The Industrialization of the United States, 1860-1910
History Skill: Geographical Analysis; Media Type: Map

From the start of the Civil War until the early years of the twentieth century, America went through a period of broad social and economic change that historians have called industrialization. One way to understand the nation’s turn to industrial production is to examine the relationships between transportation, manufacturing, and immigration. The expansion of the nation’s railroad network as well as the country's system of waterways made mass production in factories economically feasible. A firm could import raw materials to its factory and then send the finished products to markets all across the country by the same method. To staff those factories, however, corporations needed workers. Mass production required a large group of unskilled workers who could repeat the same tasks over and over again. Many of those who worked in industrial factories were members of the large groups of immigrants that came to America between 1880 and 1910. These workers gathered in areas where there were jobs—those regions, usually urban centers, that were well served by the railroad.

This series of maps shows the interlocked nature of production, transportation, and immigration. It also provides a geographical representation of the major events of industrialism, from the creation of the nation’s network of railroads to the areas of industrial production. The maps also show how industrialism depended on environmental factors such as the location of raw materials and the topography of different regions, each of which influenced the placement of factories and the routes of railroads. How were transportation, production, and immigration related in the process known as industrialization?

Source

Quiz  

1. The region of the country with the most complete railroad network in 1890 was _______.

a. the Northeast
b. the South
c. the West

2. Most of the nation’s manufacturing took place  _________.

a. in cities
b. in mountain regions
c. near waterways

3. By 1910 the state with the highest concentration of immigrants was _________.

a. California
b. New York
c. Massachusetts

Short Answers

1. Discuss the relationship between immigration and industrialization based on the evidence provided in the maps. Did the location of factories draw immigrants to particular regions? What events in Europe can you think of that would drive immigrants to the United Sates?

2. Explain the role of railroads in the emergence of industrialization. Did the density of railroads determine which areas of the country would see a faster process of industrialization? Or do the maps suggest that railroads were a factor in but not the primary cause of industrial development?

3. Analyze the role of geography in American industrialization in the second half of the nineteenth century. How much did topography shape industrial development? Was the location of railroads more important? How did mountains and the location of waterways influence industrial development?

Projects

1. Using your textbook, trace the development of transportation in America from the colonial era to the present. In which periods did transportation have the greatest influence on American political and economic development? Do you think transportation plays as great a role today as it did in the 1890s?  

2. Go to the Union Pacific Web site at http://www.uprr.com and trace the rise and fall of rail activity in the United States. How does the story of the railroads compare with the construction of other transportation networks, such as the interstate highway system?

Resources

Bedford / St. Martin's sources: David Leviatin, ed., How the Other Half Lives, by Jacob Riis, (1996). 

Print sources:  The classic work on industrial development from the perspective of the corporation is Alfred Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (1977). David Montgomery explains the path of labor and immigrant workers in this period in The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865-1925 (1987). Paul Krause, The Battle for Homestead, 1880-1892, explores the causes and effects of one of the most important industrial conflicts. A good introduction to the expansion of rail is John Stover, American Railroads (1970).

Internet sources: Images from Pittsburgh, a major industrial center, are available in the online exhibit "Bridging the Urban Landscape" located at http://www.clpgh.org/exhibit/exhibit.html. The Web site companion to the recent American Experience documentary on Andrew Carnegie, a leading industrial financier of the nineteenth century, can be found at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/amex/carnegie/index.html.  To visit the Union Pacific Railroad, go to http://www.uprr.com.