Introduction

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Introduction
Until the Revolution, Americans imported most of their manufactured goods from England. After the war, however, America's agrarian economy began to diversify. Textile mills led the American industrial revolution; Francis Cabot Lowell and his Boston Associates used the British model to establish the Boston Manufacturing Company and combine machine production, large-scale operation, efficient management, and centralized marketing under one roof. The success of Lowell and the industrial revolution was dependent on a number of interrelated factors: technology, cheap labor, dependable and abundant supplies of materials, financing, markets, and efficient transportation to market. The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw the invention of the steam engine and spinning machines as well as more-efficient water-power mechanisms, all of which made large factories possible. Furthermore, Eli Whitney's cotton gin made the cultivation of upland cotton throughout the South profitable. Labor to staff these factories first was provided by young, single women (in Cabot’s "Waltham System") and children, and, later, immigrants; the cotton gin essentially revived and entrenched the South's dependence on slave labor. In addition, the early industrial revolution operated in a favorable regulatory climate: the Bank of the United States extended credit, corporations chartered by states helped raise capital, and the Supreme Court was friendly to business interests. Not only did this capital and governmental oversight help industrialists, it also fueled a transportation boom: Americans built roads and canals, and operated steamboats on rivers. This improved transportation allowed manufacturers to deliver their goods and farmers their crops to markets throughout the country. The demand was there: industrial growth helped to create wealth, but the United States' population explosion of the era was no small boost itself.

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