One of the reasons that later industrialization progressed at such a greater pace than before was the improvement in power sources. The early Industrial Revolution depended upon steam engines and waterpower. The earliest engines were large and prohibitively expensive for all but the largest firms. Water wheels were a possibility for smaller concerns, but they could not perform nearly as much work as later power sources could. Between 1869 and 1929, total available horsepower in the United States increased from 2.3 to 43 million units. In factories, the greatest part of that growth came from a huge increase in the use of electricity (Wright 1941).
Although factories had grown larger and more efficient over the entire nineteenth century, they grew particularly large after 1880, as the power to run them became cheaper, cleaner, and more convenient to acquire. Starting in the late 1870s, Thomas Edison turned the attention of his extensive laboratory toward harnessing electricity to create affordable electric light. This achievement depended not only upon the creation of an efficient, inexpensive, incandescent light bulb but also on the creation of an electrical system to power it – everything from generators, to electrical wires, to switches. Without a precedent for any of these things, the Edison Electric Company and many related subsidiaries (later gathered together under the umbrella of General Electric) had to manufacture just about everything to make the grid operate. “Since capital is timid, I will raise and supply it,” explained Edison to one of his investors. “The issue is factories or death!” (Jonnes 2004). Other companies soon followed, because creating the central stations and the grid that eventually powered just about everything was so obviously lucrative.
Symbolizing the importance of capital to Edison’s efforts, the first person to have his home successfully wired for electricity was the banker J. P. Morgan, in 1882. Despite setbacks, his experience with electric light encouraged him to invest further in Edison’s efforts. Edison built the first central generating station in New York City later that same year. The first area of Manhattan that Edison wired was a neighborhood filled with the homes and workplaces of those who operated the financial institutions he hoped to convince to invest in his enterprises, as well as two major newspapers that would publicize his achievements. By 1902, there were 2250 electrical generating stations in the United States. By 1920, that number grew to just short of 4000. Electricity spread from large cities to small cities and eventually out into rural areas by the 1920s (Cowan 1985; Cowan and Hersch 2017).
This kind of growth required substantial improvement beyond Edison’s initial vision of an electrical system. The effects of a reliable electric grid on the cities where it first appeared were numerous, ranging from less coal smoke in the air to new sounds produced by various electrical creations – everything from streetcars to arc lights. Early arc lights were so bright people thought they could stop crime and vice by exposing the people who perpetrated these crimes. In smaller cities, obtaining electric light was a sign of modernization, which implied future growth. Modern light in urban workplaces made office work easier by lessening strain on the eyes. As electric light companies moved in, the much‐hated urban gas companies lost a considerable amount of economic power. Since people preferred electric light to gas, it became increasingly popular, as the grid expanded and the costs dropped. Electric light even changed the way people lived inside their houses. For example, children could now be trusted to put themselves to bed since there was no longer a fire risk from the open flames that were once needed to get to bed in the dark.
Nevertheless, the growing electrical grid created new urban dangers. High‐voltage electrical wires strung above ground joined other wires from telephones, telegraphs – even stock tickers – posed a new urban “wire menace.” Many came down in bad weather. They were a hazard for electric company employees and pedestrians alike. “The overhead system is a standing menace to health and life,” reported one medical journal in 1888 (Freeberg 2014). In 1889, a fire caused by overheated electrical wires ignited a building full of dry goods and burned down much of downtown Boston.
The most noteworthy effect of high‐quality, affordable lighting was the widespread practice of running factories 24 hours a day – which made them much more productive without any improvements in the technology of production. Replacing putrid gas lamps also made the smell of factories better for the workmen who worked there. As the electrical grid became more reliable, electric motors gradually began to replace steam engines as the source of power in manufacturing. Using small electric motors as a source of power freed factories from having to be located near water sources to feed boilers and made it possible for them to be smaller too.
Between 1880 and 1900, factories tended to adopt electric lighting but kept using earlier sources of power for their operation. Electric power for factory operations came quickly between 1900 and 1930. Both these developments (along with the large supply of immigrant workers) contributed to the industrialization of cities. The electrification of industrial facilities of all kinds proceeded quickly during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Businesses got wired for electricity much faster than cities because they could make the most use of what started out as a relatively expensive service.
Because factories were concentrated in or near cities, it was a lot cheaper to wire them than it was to wire farms or even smaller cities away from electrical generating stations. Many of the new factories built during this later period appeared outside city limits, another new development. Electrification allowed managers to automate jobs once done by hand labor, thereby eliminating inefficiency, gaining greater control over the production process, and boosting overall productivity. New devices like time clocks and even new modes of production like the assembly line also depended upon electric power.
The advent of cheap and readily available electricity had a particularly important effect upon the physical layout of American cities during this period. Frank Sprague, an electrical engineer who had once worked for Thomas Edison, designed the first electric streetcar system for Richmond, Virginia, in 1888. Such systems supplanted horse‐drawn carriages, making it possible for people to travel further and faster than they would have otherwise. This gave rise to a burst of suburbanization, a spate of new towns on the outskirts of American cities where wealthy and middle‐class people could move to escape from the difficulties of modern urban life but still be close enough to enjoy many of its advantages.
The new suburbanites often traveled to and from work via new electric streetcars. The electrical equipment manufacturer Westinghouse was one of the major manufacturers of vehicles powered by an overhead wire. Electric streetcars had the advantage over horses of not leaving manure or of dying in the streets. Streetcars were more popular during weekends than during the week as working‐class people took advantage of low fares to explore new neighborhoods or to visit amusement parks, like Coney Island, generally built at the end of these lines.
In the same way that employers and city planners depended upon streetcars to move people, manufacturers became more dependent upon railroads, after 1880, to move their finished products. Railroad track mileage grew greatly after the Civil War, connecting cities and leading to the growth of new factories in places that were convenient to the necessary resources to make marketable goods. Eventually, mass distribution was a prerequisite to benefit from all that increased productivity. For all these reasons, separating the causes and effects of industrialization and urbanization is practically impossible.
Throughout the nineteenth century, factories usually had to be built near shipping ports or railroad stops because these were the easiest way to get factory products out to markets around the world. As more railroad tracks were built late in the nineteenth century, it became easier to locate factories outside of downtowns. Streetcars helped fill up the empty space downtown where factories would have gone. They made it easier to live further away from work and still commute to the heart of downtown, thereby making it possible for other kinds of businesses to locate there. One example would be the large urban department store, a phenomenon that predates 1880, but grew into its own after that date. Such stores like Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia or Marshall Field’s in Chicago bought the products of industrialization in bulk and sold them at a discounted price to workers who might have had trouble getting access to them any other way.
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