1. The Industrial Revolution, which took place from the 18th to 19th centuries, was a period of time when water and steam power replaced muscle power, and rural societies in Europe and America became industrial and urban. There were many reasons why the Industrial Revolution started in England. One reason it started in England was because there were a lot of fast moving rivers. This geographical feature was important because in order to operate the water wheel, you needed fast moving rivers. The water wheel was an important step in the Industrial Revolution because it was used to work machinery in the factories.
For example, one of the earliest factories in England’s Industrial Revolution was powered by the water wheel; this factory was John Lombe’s water-powered silk mill. If England did not have this important geographic feature, it would have been harder for them to run their machines when they industrialized. Also, the rivers were a very important mode of transportation. People could transport goods to the factories cheaply going downstream; they could also trade with other vendors along the river. Rivers such as River Severn and River Thames were extremely long, so there were many vendors that traders could trade with.
Because of this, traders made a lot of money, and they could also stimulate the economy. Another reason the Industrial Revolution started in England was because they adopted the idea of the factories. The factories were a key component for England to industrialize because they allowed companies to make their goods in high demands quickly. Factories contained large amounts of industrial machinery that were used to make goods. England did not have any trouble building these machines because they had access to iron, which was the main material used to make industrial machinery.
It was also very cheap for England to build machines for their factories because they had their own natural resources, and they did not need to buy them from other countries. In conclusion, if England did not adopt this key feature, they would have not been able to industrialize. The Industrial Revolution came to America because of a young boy from Derbyshire, England named Samuel Slater. Slater was the son of a prosperous yeoman farmer that died when Slater was just fourteen, and at this age, he was apprenticed to a neighbor named Jebediah Strutt.
A few years before this apprenticeship, Strutt had entered into partnership with Richard Arkwright to construct the first water frame spinning machine. He hired Slater to supervise one of his textile mills, and for six years, Slater learned a lot about this machinery. At the end of his apprenticeship, he decided to travel to the United States because he wanted to claim Arkwright’s ideas to make money for himself, but it was illegal to export textile technology. Because of this, Slater memorized the construction plans for the Arkwright factory.
He also memorized every nook and cranny of the textile machines that Arkwright invented. On September 1st, 1789, Slater, disguised as a farm laborer, traveled from London to the Americas aboard a ship. After he set foot on land in America, he designed the first textile mills from memory using Arkwright’s inventions. Samuel Slater would later be known as “The Father of the American Industrial Revolution” to the Americans, and he would be known as “Slater the Traitor” to the Europeans. 2. The poor soil in New England made farming very difficult for New England farmers.
They could not afford to tend to their crops, so they left their farms unattended and urbanized into the cities to work in the factories during the Industrial Revolution. This was very easy for them to industrialize because they had fast moving rivers and streams that that offered waterpower needed to run factory machinery. Agriculture in the North was not substantial to make a living because the farms were extremely small, so crops did not produce in large quantities like they did in the South. Also, families could barely produce enough crops to care for each other.
They could not sell crops to earn money because they needed the crops to stay alive. In addition, factories mainly got shipments from the Western farms and the Southern farms because their agriculture thrived. The warm climate and fertile soil in the South made farming simple for Southern farmers. Unlike the North, the South depended on agriculture to make a living, and they decided to not industrialize because of it. One crop that Southern agriculture depended on the most was cotton. Cotton is a us substance that is used as textile fiber and thread for sewing.
Cotton was such a valuable crop that farmers in the South moved west because cotton grew more superior in a warmer climate. The seed drill, which was invented in the 1800’s by Jethro Tull, who was an English agricultural pioneer, helped plant the cotton seeds in the ground in a mass quantity. This new invention made cotton production even greater because it took a short amount of time to plant many seeds in the ground. Cotton seeds needed to be removed before factories could use the cotton to make products, so Southern farmers started to hire slaves to do this grueling task.
It took an interminable amount of time for the slaves to remove every cotton seed from the cotton. Luckily in 1793, Eli Whitney, an American inventor, invented the cotton gin. The cotton gin removed the seeds from cotton at a quick rate, and it did the work of fifty slaves doing the same task. This brought new life into slavery in the South because forty-nine other slaves were hired to pick the cotton. Between 1790 and 1820, cotton production soared from 3,000 to 300,000 bales per year in the South.
Also, the amount of enslaved Africans increased substantially from about 700,000 to 1. 2 million. In conclusion, these are the differences between the agriculture in the North and the South. 3. There were many inventions and changes that improved transportation during the Industrial Revolution. One invention that improved transportation was the steamboat. The steamboat was invented in 1807 by a man named Robert Fulton. Robert Fulton was an American engineer who is credited with developing a commercially successful steamboat called Clermont.
The steamboat was necessary for the Industrial Revolution to continue because it was able to travel upstream and downstream, and it quickened the amount of time it took to transport goods. Before the steamboat, people either had to walk or travel downstream on flats to transport goods; not only did this take an enormous amount of time (usually months), but it also takes an excessive amount of labor and hard work. The steamboat reduced the time of shipping goods substantially. As a matter of fact, the steamboat traveled from New York City to Albany in just two days!
If the steamboat had not been invented, factories could not get goods imported on time, and they might have had to shut down. Another change that improved transportation during the Industrial Revolution were the roads. In 1817, Congress approved to have the National Road, also known as the Cumberland Road, constructed. This road was to be built with crushed stone which made traveling easier because the road would not get muddy or flood. Before this road was constructed, other roads that became muddy, flooded easily, and were filled with boulders were in the ground.
When you traveled by stagecoach on these roads, you would normally get stuck in the ruts of the ground, and your travel would be dangerous or even difficult; you would not be able to import goods on time because you would always find yourself stopping to get out of the ruts you were stuck in. With the new National Road, you would not have to worry about getting stuck in the ruts of the surface, and you could travel quickly. You could also get goods imported quickly, so your factories could stay open. The last invention that improved transportation was the railroad.
The railroad was invented by a British man named Richard Trevithick. Richard Trevithick was a British inventor and mining engineer from Cornwall, England who built the first steam-powered locomotive passenger vehicle. Railroads were necessary for the Industrial Revolution to continue because they could carry goods or even passengers a long distance quickly, and they decreased the cost of shipping goods greatly. Railroads were really important to the factories because they could get their goods for a cheap price, and they could sell them for more than they cost. Railroads could also ship goods quickly because of their fast speeds.
In conclusion, these are examples of changes and inventions that improved transportation during the Industrial Revolution. 4. During the Industrial Revolution, fifty percent of the world’s population lived in cities. In the 1800’s, only three percent of the world’s population lived in cities. The cause of this movement was the increase in factories, which made people urbanize, or move from a non-urban area to an urban area to get a job. People in the North and few people in the South had to urbanize to the city because they could no longer afford to tend to their crops.
The cities changed for the better and for the worse for many reasons. One reason the cities changed for the better was because they were offering a lot of work to people that were jobless. Many people could afford to care for their families that lived with them, and they had also become successful in their everyday lives. They could stimulate the economy with their money that they made by working in the cities. Another reason the cities changed for the better was because there was a higher population of people in one area.
People could enjoy themselves by going to the pub, theater, or a department store. Also, people could socialize with each other and have fun. In fact, there was always entertainment in the cities for people to enjoy. The last reason the cities changed for the better was because they offered more opportunities for people to work. As a matter of fact, before the cities increased opportunity for jobs, if your parents were shoemakers, it would be very likely that you would be a shoe maker too, not matter how much you hated your job.
With increased opportunities in the cities, people were able to find different work that they enjoyed that was different from their parents’. One reason the cities changed for the worse was because there was a lot of pollution. For example, factories produced an innumerable amount of air pollution; they used coal, which is a very bad fossil fuel for the environment if used in large quantities. Also, the factories did not properly dispose chemicals and other types of waste. This puts the condition of the ecosystem and air more at stake.
Another reason the cities changed for the worse was because when families moved into the cities, they lost their extended family. Before urbanization into the cities (caused by the Industrial Revolution) happened, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandmothers, and grandfathers would stay in the same house (cabin) together; they would eat at the same table and would sleep with each other in the same room. Families would get to really love and know one another for who they were because they always spent time with each other.
When families urbanized, they separated into different houses, and they did not get to have as much quality time as they did when they lived with each other in the country. The last reason cities changed for the worse was because the sanitation was very poor. The water in the cities was not clean, and many diseases spread due to lack of sanitation between people. Factory workers came out extremely sweaty and grimy, and many of them did not have access to a bath or shower to clean themselves. Also, when they caught a disease like the flu or pneumonia, they continued going to work because they did not know the health effects of the diseases.
