Explanation:
Within the span of a few decades from the late 19th to the early 20th century, the United States was transformed from a predominately rural agrarian society to an industrial economy centered in large metropolitan cities. Prior to the American industrial revolution, most Americans were reared in largely isolated agricultural households and small towns that were linked to the external world by horse drawn wagons (Olmstead and Rhode 2000: 711). Except for towns that were connected to railroads or water borne shipping, isolation and the costs of overland transportation meant that many rural communities were largely self sufficient in food, clothing, and many other essentials of everyday life. This changed dramatically in the early decades of the 20th century, as the supply and lowered costs of manufactured goods created a consumer revolution for both urban and rural households. Many of these goods, which did not even exist a few decades earlier, were manufactured, marketed, and transported through a rapidly expanding national network of rail lines and highways. By 1920, one half of northern farms had automobiles and telephones (Olmstead and Rhode 2000: 712–713).
Theses changes were the direct result of the American industrial revolution that was founded on rising investment, employment, and productivity in the manufacturing sector. In 1880, when the agricultural frontier had largely disappeared, almost one-half of the American workers were still farmers and only one in seven workers (less than 15%) worked in manufacturing of any sort. The industrial sector, as late as 1870, consisted primarily of small firms and workshops that relied on artisan technology to produce tools, furniture, building materials, and other goods for local markets (Abramovitz and David 2000: 45). Many small industries, such as grain mills and sawmills, were often located in rural areas close to flowing rivers in order to power machinery. Following the technological revolutions of the early industrial age, workshops and small foundries were supplemented by large factories engaged in mass production. The development of commercial electricity at the end of the 19th century allowed industries to take advantage of the labor supply in large cities. The scale of change is illustrated by thdure not only in the United States, but were also the age of urbanization and immigration. The 1880s were the first decade in American history, with the exception of the Civil War decade, when the urban population increased more than the rural population (in absolute numbers).rural to urban migration of the native born picked up during this era, but domestic urbanward migrants were dwarfed by the flood of immigrants coming to cities. From 1880 to 1920, the number of foreign born increased from almost 7 million to a little uhere a causal impact? Addressing this question, the objective of this analysis, requires consideration of the counterfactual of what would have been the course of the industrialization process in the United States if there had not been an immigrant workforce.
The most commonly cited reasons for the rapid American industrial revolution are the abundance of mineral resources, technological innovation, the evolution of the American system of manufacturing, railroads and lowered costs of transportation, education and human resources, and the rise of the managerial firm (Abramovitz and David 2000; Chandler 1977; Denison 1974; Hounshell 1984; Wright 1990). Among the studies that address the relationship between immigration and industrialization, few go beyond a general or abstract discussion. In a classic survey of the literature on the American industrial revolution in the Cambridge Economic History of the United States, the role of immigration is summarized in a single paragraph, which simply notes the overrepresentation of immigrants in the manufacturing labor force (Engerman and Sokoloff 2000: 387). There are some studies that conclude that the flood of immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had an adverse impact on the per-capita economic growth, the wages of native workers, and diverted domestic migration away from industrializing cities (Hatton and Williamson 1998: Chapter 8; Goldin 1994). However, other researchers have questioned these conclusions and suggested that immigrants had a generally positive impact on the American economy and facilitated the economic mobility of native born workers during the age of industrialization (Carter and Sutch 1999; Haines 2000: 202; Muller 1993: 83–85; Thomas 1973: 174).follow me
