How Did The Civil War Affect The Economy

With the surrender of Confederate states in the U.S. and the ending of the American Civil War, one of the most technologically and scientifically impactful eras came to be a the Reconstruction of the United States. During this era, the trend of mass introduction surfaced, the telephone was invented, the cash register was created, motion picture camera, as well as the high-frequency alternator. While all of these changes intertwined with each other, they also brought about key times within the Reconstruction era, such as the Great economic depression of 1893. The diplomatic United States was affected greatly in economic ways by means of trade, culturally, as four million slaves were freed and certain technologies started as a luxury and later

Before mass production, everything was made-to-order and never in bulk or with vague intentions of selling in the future. With mass production came assembly lines. The positives to mass production were that these products could be created quickly and easily and that they would all be standardized items. Another positive that came from mass production was the fact that with machine production, it eliminated a lot of human error odds, as these machines were programmed solely for their job. This created an immaculate level of consistency for that time, as opposed to before mass production when two items of the same product could be very different due to being made individually at different times. Additionally, mass production made for less labor costs. With many tings being pre-decided, this led to divisions of labor within assembly lines, and that was a big factor in the high accuracy achieved. Each worker or group of worker had to focus only on their part of the job, which created a higher degree of reliability. With mass production came faster production rates, more efficiency, and therefore, better profits in less time. The faster production of product led to filling international demands of trade quicker and easier as

One of the disadvantages was wasted resources. If there was anything with the product design, or the assembly line, that meant every item in the entire production cycle was effected. When this happened, the manufacturer would often have to get rid of all f these items, attempt to fix the issue, and start over. This led to a lot of wasted product, which was an even bigger problem when resources were limited to begin with. Alon with concern of wasted resources due to manufacturing discrepencies, there was no assurance that the products would sell even if they were all made correctly. The company would have to find ways to gage how much product to make, and in the case that they made more than would sell, more product would be wasted. Mass production also led to less variety, which in many cases, led to loss of consumers.

While the United States seemed to thrive after the boom of mass production, it made the fall of the economy much deeper during the economic depression of 1893. Within the depression of 1893, thousands of businesses were destroyed, over four million people were left unemployed, along with the dramatic plunge of the stock