Thomas Alva Edison Alexander Graham Bell The Age of Revolutions Samuel F.B. Morse’s invention of the telegraph and Elias Howe’s invention of the sewing machine came before the Civil war. After the Civil war, industrialisation went on at a rapid pace. In , the first transcontinental railroad was completed to transport people, raw materials and manufactures.
The invention of electric bulb by Thomas Alva Edison ( ) and telephone by Alexander Graham Bell ( ) changed the whole world. The Industrial Revolution quickened the process of the transition of the United States from a rural to an urban society. Young people raised on farms saw greater opportunities in the cities and moved there. There was unprecedented urbanisation and territorial expansion in the US and, as a result, between and , fourteen million immigrants came to the country, providing workers for a wide variety of industries.
Impact of Industrial Revolution If the Renaissance changed people’s approach to life, the Industrial Revolution changed the way they had existed since the agrarian times. The mechanisation of industry resulted in much greater production and therefore it produced greater wealth. But this new wealth went to a small group, the owners of the new industries. The Industrial Revolution solved the problem of production.
But not the problem of distribution of new wealth created. Machine-made manufactures ruined the handicrafts and rendered tens of thousands of artisans and weavers jobless. During the first phase of the Industrial Revolution the introduction of machines meant that able-bodied men were thrown out of employment by the cheap labour of women and children. Moreover, many of the factories and mines were dangerous and unsanitary.
An important outcome of the Industrial Revolution was the creation of two new classes: an industrial bourgeoisie and a proletariat. To the industrial bourgeoisie most forms of government intervention, except protective tariffs and suppression of strikes, were allergic. They insisted that free enterprise was absolutely essential to vigorous economic growth. The new class of industrial workers did not simply suffer.
Towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars,