Changing the Lives of Americans

Changing the Lives of Americans

In the middle of the nineteenth century, many changes were being made in the United States. During this time, the United States was growing rapidly westward and experiencing industrialization in the north. Throughout this time, many immigrants were also entering the United States. With all of this change coming about quickly, citizens made many modifications to their lives. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the lives of Americans were changed greatly by industrialization. America and its people would never be the same.

With all of the changes coming about in the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century, Americans had no choice but to modify their lives around it. The biggest change was industrializing the north. How exactly did American's lives change because of this? For starters, since industrialization had come about, the number of factories in the United Sates began to grow. This meant that the deskilling of jobs was rapidly increasing. Owners of businesses, such as shoemakers and artisans, were no longer making large amounts of money as skilled workers. Now people wanted to mass produce products by using assembly lines, where you would only learn one task instead of how to make the whole product. Along with this deskilling, citizens of the United States had competition for jobs in factories. With all of the immigrants coming to the United States, they were willing to do just about anything. Immigrants entering the work force here were willing to work for less pay than Americans and would rarely complain. When Americans would go on strike, they were easily replaced by immigrants who did not understand the English language.

The urbanization America was once known for was now turning into industrialization everywhere. Americans who wanted to escape the industrialized cities began moving westward. Was that enough? In the west, it was difficult to start farming. The lands weren't cleared and were full of prairies with long grass. Along with this, there wasn't much water for irrigation out in the west. There were few trees, which provided little lumber for housing. At this point, Americans had no choice but to turn to industrialization.