CHAPTER XXXI

A NEW INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION (1865-1900)

A landmark in our history.-The first industrial revolution (Chapter XX) followed the use of steam and of the new inventions that moved the industries of spinning and weaving from the fireside to the factory. Between the close of the Civil War and the end of the nineteenth century, there were wonderful changes in manufacturing, transportation, and farming. We call these changes the "new industrial revolution." A knowledge of its causes is necessary to explain twentieth-century unrest, labor troubles, laws, social-welfare aims, and the new policy of the United States toward the world.

Why the period is called a "revolution."-A revolution means a great change, sometimes a complete overturning. This period is called a revolution for several reasons. (1) It used machinery and developed manufactures on a vaster scale than the world had ever known. (2) It caused a striking increase in the number of wage earners, that is, of those who worked for others instead of for themselves. (3) It altered the rank of the United States among the nations of the earth. (4) Old ideas of government and education began to give way to new ones.

If a Rip Van Winkle had fallen asleep at the close of the Civil War and awakened in 1900, he would not have understood simple statements like these: "I telephoned Mary to come on her bicycle." "We need an antitrust law." "He is a regular dynamo." "There are too many millionaires." "Turn on the electric light." "Take the trolley to the next town." He might have known what a "roadscraper" meant, but not a "skyscraper" or a "manual-training school" or "steel rails." Such a sleeper would have been bewildered at the number of things that he would have had to learn anew.

Iron.

The first cause of the new industrial revolution was the discovery of great quantities of iron ore and of easier and quicker ways of smelting it. Iron was known in ancient times, but it was difficult and expensive to make until the last century. When the ancient Greeks and Romans were doing such great things for the world, they were handicapped by the scarcity of iron. Conquering kings regarded it as a precious metal and brought it home as part of their spoils. During the first half of the nineteenth century Americans often smelted iron ore by using the bellows-and-charcoal method shown in Egyptian pictures thirty-five centuries before. It would have taken 130,000 such workers to make as much iron as one twentieth-century blast furnace can produce.

Improved way of making steel.-Iron was not strong enough to perform the many new tasks demanded of it until it was changed into steel. This was such a slow and expensive process

that at the beginning of this period (1865) steel was used less than aluminum is now.

William Kelly (1811-1888), an American born in Pittsburgh, saw at his ironworks in Kentucky a mass of molten iron raised to white heat when a current of cold air struck it. The oxygen in the air was combining with the carbon in the iron and burning out its impurities. He then tried a forced draft of air on molten iron and discovered (1851) the new way of making steel. He could produce steel as quickly as a loaf of bread could be baked; but many

SUSPENSION BRIDGE, SUPPORTED BY CABLES OF STEEL WIRE

This is the oldest of three bridges connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn boroughs in the city of New York. Its construction was begun in 1872 by John Roebling, and completed by his son in 1883, at a cost of $15,000,000. The central span is 1595 feet long. The bridge carries two roadways, two elevated railroad and two street railroad tracks, and in the center a wide walk for pedestrians. About a quarter of a million people cross this bridge every twenty-four hours.

years of struggle and experiment were to follow before he could perfect his invention. Americans did not promptly adopt Kelly's method because they thought that a man must be crazy who said that air was a better fuel than charcoal for making steel. They also believed that only the English knew how to make good steel.

The man best known for the new method of changing iron to steel in twenty minutes was Henry Bessemer (1813-1898), an Englishman. He learned (1856), like Kelly, that forced drafts of air would quickly burn the impurities out of molten iron. Bessemer worked at his method until he could produce for $50 a ton as good steel as that which had cost $250 when made by the old way. The United States adopted Kelly's and Bessemer's method after the Civil War. Near the end of the century, steel rails could be bought for $17 a ton.

The new process of making steel cheaply has been called the third greatest invention in the history of the modern world, the printing press and the steam engine alone being more important.

An age of steel.—The new industrial age was an age of steel. The modern production of almost anything on a large scale causes a demand for steel. The machines that make things, the frames of the factories, the railways that carry products, need steel. When a farmer plants a field of wheat, he causes a demand for steel in the plow, drill, reaper, thresher, and rollers for grinding flour. It is interesting to trace how a demand for a suit of clothes, a pound of coffee, the publication of a book of poems, or attendance at moving pictures is a demand for steel. A commercial traveler with imagination went to Texas to prove to the stock raisers that they should buy steel. He had thirty unruly animals put in a field fenced with barbed wire at San Antonio. The Texans said the wire would break like strings, but it held. He became a millionaire from the manufacture of steel wire.

The United States becomes the greatest manufacturing nation. For the first hundred years of our national existence (1776-1876), the United States gave most of its attention to agriculture and imported many of its manufactured articles, including most of its steel. At the end of the Civil War, three nations surpassed the United States in manufactures, namely, (1) Great Britain, (2) France, and (3) Germany. At the end of the nineteenth century we stood first. The fact that we manufactured more than we could use at home caused President McKinley to say at the beginning of the twentieth century that the time had come to cultivate "a policy of good will and friendly trade relations with all countries."

How the United States won first place in manufactures.— The United States won first place in manufacturing partly because of its natural resources. Coal and iron stand first on the list of necessities for manufactures. The countries bordering on the Mediterranean are handicapped because of lack of coal. The United States has more coal than any other nation. We were not sure about our iron until after the middle of the nineteenth century. There were Indian legends of mountains of ore in