Change in American Society Due to the Industrial Revolution - Coursework Example

CHANGE IN AMERICAN SOCIETY DUE TO THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, IMPACT ON SOUTHERN AND NORTHERN POPULATIONS: SOCIALLY, ECONOMICALLY AND POLITICALLY INTRODUCTION: The Industrial Revolution is considered more as a movement, rather than as a period of time. “Whether in England after 1760, in the United States and Germany after 1870, or in Canada, Japan, and Russia in the recent past, it is associated with a growth of population, with the application of science to industry, and with a more intensive and extensive use of capital. Everywhere there is a conversion of rural into urban communities and a rise of new social classes”1. This paper aims to identify the changes in American society due to the industrial revolution, and the social, economic and political impacts on the North and South. DISCUSSION: “The Industrial Revolution was closely associated with European colonization which was a form of domination in which one country imposes its political, economic, social and cultural institutions on an indigenous population and the land it occupies”2. Between 1493 and 1900, Europe conquered and colonized much of the land that is today North America, South America, Asia and Africa. The colonists forced indigenous populations as well as African slaves and indentured workers from Asia and Europe to cultivate, harvest crops, to extract minerals and other raw materials for export to the colonists’ home countries which were industrializing. “The fundamental feature of the Industrial Revolution was mechanization. This involved the addition of fuel such as oil or steam to hand tools and to modes of transportation. It replaced wind-powered sail-boats with steam ships and horse-drawn carriages with trains. Mechanizationturned the spinning wheel into a spinning machine, the hand loom into a power loom, and the blacksmith’s hammer into a power machine”3. On a societal level, it changed the nature of work. The new forms of energy supported machines, factories and mass production, consequently replacing manual work with machine production. By the 1850s, the United States was an industrial power. By 1900, the United States was the leading industrial nation in the world. “A second Industrial Revolution began in the United States in the late 1800s, which was the rapid economic change following the Civil War. New production methods such as Henry Ford’s automobile assembly lines and development of new processes allowed factories to produce goods more quickly.”4 In a post-industrial society, however, the majority of workers were employed in service, managerial, technical, professional, research and development, or other information-based jobs, rather than the production of goods. “The new economy centered on the creation of information and delivery of services. This change in the basic economy has been accelerated by the invention and development of computers and telecommunication technologies”5. “The changes brought by the Industrial Revolution overturned not only traditional economies, but also whole societies. Economic changes caused far-reaching social changes, including the movement of people to cities, the availability of a greater variety of material goods, and new ways of doing business. The Industrial Revolution was the first step in modern economic growth and development”6. The United States and other cultural off-shoots of Europe became the most powerful in the world in the 18th and 19th centuries as a result of economic development in combination with superior military techology. The revolution rested on three main developments: modern transportation and communication networks, the coming of electricity in the 1880s, and the application of science to industrial processes. “All these factors helped in the creation of modern industrial economies”7. Questions relating to the distinctiveness of the American North and South have intrigued historians and the public for generations. Scholars stress the differences rather than the similarities between the North and South. “The North and the South began to diverge as early as the mid-to-late seventeenth century when the formalization of racial slavery, the production of a staple crop (tobacco), and the rise of the plantation sector set the South down a path never followed in temperate colonies in the North”8. Impact of the Industrial Revolution on the Southern Populations: Economically: “The antebellum South’s low level of industrialization was not due to a failure of markets or policy but rather, was due to the relatively high productivity of its agriculture, particularly that of slave labor. If the South had been a separate economy, it would have been among the richest and most industrialized in the world at the time”.9 Allowing for economic adjustment after the Civil War with subsequent decline in income, the southern per capita growth rate was about the same before and after the war as in the North. However, the South failed to catch up to the rapidly progressing North after the War. “The central reason for persistent Southern backwardness is that in the absence of an advanced labor-using technology, Southern firms had to choose between mechanized labor-saving approaches from the North and retaining older techniques”10. In lumber and iron-making, Southern producers of the 1920s were using hand methods tbat had been phased out decades earlier elsewhere. Small wonder that the South concentrated on producing simple low-skill commodities. The quality of soil and climate, and slavery are also primary reasons. Culturally, the blues and jazz music evolving over a period of two centuries, African and European interactions: “What unites the South may be may be a relatively new and refreshing sense that what the region has to show of itself derives from the cultural and not the political realm”11. There are many ironies, the potential for self-parody in southern culture and the heterogeneity of southern cultural studies. “To read Dixie Debates is to engage in the debates it raises and to be drawn into discussions of popular cultural production”, states Sharon Monteith in the book review. Socially: “Built on the South’s cotton economy, was a social order encompassing compatible institutions, consistent cultural heritage, pattern of social control and power structure, and a folklore meaningfully linking the whole system with the past and projecting it into the future”12. This way of life is known as “sectionalism”. This feature was significant in the entire nation’s development, but in the case of the American South, it conditioned the South to isolation, individualism, ingrowing patriotism, it was a tragedy: being the final arbiter of economic and cultural fortunes. Politically: The civil rights’ movement which took place during the Industrial Revolution was one of the most significant political and social events in American history. It helped to produce several public policies that substantially advanced blacks’ political and civil conditions. Impact of the Industrial Revolution on the Northern Populations: Socially: “From the 1840s or earlier, contemporary commentators had drawn attention to the deleterious effects of industrialisation, such as the ill-health and poor housing endured by many workers13.” The origin of many pessimistic views lay with Karl Marx, who believed that workers were not paid the full value of their labour. He blamed this on the extraction of profit or surplus value, by capitalists. Since he believed that it was labour, rather than capital, which produced the surplus, it followed that workers were cheated of their due. Economically: “During the Industrial Revolution the technical and organisational changes in economic activities and the improvements of the means of local communications created both the need for and the possibility of more enlarged and complicated organisation of central business activities”14. The emergence of the central business district can be related to both the dynamic factors of economic change which sustained the process of urban itself and to the pre-existing patterns of occupance. Gradually, with further development, increasing congestion in the business district results. Politically: “The political impact of the industrial revolution on the American north was that there was control of various resources vital for military security (coal, iron, etc). Industrial production was harnessed to military needs”15. By the time the Industrial Revolution spread to most of Europe and North America, political systems had radically changed, the military balance, society, culture and environment had undergone considerable changes. Slavery was completely abolished from the North, and urbanization, industrialization with increasingly stronger economy and political strength was the result of the Industrial Revolution. CONCLUSION: From this paper, it is observed that including both its negative aspects and its benefits, the Industrial Revolution has been one of the most influential and far-reaching movements in human history. Some of the negative aspects are that “it has caused the economic and social distances between groups within industrial societies to widen, as also the disparity between rich industrial nations and poorer neighboring countries. The natural environment has also suffered from the effects of the Industrial Revolution. Pollution, deforestation, and the destruction of animal and plant habitats continue to increase as industrialization spreads”16. Perhaps the greatest benefits of industrialization are increased material well-being and improved healthcare for America. Thus, it is seen that the American Industrial Revolution has been a major movement, changing American society to a great extent. The movement impacted the North and South in different ways: politically, socially and economically. Most countries around the globe have been influenced, with subsequent industrial development, urbanization, and progress towards an information and service based society. ------------------------------------ REFERENCES Ashton, T.S. The Industrial Revolution: 1760-1830. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Coclanis, Peter A, “Tracking the Economic Divergence of the North and South”. Southern Cultures, (Winter 2000), 82-104. Delfino, Susana & Gillespie, Michele (Eds.). Book Review: “Global Perspectives on Industrial Transformation in the American South” by Robert A. Margo. New Currents in the History of Southern Economy and Society Series. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2005. Ferrante-Wallace, Joan. Sociology, A Global Perspective. California: Thomson Wadsworth, 2005 Foner, Eric & Garraty, John Arthur. The Reader’s Companion to American History . New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1991. Globalization and American Foreign Policy. Web site: http://www.u.arizona.edu/~gcdixon/courses/pol455f05/455_f05_d5.pdf Himes, Joseph S.Jr, “Changing Structure of Negro-White Relations in the South”. Phylon, 1940-1956., Vol.12, No. 3, (3rd Quarter 1951): 227-238. King, Richard H. and Taylor, Helen (Eds.). Book Review: Dixie Debates : Perspectives on Southern Culture, by Sharon Monteith, London and New York: Pluto Press, 1996: 157. More, Charles. Understanding the Industrial Revolution. London, Routledge, 2000 Porter, Glenn. “Industrial Revolution”. Microsoft Encarta: Online Encyclopedia, 2007. http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761577952_3____12/Industrial_Revolution.html#s12k Ward, David. “The Industrial Revolution and the Emergence of Boston’s Central Business District”. Economic Geography, Vol.42, No.2, (April, 1966), pp.166-171 Wright, Gavin “The Economic Revolution in the American South”. 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