U.S. History

Transportation Revolution

Because of dramatic improvements in transportation, old communities were tied together, previously isolated neighborhoods were penetrated, and the transition to a market economy was made physically possible.

Transportation in 1815 was primitive to nonexistant. The U.S. was a rural nation; Americans despaired of doing business on a national scale, and transportation west of the Appalachians were almost entirely undeveloped. Western farmers moved their products downstream to tributaries of the Ohio-Mississippi Rivers. A keelman had the responsibilities of transporting goods upstream, going against the current which could take months. The most famous keelman was Mike Fink.

No matter, transport costs were expensive and the result was that trans-Appalachian settlements remained marginal to market economy. The main port for western products in 1815 was New Orleans.

Internal improvements brought about a national road that linked the Potomac River and the Ohio River, and the Lancaster Turnpike linked Philadelphia with the Ohio River. However, they had few effects because of the high costs.

It was really the steamboat that opened the West to commercial agriculture. It was invented by Robert Fulton. The Washington reached Louisville, Kentucky from New Orleans in 25 days. It made two-way traffic on the Mississippi River possible, and it made the West into a busy commercial region.

The Erie Canal (aka "Clinton's Ditch") was built by New York governor DeWitt Clinton. It provided a water route between the Northwest and New York City. It also lowered the cost of transporting farm produce and generated more profit. It was an immense success. The Erie Canal encouraged other states to join the canal boom:

-1817 canal mileage was fewer than 100 miles
-1840 canal mileage was 3,300 miles.

Railroads

A national system with 5000 miles of rail developed in the 1840s in the United States. A national system was a continuous integrated system that created massive links between East and Northwest. Railroads soon rendered canals obsolete.

Time and Money

The Transportation Revolution reduced the time and money it took to move goods. Turnpikes cut the cost of wagon transport, and steamboat cut the river travel to one-third of a cent.The price of moving goods dropped from 1815 to 1860 by 95%.

There was a major improvement in speed. In the 1840s, travel time from Cincinnati to New York took 18-20 days, but by 1852, travel time from Cincinnati to New York took 6-8 days. Improvements like these made a national market economy possible.

Market Revolution

The Market Revolution was made possible in the 1840s by improved transportation. Foreign trade had driven American economic growth up until 1815.

1815 Business:
-U.S. exports- $52.6 million
-U.S. imports- $113 million

1860 Business:
-U.S. exports- $333.6 million
-U.S. imports- $353.6 million

Before 1815, U.S. exports involved 15% of the total national product.
By 1830, however, U.S. exports involved 6% of total national product.

This was because after 1815, U.S. developed self-sustaining domestic markets for farm produce & manufactured goods. The great engine of American economic growth no longer depended on the old colonial relationship with Europe, but now on a burgeoning internal market.

The whole political purpose of Henry Clay's American System was to transcend sectionalism and create a unified United States. Unfortunately, the Market Revolution had not accomplished this by 1840. In fact, it had produced greater results within regions than between them. For example, the Erie Canal's trade, until 1840, was mostly within New York. Therefore the Market Revolution (before 1840) was more of a regional thing--as opposed to a interregional affair.

The new transport network was mostly responsible for turning the economy into a Market Revolution. Canals and roads from New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore became the favored passage west for eastern commodities.

The result for the Ohio-Mississippi River System was the amount of goods it carried vastly increased (although this increase was a shrinking share of the expanded total) and the new national market between the West and the East was excluding the South.

From Yeoman to Businessman

There was a transformation of rural outwork; farmers became consumers. Southerners began moving north of the Ohio River--into a territory that banned slavery, which they banned because it blocked opportunites for poor whites who could not compete with large plantation owners.

Farming became easier with new technology

The standard harvesting tool of the 1830s was the cast-iron plow, but it was replaced by the McCormick reaper. Also, Johnny Chapman (aka "Johnny Appleseed") planted apple trees. It's relevant because it took place in the same time period. And it's in my notes.

The Market Revolution transformed 18th century households into 19th century homes. Between 1800 and 1850, people began to limit the family size. Neighborhoods became landscapes of privacy.

Industrial Revolution

The Jeffersonians wanted America to remain rural, but the Federalists argued that America must produce its own manufactured goods.

The American textile industry originated from industrial espionage (spying) and was powered by water. It was invented in Britain at first by Richard Arkwright, and brought to New England by Samuel Slater.

Samuel Slater was a British merchant who left Britain and came to the U.S. and he was the first to build the American Arkwright spinning mill in 1790 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

He was also responsible for the Rhode Island System (The Family System). His factories (an idea he copied from Arkwright) consisted of villages built in the countryside, and it employed the entire village. It involved the process of producing finished cloth from raw cotton.

Another factory system was introduced by Francis Cabot Lowell, a Bostonian. He toured in English factory districts in 1811 to spy on them because Britain had the greatest textile industries in the world at the time, and he wanted to make a profit (industrial espionage). He took notes (and was disgusted by the squalor the English textile towns), and he built his first mill in Waltham, Massachusetts. He eventually expanded this system to Lowell, Lawrence, and other cities.

The Waltham System (or the Lowell System) differed from the Rhode Island System because it was heavily capitalized and fully mechanized. They turned raw cotton into finished cloth and employed young single women from the country. The women were boarded in company boardinghouses and lived by enforced rules of conduct, on and off duty. They became independent, wage-earning women.

The Market Revolution hit American cities with particular force, and the richest men were seaport merchants.

There was also a rise in New York City's ready-made clothing (before that, people had to buy cloth and sew them into clothes themselves). In 1815, only the wealthy wore tailor-made clothing. However, the creation of the southern and western markets, the availability of cheap manufactured cloth and availability of cheap labor made ready-made clothing affordable.

This transformed New york City into a center of a national market for ready-made clothes (so that's why New York is a fashion capital of the world). Negro cottons were graceless, hastily assembled clothes slaves wore, dungarees and work shirts were for western farmers, inexpensive clothing were for urban workers, and fancy ready-made clothing were for middle-class.

In 1860, women in the clothing trade workforce was 25000; the percentage of women was 25% and the percentage of women working in the clothing trade was 67%.