Contextual Essay

If the victory of the industrial North over the slave-holding South in the Civil War had not already sealed the fate of the American economy, the forces of western expansion, population growth, and urbanization (see VUS.8a) would. These forces all helped transform the American economy from an agrarian to an industrial one.

The Transformation of an Agrarian Society

The industrial economy was a far cry from the Agrarian Republic envisioned by America's early leaders. However, many philosophers, writers, politicians, and businessmen actually viewed the two as compatible. Machinery could complement rural society, and as long as it was removed from the grimy urban setting as in Europe, America could avoid the trappings of industrialization that had forced many to find refuge in America in the first place. Machines could transform the unruly and dangerous "wilderness" into a coveted "middle state": a garden that could be "tamed" and managed, while at the same time keeping man close to nature and, by extension, to God.

The modern industrial economy emerged from several fundamental changes to these ideas. Many scholars have tried to identify these transformations and trends. The notion of an agrarian republic, especially in the West, proved unrealistic without massive federal aid, and, as Donald Worster describes in Rivers of Empire, adequate water resources. Instead, people clustered to towns and cities, which served as urban oases, particularly in the twentieth century.

Rather than working for independence and sustenance, farmers now cultivated lands with an eye to the market, often specializing in certain crops. Agribusiness turned crops into commodities, and land was now simply stored capital. William Cronon describes the division of production from consumption that cities introduced in his notable work, Nature's Metropolis. In his study based on Chicago, Cronon theorizes that cities organized rural spaces and connected them to a global economy. Much of the West provided the natural resources necessary for industry and thus western expansion intertwined with urban growth and technological innovation to transform the American economy. Such a transformation blurred the line between rural and urban life in America. Ed Ayers and Hal Barron describe a similar process in the rural South and North.

Several inventions provided the catalysts for industrial growth, most notably for revolutions in transportation, communication, and mechanization. Machines even replaced human labor on the farms and streamlined production. Historians of the era continue to debate how drastically these inventions actually changed or "improved" life. Scholars of the "technological determinism" school of thought argue that technology drives change and controls people's lives. Others, such as Barron, argue that rural people manipulated technology to preserve traditional practices amidst the complexity of change. While the urban pressures of the time changed rural people in their role as citizens, producers, and consumers, rural northerners tried to both accept and control changes in life and values. They clung to their republican notions of local rural independence and autonomy within an increasingly urban nation. However, he acknowledges that industrialism, growing cities, and consumer culture altered rural people's role as citizens, producers, and finally as consumers. Their resistance did not stop change, but their determination to cling to local values and sensibilities allowed rural northerners to adopt mainstream patterns to their own, preserve a rural way of life, and continue to assert local control.

In contrast, Tom Schlereth asserts that Victorians' lives changed dramatically as they embraced these new materials. Industrialism, he observes, "made surplus possible." Both agree that consumerism transformed shopping into an activity where people bought more things than they actually needed. New artifacts and gadgets flooded the market. Chain stores and the mail order catalogs of Sears or Montgomery Ward replaced the local country stores. However, in Mixed Harvest, Barron argues that these same local merchants eventually found ways to adapt and compete with the mail order companies. Thus while the impact of national corporate consumer marketing forced local merchants to change their business practices, they still maintained local dominance. Shopping became, or could become, a full day excursion where the advertisements, sales, and huge new supermarkets and department stores, with wide aisles and colorful displays, all encouraged impulse buying.

Advances in transportation such as the steamship, railroad, automobiles, and streetcars allowed quick and inexpensive movement of people to and from other regions, cities, and the emerging suburbs. As Schlereth observes, transportation schedules introduced the concept of regulated time across the country and defined the orderly pace of the future. Time schedules affected the nature of work as industry and machinery influenced the workplace. Commercial agriculture mechanized the farm, and increased the desire for the more economical seasonal laborer, as opposed to the permanent laborer. Meanwhile, expedient production characterized sweatshops, mills, and manufacturing plants. To describe many of these changes, Schlereth focuses on machinery, the items of their production, and the new type of workspace that corporations developed. While men became semi-skilled workers and middle managers, women worked primarily as typists or domestics. Through time cards, workers accounted for their wages and budgeted their households. Schlereth further depicts the evolution of the modern workplace by describing new office machines and equipment, organizational charts, and even the development of five and dime stores like Woolworth's that marketed products to the wage earners.

Innovations and technological inventions in communication reduced space as an issue in human interactions and relationships. Letter writing, particularly in the form of postcards, grew ever more popular. Newspapers introduced new techniques to display graphics, while human-interest sections like advice columns served to promote readership and increase public dialogue. The telegraph and telephone spawned industries, which created new jobs, such as operators—a field primarily dominated by women. Amateur photography and popular amusements like the movies introduced new ways for people to spend their leisure time. Automobiles and other forms of transportation, as well as the new work schedules promoted the family trip. Amusement parks, professional sports, vaudeville, and fairs provided new destinations for amusement and relaxation.

The railroad, the telephone, and electricity became more than just novelties. These inventions soon built the foundation of the new economic order. In 1894, the Chicago World's Fair featured more artificial light in the "Great White Way" than anyone had ever seen. Other inventions there included moving sidewalks, elevators, and electric cranes. While most average Americans were not sure what to do with the new inventions, they were excited about them and saw the spectacles as a symbol of progress. Businessmen, however, saw much more potential in such innovations. By the end of the nineteenth century, companies took over the technology and replaced individual craft shops. These corporations could sell stock and raise funds for large-scale operations.

In America by Design, David Noble provides a detailed overview about the impact of technology on the American economy. He argues that the scientist combined with the entrepreneur and emerged as the engineer. Companies created industrial research laboratories, consolidated patents, and used technology and technological innovation toward capitalistic, rather than purely scientific, ends. They gave money to universities to establish training grounds for engineers. Technology influenced management systems and production, encouraging virtues of efficiency and organization, such as assembly-line production and the bureaucratic organization advocated by engineer Frederick Taylor in his work, Principles of Scientific Management.

Technology and the Rise of Big Business

No industry exemplified the dominance of new technology in the new economy than the railroad, which introduced the modern corporation. The competition, enormous costs, and complexity of operations required unprecedented capital and new management techniques. In order to control the price competition, companies, whether they be railroad, electrical, or oil, merged with rivals, dominating their markets through monopolies or trusts. John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil emerged as the most well known example, but Western Union, AT&T, and Westinghouse also dominated their respective markets. Such activity soon led to accusations of corruption leading to unscrupulous business practices and unregulated laissez-faire economic competition.

Because of these developments, not everyone agreed then, nor do scholars agree today, that the new inventions and the industrial economy improved life in the United States. In American Genesis, Thomas Hughes identifies technology as a defining feature of twentieth century America providing an excellent overview that traces the shift of technology and invention from the minds of creative individuals to the larger "system-builders" who dominated innovation and production today. However, even at the dawn of the twentieth century, many observers asserted that such economic and technological changes were corrupting the foundations of the American system and its values of equality, freedom, and opportunity. Such concerns about America's moral and economic future gave rise to the Populist and Progressive reform movements that sought to preserve American values in the new industrial economy.

Further Reading and Works Cited

Ayers, Edward L. The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Barron, Hal S. Mixed Harvest: The Second Transformation in the Rural North 1870-1930. Chapel Hill: University Press of North Carolina Press, 1997.

Cronon, William. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1991.

Hounshell, David. From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984.

Hughes, Thomas Parke. American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870-1970. New York: Viking University Press, 1989.

Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Idea in America. New York, 1964.

Schlereth, Thomas J. Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life, 1876-1915, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991.

Worster, Donald. Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West. New York: Pantheon Books, 1985.