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Home , Interchangeable parts, Mass Production, Samuel Slater

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SECTION 1 The Industrial TEKS 5B, 5D, 7A, 11A, 12C, 12D, 13A, Revolution in 13B, 14A, 14B, 27A, 27D, 28B What You Will Learn… America Main Ideas 1. The of new in Great Britain If YOU were there... led to the beginning of the You live in a small Pennsylvania town in the 1780s. Your father is a . 2. The development of new blacksmith, but you earn money for the family, too. You raise sheep machines and processes and spin their wool into yarn. Your sisters knit the yarn into warm brought the Industrial Revolu- tion to the . wool gloves and mittens. You sell your products to merchants in the 3. Despite a slow start in manu- city. But now you hear that someone has invented machines that facturing, the United States made rapid improvements can spin thread and make cloth. during the . Would you still be able to earn the same amount

The Big Idea of money for your family? Why? The Industrial Revolution trans- formed the way goods were produced in the United States. BUILDing BACKOU GR ND In the early 1700s making goods depend- ed on the hard work of humans and animals. It had been that way for Key Terms and People hundreds of years. Then new brought a change so radical Industrial Revolution, p. 385 that it is called a revolution. It began in Great Britain and soon spread to , p. 385 the United States. , p. 385 , p. 386 technology, p. 387 , p. 387 The Industrial Revolution , p. 387 At the beginning of the 1700s, the majority of people in Europe , p. 387 and the United States were farmers. They made most of what they needed by hand. For example, female family members usually made clothing. First, they used a to spin raw materials, such as or wool, into thread. Then they used a hand loom to Use the graphic organizer online weave the thread into cloth. to list the key contributors to the Some families produced extra cloth to sell to merchants, who sold Industrial Revolution and their it for a profit. In towns, a few skilled workers made goods by hand in . their own shops. These workers included blacksmiths, carpenters, and shoemakers. Their ways of life had stayed the same for generations.

A Need for Change By the mid-1700s, however, changes in Great Britain led to a greater demand for manufactured goods. As agriculture and roads

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Textile Mill and After the thread was spun, it moved to the Connect to Science and Technology loom to be woven into A water frame adapts the power of cloth. Workers called flowing water into energy that moves spoolers watched the wheels and gears through a system looms and made sure that of belts. These wheels and gears then the spools of thread were kept straight. move parts of machines such as looms and spinning wheels. Then the raw cotton was spun into thread on a .

Flowing water from a river turned A for clean- the waterwheel. The giant wheel ing the raw cotton was turned smaller gears connected to the first step. belts. These belts moved parts of the machinery in the mill.

ANALYSIS skill Analyzing Visuals What provided the power for the machines in the mill?

improved, cities and populations grew. Over- In 1769 Englishman Richard Arkwright seas trade also expanded. Traditional manu- invented a large spinning machine called a facturing methods did not produce enough water frame. The water frame could produce goods to meet everyone’s needs. dozens of cotton threads at the same time. It People began creating ways to use lowered the cost of cotton cloth and increased Academic machines to make things more efficient. the speed of production. Vocabulary These developments led to the Industrial The water frame used flowing water as its efficient productive and Revolution, a period of rapid growth in using source of power. Merchants began to build not wasteful machines for and production large textile mills, or , near rivers and that began in the mid-1700s. streams. The mills were filled with spinning machines. Merchants began hiring people to Textile Industry work in the mills. The first important breakthrough of the Additional improvements also speeded Industrial Revolution took place in how up the spinning process. Britain soon had textiles, or cloth items, were made. Before the the world’s most productive textile manufac- Industrial Revolution, spinning thread took turing industry. much more time than making cloth. Several workers were needed to spin enough thread Reading Check Drawing Conclusions How to supply a single weaver. did machines speed up ?

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New Machines and Processes first mill in Pawtucket, . The production of cotton thread by American New machines encouraged the rise of new machines had begun. Slater ran the mill and processes in business and manufacturing. the machinery. He was confident that his As the machines used to make products new machines would work well. became more efficient, the processes involved changed dramatically. “If I do not make as good yarn as they do in England, I will have nothing for my services, but Slater and His Secrets will throw the whole of what I have attempted The new textile machines allowed Great over the bridge.” Britain to produce cloth more quickly and —Samuel Slater, quoted in The Ingenious Yankees, by Joseph and Francis Gies inexpensively than other countries could. To protect British industry, the British Parlia- Slater’s machines worked, and the ment had made it illegal for skilled mechan- Pawtucket mill became a success. Slater’s wife ics or machine plans to leave the country. also invented a new cotton thread for sewing. Disguised as a farmer, Samuel Slater, a In 1798 Slater formed his own company to skilled British mechanic, immigrated to the build a mill. By the time he died in 1835, he United States after carefully memorizing the owned all or part of 13 textile mills. designs of textile mill machines. Soon after Other Americans began building textile arriving, he sent a letter to , mills. Most were located in the Northeast. who owned a textile business in New In New England in particular, merchants England. Slater claimed he could improve had the money to invest in . More the way textiles were manufactured in the important, this region had many rivers United States. and streams that provided a reliable supply Brown had one of his workers test of power. Fewer mills were built in the Slater’s knowledge of machinery. Slater South, partly because investors in the South passed. Brown’s son, Smith Brown, and concentrated on expanding agriculture. son-in-law, William Almy, formed a partner- There, agriculture was seen as an easier way ship with Slater. In 1793 they opened their to make money.

Elements of Mass Production

Connect to Economics Mass-production techniques allow manu- facturers to efficiently create more goods for the marketplace. Mass production requires the use of interchangeable parts, machine tools, and the division of labor. Why are interchangeable parts important?

Interchangeable Parts Machine Tools Eli Whitney developed the idea of Machine tools like this one using interchangeable parts. Inter- make parts that are identi- changeable, or identical, parts are cal and therefore inter- needed so each part does not have changeable. to be custom-made by hand.

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A Manufacturing Breakthrough Whitney also came up with the idea Despite these great changes, most manu- of using interchangeable parts — parts of facturing was still done by hand. In the late a machine that are identical. Using inter- the U.S. government worried about a changeable parts made machines easier to possible war with France, so it wanted more assemble and broken parts easier to replace. muskets for the army. Skilled workers made Whitney promised to build 10,000 muskets the parts for each weapon by hand. No two in two years. The federal government gave parts were exactly alike, and carefully fitting him money to build his , and in 1801 all the pieces together took much time and Whitney was called to Washington, D.C., to skill. give a demonstration. As a result, American gun makers could Whitney stood before President John not produce the muskets quickly enough to Adams and his secretary of war. He had an satisfy the government’s demand. Factories assortment of parts for 10 guns. He then ran- domly chose parts and quickly assembled needed better technology , the tools used to produce items or to do work. them into muskets. To the audience’s amaze- In 1798 inventor Eli Whitney tried to ment, he repeated the process several times. address some of these problems. Whitney Whitney’s Influence gave officials a proposal for mass-producing Whitney had proven that American guns for the U.S. government using water- inventors could improve upon the new powered machinery. Whitney explained British technology. Machines that produced the benefits of his ideas. matching parts soon became standard in industry. Interchangeable parts sped up “I am persuaded that machinery moved by water [and] adapted to this business would mass production , the efficient production greatly reduce the labor and facilitate [ease] of large numbers of identical goods. the manufacture of this article.” Reading Check Summarizing How did Eli —Eli Whitney, quoted in Technology in America, edited by Carroll W. Pursell Whitney influence American manufacturing?

Division of Labor Mass-Produced Goods Mass production uses a division of The end result is goods that have labor in which the work is divided been mass-produced. These tech- among several people, each doing niques were used to build items a specific task, like the workers such as these firearms. shown here.

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linking TO Today Modern Manufacturing The word manufacture comes from Latin words that mean “to make by hand.” Yet in modern manufactur­ ing, machines—not human hands—do most of the work. A key feature of modern manufacturing is the . An assembly line is a long conveyer belt. As the product moves along the belt, or “down the line,” workers assemble it. Often, the workers use machines to help them. On a growing number of ­assembly lines, there are no workers at all: the prod­ uct is assembled by computer-controlled . Although a far cry from Eli ­Whitney’s ­factory, modern factories use the same elements of mass production that ­Whitney did more than 200 ANALYSIS Analyzing Information years ago. skill How do interchangeable parts help the modern assembly line work?

Manufacturing Grows Slowly generally were willing to work for lower wages than factory workers in the United Despite the hard work of people such as States were. Samuel Slater and Eli Whitney, manufactur- Because British manufacturers had plenty ing in the United States grew slowly. Many of factory workers with technical skills, they businesspeople were eager to make their could produce large amounts of goods less fortune in the new capitalist economy, free expensively than most American businesses from the restrictive British policies of the could. As a result, they could charge lower colonial era, but there were several reasons prices for the goods. Lower British prices made it was difficult. In 1810 Secretary of the it difficult for many American manufacturers Treasury suggested some rea- to compete with British companies. This situ- sons why there were so few factories in the ation in turn discouraged American investors United States. from spending the money needed to build “[The reasons include] . . . the superior attrac- new factories and machinery. The new free tions of agricultural pursuits [farming], . . . the market economy had not yet reached a bal- abundance of land compared with the popula- ance between the needs of workers, business tion, the high price of labor, and the want [lack] owners, and consumers that would result in of sufficient capital [investment].” a growing economy. As a result, only a few —Albert Gallatin, quoted in Who Built America? industries had found a place in the Ameri- by Bruce Levine et al. can economy. These included cotton goods, Gallatin and others believed that few flour , weapons, and production. people would choose to work in a factory if These circumstances began to change they could own their own farm instead. In around the time of the War of 1812. Since the Great Britain, on the other hand, land was 1790s, wars between European powers had more scarce and more expensive than in the interfered with U.S. trade. American custom- United States. As a result, fewer people were ers were no longer able to get all the manu- able to own farms. British factory ­workers factured goods they were used to buying from

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British and European manufacturers. Then, In February 1815, New Yorkers celebrated during the War of 1812, British ships block- the end of the War of 1812 and the return of aded eastern seaports, preventing foreign free trade. The streets were decorated and filled ships from delivering goods. Americans began with merchants whose ships were loaded with to buy the items they needed from American goods. “With Peace and Commerce, America manufacturers instead of from foreign sup- Prospers,” declared one display. Eager busi- pliers. As profits for American factories grew, nesspeople prepared to lead the United States manufacturers began to spend more money into a period of industrial growth. They urged expanding their factories. State banks and pri- northern politicians to pass higher tariffs on vate investors began to lend money to manu- foreign goods to protect American compa- The Impact facturers for their businesses. nies. Many southerners, however, feared that Today At the same time, many Americans began tariffs might harm their economy by making American to realize that the United States had been imported goods too expensive. dependence on relying too heavily on foreign goods. If the some foreign United States could not meet its own needs, Reading Check Analyzing How did the War goods, such as of 1812 aid the growth of American manufacturing? oil, is still being it might be weak and open to attack. Former debated today. president , who had once opposed manufacturing, changed his mind. SUmmary and preview The Industrial He, too, realized that the United States was Revolution started with the English tex- too dependent on imports. tile industry but soon spread to the United “To be independent for the comforts of life we States. In the next section you will learn must fabricate [make] them ourselves. We must about how factories changed the working now place the manufacturer by the side of the lives of Americans. agriculturalist [farmer].” —Thomas Jefferson, from The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, edited by P. L. Ford

Section 1 Assessment ONLINE QUIZ Reviewing Ideas, Terms, and People Critical Thinking 1. a. Identify What was the first industry to begin to 4. Drawing Conclusions Review your notes on use machines to manufacture goods? key inventions and improvements during the b. Predict In what ways might life for workers Industrial Revolution. Then copy the chart below change as a result of the Industrial Revolution? and use it to show how each contribution affected 2. a. Recall In what part of the United States were manufacturing. most mills located? Why? Invention/improvement Effect on Manufacturing b. Draw Conclusions How did the ideas of Samuel Slater and Eli Whitney affect manufacturing in the United States? c. Evaluate Whose contributions do you think were more important—Slater’s textile machines or Whitney’s interchangeable parts? Why? 3. a. Identify What event encouraged the growth of Focus on Writing American manufacturing? Why? 5. Noting Inventions In your notebook, create a three- b. Contrast Why was manufacturing in Great column chart. In the first column, list any inventions ­Britain in the early years more successful than that mentioned in this section. In the second column, in the United States? identify the inventor. In the third column, describe c. Analyze How would a higher tariff affect the the invention and its benefits. economy of the North?

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