Farms that were on poor soil and distant from markets declined, whereas other farms successfully adjusted production as rural and urban markets expanded and as Midwestern agricultural products flowed eastward after 1840. Rural and urban demand for manufactures in the East supported diverse industrial development and prosperous rural areas and burgeoning cities supplied increasing amounts of capital for investment.

In the late nineteenth century, the United States underwent an extremely rapid industrial expansion that moved the nation into the front ranks of the world economy. At the same time, the nation maintained democratic institutions as the primary means of allocating political offices and power. The combination of robust democratic institutions and rapid industrialization is rare and this book explains how development and democracy coexisted in the United States during industrialization. Most literature focuses on either electoral politics or purely economic analyses of industrialization. This book synthesizes politics and economics by stressing the Republican party's role as a developmental agent in national politics, the primacy of the three great developmental policies (the gold standard, the protective tariff, and the national market) in state and local politics, and the impact of uneven regional development on the construction of national political coalitions in Congress and presidential elections.

From the bestselling author of The Trillion Dollar Meltdown and The Tycoons comes the fascinating, panoramic story of the rise of American industry between the War of 1812 and the Civil War

This book provides a descriptive, episodic yet analytical synthesis of industrialization in America. It integrates analysis of the profound economic and social changes taking place during the period between 1877 and the start of the Great Depression. The text is supported by 30 case studies to illustrate the underlying principles of industrialization that cumulatively convey a comprehensive understanding of the era.

"The best historical study....that we have of American economic growth between independence and the Civil War....Deserves to be widely used in survey courses....ideal for courses in social and economic history, both undergraduate and graduate."--The American Historical Review. Drawing on recent studies in the history of technology, this groundbreaking work offers a new view of the Industrial Revolution in America. The author, an authority on the history of business and the economy, sees industrialization as a culturally inspired change.

In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the United States underwent an extremely rapid industrial expansion that moved the nation into the front ranks of the world economy. At the same time, the nation maintained democratic institutions as the primary means of allocating political offices and power. As the combination of robust democratic institutions and rapid industrialization is rarely found in world history, this book explains how economic development and democracy coexisted in the United States during industrialization.

From the medieval farm implements brought by the first colonists to the invisible links of the Internet, the history of technology in America is a history of our society as well. Arguing that "the tools and processes we use are a part of our lives, not simply instruments of our purpose," historian Carroll Pursell analyzes technology's impact upon the lives of women and men, their work, politics, and social relationships--and in turn, their influence upon technological development. Pursell shows how both the idea of progress and the mechanical means to harness the forces of nature developed and changed as they were brought from the Old World to the New. He describes the ways in which American industrial and agricultural technology began to take on a distinctive shape as it adapted and extended the technical base of the industrial revolution. He discusses the innovation of an American System of Manufactures and the mechanization of agriculture; new systems of mining, lumbering, and farming, which helped conquer and define the West; and the technologies that shaped the rise of cities. And he shows how the export of technology helped to foster American hegemony both in theWestern Hemisphere and elsewhere in the world. Pursell also argues that American technology has created a social hegemony, not only over the way we live but also over how we evaluate that life. He shows that such developments as scientific management techniques and industrial research changed Americans' lives as much as the mass production of such durable consumer goods as radios and automobiles. In many ways, he concludes, today's military-industrial complex is the legacy of the intense cooperation betweenscience and technology during World War II.