An economic process that started in England and also occurred in the United States that involved the introduction of technology into manufacturing.
Beginning in the 1500s, England’s production of woolen textiles increased, and mechanized work became an important element of England’s economic development. After 300 years, nonmechanical production capabilities had reached their limits. Growing demand for textiles and increased capital available for investment contributed to the introduction of technology into England’s textile industry in the second half of the eighteenth century. England had already experienced other great changes in its modes of production, including the creation of small workshops and the putting-out system (cottage industries), and its agricultural system produced a surplus of food for a growing population. England’s
Industrial Revolution saw the introduction of technology and the reorganization of labor under the factory system; the rise of new power sources, including water and the steam engine; and widespread social, economic, and political consequences of these revolutions. The introduction of technology allowed the English to produce more at lower cost, resulting in higher profits and a concerted effort to protect this technology through prohibition against exporting it.
The American colonies experienced the economic consequences of England’s Industrial Revolution as Britain flooded colonial markets with cheap manufactured goods. Even after Americans gained their political independence from England, they remained, to the detriment of many, part of England’s economic empire because of U.S. trade restrictions imposed by Great Britain.
Many of the earliest Americans saw the possibilities in England’s Industrial Revolution and hoped to accomplish a similar revolution in the United States. President George Washington’s secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, issued a series of reports promoting actions that would make America more economically independent and advanced, including improving public credit, paying off debt from the revolution, minting and standardizing currency, creating a national bank, and establishing tariffs designed to promote manufacturing. In the South, the postrevolutionary period saw a transformation to cotton production as English manufacturers demanded ever-increasing amounts of this raw material. The demand for cotton after the invention of the cotton gin in 1793 revitalized slavery in the South, where the economic system remained agrarian.
The economic and diplomatic problems caused by the Napoleonic Wars, coupled with the War of 1812, unleashed a fever of American nationalism that many citizens and politicians viewed as a call for economic independence and development. The War of 1812 and the expanding size of the United States clearly illustrated the need for an infrastructure, creating a boom in road and canal building followed shortly by steam-powered riverboats and railroads. The most important economic advancement for the United States in the early 1800s—and the one that would begin America’s own Industrial Revolution—occurred when the Boston Associates, a group of wealthy New England entrepreneurs, decided to create their own textile mills. Their plan began when American entrepreneur Samuel Slater disguised himself as a sailor and set sail from England to the United States with the plans in his mind to build a spinning mill—plans he had memorized while in England to thwart England’s attempts to keep its technological innovations secret. In 1813, the Boston Associates built their first mill in Waltham, Massachusetts, and then sent Francis Lowell, another member of the Boston Associates, to England to steal more technological secrets. In the early 1820s, the Boston Associates started to build a new state-of-the-art textile mill at Lowell, Massachusetts, hoping to improve on England’s technology and to avoid the negative social consequences such as drinking and prostitution that were associated with the Industrial Revolution. Their business and social experiment—technological innovation paired with the attracting of qualified and devoted workers— failed, but they had laid the foundations for America’s own Industrial Revolution.
From this small beginning America’s productive capacities expanded, and a second industrial revolution between the Civil War and World War II expanded the nation’s manufacturing capability. The rise and dominance of big business during this period stemmed from continued territorial and demographic expansion, ever-increasing sources of raw materials, an expanding infrastructure, inventions that expanded and cheapened production, and new management techniques and methods of labor organization. The growing population created a ready supply of consumers and cheap labor, and the consolidation and expansion of business gave entrepreneurs increasing political power. John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust, Andrew Carnegie’s steel empire, and J. P. Morgan’s financial activities all serve as examples of the productive capabilities of the United States. This capability gave the United States a decided advantage when it entered World Wars I and II and made victory possible. In the twentieth century, this manufacturing solidified America’s position as a world power. Since the mid-1990s, the United States and other industrialized nations have been moving into a post-industrial age in which mechanization is being replaced by a revolution in communications and service industries. This era is yet to be completely defined.
