Industrialization In The 19th Century

At the end of the Nineteenth Century, the American population was growing rapidly. Industrialization was growing and this meant all of the major cities were populating also. After some of the government grants given to the railroad companies, 200,000 miles worth of tracks laid across the country, to help settle the west by the year 1900. “From 1877 to 1890, both the amount of goods and the number of passengers traveling the rails tripled” (U.S. History chapter18). Agriculture was the first big venture but toward the end of the century much focus had change to industry. This was a time when major corporations started, they could make products cheaper, which drove out the smaller competitors. Large companies who supplied items like steel
With so many technological advances in industry, the number of required workers increased rapidly. The factories also now had electric lights in them letting them work 24 hours a day. “As late as 1880, fully one-half of all Americans still lived and worked on farms, whereas fewer than one in seven—mostly men, except for long-established textile factories in which female employees tended to dominate—were employed in factories. However, the development of commercial electricity by the close of the century, to complement the steam engines that already existed in many larger factories, permitted more industries to concentrate in cities, away from the previously essential water power. In turn, newly arrived immigrants sought employment in new urban factories. Immigration, urbanization, and industrialization coincided to transform the face of American society from primarily rural to significantly urban. From 1880 to 1920, the number of industrial workers in the nation quadrupled from 2.5 million to over 10 million, while over the same period urban populations doubled, to reach one-half of the country’s total population” (U.S. History
It was common in that time for children to work in the factories. The American federation of labor was founded in 1886. There were many large strikes happening from the railroads and the steel workers. “Factory wages were, for the most part, very low. In 1900, the average factory wage was approximately twenty cents per hour, for an annual salary of barely six hundred dollars. According to some historical estimates, that wage left approximately 20 percent of the population in industrialized cities at, or below, the poverty level. An average factory work week was sixty hours, ten hours per day, six days per week, although in steel mills, the workers put in twelve hours per day, seven days a week” (U.S. History chapter 19). Millions of people migrated to America in hopes of finding a better future here. From 1850-1900 the Population tripled” (Immigrant City PowerPoint). There were so many immigrants coming in, a processing center was opened at Ellis Island. The reality was not quite the land of opportunity that they had heard, often spending long hours stuck in factory work with low