CH14 – Forging the National Economy

Time Frame: 1790-1860

Objectives: At the end of this chapter, you should be able to:

• Describe the growth and movement of America’s population in the early nineteenth century.
• Describe the largely German and Irish wave of immigration beginning in the 1830s and the reactions it provoked among native Americans.
• Explain why America was relatively slow to embrace the industrial revolution and the factory.
• Describe the early development of the factory system and Eli Whitney’s system of interchangeable parts.
• Outline early industrialism’s effects on workers, including women and children.
• Describe the impact of new technologies, including transportation and communication systems, on American business and agriculture.
• Describe the development of a continental market economy and its revolutionary effects on both producers and consumers.
• Explain why the emerging industrial economy could raise the general level of prosperity, while simultaneously creating greater disparities of wealth between rich and poor.

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