ideologies of our founding fathers had survived this long
and people believed that here was the land of milk and honey. Many opportunities
existed here and still are just waiting to be discovered.
6. www.vault.com/importexport