America: An Industrial Empire – Week 7 Flashcards
Commercial Might:
In the half decade between 1860 and 1910 the US assumed a dominant role in global manufacturing
Industrial empire stretched across the globe, American products traded internationally
Industrial empire of US built on a vast agricultural and raw materials, of goods and commodity
New Orleans, Chicago and New York grew
Vast trade Bridge between US and UK
By 1900, Anglo-Atlantic = vast single economy, 2 most industrial empires on earth
Americas empire = colonial offshoot of the UK
US = hyper colonial state, nation placed economic modernisation at its centre
US advanced by exploiting land and labour
US central to ‘Great Divergence’
By the late 19th century US had emerged into second phase of ‘Great Divergence’
Industrial empire explores Atlantic trading system
Key was to use ‘Ghost acres’, using land around the world, empty areas such as in the West, central to US economic expansion
Labour extraction, colonisation of American West, steam trains transporting produce, steam ships navigating the Atlantic
Key role of financial trade
A Nation of Bondage?
By 1860, the eve of the American Civil War, vast empire of cotton stretched across the Southern states
4 million enslaved African Americans worked the cotton fields to supply Britain’s textile revolution
US cotton, slave grown cotton, accounted for 77% of British cotton consumption
Slave based investment and slave based empire
‘Hashish of the West’: Cotton Production and Exports 1860:
Slave based empire came to a shattering close by the end of the American Civil War in 1865
Beckett: Key to understandings Americas rise as a capitalist empire was American cotton and the continental and Atlantic global markets
Cotton and Slavery:
Cotton exports represent 60% of all US exports on the eve of the US Civil War, cotton is king, vast economic superstructure upon which American trade was based
Diversification and Acceleration:
US trade and industry quickly diversified
1860, cotton represented 60% of exports
By 1900, manufactured goods were 50% of the exports
Surging demand in iron and steel production in US
Grains grown in Northern states became central
American agriculture grew West
Vast agricultural empire, built on wheat and corn above all
Second agricultural empire
Integrated Worlds: Chicago and Railroads
Chicago was at the centre of Americas Western agricultural empire
Principle trading hub
Centre of Americas Western agricultural empire
No city was linked to the trade in wheat as profoundly as Chicago
Factory complexes were essential
Influenced farm sector
Immigrant masses used to control livestock
Speculative Empires:
Transforming agricultural sector of Americas vast trading empire
Advanced rapidly in second half of 19th century
On the eve of the American Civil War, 1860, American manufactures still lacked behind Britain, France and Germany in industrial output
By 1894 by contrast, the US was the world’s largest industrial power, producing more than its three largest competitors combined
By 1900, the US dominated global markets in steel, oil, wheat and cotton
Between 1860 and 1900, fivefold increase in production
Share of manufacturing grew from 32% to 50%
Industrial workforce expanded from 1.5 million to 5.9 million workers, more than 1 in 4 Americans in 1900 worked in industry
Second Industrial Revolution, 1870 to 1900 – industrial ascendancy
New York, circa 1900:
Loosely regulated trade and speculation, contemporaries term the ‘Gilded Age’
New York stock exchange substantially grew
Wall Street = hub of global metropolis
New York = imperial city by end of WW1
As American corporations grew in size and power, rampant industrialisation unleashed social and political tensions that divided working Americans into a proletariat of machine employers and a made managerial class of waged supervisors
Making America corporate was difficult
Immigration to USA, 1870-1920:
Between 1860 and 1890 over 10 million immigrants landed in the US – mostly from Europe and some from Asia – it was the largest and quickest world population movement in history
In the 1880s alone over 5.25 million immigrants arrived, as many in that decade alone that had come to the US alone in the first 60 years of the 19th century
By the first decade of 20th century, nearly 9 million immigrants entered the US, through vast immigrant reception centres such as Ellis Island NY, in 1907 alone recorded 1 million new arrivals, roughly 5,000 a day
Before 1870, most came from Western and Northern Europe
Immigrants gravitated to the cities – shared culture
Workers fuelled industrial growth of the Industrial empire
1 in 3 industrial workers in US were immigrants
50% in the growth of American manufacturing in late 19th century can be ascribed to mass immigrant labour
Growth of Cityscape:
Factories proliferated in cities, 90% of all manufacturing in 1900 took place in US cities
Growth of city central to manufacturing growing
1860, only 3 cities, New York, Brooklyn and Philadelphia had more than 250,000 inhabitants
By 1890, as many as a dozen cities across the US had passed this threshold
New York, exceeded 3.5 million by 1900
Chicago, grew
By 1900, 1.7 million inhabitants, 500% increase over 30 years
Chicago largest Czech community and city by 1893
By 1910, third largest Polish city in the world
By 1900, nearly 90% were first or second immigrants themselves, immigrant hub of New American West
Divided by skill, gender, ethnicity, race and age
European and Asian Immigrants slotted into new work culture, urban manufacturing workforce
Child Labour:
Child labour increased
By 1900, 2 million child workers
1 in 6 children aged between 10-15 held jobs
Payed for every piece of clothing produced
Mainly worked in sweat shops, operated in deplorable conditions
Sweatshop NY:
Average working week = 59 hours
12 hour working day norm in many industries
As late as 1920, many work 7 days, 84-hour weeks
Steel Workers and Scrip Money:
By 1900, steel mills emerged as giant of American manufacturing
First billion-dollar enterprise, was the US Steel formed by JP Morgan in 1901
Impersonality of large factories – workers entrapped
Safety regulations almost entirely absent
Loss of life and limb was common
Aspects of welfare paternalism existed
Sunshine and Shadow:
By contrast, America’s elite grew significantly richer
In 1900, the richest 2% of American families earned more than 2/3 of the nation’s wealth, the top 10% owned almost ¾ of it
American Industrial Capitalism:
Rapid Growth, particularly in new industries such as steel and oil
Consolidation and growth of corporate businesses, businesses that integrated multiple functions within one company
Growth of urban factory employment and expansion of American city
Transformation of the American industrial workforce and the central role played by immigrants
Radical transformation in the experience of work and the organisation of production, e.g. led to trade unions, resistance
Buoyant growth – enjoyed enormous natural resources – internal market
Rapid growth in immigration fuelled internal market
