Industrial Revolution Outline
Thesis: The 1800s had not only ushered in a new era of enhanced transportation and technology, but also the Industrial Revolution which urbanized America’s social working structure and mechanical employment. Due to the Industrial Revolution, the US’s financial system changed dramatically, transforming from a revenue dependent on the work of farmers and artisans to that based on fast, reliant, and cheap mass production of factories, which were able to employ several non-skilled workers. However, the industrialized era also had its consequences(though not all negative), in which the precedent social order was destroyed, featuring the decline of America’s stringent patriarchy and the uprising of female employment and strikes. Paragraph 1: • Putting-out system disintegrated artisanship and apprenticeship • More mills and factories= More opportunities for unskilled employment= Lower wages • Industrialized machines threatened independence of skilled male work force • Transformation of a large barter system into a cash economy • Free labor/ debility of community hire- workers able to work at whatever factory or company they want, at whatever wages available • Industrial capitalism is boosted due to the improved conveyance system, cheap labor, and fast production Paragraph 2: • Child and women’s labor • Decline of absolute patriarchal dependency for women • Free labor- preindustrial ideal of “community of interest” between employer and employee did not exist anymore • Strikes- workers protested for more human conditions- better wages and shorter hours Conclusion: The Industrial Revolution provided a series of benefits and consequences for which changed the face of American economics and lives of common American workers forever. The industrialization of US capitalization caused the cheaper and more extensive employment, non-experienced workers, like women, children, and immigrants found job openings. Artisans and apprentices began losing their place in society; as specialization and standardization became the new concepts of employee condition, while also diminishing the stable economic power of male workers.
