Hey there and welcome back to Heimler's History. Now we've been going through Unit 4 of the AP U.S. History curriculum, and in this video and in the next we're going to talk about the Market Revolution. Mmm, so tasty. So if you're ready, I'm ready, let's get to it. So like I said, we're going to cover the Market Revolution in two videos.
In this one we're going to focus on the changes in technology and agriculture and commerce during the first half of the 19th century. In the next video we're going to consider how the Market Revolution changed society. So I'm in the mood to begin with a definition. What is the Market Revolution?
Essentially, it was the linking of Northern industries with Western and Southern farms, which was created by advances in agriculture, industry, and transportation. What you really need to take from that definition is that this revolution coordinated industry in the United States. All the different regional sectors of the economy really knit themselves together into a singular economic entity.
And this was a seriously big deal because it marked America's transition from mainly an agrarian society into a firmly capitalist society. Now, as I said, all of this occurred because of innovations in transportation and in industry and in agriculture, and I'm kind of in the mood to talk about each of those in turn. So let's start with innovations in transportation.
Now, if the whole dang nation was going to be relying on each of its parts to manufacture goods for sale, that meant that there had to be a reliable and efficient means to transport raw materials and goods for sale. This problem was first solved by the construction of the National Road, otherwise known as the Cumberland Road. It connected Maryland on the east coast to Illinois in the heartland, stretching for a thousand miles all- paved.
Now that doesn't sound like too big of a deal to us who are used to traveling on interstate highways on the regular, but in those days it was a huge deal because states often rejected the idea of being responsible for a federal road that passed beyond their borders, and very few of those proposed actually made it into reality. Also important in the transportation category was the building of canals. Canals, in case you don't know, are basically human constructed rivers, because sometimes a river just doesn't go where you need it to go in order to trade and get that boom boom. The most significant of these canals was the Erie Canal, constructed in New York in 1825. This canal linked western farms with eastern manufacturing and created the occasion for a flurry of canal building throughout the United States. Now, if you're going to be shipping goods and raw materials on water, then you need a reliable vehicle.
Enter the Steamboat. Previously, if you wanted to ship manufactured goods down a river, then it was basically a one-way trip, and that trip was dictated by the direction of the current. But with the advent of steam power in boats, goods could be delivered downstream, then raw materials could be loaded on it, and it could power its way right back upstream. And this increased the efficiency of trade immensely.
And finally, maybe the most significant innovation in transportation technology was the railroad. By the 1820s and 1830s, railroads had largely replaced canals as the main technology, linking regions for trade and manufacture. And from there they exploded like mad, and local and state governments helped this expansion by granting special loans and tax breaks to railroad companies, and in some cases they even granted them land as well.
So that's how all the regions of the nation got linked together through transportation, and now let's turn the corner and talk about innovations in industrial technology. New patent laws that protected the rights of people's inventions made the environment ripe for new technology. One of the most significant of these innovators was Eli Whitney, whose technology of interchangeable parts revolutionized the industrial sector. He first applied this technology to the manufacture of guns.
Now think about this for a second. Prior to interchangeable parts, if you wanted a gun or dang near anything manufactured for that matter, then an artisan would have to make the whole item for you from beginning to end. It was a long process that required skilled labor, and if you got your trigger messed up, well then you had to get a whole new gun.
But Whitney figured out that if you machined each piece of a weapon with precision and in- bulk, then you could assemble all of those pieces, and then if any of the pieces failed, you could just change it out with another that fit the exact specifications. And when this innovation was applied to industry, it took off. In the 1820s, the factory system was born in America, and the revolution here was related to interchangeable parts. Factories could mass produce the discrete parts of any given item with precision, and then workers could assemble them to be shipped to regional and more distant markets.
And so now, all of a sudden, manufactured goods could be mass-produced by unskilled laborers and Americans were flooded with crap to buy that they never even knew they wanted. Thanks America! Another significant innovation in the market revolution happened in the agricultural industry. Now the first innovation I'll mention could belong to the previous category of industry, but it was a major player for agriculture as well. So prior to his work in interchangeable parts, Eli Whitney had invented the cotton gin, which significantly sped up the...
process was separating cotton seeds from cotton fibers, which was then thrown into a spinning machine which turned the raw cotton into yarn. These inventions transformed Southern agriculture, which could ship way more cotton than previously was possible. Also on the agriculture front, a significant change was occurring in the way people farmed. In the early 1800s and for generations before it, subsistence farming was the main goal of agriculture. This just meant that people farmed in order to feed themselves and maybe have a little extra to sell locally.
But in our time period, commercial farming rapidly began to replace subsistence farming as the norm. This kind of farming focused on growing cash crops like cotton or tobacco. These crops weren't grown for a family's survival, because you can't exactly eat cotton or tobacco. These crops were grown exclusively to be traded at local, and at this point increasingly distant, markets. And cotton was, by all measures, the most important, especially for Southern farmers.
And because Southern cotton was in high demand from British textile factories, this new boom in cash crops began linking not only American farms to American industry, but also American farms to international industry. So the thing you really need to take away from all of this is as follows. Because of the increasing innovation in technology and transportation and industry, the different regions of America were growing increasingly interconnected economically and increasing economic ties internationally. That's it. Okay, don't click away just yet.
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Heimler out.