The period of rapid technological advancement in the United States known as the Industrial Revolution may have taken place during parts of the 18th and 19th centuries, but its impact resonated for decades and influenced everything from food to clothing. , including travel and accommodation, especially in cities.
While American cities like Boston, Philadelphia, New York and Baltimore certainly existed before the start of the Industrial Revolution, newly established factories, factories and other mass production sites fueled their growth, as people flooded urban areas. to take advantage of employment opportunities. . But that’s only part of the story.
As the population of cities continued to increase, these municipalities were faced with the challenge of how to handle the influx of people. Problems such as housing availability, overcrowding and the spread of infectious diseases had to be addressed as quickly as possible, otherwise newly industrialized cities risked losing their citizens and the factories that employed them. Here is what happened.
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Origins of the industrial revolution
The Industrial Revolution began in England in the mid-1700s: a few decades after the country’s first steam engines were produced. The textile industry was the first to benefit from emerging technology, such as Richard Arkwright’s “water frame” (patented 1769), James Hargreaves’ “spinning jenny” (patented 1770) and the power loom of ‘Edmund Cartwright (patented 1786). Factories capable of mass-producing cotton fabric have sprung up all over the country.
It didn’t take long for British industrialists to take advantage of manufacturing opportunities in the nascent United States, and in 1793 the Englishman Samuel Slater opened a textile factory in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Using technology developed in England, as well as new additions, like Eli Whitney’s cotton gin (patented 1794), America’s industrialization continued.
Urbanization begins in the United States
What is known as the American Industrial Revolution (or Second) began in the second half of the 19th century, as the country was rebuilding itself after the Civil War, its bloodiest conflict to date. At the same time, waves of immigrants from Europe began to arrive in America in search of jobs, many of them in factories in industrial cities.
“After the Civil War, the United States gradually changed from a largely rural agrarian society to one dominated by cities where large factories replaced the production of small stores,” says Alan Singer, historian at the Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, and author of The Great Jubilee of the Emancipation of New York. “Cities grew because industrial factories needed a large workforce and workers and their families needed places to live near their work. Factories and cities have attracted millions of immigrants looking for work and a better life to the United States.
But city domination did not happen overnight, according to Daniel Hammel, professor in the Department of Geography and Urban Planning at the University of Toledo and associate dean of the Faculty of Arts and Letters. “Even during the Industrial Revolution, most Americans lived in the countryside,” he explains. “We were essentially a rural nation until about 1920. ”
Indeed, the 1920 US census was the first in which more than 50 percent of the population lived in urban areas. Even then, says Hammel, “we’re not talking about massive cities; we’re talking about small settlements, in many cases 2,500 or 3,000 people.
Black Diamond Express train on the Lehigh Valley Railway in Pennsylvania, circa 1898.
Universal History Archives / UIG / Getty Images
The 1870s also saw a rapid expansion of the country’s rail system. Prior to this time, for a city to be a manufacturing hub, it had to be located somewhere with access to water, such as an east coast port (like New York or Boston), one of the Great Lakes ( like Buffalo or Cleveland), a canal (like Albany or Akron) or a river (like Cincinnati or Pittsburgh). But thanks to the continued growth of the railroad, places without access to water developed, such as Scranton, Indianapolis, and Dayton, could afford to ship and receive supplies and goods.
The industrialization of agriculture
One of the byproducts of the Industrial Revolution was a change in American farming methods and, in turn, the amount of labor required to work the land. “At one point, you needed a large family to be able to farm your land,” says Hammel. “But with industrialization, especially at the start of the 20th century, agricultural production became mechanized and we didn’t need as many labor in rural areas. This prompted (or, in some cases, enabled) young adults who were no longer required on the family farm to seek opportunities in urban factories.
The industrialization of agriculture has also affected African-American sharecroppers living in the southern states, Hammel says. “Suddenly the owners didn’t need so many people to work on their land anymore, so they moved [the tenant farmers] out of it, ”he notes. “And that was, in essence, the start of the Great Migration. From that time until the time of WWII, African Americans moved in large numbers from the Mississippi Delta, especially to cities in the Midwest. Some of the more common urban destinations were Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, and New York.
More people, more problems
The Industrial Revolution caused cities to turn into cities and existing cities grew, both in terms of population – with new arrivals from Europe and rural areas of the United States – as well as their geographic footprint. , now that they housed factories and other buildings needed for manufacturing.
And while job opportunities were the main draw for most newly created city dwellers, it left them with the problem of having to find a place to live. For many, that meant moving into cramped, dark apartment buildings: some of which were already considered old, while others (especially in Chicago) were hastily assembled and of exceptionally poor quality, notes Hammel.
But at the same time, Hammel stresses that population density in itself is not a problem. “There were very wealthy and very healthy people who lived in extremely high density,” he explains. “But if you don’t have a lot of money, the density combined with the lack of light and air circulation in some of these homes was a major issue. Specifically, as Singer points out, it was a public health issue. “Rapid and unregulated urbanization meant overcrowding, substandard housing for workers, inadequate infrastructure (including water and sewage systems) and the spread of epidemic diseases like tuberculosis,” notes- he does.
Gradually, as there was a better understanding of how people got sick, cities created public health services dedicated to reducing preventable disease and death through improved sanitation, hygiene, infrastructure, housing, quality of food and water and safety at work. While many of these areas are still in the works, these societal advances were originally born out of necessity when the Industrial Revolution fueled the growth of American cities.
