Industrial growth Essay

Industrial growth was mainly concentrated in the North and East of the United States. According to our text in the year 1890 more than 85 percent of manufactured goods originated from here. The West was not as settled as the Eastern and Midwestern portions of our country, but still played a major role supplying raw materials to the industries to the East. Between 1870 and 1900 settlers took a total of 430 million acres in the West and with this began the economic growth of the western portion of the U. S. The only advance that was technologically available to individuals of the West that connected them to the East was the railway system. This was the single most important innovation that changed America’s economic and social life forever. The railway system linked cities and villages that were in isolated or remote areas. â€Å"It tied people together, brought in outside products, fostered greater interdependence, and encouraged economic specialization† (520). Some of the resources that the West had were gold mining, cattle ranching and land bonanzas. It was these resources that would help in getting settlers from the east and around the world to come out to the western part of the U. S. But with growth due to the bonanza’s there were â€Å"uneven growth, boom and bust economic cycles, and wasted resources† (501). Individuals became migrant because of these cycles and began to followed river bottoms in search of gold, railway tracks and other opportunities. The book discussed â€Å"Instant Cities† that would sprout up because of this migration. The West portrayed a get rich quickly type of lifestyle. Mining was a very influential factor as to why most came to the West and why there was a get rich ideology. But still many came because of opportunities that mining produced such as providing food clothing and services to the miners. Cattle ranching in the west proved to be very profitable. The plains provided grasses and terrain that suited cattle. Mexican helped to create the essentials for cattle ranching with introducing the long horn cattle and such things as â€Å"branding, roundups, and roping† (505). In 1870 millions of farmers followed the miners and ranchers to move out west for the crop bonanzas. Farming was very hard in these early times taking its toll on many families. But as farming techniques got better and new technology was introduced farming became a thriving business in the West. The differences economically for the East and West sections of the United States varied because of industrialization. This happened over three decades after the Civil War. At the beginning of the war the United States was behind industrialized countries in Europe, but by 1900 the U. S. was to exceed many of those countries. Population was a major factor for this industrialization. It was the population of the East that helped to move the East up the economic ladder faster than the West, which of course was a contributor of raw materials for these factories. Labor was gained through immigration that happened to grow by at least eight million between 1870’s and 1880’s and then between 1890 and 1914 another fifteen million arrived (519). The growing population expanded economic growth for the East during the latter part of the 19th century. The growing population helped to expand markets of the East, but when the telegraph and telephone was introduced along with the railways this only helped to exploit and expand these markets into the West.