Chapter 7

Machines changed worker lives by...

Dividing labor into small task

Samuel Slater

English emigrant who built America's first water-powered textile mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island in 1793

labor union

Group of workers who band together to seek better working conditions

Industrial Revolution

Historic period in which production shifted from manual labor to the use of machines, changing how people lived and worked

Interchangeable parts

Identical components that can be used in place of one another in manufacturing

Eli Whitney

Inventor who introduced the use of interchangeable parts in the United States

Capital

Money needed to build factories

What was one effect of the Erie Canal?

New York City became the nation's greatest commercial center.

National Road

Road made of cryshed stone that linked successfully link Maryland and the Ohio River

What was the most far reaching development in the transportation revolution of the early 1800's?

The arrival of railroads.

Turnpike

Toll roads chartered by some states, named for the gate that guarded the entrance

Erie Canal

Waterway built to link Lake Erie and New York City via the Hudson River

Cotton Gin

a machine for separating cotton from its seeds.

Nativists

campaigned for laws to discourage immigration

Tariff of 1816

increased prices on imported goods

Samuel F.B. Morse

inventor of the electrical telegraph and Morse Code, a system of dots and dashes used to send messages over metal wires

Francis Cabot Lowell

merchant who developed an entire industrial system for all stages of manufacturing cloth in the town of Lowell

Which American industry first used machines to do work previously done by hand?

textiles

Lowell girls

young girls who worked in Lowell's mills and lived in strictly supervised boarding houses