HOW HAS THE UNITED STATES

INDUSTRIAL ESTABLISHMENT CHANGED

SINCE 1840 TO THE PRESENT?

Charles Michaels

History 1700: U.S. History

Ken C. Hansen
 The industrial complex of the United States has changed in many ways since the

industrial revolution first started. Our first machines that were used in the United States

were powered by water and then eventually people started to build on the ideas of the

machines of that time to make them better, and into what they are today. We have

changed we type of products we produce and what is important to our society as a whole.

We have expanded our industry to encompass much more goods that can be produced and

traded. Our machines have also gotten smaller and more efficient in their tasks. One thing

that has stayed the same for come companies and places is that some of the workers are

still over worked and get paid very little in return.

The main cause of the industrial revolution was when Samuel Slater brought new

technologies from Great Britain to the United States and founded the first cotton mill in

Beverly, Massachusetts. He was able to start his own business, which was very successful

because he could produce clothing and other cotton products much faster than his

competition. Back then people would make their own clothing and blanket but after

seeing how much faster and nicer the cotton mills could make the clothes people started

to just buy their clothing and cotton products from the shops and cotton mill. This led to

other people wanting to replicate his idea so they too could start their own business and

become rich, so people started to build dams so they could gather up water for their mill.

They would also build more than one mill for each factory in order to have more power

behind each of their machines allowing them to put more machines and more workers in

one place.
 As more mills opened more women started to work and help provide for their

families. The downside to women working is that their managers that were usually men

would degrade the women and make them work more hours with less pay. Because of

their low wage they had to work around 12 hours a day just to barely survive and pay

their bills. They would often get in accidents at work because their managers were

pushing them so hard to go faster, and when they got in accidents the manager would

send them home and they would be replaced by someone else. People started to fight over

water rights because the dams would kill the fish which would make it harder for the

fishermen to make a living and feed their families and would often block water from

going to other peoples mills. People tried to improve the model of the mill to make it

more productive and more efficient, but eventually there were too many mills on one

place so the people started to look to new ways to power their machines.

This led to steam engines that were used to power trains and other types of

machines used in factories to produce products faster and away from the water. The

people were eventually able to make electrically powered machines. In todays world we

mostly use electricity to power our machines and our factories; we still used engines for

our cars and other types of machines, but these new engines are much stronger than the

old steam engines and they dont use coal for fuel they use gasoline or oil which is a

liquid that comes from coal or can be produced by drilling. Electricity is much more

reliable and more efficient because you can just turn it on and it is ready to go but the
older machines needed time to warm up and you need someone to be shoveling coal into

the engine to keep it running, or you would need a certain amount of water to turn your

mills. What happened if there was a drought? What happened if you was on a steam

powered train and ran out of coal in the middle of a trip? These may not have happened

very often but there was still a chance that this could happen, which is why electrically

powered machines and factories of today are much more reliable than the machines and

factories from back then. Yes, we still do have power outages that can shut down roads,

houses, businesses, and factories but these dont happen very often and can be fixed in a

few hours sometimes even shorter.

We also have created more machines to do more tasks. Back then machines were

very expensive and were only found in factories or used for trains at the train stations;

now we have machines for farming, machines for accounting businesses, we have

machines for every type of profession. We have expanded our industrial complex so far

that just about every area of our lives depends on our industries. Our machines allow a

group of 300 farmers to accomplish the same type of jobs that would normally take

thousands of people to finish. We have machines that allow us to make copies of

documents without having to sit down and rewrite the whole thing each time, allowing us

accomplish more with each day.

 Back then most of our machinery and factories were dealing with cotton, wood, or

trains, but now we have machines and factories to help melt down metals to make them

stronger which are then used for our military planes and ships, or the construction of cars.

Our industry has grown so large that we could break it up into different parts; the

agriculture industry produces food for the country and ships out the excess to other

countries for more profit. The transportation industry builds cars and different ways to

transport goods and people around the world. The military industry builds weapons and

tools to help protect the American population. Even have a food industry that makes and

produces food the quality of the food that is produced is much better than what was being

produced in the past with all the magic remedies that were being sold that could actually

harm you more than it can help you.

With the emergence of these new industries they each can go in depth on what

they are good at to make it better instead of focusing on a broad spectrum of what needs

to be produced; and they even break up into smaller sub-industries that focus on even

more specific goods and trades that need to be produced. This allows todays industries to

thrive and continue to innovate the way we live our lives; our machines are always

getting smaller and smaller as time goes on they are also becoming faster. This is possible

because we now have machines created to help create more machines, these machines

can make more precise cuts and calculations so we can get more power out of less space.

This is one of the reasons we dont see as many factories because machines are taking the

place of humans in many of the jobs that used to be available and because the machines

are smaller which allows the buildings around them to be smaller.

 Our businesses have become more sophisticated and government regulations help

employees get treated more fairly by their managers. Back then the manager could pretty

much do what ever he wanted because jobs were in such high demand if someone quit

they could be easily replaced. This caused the heads of companies to become selfish; they

knew they could do whatever they wanted to their employees because the employees

needed the job to survive and wouldnt quit. But after a few years employees started to go

on strikes and told others about their hardships with certain companies to prevent other

people from working there until the managers would fix their problems and treat the

workers fairly. We now depend on our state government to make sure and keep the

businesses in line and to stop them from treating workers unfairly. However some

companies have found a way around this regulation; they outsource certain parts of the

process of producing and transporting their products in order to reduce cost, to be able to

pay their workers lower wages, and because other places in the world have no regulations

on how young children can work and how long employers can make their employees

work. This helps businesses to produce more, faster, and cheaper; it is nice to have our

products when we need them but we should not force people to live the same way the

American population lived when the industrial revolution first started. Wearing poor

clothing, having no rest to do anything other than work, needing to work every waking

moment in order to be able to provide for their families, and keeping children from

school in order to save an extra couple dollars.

 In China there have been numerous reports of Apple workers committing suicide

because of the long work hours and stress that is put on them every time they go to work.

This shows how stressful the competition and work environment can be on a regular

basis. Back then the stress was being placed there by greedy managers who just wanted

more money, and now the stress is being placed on workers by greedy managers who

want more money and are trying to stay above the competition by producing their

products faster and better. We are just increasing the stress that is being placed on todays

workers, which can cause them to be less productive because they will care less about the

company due to them being treated poorly, it also can cause them to quit or take more

drastic measures to get away from such high levels of stress. Our American industry

should strive for more kindness and fairness when it comes to their employees because

the business needs their employees in order to perform the way that it needs to in order to

survive. There have been reports and studies saying that if a person is happy with their

job and what they do for a living they will work harder and care more about the success

of the company.

In our industry today there is much more competition because most companies

know how to produce and transport the basic needs of the American population; and in

order to make a profit and be successful a company would need to make its self stand out

by having better performance, creating a better product, or by have excellent customer

service that makes people keep wanting to come back and do business with them again.

There is even much more competition to even get a job in the industry let alone start a
new business. As people become more and more educated the competition is increasing

which forces people to spend more time in school or get more experience in order to

become superior to their piers. Businesses also need to keep up with current trends and

current times; that means if the business is in the clothing industry they need to keep up

with the current types of clothing that people like to wear so they dont lose to their

competition. If the company is in the technology industry they need to keep up with the

latest gadgets and keep coming out with new toys for their customers to enjoy and use

while they are at work or at home. When the industrial revolution first started there

wasnt much competition at all because the only thing standing in the way of machines

were products that were hand made, which were produced much slower and costed more

than what was being produced by machines. The machines could produce more, faster,

and with less people. Eventually more people started to build machines, which led to

more competition, and to keep up people kept improving their machines until we got to

where we are today. Todays machines and industries have become so common and so

numerous that the competition just keeps growing and gets harder and harder to keep up

with. Many businesses fail simply because they cant keep up with current times most of

our shopping is done online now; Sears and K mart are some examples many or all of

their locations are pretty much closed down completely because they didnt keep up with

the current needs of todays consumers.

 Our industry has changed in many different ways since the 1840s. We made new

discoveries in technology and created new machines that are faster and more efficient

than ever before. We have expanded our industry so far we are now at the point that we

can break our industry into different parts and sections based on what part of society they

focus on the most. We have the military industry, food industry, medical industry each of

them focusing on specifically what they are meant to do and accomplish for our society.

This allows them to become more skilled in the arts they practice and giving them the

ability to look deeper into what they do for our communities and look for ways to expand

what they can do to benefit our country. The main part of our industry that we was

Americans need to focus on and strive to do better on is how we treat our employees and

making sure we dont over work them. If they are happy with their company they will be

more likely to want the company to succeed and put forth more effort to get the company

where it needs to be. This will also help companies combat the growing competition and

stay ahead of the curve; this will also make it easier for them to find workers because

people will want to work for them. Competition can create some problems on finding a

job and creating more stress, but it could also be a good thing because it forces businesses

to be creative and try to invent new things. A healthy competition can help our industry

and our economy continue to grow and progress, but if we take the competition too

seriously and start hurting our employees because we want to be ahead of the competition

that will just show that we still havent progressed at all in that area of our industries.
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