Chapter 13 Section 1

Life in the North

Technology and Industry

• Industrialization changed the way Americans worked, traveled, and communicated.

• In the North, manufacturers made products by dividing tasks among workers.

• They built factories to bring specialized workers together. Products could be made more quickly.

• Mass production of cotton textiles began in New England after Elias Howe invented the sewing machine in 1846.

• By 1860 factories in the northeast produced about two-thirds of the country’s manufactured goods.

• Advances in transportation sparked the success of many new industries.

1. Robert Fulton’s steamboat, developed in 1807, enabled goods and passengers to move along inland waterways more cheaply and quickly.

Elias Howe

Sewing Machine

2. Thousands of miles of roads and canals were built between 1800 and 1850, connecting many lakes and rivers.

3. Canal builders widened and deepened the canals in the 1840’s so steamboats could pass through. Steamboats created the growth of cities such as Chicago, Cincinnati, and Buffalo.

4. Clipper, or sailing, ships were built in the 1840’s to go faster, almost as fast as steam ships. They could travel an average of 300 miles per day.

5. Railroad growth in the 1840s and 1850s connected places that were far apart. Early railroads connected mines with nearby rivers. Horses, not locomotives, powered the early railroads.

a. The first steam-powered locomotive, the Rocket, began operating in Britain in 1829.

b. Peter Cooper designed and built the first American steam locomotive, Tom Thumb, in 1830.

Peter Cooper

Tom Thumb

6. A railway network in 1860 of nearly 31,000 miles of track linked cities in the North and Midwest. Railway builders tied the eastern lines to lines built farther west so that by 1860, a network united the East and Midwest.

7. Railways transformed trade and settlement in the nation’s interior. With the Erie Canal and Railway network between the East and West, grain, livestock, and dairy products moved directly from the Midwest to the East. Prices were lower because goods traveled faster and more cheaply.

• People needed to communicate faster to keep up with the industrial growth and faster travel methods.

• Samuel Morse developed the telegraph in 1844. It used electric signals to send messages along wires. To transmit messages, Morse developed the Morse code, using a series of dots and dashes to represent the letters of the alphabet.

• By 1860 the United States had constructed more than 50,000 miles of telegraph lines.

Morse Code

Samuel Morse

Agriculture

• Farmers were able to sell their products in new markets as a result of the railroads and canals.

• New inventions changed farming methods and also encouraged settlers to develop larger areas in the West thought to be to difficult to farm.

1. John Deere invented the steel-tipped plow in 1837. Its steel-tipped blade cut through hard soil more easily than previous plows, which used wood blades.

2. The mechanical reaper sped up harvesting wheat. Cyrus McCormick designed and constructed and made a fortune in Manufacturing it and selling it. The mechanical reaper harvested grain much faster than a hundred hand operated sickles. Farmers began planting more wheat because they could harvest it faster. Growing wheat became profitable.

John Deere

Steel-Tipped Plow

Cyrus McCormick

Mechanical Thrasher

3. The Thresher separated the grain from the stalk.

• Midwestern farmers grew large quantities of wheat and shipped it east. Farmers in the Northeast and Middle Atlantic states increased production of fruits and vegetables because they grew well in Eastern soil.

• Agriculture was not a mainstay of the North. Farming the rocky soil was difficult. Instead, the North continued to grow industrially.

• More and more people worked in factories, and the problems connected with factory labor also grew.