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  • - [Voiceover] So we have been talking about

  • the Market Revolution

  • in the United States

  • which was this period in the first half

  • of the 19th century

  • where the way that Americans did business really changed.

  • And it changed in a number of ways,

  • so the kinds of work that people did changed

  • and the people they sold their goods to changed

  • in the form of new markets.

  • And even the kinds of commodities

  • that they were producing.

  • All of these were altered in the first half

  • of the 19th century,

  • thanks to a couple of simultaneous trends.

  • The Industrial Revolution in which new technologies

  • were developed to make production more efficient

  • and revolutions in transportation and communication,

  • which made it easier to get goods and people

  • to far distances more quickly

  • and to communicate over considerable distances

  • more quickly.

  • And these really resulted in a reorganization

  • of American society

  • that some historians have actually said

  • was more revolutionary than the American Revolution.

  • So in the last video,

  • we discussed some of the new technologies

  • which changed American work in the early 19th century.

  • One of these was the introduction of the textile mill,

  • which was powered by a water wheel,

  • by Samuel Slater,

  • which helped textile mills become the chief industry

  • of New England,

  • also helped women start working outside the home

  • in the Lowell Mills, started by Charles Lowell

  • and also began the system by which factory owners

  • would hire individuals, rather than family units,

  • to work for wages in their factories.

  • The other major invention that had a really important impact

  • on American society was the cotton gin,

  • which was a machine that separated cotton seeds

  • from the fiber and it made the production of cotton

  • considerably more profitable.

  • And so, with cotton a profitable crop,

  • the American south really invested in cotton

  • and investing in cotton as its main cash crop

  • meant they really entrenched the system of slavery.

  • So even though in the 1780s, early 1790s,

  • many southern states were thinking perhaps

  • they'd abolish slavery because the institution was not

  • overly profitable,

  • as cotton became the cash crop of the south,

  • the institution of slavery would be entrenched

  • and continue to grow until the 1860s.

  • So those are some of the new technologies of production.

  • In this video, I wanna spend some time talking about

  • the revolution in communication and transportation

  • that happened also in this time period.

  • So just like inventions like the textile mill

  • or the cotton gin made it easier to work faster,

  • inventions in transportation and communication

  • in the early 19th century also made it possible

  • to transport goods faster

  • and to transport information faster.

  • So I wanna talk about just a few

  • of these transportation inventions.

  • One of these was the railroad.

  • Now, the railroad was not invented in the United States.

  • Rather, the United States imported the railroad technology

  • from England and Germany

  • and this is one of the very first railroads

  • in the United States,

  • I think it's kind of adorable

  • 'cause you can see how it still is really

  • owing a debt, stylistically, to a wagon.

  • Even looks like a wagon here on the end.

  • So railroads begin to come into the United States

  • in the early 1800s and first they're mostly for cargo

  • or helping to move stone,

  • things to help build canals,

  • which we'll get to in a second.

  • But soon they're also passenger rail stations.

  • And the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad,

  • or B&O railroad,

  • which you may know from your Monopoly board

  • was one of the first passenger rail lines

  • in the United States.

  • Another major transportation revolution

  • of this time period was shipping on water.

  • So, in 1807,

  • inventor Robert Fulton

  • came up with the steamship

  • and so a steamship,

  • and you can see the little smokestacks right here,

  • makes it much easier to power the ship

  • and one thing you can do then is go against the tide

  • of a river,

  • so instead of just, for example,

  • going down the Mississippi River

  • to the port of New Orleans,

  • you can also go back up the Mississippi River

  • which means commerce can go more easily in both directions.

  • Another major innovation of the time period are canals.

  • And this here is a map of the Erie Canal,

  • which was completed in 1825

  • and a canal is a relatively narrow,

  • relatively shallow waterway

  • but it still allows cargo barges to move across

  • what otherwise would be really hard to navigate territory,

  • so, you know, it's hard to see here,

  • but there are mountains here, right.

  • So, now you can take

  • cargo across mountains,

  • across large stretches of land by ship,

  • which is much faster

  • than trying to do it on foot

  • or with a wagon.

  • I think it's actually hard for us to imagine now,

  • but in the early 19th century

  • and really for most of time before then,

  • waterways were the highways of the world.

  • It was a lot easier to get from Boston to London

  • across the Atlantic by ship

  • than it would have been to get from Boston

  • to the Appalachian Mountains on foot.

  • Before the invention of air travel,

  • before the Interstate Highway System,

  • and really, up until the invention of the railroad,

  • waterways were the easiest way to get around

  • in the world.

  • And the last communication revolution

  • that I wanna talk about is the invention of the telegraph,

  • which a portrait painter-turned-inventor

  • named Samuel Morse

  • first patented in 1844

  • and Morse invented Morse Code

  • because the telegraph worked by sending

  • pulses down copper wires

  • and so it made it easy to communicate

  • through coded messages of dots and dashes.

  • So, dots and dashes corresponded with letters

  • which allowed you to send messages over

  • extremely long distances,

  • so you could send a message by telegraph

  • in an instant,

  • as opposed to sending a letter,

  • which might take days or even weeks

  • to get to its destination.

  • So, all of these revolutions in transportation

  • and communication kind of translate into

  • two major transformations in American business

  • at this time period.

  • One, is that the scope

  • of business that you can do is much greater

  • because now, if you're a farmer who lives in,

  • say, Rochester,

  • your radius of...

  • your radius of people you can sell your produce to

  • before it goes bad is considerably larger.

  • Now, instead of just being able to get to

  • where you can get maybe in a wagon's trip of a day,

  • you can send your crops on the Erie Canal

  • and suddenly, you're dealing with a much larger market.

  • So, they're not only creating a national web of commerce,

  • they're also creating an international web of commerce

  • because these canals and steamships

  • go to international ports which mean that

  • you can now do business from the western part of New York

  • with people who live in London.

  • And the other thing that increases here

  • is the pace of business,

  • right, so instead of having to negotiate a business deal

  • through a series of letters,

  • which might take you many weeks,