Nine Inventions That Changed the World
Directions:
Answer the questions in the chart using the information you find online.
Inventions
Cotton Gin
Sewing Machine
Who was the
inventor or
inventors?
What did the new
invention do?
Why was the
invention
important?
Telegraph
Telephone
Inventions
Steam Engine
Who was the
inventor or
inventors?
What did the new
invention do?
Why was the
invention
important?
Steamboat
Phonograph
Electric Light
Bessemer Converter
Station 4 Document
In 1789 the Pennsylvania legislature placed an advertisement in English newspapers
offering a cash bounty to any English textile worker who would migrate to the state. Samuel
Slater, who was just finishing an apprenticeship in a Derbyshire textile mill, read the ad. He
went to London, booked passage to America, and landed in Philadelphia. There he learned
that Moses Brown, a Quaker merchant, had just completed a mill in Pawtucket, Rhode
Island, and needed a manager. Slater applied for the job and received it, along with a
promise that if he made the factory a success he would receive all the business's profits,
less the cost and interest on the machinery.
On December 21, 1790, the mill opened. Seven boys and 2 girls, all between the ages of 7
and 12, operated the little factory's 72 spindles. Slater soon discovered that these children,
"constantly employed under the immediate inspection of a [supervisor]," could produce
three times as much as whole families working in their homes. To keep the children awake
and alert, Slater whipped them with a leather strap or sprinkled them with water. On
Sundays the children attended a special school Slater founded for their education.
The opening of Slater's mill marked the beginning of a widespread movement to consolidate
manufacturing operations under a single roof. During the last years of the 18th century,
merchants and master craftspeople who were discontented with the inefficiencies of their
work force created the nation's first modern factories. Within these centralized workshops,
employers closely supervised employees, synchronized work to the clock, and punished
infractions of rules with heavy fines or dismissal. In 1820, just 350,000 Americans worked
in factories or mills. Four decades later, on the eve of the Civil War, the number had soared
to 2 million.
For an inexpensive and reliable labor force, many factory owners turned to child labor.
During the early phases of industrialization, textile mills and agricultural tool, metal goods,
nail, and rubber factories had a ravenous appetite for cheap teenage laborers. In many
mechanized industries, from a quarter to over half of the work force was made up of young
men or women under the age of 20.
During the first half of the 19th century, unmarried women made up a majority of the work
force in cotton textile mills and a substantial minority of workers in factories manufacturing
ready-made clothing, furs, hats, shoes, and umbrellas. Women were also employed in
significant numbers in the manufacture of buttons, furniture, gloves, gunpowder, shovels,
and tobacco.
Many women found the new opportunities exhilarating. Eleven-year-old Lucy Larcom went
off to the Lowell textile mill enthusiastically: "The novelty of it made it seem easy, and it
really was not hard, just to change the bobbins on the spinning-frames every three quarters
of an hour or so.... The intervals were spent frolicking around among the spinning-frames,
teasing and talking to the older girls, or entertaining ourselves with games and stories in a
corner."
Unlike farm work or domestic service, employment in a mill offered female companionship
and an independent income. Wages were twice what a woman could make as a seamstress,
tailor, or schoolteacher. Furthermore, most mill girls viewed the work as only temporary
before marriage. Most worked in the mills fewer than four years, and frequently interrupted
their stints in the mill for several months at a time with trips back home.
By the 1830s, increasing competition among textile manufacturers caused deteriorating
working conditions that drove native-born women out of the mills. Employers cut wages,
lengthened the workday, and required mill workers to tend four looms instead of just two.
Hannah Borden, a Fall River, Massachusetts, textile worker, was required to have her loom
running at 5 A.M. She was given an hour for breakfast and half an hour for lunch. Her
workday ended at 7:30 P.M., 14.5 hours after her workday had begun. For a 6-day work
week, she received between $2.50 and $3.50.
The mill girls militantly protested the wage cuts. In 1834 and again in 1836, the mill girls
went out on strike. An open letter spelled out the workers' complaints: "sixteen females
[crowded] into the same hot, ill-ventilated attic"; a workday "two or three hours longer a
day than is done in Europe"; and workers compelled to "stand so long at the machinery ...
that varicose veins, dropsical swelling of the feet and limbs, and prolepsis uter[us], diseases
that end only with life, are not rare but common occurrences."
During the 1840s, fewer and fewer native-born women were willing to work in the mills.
"Slavers," which were long, black wagons that criss-crossed the Vermont and New
Hampshire countryside in search of mill hands, arrived in Rhode Island and Massachusetts
milltowns empty. Increasingly, employers replaced the native-born mill girls with a new
class of permanent factory operatives: immigrant women from Ireland.
A. What were working conditions like during this time
period?
B. Why did people accept the conditions?
C. Why would this process promote industrial growth?
D. Is this progress? Explain.
Document 7
Oil was not the only commodity in great demand during the Gilded Age. The nation also needed steel.
The railroads needed
STEEL
for their rails and cars, the navy needed steel for its new naval fleet, and
cities needed steel to build skyscrapers. Every factory in America needed steel for their physical plant
and machinery. Andrew Carnegie saw this demand and seized the moment.
Humble Roots
ANDREW CARNEGIE
was not born into wealth. When he was 13, his family came to the United States
from Scotland and settled in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, a small town near Pittsburgh. His first job was
in a cotton mill, where he earned $1.20 per week.
His talents were soon recognized and Carnegie found himself promoted to the bookkeeping side of the
business. An avid reader, Carnegie spent his Saturdays in the homes of wealthy citizens who were
gracious enough to allow him access to their private libraries. After becoming a telegrapher for a short
while, he met the head of a railroad company who asked his services as a personal secretary.
Millionaire Andrew Carnegie spoke against irresponsibility of the wealthy and sharply criticized ostentatious living.
During the Civil War, this man,
THOMAS SCOTT,
was sent to Washington to operate transportation for
the Union Army. Carnegie spent his war days helping the soldiers get where they needed to be and by
helping the wounded get to hospitals. By this time, he had amassed a small sum of money, which he
quickly invested. Soon iron and steel caught his attention, and he was on his way to creating the
largest steel company in the world.
Vertical Integration: Moving on Up
The Bessemer Process
When WILLIAM KELLY and HENRY BESSEMER perfected a process to convert iron to steel cheaply and
efficiently, the industry was soon to blossom.
Carnegie became a tycoon because of shrewd business tactics. Rockefeller often bought other oil
companies to eliminate competition. This is a process known as
also created a
VERTICAL COMBINATION,
HORIZONTAL INTEGRATION.
an idea first implemented by
GUSTAVUS SWIFT.
Carnegie
He bought
railroad companies and iron mines. If he owned the rails and the mines, he could reduce his costs and
produce cheaper steel.
Carnegie was a good judge of talent. His assistant,
STEEL COMPANY
HENRY CLAY FRICK,
helped manage the
CARNEGIE
on its way to success. Carnegie also wanted productive workers. He wanted them to
feel that they had a vested interest in company prosperity so he initiated a profit-sharing plan.
All these tactics made the Carnegie Steel Company a multi-million dollar corporation. In 1901, he sold
his interests to J.P. Morgan, who paid him 500 million dollars to create U.S. Steel.
. What process is described here?
B. Why would this process promote industrial growth?
C. Is this progress? Explain.