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Introduction
The history of the United States has a life-changing period between the end of the nineteenth century and the middle of the twentieth – industrial urbanization. It is also called the Second Industrial Revolution as the increasing number of urban citizens coincided with the time of rapid technological progress of the twentieth century. By the 1900s, nine-tenth of the nation’s manufacturing took place in urban areas. This paper aims to discuss the influence of migration and technology in industrial urbanization, and prove that technology played a more important role in the development.
Before the Civil War, only a tenth part of the United States population lived in towns or cities, but the situation dramatically changed through the following century. The number of people who moved from the countryside to a city doubled in thirty years, and by 1900, almost half of the population lived in cities. For example, New York had more than two million citizens, and towns of countryside-based states such as Nebraska increased the urban population fifty times. The increasing proportion of the people living in urban areas and the decrease of the rural way of life is called urbanization. This process influenced many institutions of the United States, such as culture, family, and, most importantly, the economy.
People migrated from rural to urban while the technologies developed due to industrial progress. Mainly, it happened because the iron and steel industries expanded and needed innovations to increase production. Moreover, such technologies as electricity and communications developed to improve industrial growth. It became the critical factor for the economy’s growth: industrial volume of production increased, more factories were built, and required more human workforce.
Urbanization, together with industrial progress, caused economic development and opened job opportunities that drew people to leave their countryside lives. The basic scenario of urbanization is when a factory establishes, it requires many workforces and makes people move to live nearby. The concentration of different people expands as well as the factory grows, and a town appears.
Migration and Its Role in the Industrial Urbanization
Migration has always been a part of history, as people tend to move to places rich in resources, and leave lands that ran out of them. With the population expanding, the need for more jobs and more resources appeared, and migration also became a solution. Due to the economic crisis after the Civil War, the United States population generally migrated for work.
New York City is a remarkable example of the city that drew migration at the beginning of the twentieth century. Its population grew fast, although it was not a place rich in natural resources. The primary purpose of migrating to New York City was to get a job, and there were many opportunities to find it. The Industry City, the shipping and manufacturing complex – the most prominent industrial property in the country because of the variety of factories, warehouses, and manufacturers located at the same place. The Industry City attracted migrants with its jobs, and they left the rural way of life to discover new opportunities. Moreover, the more significant concentration of people creates the need for infrastructures such as schools, hospitals, food production so that even more individuals migrate to get jobs in these locations. Riefler states that “in those areas where increases in manufacturing specialization were most significant, city growth exceeded hinterland development by the broadest margin resulting in rapid urbanization.”
Many challenges, such as terrible living conditions, overcrowded streets, anti-sanitation, were met by working-class people. Still, their willingness to survive in these new conditions moved the progress of the industrial revolution. The other way how migration moved industrial urbanization is the cities’ infrastructure. Skyscrapers appeared in the towns so that more people could live in a small piece of land, internal city roads were built, and civil organizations were established to make the city a better place to live. To conclude, migration grew fast because of the expanding population and the opportunities beyond rural life.
Technology, and Its Role in the Industrial Urbanization
The rise of technology is a significant chapter of the twentieth century’s history as many areas of industrial production rapidly developed because of it. The majority of technologies invented during this period are related to improvement for the the iron and steel production. Moreover, technologies like electricity and steam engines appeared to improve the working process of factories. Electricity made it possible to build manufacturing away from a river and caused an increase in new factories around the country.
Innovations, such as communication and electric lightning, allowed factories to work twenty-four hours a day, and it created a demand for more workforce. The speed of production also changed as the machines were allowed to divide it into small repetitive steps to make, and workers sometimes needed to do only one particular task. It became an opportunity to get a job without almost any level of education and drew more people to join the workforce. Besides, the cost of such labor was lower, and the machines made it possible to make manufactured products cheaper for consumers.
New developments in transportation technology accelerated the economy and the communication between cities. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the railroad connected almost all of the States. It accelerated the development of towns and communities that tied the citizens of the whole country together. Railways became not only a means of transportation but also created the majority of work for people throughout the country. All of these improvements led to rapid economic progress, and the Second Industrial Revolution became the time of the fastest growth.
Conclusion
The Second Industrial Revolution changed the lifestyle of many Americans from the rural to the urban one. The unprecedented growth of urban, industrial America resulted from the labor of millions of men toiled in factories, on railroads, and construction sites across the United States. However, technology was the factor that created the need for new workers in cities. New inventions, such as electricity, broaden the production opportunities of factories, and it caused the demand for a more human workforce. New technologies and innovations built new jobs, and also led to the development of infrastructure around the workplaces. The demand for managing many people inside a factory created management strategies that are still in use, such as Ford’s assembly line and salary division for the workers.
The migration to the cities was a growth point for economics, yet it could not increase this fast if technologies were not developing and causing the workforce demand. Rees concludes that “industrialization and urbanization began long before, but it accelerated greatly during this period because of technological innovations and changes that increasingly apt to favor economic growth beyond any other concern.” Technology played a more significant role in industrial urbanization as it led to important changes and a better quality of life.
Bibliography
Husband, Julie and Jim O’Loughlin. Daily Life in the Industrial United States, 1870-1900, 2nd Edition. Westport: Greenwood, 2019.
Judd, Dennis R., Annika M. Hinze. City Politics: The Political Economy of Urban America. New York: Routledge, 2019.
Rees, Jonathan. Industrialization and urbanization in the United States, 1880–1929. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, 2016.
Riefler, Roger. Nineteenth-Century Urbanization Patterns in the United States. Sydney: CBA Faculty Publications, 1979.
Roark, James, Michael P. Johnson, Francois Furstenberg, Sarah Stage, Sarah E Igo. The American Promise: A Concise History. New York, Macmillan, 2019.
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