Industrialization and Urbanization in the United States

Early in the nineteenth century, an awesome new force was gathering strength in Europe. The term “Industrial Revolution” was coined by the French as a metaphor of the affinity between technology and the great political revolution of modern times. Soon exported to the United States, the Industrial Revolution swept away any visions of America being an agrarian society. The steam engine, the railroad, the mechanical thresher, and hundreds of other ingenious artifacts that increased man’s ability to transform the natural world and put it to use would soon be puffing and clattering and roaring in all corners of the land. The new machines swiftly accelerated the consumption of raw materials from the nation’s farms, forests, and mines.