Industry and Innovation

Innovation

• Innovation leads to more innovation. In other words the invention or creation of one idea creates and leads to the invention or creation of many other things.

• Example: The need to move goods faster first led to boats moving large goods, but since boats can’t go inland, railroads were developed.

• Pre-AP: Come up with your own example of something that was invented and led to the invention or demand for something else.

Railroads

• Building of railroads solved many transportation problems in Texas and the USA.

• Railroads were much faster than wagons and far more reliable.

• Railroads allowed raw materials in Texas to be sent to markets in the Northern USA and to ports where they could be sent to Europe.

Railroads

• The invention of the refrigerated railroad car allowed beef to be shipped to far away places without spoiling.

Industries in Texas

• Texas industries included:– Lumber– Cottonseed Oil– Flour and grist milling (baking bread)– Meatpacking– Oil (later on in the twentieth century)

Lumber Industry

• Lumber used for railroad ties, fuel in early trains and buildings.

• John Henry Kirby – Kirby Lumber Company owner. Largest lumber company in the state of Texas in the late 1800’s.

• Company Towns – place where company employees lived, worked, shopped etc. If you lived in a company town you were given a SCRIP to the company store, not money. A SCRIP could only be used at the company store.

A big switch

• When railroads stopped burning wood for fuel they switched to coal. This led to the explosion of the coal industry in Texas.

• Coal was found using the technique known as strip mining; a method of mining that strips away layers of earth and rock.

Modern Cities Beginnings

• Some of the largest cities in Texas got their beginnings during this time:– Fort Worth and Waco due to the cattle

industry.– Dallas and Houston due to the railroad

industry.

Typical Industrial Workers

• Most workers were male

• Twice as many children worked in industry as did women.

• Average Wage: $225 per year!!! (about $1 per day)

• Work week: Monday – Saturday (12 hours each day)

Poor working conditions lead to change!!

• Unsafe working conditions led to the formation of unions, or groups of people who work to gain better working conditions and pay.

• Some went on strike (stopped working) to protest these awful conditions.

• Most minorities were not allowed to join labor unions and were often treated worse and paid less (discrimination).