National and Regional Growth

• Free Enterprise and Factories   * During Industrial Revolution factory machines replace hand tools   * Manufacturing replaces farming as main form of work   * Factory system brings workers and machines together under one roof   * People leave farms, move to cities where factories are located   * Work for wages, have set schedules, way of life changes   * War of 1812 leads U.S. towards industrialization   * British blockade causes U.S. to manufacture goods previously imported
• Factories Come to New England   * New England is a good place to set up successful factories because:     * Fast-moving rivers     * Ships and access to the ocean     * Willing labor force   * Samuel Slater builds first spinning mill and hires entire families   * Family system of employment spreads throughout New England
• Lowell Mills Hire Women   * Francis Cabot Lowell builds factory in Waltham, MA in 1813   * Uses power looms   * Factory is successful and build a factory town   * Lowell mills     * Textile mills in Lowell     * Employ farm girls     * High wages   * Girls follow strict rules, read books, and publish literary magazines   * Later factories run by powerful steam engines instead of water power     * Allow factories to be built away from rivers and beyond New England
• A New Way to Manufacture   * U.S. government hire Eli Whitney to make 10,000 muskets for the army   * Guns are made one at a time by gunsmiths, Whitney changed this method     * Uses interchangeable parts to make guns       * Speeds up production       * Makes repairs easy       * Uses less skilled workers       * Requires close supervision       * Gives workers less independence
• Moving People, Goods, and Messages   * Robert Fulton invents steamboat, put Clermont on the Hudson River in 1807     * Clermont makes 300-mile trip from New York to Albany and back in record time of 62 hours   * Henry Miller Shreve design a more powerful steam engine   * Enables steamboats to travel upriver, against the current   * Samuel F.B. Morse first demonstrates the telegraph in 1837     * Enables people to communicate in seconds between cities   * By 1861, telegraph lines span the U.S., brings people closer as a nation
• Technology Improves Farming   * John Deere invents steel plow in 1836     * Makes plowing Midwestern soil easier     * More farmers move to the Midwest   * Mechanical reaper, threshing machine improves agriculture   * Farmers feed factory worker, become market for factory goods   * Growth of Northeastern textile mills increases Southern cotton demand

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