This document discusses several key factors that contributed to the industrialization of the United States in the 19th century, including improvements to transportation infrastructure like the Erie Canal and National Road, the use of steam power and new technologies like interchangeable parts, and a business environment defined by free enterprise, private property rights, and limited liability that encouraged investment and experimentation. Rapid urbanization created new problems for cities to address as the population grew.
1. Erie Canal
National Road
Steamboats and Canals
Iron Horse
2. Free enterprise based on private property rights
Acquire capital and use it- no government
intervention and the passage of general incorporation
laws.
Allowed experimentation with new technologies
Increased competition
Low taxes = money to invest
General Incorporation Laws
Limited liability
3. Stony soil discouraged farming and made manufacturing
more attractive.
Relatively dense population provided labor
Shipping brought in capital while seaports made easy
imports and exports.
Rapid rivers provided abundant water power.
4. Who is Who
Sam Slater
"Father of the Factory System“
Francis Lowell
Growth of cities
Rapid urbanization created an array of problems
5. Increased the industrial growth in the U.S.
Interchangeable parts
Eli Whitney
Impact of the cotton gin (changed America
and the world)
Samuel Morse
Telegraph -"What hath God wrought?"
6. Accounted for largest % of population increase
1.Germans
2.Catholic southern Irish
Gains for workers
Laboring men get voting rights.
Commonwealth v. Hunt (1842)
Agriculture still leading economic activity