Scientific and industrial revolutions

(1) In 1800, almost all Americans lived on farms or in small villages. During the 1800s, the Industrial Revolution changed that. Factories, mills, railroads and steel plants were built in and near cities, and they needed thousands of workers. Machines such as the mechanical reaper also meant that fewer workers were needed on farms. Millions of rural Americans and millions of immigrants from Europe moved to cities for jobs.

(2) The U.S. Census counts a place as urban if it has 2,500 or more people. The graph shows the share of Americans living in urban areas.

(1) In 1800, almost all Americans lived on farms or in small villages. During the 1800s, the Industrial Revolution changed that. Factories, mills, railroads and steel plants were built in and near cities, and they needed thousands of workers. Machines such as the mechanical reaper also meant that fewer workers were needed on farms. Millions of rural Americans and millions of immigrants from Europe moved to cities for jobs.

(2) The U.S. Census counts a place as urban if it has 2,500 or more people. The graph shows the share of Americans living in urban areas.

(1) Merrow Valley is a fictional river valley in New England. Its story is typical of many places that industrialized in the 1800s. Textile mills and machine shops opened along the river, and later along the railroad, and they hired thousands of workers—young people from nearby farms, families from other states, and immigrants from Ireland, Quebec and elsewhere.

(2) The graph shows how many people in the valley worked on farms and in factories in each census year.

(1) For centuries, most European scholars learned about nature by studying ancient authorities such as the Greek philosopher Aristotle and the astronomer Ptolemy, who taught that the sun and planets circle the Earth. Between about 1540 and 1700, a group of thinkers began to test ideas by careful observation, measurement and experiment. Historians call this change the Scientific Revolution.

(2) In 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus published a book arguing that the Earth and other planets move around the sun. In 1609 and 1610 Galileo Galilei turned a telescope to the sky and saw moons circling Jupiter—proof that not everything circles the Earth. Church leaders put Galileo on trial in 1633 for supporting Copernicus. In England, the Royal Society, founded in 1660, took as its motto Nullius in verba—"take nobody's word for it." In 1687 Isaac Newton published the Principia, which explained motion and gravity with mathematical laws.

(3) In the Principia, Newton listed rules for reasoning. Two of them read (in Andrew Motte's English translation of 1729):

Rule I. We are to admit no more causes of natural things, than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

Rule IV. In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions collected by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions.

("Experimental philosophy" = science; "propositions" = conclusions; "phenomena" = things that are observed.)

(4) The new habits of measuring and testing spread beyond astronomy. James Watt was an instrument maker at the University of Glasgow when, in the 1760s, he repaired a model of an older steam engine. By measuring how much fuel and steam it wasted, he designed a separate condenser that made steam engines far more efficient. He patented it in 1769. Better steam engines soon powered mines, mills and, later, railroads—helping to launch the Industrial Revolution.

The following is a fictional letter, written for this app. It is based on the real conditions described by young women who worked in the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, in the 1840s.

Lowell, March 1846

Dear Sister,

(1) You asked what my days are like. The factory bell rings us awake before five o'clock, and at the second bell we must be at our looms. We stop for a short breakfast and a short dinner, but otherwise we tend the machines until seven in the evening—near thirteen hours. The overseer writes down the name of any girl who comes late.

(2) The weaving room is so loud that we cannot hear one another speak, and the air is full of cotton dust that sets us coughing. The windows are nailed shut to keep the air damp so the threads will not break.

(3) Still, I earn my own money, which I could never do at home on the farm. My wages are three dollars and a quarter a week, and one dollar and a quarter of that goes to the boardinghouse for my room and meals. I send some home and save the rest. But last month the company cut our pay for each piece of cloth and gave each of us a fourth loom to tend.

(4) Many of us have signed a petition to the legislature asking for a law limiting the workday to ten hours. Some of the older girls say that one girl alone can do nothing, but that hundreds standing together may be heard.

Your loving sister, Hannah

The following is a fictional letter, written for this app. It is based on the real conditions described by young women who worked in the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, in the 1840s.

Lowell, March 1846

Dear Sister,

(1) You asked what my days are like. The factory bell rings us awake before five o'clock, and at the second bell we must be at our looms. We stop for a short breakfast and a short dinner, but otherwise we tend the machines until seven in the evening—near thirteen hours. The overseer writes down the name of any girl who comes late.

(2) The weaving room is so loud that we cannot hear one another speak, and the air is full of cotton dust that sets us coughing. The windows are nailed shut to keep the air damp so the threads will not break.

(3) Still, I earn my own money, which I could never do at home on the farm. My wages are three dollars and a quarter a week, and one dollar and a quarter of that goes to the boardinghouse for my room and meals. I send some home and save the rest. But last month the company cut our pay for each piece of cloth and gave each of us a fourth loom to tend.

(4) Many of us have signed a petition to the legislature asking for a law limiting the workday to ten hours. Some of the older girls say that one girl alone can do nothing, but that hundreds standing together may be heard.

Your loving sister, Hannah

(1) In the early 1900s, cars were built one at a time by teams of skilled workers, and only the wealthy could afford them. Henry Ford wanted to build a simple, sturdy car that ordinary families could buy: the Model T, introduced in 1908.

(2) In 1913, at his Highland Park plant in Michigan, Ford introduced the moving assembly line. Instead of workers moving around a car, a conveyor moved each car past workers who each did one small task again and again, using interchangeable parts. The time needed to assemble a Model T chassis (the frame, engine and wheels) fell from about 12½ hours to about 1½ hours.

(3) The work was fast, repetitive and tiring, and many workers quit. In 1914 Ford raised pay to $5 a day, about double the usual factory wage, which cut turnover and helped his own workers afford the cars they built. By the time production ended in 1927, Ford had built about 15 million Model Ts.

In 1832 a committee of the British Parliament, led by Michael Sadler, took testimony as it considered a bill to limit the working hours of children in textile mills. Elizabeth Bentley, then 23, answered the committee's questions. Excerpts from her testimony follow. A doffer removed full bobbins of thread from the spinning frames. To be thronged meant to be very busy.

(1) What age are you? — Twenty-three.

(2) What time did you begin to work at a factory? — When I was six years old.

(3) What kind of mill is it? — Flax-mill.

(4) What were your hours of labour in that mill? — From 5 in the morning till 9 at night, when they were thronged.

(5) What were your usual hours of labour when you were not so thronged? — From 6 in the morning till 7 at night.

(6) What time was allowed for your meals? — Forty minutes at noon.

(7) Had you any time to get your breakfast or drinking? — No, we got it as we could.

(8) Does that keep you constantly on your feet? — Yes, there are so many frames, and they run so quick.

(9) Suppose you flagged a little, or were too late, what would they do? — Strap us.

(10) Girls as well as boys? — Yes.

(1) Merrow Valley is a fictional river valley in New England. Its story is typical of many places that industrialized in the 1800s. Textile mills and machine shops opened along the river, and later along the railroad, and they hired thousands of workers—young people from nearby farms, families from other states, and immigrants from Ireland, Quebec and elsewhere.

(2) The graph shows how many people in the valley worked on farms and in factories in each census year.

(1) In the early 1800s, most American factories ran on water power. A mill needed a river with a waterfall or rapids, where falling water could turn a large water wheel. Mills were often built in the countryside, wherever there were good falls—even far from towns.

(2) After about 1850, more and more factories used steam engines. A steam engine burns coal to make steam, so it can run anywhere coal can be delivered. Railroads could bring heavy loads of coal and carry finished goods to distant markets. Factories that used great amounts of coal, such as ironworks and steel mills, were often built near coal fields and rail lines. Freed from the riverbanks, many factories moved into growing cities.

(3) The map shows four possible factory sites in Lindell County, a fictional county.

In The Wealth of Nations (1776), the Scottish economist Adam Smith described a small workshop where pins were made. Pins were simple but useful goods, made by hand. Smith used the example to explain the division of labor—splitting a job into many small tasks, each done by a different worker.

(1) One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it…

(2) I have seen a small manufactory of this kind, where ten men only were employed, and where some of them consequently performed two or three distinct operations. But though they were very poor, and therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery, they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of pins in a day. There are in a pound upwards of four thousand pins of a middling size. Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a tenth part of forty-eight thousand pins, might be considered as making four thousand eight hundred pins in a day. But if they had all wrought separately and independently, and without any of them having been educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made twenty, perhaps not one pin in a day…

Word help: "manufactory" = workshop or factory; "straights" = straightens; "indifferently accommodated" = poorly supplied; "wrought" = worked.

(1) Economists divide jobs into sectors. Farming, fishing and mining produce raw materials. Manufacturing turns materials into goods. The service and information sector includes health care, education, retail, finance and jobs built on computers and the internet, such as software development and data analysis.

(2) After 1970, many U.S. factory jobs disappeared as companies used more automation and moved production to countries with lower wages. At the same time, the computer and the internet created entirely new industries. The graph shows how jobs changed in Riverton County, a fictional county whose story is typical of many U.S. manufacturing regions.

(1) For centuries, most European scholars learned about nature by studying ancient authorities such as the Greek philosopher Aristotle and the astronomer Ptolemy, who taught that the sun and planets circle the Earth. Between about 1540 and 1700, a group of thinkers began to test ideas by careful observation, measurement and experiment. Historians call this change the Scientific Revolution.

(2) In 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus published a book arguing that the Earth and other planets move around the sun. In 1609 and 1610 Galileo Galilei turned a telescope to the sky and saw moons circling Jupiter—proof that not everything circles the Earth. Church leaders put Galileo on trial in 1633 for supporting Copernicus. In England, the Royal Society, founded in 1660, took as its motto Nullius in verba—"take nobody's word for it." In 1687 Isaac Newton published the Principia, which explained motion and gravity with mathematical laws.

(3) In the Principia, Newton listed rules for reasoning. Two of them read (in Andrew Motte's English translation of 1729):

Rule I. We are to admit no more causes of natural things, than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

Rule IV. In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions collected by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions.

("Experimental philosophy" = science; "propositions" = conclusions; "phenomena" = things that are observed.)

(4) The new habits of measuring and testing spread beyond astronomy. James Watt was an instrument maker at the University of Glasgow when, in the 1760s, he repaired a model of an older steam engine. By measuring how much fuel and steam it wasted, he designed a separate condenser that made steam engines far more efficient. He patented it in 1769. Better steam engines soon powered mines, mills and, later, railroads—helping to launch the Industrial Revolution.

Source 1 — A fictional letter, written for this app, based on real complaints of the 1870s.

(1) Pittsburgh, October 1879. Dear Brother, I have nearly given up trying to know what time it is. Every town sets its clocks by the sun, so noon in Pittsburgh is not noon in Philadelphia or in Chicago. The station here has several clocks, each showing the time used by a different railroad. My timetable lists departures in Philadelphia time, though I was standing in Pittsburgh. Yesterday I missed my connection by twenty minutes because I read the wrong clock, and I lost a day of sales. — Your brother, Samuel

Source 2 — Informational text.

(2) Before the 1880s, most American towns kept local solar time, setting noon by the sun's highest point. As railroads tied the country together—a line reached the Pacific in 1869—dozens of different local times made schedules confusing and even dangerous, because trains on the same track had to know exactly when other trains would pass.

(3) On November 18, 1883, the major railroads of the United States and Canada began using a few standard time zones. Every place within a zone set its clocks to the same time, and neighboring zones differed by exactly one hour. Telegraph signals sent from observatories helped stations keep their clocks exact. Many cities adopted "railroad time" right away. Congress did not make standard time zones federal law until the Standard Time Act of 1918.

(1) Merrow Valley is a fictional river valley in New England. Its story is typical of many places that industrialized in the 1800s. Textile mills and machine shops opened along the river, and later along the railroad, and they hired thousands of workers—young people from nearby farms, families from other states, and immigrants from Ireland, Quebec and elsewhere.

(2) The graph shows how many people in the valley worked on farms and in factories in each census year.

In 1832 a committee of the British Parliament, led by Michael Sadler, took testimony as it considered a bill to limit the working hours of children in textile mills. Elizabeth Bentley, then 23, answered the committee's questions. Excerpts from her testimony follow. A doffer removed full bobbins of thread from the spinning frames. To be thronged meant to be very busy.

(1) What age are you? — Twenty-three.

(2) What time did you begin to work at a factory? — When I was six years old.

(3) What kind of mill is it? — Flax-mill.

(4) What were your hours of labour in that mill? — From 5 in the morning till 9 at night, when they were thronged.

(5) What were your usual hours of labour when you were not so thronged? — From 6 in the morning till 7 at night.

(6) What time was allowed for your meals? — Forty minutes at noon.

(7) Had you any time to get your breakfast or drinking? — No, we got it as we could.

(8) Does that keep you constantly on your feet? — Yes, there are so many frames, and they run so quick.

(9) Suppose you flagged a little, or were too late, what would they do? — Strap us.

(10) Girls as well as boys? — Yes.

(1) Historians often describe two waves of industrial change. The First Industrial Revolution (about 1760–1840) began in Britain. It centered on textiles, iron, and power from water wheels and steam engines. The Second Industrial Revolution (about 1870–1914) was led by the United States and Germany. It brought cheap steel, electricity, oil, the telephone and mass production.

In The Wealth of Nations (1776), the Scottish economist Adam Smith described a small workshop where pins were made. Pins were simple but useful goods, made by hand. Smith used the example to explain the division of labor—splitting a job into many small tasks, each done by a different worker.

(1) One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it…

(2) I have seen a small manufactory of this kind, where ten men only were employed, and where some of them consequently performed two or three distinct operations. But though they were very poor, and therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery, they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of pins in a day. There are in a pound upwards of four thousand pins of a middling size. Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a tenth part of forty-eight thousand pins, might be considered as making four thousand eight hundred pins in a day. But if they had all wrought separately and independently, and without any of them having been educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made twenty, perhaps not one pin in a day…

Word help: "manufactory" = workshop or factory; "straights" = straightens; "indifferently accommodated" = poorly supplied; "wrought" = worked.

(1) Industrial workers in the late 1800s often worked 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week, for low pay, in dangerous conditions. Children worked in mines, mills and factories. There was no minimum wage and little compensation for workers hurt on the job. A single worker had almost no power to bargain with a large company, so workers formed labor unions to bargain collectively.

(2) Key events:

• 1869 — The Knights of Labor forms, welcoming skilled and unskilled workers.
• 1886 — The American Federation of Labor (AFL) is founded under Samuel Gompers; it organizes skilled workers by craft and focuses on wages, hours and working conditions. The same year, a bombing at a labor rally in Chicago's Haymarket Square turns much of the public against unions.
• 1894 — In the Pullman Strike, railroad workers walk off the job; federal troops are sent in and the strike is broken.
• 1911 — A fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City kills 146 workers, mostly young immigrant women, many trapped behind locked doors. New York passes dozens of new safety laws.
• 1935 — The National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) guarantees most private-sector workers the right to join unions and bargain collectively.
• 1938 — The Fair Labor Standards Act sets a national minimum wage (25 cents an hour at first), requires overtime pay beyond a standard workweek that reached 40 hours by 1940, and limits child labor.

(3) Many things workers take for granted today—the eight-hour day, the weekend, overtime pay and workplace safety rules—came from these struggles.

(1) Merrow Valley is a fictional river valley in New England. Its story is typical of many places that industrialized in the 1800s. Textile mills and machine shops opened along the river, and later along the railroad, and they hired thousands of workers—young people from nearby farms, families from other states, and immigrants from Ireland, Quebec and elsewhere.

(2) The graph shows how many people in the valley worked on farms and in factories in each census year.

(1) For centuries, most European scholars learned about nature by studying ancient authorities such as the Greek philosopher Aristotle and the astronomer Ptolemy, who taught that the sun and planets circle the Earth. Between about 1540 and 1700, a group of thinkers began to test ideas by careful observation, measurement and experiment. Historians call this change the Scientific Revolution.

(2) In 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus published a book arguing that the Earth and other planets move around the sun. In 1609 and 1610 Galileo Galilei turned a telescope to the sky and saw moons circling Jupiter—proof that not everything circles the Earth. Church leaders put Galileo on trial in 1633 for supporting Copernicus. In England, the Royal Society, founded in 1660, took as its motto Nullius in verba—"take nobody's word for it." In 1687 Isaac Newton published the Principia, which explained motion and gravity with mathematical laws.

(3) In the Principia, Newton listed rules for reasoning. Two of them read (in Andrew Motte's English translation of 1729):

Rule I. We are to admit no more causes of natural things, than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

Rule IV. In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions collected by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions.

("Experimental philosophy" = science; "propositions" = conclusions; "phenomena" = things that are observed.)

(4) The new habits of measuring and testing spread beyond astronomy. James Watt was an instrument maker at the University of Glasgow when, in the 1760s, he repaired a model of an older steam engine. By measuring how much fuel and steam it wasted, he designed a separate condenser that made steam engines far more efficient. He patented it in 1769. Better steam engines soon powered mines, mills and, later, railroads—helping to launch the Industrial Revolution.

Source 1 — A fictional letter, written for this app, based on real complaints of the 1870s.

(1) Pittsburgh, October 1879. Dear Brother, I have nearly given up trying to know what time it is. Every town sets its clocks by the sun, so noon in Pittsburgh is not noon in Philadelphia or in Chicago. The station here has several clocks, each showing the time used by a different railroad. My timetable lists departures in Philadelphia time, though I was standing in Pittsburgh. Yesterday I missed my connection by twenty minutes because I read the wrong clock, and I lost a day of sales. — Your brother, Samuel

Source 2 — Informational text.

(2) Before the 1880s, most American towns kept local solar time, setting noon by the sun's highest point. As railroads tied the country together—a line reached the Pacific in 1869—dozens of different local times made schedules confusing and even dangerous, because trains on the same track had to know exactly when other trains would pass.

(3) On November 18, 1883, the major railroads of the United States and Canada began using a few standard time zones. Every place within a zone set its clocks to the same time, and neighboring zones differed by exactly one hour. Telegraph signals sent from observatories helped stations keep their clocks exact. Many cities adopted "railroad time" right away. Congress did not make standard time zones federal law until the Standard Time Act of 1918.