Factories and productsManufacturing is a catch-all term for activity that produces a product. This can be a simple pair of shoes, or a 30-ton locomotive. It includes anything that isn't a service, like banking, or grown on a farm, or mined from the earth. The map shows manufacturing activity in 1870. By this time, New England is moving away from farming, and factories are now common in every city. Many still run on waterpower, but steam engines are taking over. Manufacturing has become so important that the Census Bureau begins collecting detailed information about factories. The 1870 Census is a treasure trove of data on employees, sales, expenses, and even power systems. |
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New Driving Force ORANGE highlights above indicate factories using steam engines to power machinery. The size of the large RED circles (above) is proportional to the number of factories in each state. All the heavy activity is up north, but small orange dots are sprinkled everywhere, even in the South. This indicates the amount of steam power used in each county. Almost every county has at least a small dot. People everywhere are eager to enjoy the benefit of powered equipment, even in farming regions. Farmers are almost totally left out, as steam tractors are not yet available. But here and there, someone installs a steam-powered pump, or one of the new high-speed rotary printing presses. | |||||||||
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Smokestacks Everywhere New factories are typically filled with equipment, most of which is now driven by steam. Iron-rolling mills are the most common, but things like printing presses and agitating tanks for lard refineries are also driven by steam power. Textile mills, and other large factories, usually install their steam engines in the basement, with power transmitted to upper floors by belts and pulleys. Some factories generate steam pressure in a completely separate building, using pipes to transmit the steam to the engines themselves, which can be located almost anywhere on the site. It's easy to pick out the location of the boiler rooms. Just look for the smoking chimneys. | |||||||||
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Rural Power Waterwheels are still in wide use, with the advantage of not requiring any fuel or metal machinery. The large BLUE circles (above) are proportional to waterpower in each state. Water-powered mills (BLUE dots on map) are surprisingly widespread, even in areas like the Carolinas, where the coastal land is mostly flat. Often, low dams are constructed across minor streams to make a mill pond, which creates a reservoir to power the mill during periods of low water flow. Most waterwheels are used to power either sawmills, or grist mills (which grind wheat and other grains into flour). The Fall Line (dashed) separates the Southern uplands from the broad, nearly flat coastal plain. | |||||||||
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Manual work Small businesses often have no need for powered machinery. Most are located in the North, where small shops are sprinkled about within large cities, often in the same neighborhood as factories. GREEN circles (above) are proportional to the number of people producing hand-made products in each state. The chart shows the most common hand trades. As farms become less important, farming families often turn to making simple items at home, known as 'home manufactures,' to help supplement their income. Men use hand tools in small shops, while women sometimes sew clothing at home, on one of the tiny new hand-cranked sewing machines (lower left). | |||||||||
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New Laborers A fresh wave of immigrants has been arriving from Europe over the previous 20-year period, at a rate of nearly a million per year. Immigrants are now 12% of the entire US population, and are the primary source of factory labor in the North, where almost all new immigrants have settled (highlighted areas above). All the GREENISH highlights above are a mix of Irish and Germans, almost evenly split. Blacks still provide most of the labor in the South, though they are no longer slaves. The old plantation estates have been subdivided into smaller parcels, where poor families are permitted to live and farm, in return for a portion of the yearly crop. This is called share-cropping, and resembles medieval feudalism. Both Blacks and Whites are exploited by this system. | |||||||||