Industrial Revolution In America

The Industrial Revolution heavily affected the United States during the nineteenth century, invoking changes in lifestyles, occupations, and even the economy. Many Americans drastically changed how they lived and how they worked, and the government had to change how it responded to certain events due to these new ways of life. We as a society have grown to an enormous extent, both domestically and across the globe. New forms of manufacturing have led to longer life expectancies, more conveniences than one can think of, and a lifestyle built around not having to make everything yourself. At the same time, the economy has grown considerably, creating various new job opportunities, encouraging immigration, and generally increasing the satisfaction

Many people who used to work on farms left to find work in the big city, often in factories or construction. This was vastly different from the cottage industry if the days before, where everyone made everything they needed at home. Instead, factories would produce much larger amounts of products, leading to many people leaving their agricultural jobs out of necessity, having nothing to sell but their labor as mass production made small scale manufacturing irrelevant. The new factories also led to a change in the role of women in society, taking them from being housewives to working in factories manufacturing products like clothing .and actually making their own money. This led to new opportunities for women in the United States, and gave rise to campaigns to make women a more important part of society, which could arguably be a factor in the later women’s suffrage movement. The combination of these lifestyle changes also led to new laws being created to better fit the social environment, much like what is happening today with the rapidly changing technology making current laws obsolete or overbearing. These laws led to yet more social changes and changing roles, such as in the case of child

The first way to effectively transport large amounts of materials inland economically was using canals, and by the 1820s there was an established network of canals throughout the country. These would later serve as a template for the railroad network, which gained its momentum towards the latter half of the Industrial Revolution. The railroad system also became a popular method to transport goods due to the ease of building it compared to canals as well as the advent of steam engines, which allowed transportation of goods over much longer distances with unprecedented speed without the need for horses. The various forms of transportation helped transport goods, spread ideas, and communicate information over huge distances with less cost than any other option before. The discovery of oil not long afterwards also drove transportation methods to improve, as well as eventually leading to the invention of automobiles. Other forms of communication also resulted from the Industrial Revolution, most notably the telegraph and later the telephone. Both of these methods allowed for near instant communication over large distances, created by Samuel F.B. Morse and Alexander Graham Bell respectively. This combination of long range communication and ability to transport goods over long distances allowed amazing technological advancements