The Dawn of Innovation: Book Review

The Dawn of Innovation: The First American Industrial Revolution, Charles Morris, 2012.

Introduction: Beginning in the 1820s, there was a shift away from elites to universal suffrage (white males) with a large percent voting in election. “Political and economic power shifted decisively away from society’s traditional elites, as the world’s first true middle class seized control of the political apparatus” (L128). America was attempting to compete against Great Britain, with a distinctive approach to manufacturing, which Morris described as “armory practice” (think Eli Whitney). There was a drive toward mass production and distribution in every field; therefore, mass consumption of a successful middle class. The British invented mass production for textiles. The US manufacturing was mainly in New England and Middle Atlantic. With limited interior transportation, they had self-sufficient towns on riverbanks.

With the Erie Canal and western steamboats, grain, lumber, and meat became big business, initially in Cincinnati. Meatpacking started here, then moved to Chicago. Procter and Gamble were innovators in chemicals. The South exploited slavery, with Boston and New York controlling shipping and related industries (brokerage, insurance).

Chapter 1: The Shipbuilders’ War. During the War of 1812, Britain was the greatest naval power with 600 war vessels. “The American declaration of war against Great Britain in June 1812 is a puzzlement for historians” (p. 2). Both the British and French blockaded American ports. The US has a limited navy and American privateers. Important fighting happened on Lakes Ontario and Erie, called the shipbuilders’ war, with success based on logistics. The treaty at Ghent ended the war, although Jackson’s win at New Orleans happened later. The British continued a trade embargo, which encouraged domestic textile and iron industries. Industry became important to safety and success.

Chapter 2: The Hyperpower. The economic growth of England from 1800-1830 was relatively good despite the financial drain of major wars, with capital to export. Adam Smith described a French pin factory. The French preferred manual over mechanized labor because labor was cheap and readily available. In England labor was expensive and coal was cheap. In 1800 Britain had only about a third of the population in agriculture (a result of the Black Death and major changes in farming practices, with a focus on wool), with small farmers experimenting with plants and crop rotation.

Cotton textiles were central to British industrialization, from a small cottage industry to employ 425,000 by 1830. It started with spinning, first drawing up machinery, then the slow process of building and operating plants, made by trial-and-error. James Hargreaves built the spinning jenny in 1767, then machines with up to 12 jennies. Richard Arkwright built the water frame, then a factory for spinning, using clockmakers to build his machines.

Thomas Newcomen built a steam engine in 1712, improving on Thomas Savery’s engine. James Watt used a separate boiler to increase engine efficiency. He partnered with Matthew Boulton. Britain improved iron and steel making using coke, reverberating furnace, puddling process for wrought iron. Crucible steel was done by Benjamin in the 1740s. Improved engines meant bigger factories operating at higher speeds.

British banking funded canals, turnpikes, and then railroads, plus naval technologies. The longitude problem solved by clock maker John Harrison. Then clockmakers make reliable and affordable watches. The need to build precision into machines that made other machines: an accurate screw head needs an accurate screw-cutting lathe. Henry Maudslay’s screw-cutting lathe by 1800. James Nasmyth developed the steam hammer in 1838. Charles Babbage and the difference engine after a mechanical calculator. The analytical engine, a prototype for the modern computer, included the punch cards from the Jacquard loom.

Chapter 3: The Giant as Adolescent. The Erie Canal was completed at the end of October 1825, bringing the Northeast into one economic unit. Rural America was filled with farmers and others working on middle class success, including local merchants and wage laborers on farms. With the Erie Canal, large grain farms became labor-intensive, high productivity enterprises.

Iron districts developed in largely rural Pennsylvania and New Jersey, using wood charcoal for smelting. The Martha Furnace from 1808 in New Jersey had a 30-foot blast furnace and infrastructure for pig iron and castings for pots and stoves. At the same site was a grist mill, sawmill, stamping mill, carpentry shop, and blacksmith. These trades were matched to the agricultural cycle, using farmers for part-time labor. American productivity would average almost 4%, out-performing the high tech British. Americans focused on large-scale production and distribution of ordinary goods in most industries.

American clockmakers starting with Eli Terry made cheap clocks by the millions. The clocks needed precision parts like coiled springs for accurate time-keeping. Plus, factories workers were on the clock. Terry went into business for himself in 1793, soon focusing on volume and price in a water-powered factory producing 3,000 clocks by the third year of business (with cases produced by others). He built a new plant in 1814 with shorter pendulum and weight hangings. His design was widely pirated after his patent. A peddler network for clocks developed. The price of brass dropped with the Panic of 1837, and some watchmakers transitioned to brass.

“Samuel Slater rips off the British” (p. 89). The US ignored British patents, but Britain’s textile experts were banned from migrating. Hamilton’s Treasury Department openly encouraged pirating British technology. Samuel Slater worked at a water-powered cotton mill, sneaked off to Providence and became a partner with Moses Brown to construct an Arkwright-style cotton mill. Slater had no patent rights on his machinery. Within a year, they had a yarn factory with water-powered carding, roving, and spinning machinery. The merchant distribution system was already in place. Three mills were running by 1799, soon with competition from others.

Francis Cabot Lowell created a textile industry in Boston, with knowledge gained by getting access the British mills and get copies of machine drawings. (Being a rich brahman gets you access.) Lowell established the Boston Manufacturing Company as a joint stock company about the time of the War of 1812. Lowell, family and friends bought the shares. Lowell went for an integrated product line at a three-story mill, with cotton cleaning on the first, spinning the second, and weaving on the third—the weaving machinery took years, but this required tough fabrics with sturdy threads. The net result was economies of scale. He employed farm girls willing to work away from home for a few years, a job easier than farming and with girls their own age. By 1815 there were 23 yarn-making machines including carders, rovers, and spinning jennies and 21 looms.

Canals were built to supply water power for the increasing number of factories. Henry Burden built the most powerful waterwheel in Troy, New York. In 1851 Uriah Boyden and James Francis built a Boyden-Francis turbine at Lowell, the start of converting Lowell waterwheels to turbines. Similar turbines provide about 20% of the world’s electricity today. Lowell Manufacturing developed a line of steam engines.

Merchants around Lynn, Massachusetts developed a putting-out system for shoes, buying and cutting leather and supplying the leather and supplies to home shoe workers. By 1850 the majority of people bought shoes in stores rather from cobblers. Stoves were easy to cast by iron foundries, but selling was difficult because of the bulk. The foundries produced stove plate and shipped the pieces to merchant establishments.

Oliver Evans produced high-pressure steam engines in 1801. Robert Fulton steamboats used Boulton and Watt low-pressure engines, but Evans high pressure engines were cheaper and easier to build—but more likely to explode. From 1816-35 there were 40 steamboat explosions, causing 353 deaths, mainly on western steamboats. As steamboats multiplied so did explosions, about a hundred a year from 1867-70. Eastern manufacturers constructed the pistons, flywheel, shafts, and other moving parts, while local contractors did the heavy castings for engine housing and boiler and assembled the engines.

Chapter 4: American Arms. Muskets were made at the Springfield, Mass. Armory beginning in 1795 and Harpers Ferry the next year. They outsourced 30,000 muskets to private contractors. The concept was a high level of precision required interchangeable parts; that’s the theory and mythology. Productivity gains were made from work-flow improvements and specialist teams for specific parts.

The major parts were the lock, stock, and barrel. The stock was wood. The barrel started with a flat piece of iron, heated, then hammered into shape. The barrel had to be straight, initially smooth-bore weapons. Accuracy and range resulted from spiral barrel groves that spin the ball and stabilize its flight. The lock was the most complex. The soldier had to stand with the weapon upright, load the ball and powder from a paper cartridge, and ramrod it in place. Then the hammer was pulled back with intricate movements of a tumbler, then the trigger pulled to strike a spark to ignite the powder.

Eli Whitney was the legendary story of the gunmaker creating interchangeable parts. In fact, he was one of many, never came close to interchangeable parts, did produce adequate weapon, but was mostly late. Of course, overpromising and underperforming were common business practices. Other gun manufacturers also claimed interchangeability, including Simeon North. North built in bulk, used a standard die for lock plates, but hand trimming and fitting was still required.

Both English and French gun smiths worked toward part interchangeability. It was just difficult given the quality of metals and machinery. The use of blueprints with three-dimensional axis plots did not exist at the time. American muskets were based on the French Charleville, a 1763 model used during the American Revolution.

Thomas Blanchard invented a gun-stocking lathe, using a pattern usually made of metal and the target block of wood, rotating slowly, with a cutting tool (Blanchard profiling cutter) to match the pattern. The concept was replicated for multiple milling machines. The interchangeability of metal parts was more challenging. John Hall invented the Hall rifle. Hall started with a patent for a breech-loading rifle in 1811, which works without blowing up only when the primer, powder, and bullet were prepackaged in a metal cartridge. Christian Sharps came up with the Sharps rifle and Tyler Henry the Henry rifle, a prototype for the Winchester.

Flintlocks were replaced by percussion caps in the 1840s, but the basic infantry weapon in the Civil War was the modified Springfield 1795 musket. Samuel Colt became the most important private-sector military arms producer.

Chapter 5: The Rise of the West. Europeans visiting the US in the 1800s included Frances Trollope, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Charles Dickens, all horrified by slavery as practiced in the South. They were also surprised by the commercialism and lack of social class.

US exports were mainly cotton; about 15% of exports were manufactured goods. Imports were 63% manufactured goods, including high quality steel, engines, rails, and tools. The US ran annual trade deficits made up mainly by inflows of foreign investments. Big projects like canals and railroads were financed by state bond issues including the Erie Canal, created a bond bubble.

The commercial banking business was primarily about trade, lending short-term, also farm futures. It worked well with Nicholas Biddle at the head of the Second Bank of the US. Biddle was good at preventing panics. It ended when Andrew Jackson refused to reauthorize the bank and the charter expired in 1836. The result was “wild cat banking,” particularly in the West.

Cotton prices remained high from the 1830s to the Civil War, which benefited Northern finance houses with trading, marketing shipping, banking, and insurance revenues. It became a unified commercial and industrial economy, with tools, grain, packed meat, and steam engines coming down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. The West invested farm surpluses in infrastructure like railroads and businesses. Farms became larger and more mechanized with greater productivity from the workforce.

The East coast had useful waterways linking major cities. Robert Fulton used Boulton and Watt low-pressure engines for his steamships. Interior western waterways were shallow and winding, where sailing ships were useless. Flatboats worked downstream. The solution was a western steamboat network which took about 20 years. The Livingston-Fulton combine acquired a steamboat franchise from Louisiana in 1811. Fulton’s first boat went 2,000 miles from Pittsburgh to New Orleans in 1811, then put more boats in operation. Western rivers became open after court cases by 1818, leading to 31 steamboats in the west by 1819. These were high-pressure boats, more efficient but could blowup.

Western farmers went on a rapid rural-industrial path. Western factories turned out 100 steamboats a year, mainly in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Louisville. Iron and coal industries in Ohio and Pennsylvania expanded, with towns having foundries, forges, rolling mills, and machine shops. Problems included hard work and malaria.

The bonanzas came from linking the West to the East coast. Chicago, Cleveland, and New York were available by water. Others required railroads, beginning with the Baltimore & Ohio first using horses then switching to locomotives in 1830 (which came from Britain). George Stephenson opened the first commercial railroad, the Stockton and Darlington in 1825. Robert Stevens (Camden and Amboy) invented the T-rail, easy to lay and durable. The deWitt Clinton was the first steam locomotive in New York State in 1831. Locomotives got bigger and faster. Bridge builders like John Roebling expanded suspension bridge technology.

Andrew Jackson stopped federal support of internal improvements in 1830, including foregoing national standards like for road gauge. Railroads were often combined public-private, with investors providing equity and states revenue bonds. In 1854 Pennsylvania sold the road to the Penn. Railroad, including consolidating smaller roads. The Erie was initially the longest train route in the country. Vanderbilt made the New York Central, an 1850s consolidation.

Chapter 6: America is Number Two. Farm worker percent dropped from 75% at 1800 to 56% in 1860, and fewer than a third in the Northeast. Typhoid, cholera and general poor health were common among immigrants. The Civil War “produced the largest biological crisis of the 19th century” (p. 197). The New England public school movement spread to the Middle Atlantic and Midwest. The US went from a struggling ex-colony to the second largest economy in the world.

Cincinnati became Porkopolis, conveniently near salt deposits for packing, rising to 2.6 million pigs in the mid-1850s. Rendering lard became a key part of the process. Hides went to tanners, bristles to brush makers, bones to button factories, and intestines for sausage casings. Hog lard was used for soap, candles, waxes, and lubricants. The lard was boiled in 100-gallon kettles, with the size increasing over time. Chemical plants increased around Cincinnati, including William Procter and James Gamble. Regular bathing in the US became more common. Oil refining started about the time of the Civil War. Another new industry (around many cities) was machine-based furniture, with lumber common in the US. Rough sawing using steam-powered circular saws reduced costs. Interchangeable parts was another goal of furniture manufacturing.

Beef cattle were easier to drive and harder to preserve so they traveled to eastern markets. Slaughterhouses became decentralized at rail depots over time. Beef slaughterhouses started in Chicago. Chicago became a railroad and shipping hub.

Skill-based eastern manufacturing included heavy products like locomotives, mill machinery, and printing presses. Vanderbilt was at the center of eastern steamboats (sidewheelers), moving in and out opportunistically and became the richest operator. These were mainly built in New York and New Jersey foundries, shipyards, and machine shops. Transatlantic shipping was mainly by sailing ships, with a couple of British steamships (with sails) arriving in 1838. The Cunard line was successful with a mail subsidy. Vanderbilt took advantage of travel to the California Gold Rush through Nicaragua. Britain moved to iron ships and propeller drives, while Americans (including Vanderbilt) moved toward railroads.

Mattias Baldwin opened a workshop in 1829 specializing in steam engines. Baldwin built a model of a steam-driven railroad in 1830, then a contract for a locomotive for the Philadelphia-Germantown Railroad. By 1835 he built 14 locomotives in a year. Contracts increased. In 1838 there were 350 steam locomotives in the US, 122 built by Baldwin (78 imported). He barely survived the 1837 panic, but by the 1880s Baldwin was the largest locomotive maker in the world. The process was making or purchasing components, then two weeks building the engine, with several locomotives worked on simultaneously. Management skills were important for productivity improvement (e.g., Operations management including work sequence and controlling parts).

George Corliss in New York built the Corliss Steam Engine Company in 1857. The standard was the slide value, which moves back and forth to admit and vent steam on both sides of the piston. These were used for canal locks, like Lowell Locks and Canals Company which had 39 by 1870. The Corliss engine addressed fuel consumption (improved 30%) and speed regulation. The valve cycle regulation was done by the spinning-ball governor, important for textile mill operators. Most of the industry switched to Corliss-type machines for heavy steam plants, until the steam turbine and new valve configuration around WWI.

Hand printing changed little since Gutenberg, until the first powered cylinder press installed at the London Times in 1814. The cylinder held the paper sheet and had three positions: loading the sheet, printing, and one for removal.

Robert and son Richard Hoe learned of the cylinder press in 1832, then Richard produced his own version in 1833, selling hundreds. As the cost of paper fell (based on the Fourdrinier paper-making machinery from France. The patented Hoe Type Revolving Machine on a central cylinder with the paper fed flat and taken up by a stationary roller. The feeder slid the sheets down a ramp, then positioned on the roller, unloaded after printing and stacked in correct piles, with inking built into the central cylinder. The 20 Cylinder machine had output of 20,000 pages an hour, promoting newspapers of all kinds. Even the London Times bought two in 1856.

Samuel Colt had a gun-making plant in Hartford. Elisha Root was a major inventor. The key for production of all types was mechanization in a labor-short country.

Chapter 7: On the Main Stage. London’s Great Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851 was organized by Prince Albert, with 13,000 exhibitions, constructed with over a million machine-fabricated, iron-framed glass sheets. They were based on a new plate-glass rolling and annealing process patented in 1848.

Cyrus McCormick’s beat competitors in a field test. Samuel Colt has a repeating firearm exhibit. A Vermont firm showed machine-made rifles with interchangeable parts. The gun manufacturing was called the “American system,” a good model with special-purpose machinery for interchangeability. Gunsmith John Pearson produced long guns with Sam Colt and claimed the original Colt guns were his design. Colt built a factory and mostly concentrated on sales. An 1839 patent simplified percussion caps. An encounter of Texas Rangers using cost revolvers against Comanches became legendary. His guns were useful for close combat. In 1849 he produced a .31 caliber pocket pistol. Sales soared during the Civil War.

British gun making was stagnant with some 48 different trades, with deteriorating quality. Colt had a London plant running by 1853, using a steam engine. Colt’s barrels were bored for greater integrity with rifling machines, among the most advance precision-manufacturing (along with his Hartford plant) in the world. The British used American machinery for the Enfield rifle armory. “What was missing [in Britain] was the American instinct to push for scale, the conviction that the first objective of any business should be to grow larger” (p. 259).

Colt and Root came up with the model 1860 .44 caliber revolver, lighter, streamlined, with self-contained, metal primer-powder-bullet cartridge. By the 1870s handguns used magazine-fed, spring-driven mechanisms like the Henry and Spencer rifles during the last years of the Civil War. American clock manufacturing was one of only a few industries with precision parts. Others included sewing machines, typewriters, and watches, each with unique histories.

Elias Howe received the core patent in 1846 for sewing machines, which included a needle with the eye at its point, a shuttle to form a lock stitch, and an automatic feed. Howe just could not raise the funds for his own firm. Instead, he made money from royalties. Willcox & Gibbs was a competitor, who manufactured machines for Brown & Sharpe. The machines were fast, durable, and nearly silent. Brown & Sharpe mechanic Henry Leland later founded Cadillac Automotive. Isaac Singer was a promoter who produce using handcraft methods into the 1880s, then created a streamlined mechanized production system.

Typewriters started in the 1850s but were slow and broke down. Christopher Sholes used individual keys for each letter from the 1870s, including the QWERTY keyboard. These were produced by E. Remington & Sons, produced thousands but not enough to meet demand. They spun off typewriters to Standard Typewriter in 1886, later Remington Typewriter (1902). There were competitors from the 1890s. Typewriters improved with advances in ball bearings, vulcanized rubber, glass, sheet metal, cellulose, and improving machinery.

Watches required precision for very small parts. Aaron Dennison and Edward Howard started a watch company in 1849, with individual parts farmed out to specialists, then assembled. Dennison built a factory in Waltham in 1854 called the Waltham Watch Company. After bankruptcy in 1857 a new production system was installed just in time for Union demand at the start of the Civil War. The focus was on fully automated watch production. This included dimensioned gauging (precise measurements, needle gauges, and precision screw cutting. The watches still needed final adjustment and tuning. The Elgin Watch Company was founded in 1864 by former Waltham mechanics.

Food processing included high-pressure lard-processing systems, steam-powered threshers in the 1870s, processing 5,000 bushels a day on Great Plains factory farms, then pouring them directly into freight cars on the farms’ own rail spurs. Food and lumber processors were 60% of all power-using manufactured industries in 1869, then textiles, paper, primary metal industries like smelting for 90%. Continuous-flow processing requires precise valves, gauges, temperature control devices, and protection from contamination. Mid-century America was still predominately agricultural with 16% of the workforce in manufacturing: grain mills, meatpacking, lard refining, turning logs into planks and beams, iron smelting and forging, making steam engines and steamboats, vats and piping, locomotives, reapers and mowers, carriages, stoves, cotton and woolen cloth, shoes, saddles and harnesses, and workaday tools.

Lincoln was egalitarian, pro-manufacturing and protective tariffs, pro-education, and pro-canals, roads, and interior development. Abe was against the expansion of slavery to Western states. Border states had iron plantations. The Homestead Act allowed citizens to take possession of raw land and improve it. Senator Justin Morrill passed the land-grant college act. The 1862 Pacific Railroad Act granted public lands for building a railroad from the Missouri to the west coast, which was completed almost on time. The 1870s had economic cycles with the Panic of 1873, but over the decade output rose almost 60% and prices fell, also labor riots. With a widespread railroad network and mechanized production there were economies of scale for production and distribution.

Chapter 8: The Newest Hyperpower. America followed Britain in steelmaking and science-based industries, but dominated mass production, marketing, and distribution. Key infrastructure included railroads and telegraph. Railroads sold land to farmers on easy terms, stimulating their own growth. Railroads helped factory farms, meatpacking, steel, and petroleum.

George Cass of the Northern Pacific organized absentee landowners into massive farms, using steel plows, factory-style harrowing, seeding, harvesting, and threshing, using 70-horse plow teams at 45 degree angles, then in the 1890s 126 horses, 84 plows, 81 harrows, 77 wagons, 30 seeders, 8 threshing machines, and 45 binders, loading three freight-cars with 30,000 bushels a day. “By 1890, American wheat farms west of the Mississippi were producing 30%-50% of the Western World’s supply of wheat, and Minneapolis flour milling, including Pillsbury.

Chicago meatpacking, moving from salted pork to fresh beef using wild longhorns, with large Texas cattle ranches. Gustavus Swift used forced-air circulation for refrigeration and Chicago had about five major houses of vertically consolidated stockyards, ranches, and distribution centers.

Railroads initially used British steel. Alexander Holley became the foremost steel and plant engineer and designer (later Connecticut governor). He saw the Bessemer process of England. Holley designed most American steel plants (6 of 11 were his design). This included the Andrew Carnegie Edgar Thomson plant opened in 1875. Melted pig iron was poured into a giant Bessemer converter, then poured the steel into a moving train of ingot molds. Carnegie used steel technicians and managers including Bill Jones, Charles Schwab, and Henry Frick.

Standard Oil was developed by John D. Rockefeller who started in dry goods, then invested in an oil refinery in Pennsylvania, bought more, and dominated the refinery industry, concentrating on lowering costs and increasing efficiency, including hiring chemists to find useful by-products. The key product was kerosene. Rockefeller created the first global consumer product. He either merged or bought out most of his competition. He retired young and managers exploited their monopoly position for greater profit. The Supreme Court broke up Standard Oil in 1911, which in fact greatly enriched Rockefeller and made his the first billionaire.

According to economist Michael Spence the “middle-income transition” was achieved by the US, which became a middle-class nation early. This included a shift from infrastructure to consumer-oriented production. Real incomes grew after the Panic of 1873. The midwestern “balloon house” with a wooden frame became the American standard. The first department store was Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia in 1876. Urbanization included serious problems including sanitation and water-born diseases like cholera and typhoid. Cities began to invest in clean water, sewers, garbage collection, transit, street lighting, police, fire, and parks, beginning roughly about 1880.

Branding and advertising became important including Coca-Cola, Quaker Oats, Pillsbury, Kellogg, HJ Heinz, Gillette, and beer brands. Patent medicines were big advertisers in a era without regulations. The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co. was the first national grocery chain; Frank Woolworth’s nickel stores. Drugstore soda fountain. George Eastman sold his Kodak from 1888. By 1900 there were over 1.5 million telephones. Investment banks included Morgan Kuhn, Loeb, Goldman Sachs, and Lehman Bros. Sears was the first stock offering for a retain company.

US Industrial production probably exceed Britain in the 1880s and much bigger by the start of WWI. Germany also had a substantial per capita growth rate.

Although the major improvements in steel were from Britain (hot-air blast furnaces, Bessemer process, open-hearth method), but the US exceeded British capacity based on work organization, mechanization, and production methods. Britain had many older, smaller plants with less mechanization. Plus a few modern plants. Carnegie and other practiced vertical integration and standardization—the disadvantage of the technological first mover. The British had less standardization in part became much of their production was exported. Also worker recalcitrance and union resistance.

In mid-century Britain led the world in inorganic chemicals (ammonia, caustic soda, sulfuric acid) but did not adjust to the improved process of Ernest Solvay in the 1870s. German and Belgium produced cheaper with less environmental damage, followed by the US, then electrolytic technology. In electric power, the use of steam turbines (invented by Charles Parsons from England), then dominated by GE, Westinghouse, and Germany’s Siemens.

Britain was a high-cost builder of rail equipment, saving 30-40% when forced to import from the US. The use of free trade help relative to steep tariffs of US and Germany and German dumping. They could have moved toward protection and “fair trade,” but did not. Morgan’s US Steel bought Carnegie to create monopoly prices and stop R&D and capital spending. This was pattern followed by much of US business in the 20th century.

The US suffered trade deficits until the 1870s with increases in exports of grains, flour, meat, and animal fat, then surpluses beginning in 1876. WWI surpluses made the US the largest creditor nation.

Chapter 9: Catching Up to the Hyperpower. Morris jumps to China. America saw British technology theirs for the stealing beginning with Hamilton’s Treasury. Japan and China followed similar patterns. After independence, the US depended on British manufactured products, consigned to coastal merchants that distributed the goods. After the South succeeded, the North pushed favorable legislation for manufacturing including increased tariffs and railroads to the agrarian West. There was a lot of resource waste and spoilage, dumping waste in the nearest river.