Industrialization of the United States

Industrial development in the United States began as early as the 18th century (see early United States history). However, the years from 1865 (the American Civil War) to 1945 (the end of World War II) were momentous, as the USA rose from an agrarian nation of 35 million citizens, to the world's dominant superpower, a world leader in manufacturing and the home of 140 million people, mostly through immigration. The Old West was colonized, and mass production, automobiles, electric lighting, and popular culture such as Hollywood movies and jazz created the modern American lifestyle.

Understand
"No man can be a good citizen unless he has a wage more than sufficient to cover the bare cost of living, and hours of labor short enough so after his day's work is done he will have time and energy to bear his share in the management of the community, to help in carrying the general load."

- Theodore Roosevelt, The New Nationalism

The late 19th century was named The Gilded Age; and saw a rising class of capitalists and intellectuals, among continued poverty, widespread corruption, and racial tension in the wake of the emancipation of slaves. While the adventures of the Old West have shaped posterity's image of 19th-century America, most of the population remained in the East and South. Meanwhile, the Industrial Revolution was in full swing across the Atlantic in England, and would eventually spread to the United States. This heralded a new era of massive immigration to cities such as New York and Chicago from other parts of the US and from abroad to work in the factories (though frequently under appalling conditions). These cities eventually grew into the multicultural, cosmopolitan metropolises that we know today.

It was also during this period that the United States would establish its own overseas colonial empire. The first American colony would be Liberia, which was founded in West Africa in 1822 for the settlement of freed African-American slaves. Liberia would declare independence in 1847, which would be formally recognised by the United States in 1862, thus temporarily putting an end to the American colonialism. However, the United States would later win the Spanish-American war in 1898, thus gaining colonies of its own once more; Cuba, the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico. Cuba was granted independence in 1902, followed by the Philippines in 1946, while Guam and Puerto Rico remain U.S. territories to this day.

The Progressive Era starting around 1900 brought political reforms, such as antitrust laws, labor rights, women's suffrage, and the prohibition of alcohol (which was repealed in 1933). The "war on drugs" has its origin in the prohibition era and the time immediately afterwards, though the actual term was not used until the Nixon era.

World War I was followed by the Roaring Twenties, an economic boom brought to halt by the 1929 stock market crash that led to the Great Depression. The New Deal policies of the 1930s included infrastructure projects which transformed the American scenery.

During the interwar years the US started intervening in some low level domestic conflicts and civil wars throughout Central America and the Caribbean, mostly to ensure stable dictatorships favorable to the US and American business interests primarily in bananas and other agricultural products. This era gave rise to the term "banana republic" and some of the same patterns could be seen after the war with a cold war background.

As World War II in Europe began in 1939, the United States was a non-belligerent supporter of the Allies. The Pearl Harbor attack in 1941 marked the beginning of American involvement in the Pacific War, and after Germany also declared war on the US shortly thereafter, the American Armed Forces became officially engaged in the European theater as well, beginning with the liberation of North Africa in November 1942. World War II played a major role in kickstarting America's recovery from the Great Depression, as many industries were revitalized to support the war effort. As many men were drafted into the military to fight in the war, many factory jobs were taken over by women to fill in for the labor shortage, thus leading to the resurgence of the feminist movement that advocated the economic and political empowerment of women. In 1944 the Allies, mostly Americans, landed at the D day beaches and helped bring the war to an end by May 1945 (Europe) and September 1945 (Japan) respectively.

In sports, baseball grew and consolidated into "Major Leagues", and the first rules of American football were set. At first, football was almost exclusively played by high school and college amateurs. Basketball was also invented in this era and ice hockey became a sport played mostly in the Midwest, the Northeast and Canada. Public attention to these two sports was low and their attendance figures were dwarfed by "America's pastime", baseball. Radio and railroads made nationwide leagues at least a theoretical possibility, and by the beginning of the 20th century, Major League Baseball franchises could be found in most of the Northeast and Midwest, playing the first "World Series" in 1903 and having a single commissioner since 1920 (although MLB would did not become a unified league until 2000). Professional football originated mostly in and around Ohio and by 1920 a league that would later become the NFL and included teams such as the Green Bay Packers or the Chicago Cardinals (now playing in Arizona) crowned its first champion but was mostly ignored by major newspapers, radio stations and the public at large. For the first half of the 20th century, boxing and horse racing received much greater media coverage than the sports considered as "major" today, apart from baseball.

The Life and Death of Great American Cities
As the American frontier was closed during the late 19th century (with the exception of Alaska), the early 20th century was the Golden Age of American cities. While Old Towns from before the Civil War are few, the architecture of the Industrial Age brought the world's attention, with the first skyscrapers, and innovative styles such as Art Deco.

From 1901 until 1998, the world's tallest building was found in the United States, with the Philadelphia City Hall, finished in 1901, being the first American record-holder. From 1908, the title was passed on between skyscrapers in New York: the Singer Building (until 2020 the tallest building ever to be voluntarily demolished), the Metropolitan Life Tower, the Woolworth Building, the Bank of Manhattan Trust Building, the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center (the tallest building ever to be destroyed by force). Sears Tower in Chicago was tallest in the world from 1974 until 1998, when it was surpassed by Petronas Tower in Kuala Lumpur. The current tallest building in the United States is, since 2013, One World Trade Center, also known as the Freedom Tower, in New York City at 1,776 ft (541.3 m).

Many city centers fell in decay during the Great Depression. Since the 1940s, much of the population has migrated to suburbs. Many neighborhoods were subsequently torn down to "make way for the automobile", particularly those inhabited by poor and/or non-white people. Increasing globalization has also meant that much of the manufacturing has moved abroad to countries with much lower labor costs, causing many former great industrial cities like Detroit, Pittsburgh and Buffalo to fall into a state of urban decay with high rates of poverty, unemployment and violent crime. During the 21st century, some American city centers have been revitalized, due in part to rising gas prices that make living in the suburbs uneconomical, decreased crime rates, and a sense of boredom with the sterility of suburban life that many in the so-called Millennial generation feel. The trend of re-urbanization appears to continue resulting in better public transport systems in and between many cities.

Destinations
The United States has too many remnants from the Industrial Revolution to mention in a single article. This is a compilation of cities and other places of great historical importance, where the industrial heritage is more or less visible today. Many of them are in the north-east, and can be seen on the American Industry Tour from Boston to Chicago.

In the mid-19th century, America became world leading in railroads, and later in urban rail. However, from the 1930s, the General Motors Streetcar Conspiracy had many rail lines closed down, to promote automobile use. Ever since then, America has been the land of the automobile, with rail travel lagging behind. Even today of roughly one billion automobiles in the world, 250 million are driving around on American streets. Getting around the United States without a car can thus be difficult.

New England
New England had already developed some industries during the Colonial era, but industrialization really took off during the Civil War.



Mid-Atlantic
The Mid-Atlantic had thriving industrial cities even before the Civil War. Their productivity helped bring the Union to victory. Many immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Greece and Eastern Europe settled here, including many Ashkenazi Jews fleeing pogroms in Europe. The manufacturing crisis beginning in the 1960s hit the Mid-Atlantic hard, but high-tech, service and hospitality industries have emerged, and many industrial buildings have been redeveloped for other purposes.



Midwest
The rich natural resources, such as grain, iron, coal, wood and hydroelectric power, together with the Great Lakes and the Mississippi river system, allowed the Midwestern cities to boom during the Industrial Revolution. The Midwest received much immigration from Scandinavia and the German-speaking parts of Central Europe, which is most visible in the simple and hearty nature of local cuisine. Since World War II, manufacturing has declined, and the region is today known as the "Rust Belt", with high unemployment and urban decay.



The South
After the American Civil War, the federal government organized the South under the Reconstruction program. Reconstruction briefly brought the civil rights guaranteed in the constitution to (almost) all (male) citizens, including African Americans. However by 1876 Reconstruction had ended and the South was firmly in the grab of the old white landowning elite from the antebellum era. Though slavery was abolished, racial tension continued, and under "Jim Crow laws", African-Americans remained as second-class citizens until the Civil Rights revolution during the 1950s and 60s. There was a civil rights movement throughout the 19th and early 20th century, however it was less successful than in the 50s and 60s (owing in part to different attitudes among white Northerners) and more focused on lifting African Americans up from poverty through education and economic development than on achieving political participation. The most notable result of the early civil rights movement was their defeat in the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court case that established the notorious "separate but equal" rule in 1896 and was overturned in 1954 in the ruling on Brown v. Board of Education.

Industrialization generally came late to the South; however, the oil industry in Texas boomed starting around 1900. The New Deal targeted the South, especially through the Tennessee Valley Authority.



The West
California became the Land of Opportunity; more civilized than the Wild West. As the transcontinental telegraph lines and railroads were completed in the 1860s, the Pacific Coast became more connected to the east. The Great Depression caused large-scale migration westwards.



Itineraries

 * Lincoln Highway
 * American Industry Tour
 * Route 66, opened in 1926 and decommissioned in 1985, was a legendary link between east and west until it was bypassed by multiple Interstate highways in the post-war years.
 * In a sense all great trips by train across the continent live and breath the history of this era, even though the "original" transcontinental route does not carry scheduled passenger traffic any more