entire teacher guide - American Precision Museum

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Industrial Revolution in the Upper Connecticut River Valley: An Overview
Carrie Brown, Ph.D.
American Precision Museum
Windsor, Vermont 2007
1
Industrial Revolution in the Upper Connecticut River Valley: An Overview
In the year 1800, among white adults in
America, only one in fifty owned a clock, and
one in thirty-two had a watch.1 How many
clocks are there in your home? What
happened?
somewhere far away. Many of them developed in the small
towns and villages of New England. By studying the history of
our own towns, we can discover how industrialization
happened and how it affected our communities and the world at
large.
Perhaps most people in America didn’t feel the
need for a clock in 1800. Farm families
worked by the rhythm of the sun and the
seasons. The gristmill operator was often also
a farmer, and he could work in his own fields
until a neighboring farmer arrived with a load
of grain to be turned into flour. Some women
took in sewing at home, and their paid work was interspersed
with household chores and with caring for children. The local
school bell and the church bell called people together when it
was time for them to gather. But even if they had wanted
clocks, most people could not have had them. Clocks were
made by hand, one at a time, by skilled craftsmen, and only the
wealthy could afford them. Then, by 1850, American
clockmakers had begun to produce a $2.00 clock—a clock that
could be purchased by an ordinary worker and placed on a
shelf in the ordinary home.
Why Here?
What happened was this: a strong and steady process of
invention and innovation brought about a change so dramatic
that it has long been called the Industrial Revolution. Those
changes were not developed by a few isolated geniuses
At the same time, the natural environment of New England
encouraged technical innovation. Thousands and thousands of
acres of forest provided lumber for the ships and masts needed
by England’s expanding, seagoing empire. Rivers running
The same philosophies that inspired the Enlightenment and the
American Revolution inspired changes in technology. People
in Western Europe and America had come to believe that
humans could improve their lives through work, that science
could provide control over nature, and that the role of
government was to serve the welfare of the people rather than
the welfare of the king. Laws were developed that encouraged
inventors to invent. Economic and legal systems encouraged
people to engage in business. The social setting also
encouraged invention. The Puritans had valued education, and
they created the expectation that there would be schools in
every community. Life on the frontier demanded self-reliance
and creative problem solving. And so the population that grew
in New England was eager and able to solve problems through
innovation.
2
down the hillsides provided water to power mills. Long before
the American Revolution, water-powered sawmills were
scattered across the northern states. In the 1760s in Windsor,
Vermont, two dams were built on Mill Brook, and the reserved
waterpower ran a sawmill at the upper dam and a gristmill at
the lower one.2 Clustering around the mills in towns across
northern New England, communities began to grow. Within
those new communities, more crafts and small industries were
established: blacksmiths’ shops, wheelwrights’ shops, and
carding mills for combing wool and making it ready to spin
into yarn.
Beginnings of Industry
Spinning, sewing, and weaving were still mostly done at home,
but gradually people began to specialize. Perhaps a farm wife
wanted to make clothes for her family, using the wool from her
own sheep. First, she would send the wool to a nearby waterpowered carding mill to be prepared for spinning. She then
might spin the wool into yarn herself. Next, she might take the
yarn to a neighbor who had a large loom and who wove cloth
for the whole community. The woven cloth then needed to be
turned into a garment—perhaps a skirt or a coat. Gradually,
small businesses—cottage industries—began to grow. When
workers were brought together to share tasks and equipment,
work became more efficient. Products could be made more
quickly. Local merchants began to seek markets farther away,
and New England shoes, salted codfish, furniture, and other
goods were traded up and down the coast and throughout the
West Indies.
The British government, however, put severe restrictions on
American industries. In 1767, Benjamin Tyler journeyed on
foot from Farmington, Connecticut to Claremont, New
Hampshire, where he set up a sawmill and then a forge. There
was bog ore in nearby Charlestown, and soon Tyler had
installed all of the equipment needed to turn the ore into iron.
Under British colonial law, this activity was forbidden and
3
punishable by a fine of 500 pounds, but Tyler persevered.
Eventually he also owned a quarry that produced grinding
stones for gristmills, and he invented a new type of water
wheel.3 Some historians have argued that the American
Revolution was caused as much by the desire of
entrepreneurial Americans to have their own industries as by
the desire for political freedom. In 1776, the political
revolution began, but the industrial revolution was also
underway.
During the War of Independence, all British imports were cut
off. The need for American-made products became even more
acute, and industries continued to develop. After the war, it
was still illegal in England to export new technology to
America, and the Americans struggled to catch up with
technological changes that were occurring in Europe. In 1790,
defying the law, Samuel Slater slipped out of England and
traveled to Rhode Island carrying—in his head—plans for a
cotton-spinning machine. On the Blackstone River in Rhode
Island, Slater created the first large textile mill in the United
States. By 1809 there was a small textile mill in Manchester,
New Hampshire. A few years later, on the Charles River just
outside of Boston, Francis Lowell built the first mill in the
world that took in raw cotton, carded it, spun it, and wove it
into cloth. A cotton mill was built in Newport, New Hampshire
in 1813, and in the 1830s the Monadnock Mill was established
in nearby Claremont. Monadnock Mills would become one of
the largest textile mills in the upper Connecticut Valley. As the
textile industry began to grow, tools and machines to build the
textile machines had to be developed, and so a machine
industry also began to grow.
In 1802, in Connecticut, a man named Eli Terry built a clock
factory that used waterpower to run machinery to make clock parts.
The gears were cut from wood, and Terry’s machines could cut
parts with the same shape and dimensions, quickly and reliably.
The clocks could be assembled easily, without much hand fitting of
individual parts. Terry’s wooden clock parts did not need to be
highly accurate in order for the clock to work. When rolled, sheet
brass became more available and more clocks were made of brass,
the gears would be cut more accurately. In the gun industry, parts
would need to be accurate to within a hundredth of an inch.1
The American System
The machine industry did not emerge only from the needs of
the textile factories. Military needs also drove the development
of new technology in the 1800s. Military leaders had long
recognized that guns made by skilled gunsmiths could not
supply a large army. Thousands of guns needed to be made at
the same time. More important, guns that broke in the field
needed to be fixed. A hand-crafted gun was a unique
mechanism with all of its parts hand filed and fitted together. If
4
it broke, only a skilled gunsmith could repair it. If the guns
could all be alike, with parts uniform to within certain
tolerances, parts could be interchanged and guns could be
repaired on the battlefield.
years, Hall designed other special machines and gauges
(measuring devices) for creating uniform gun parts. Between
1813 and 1830, Thomas Blanchard developed an automatic
lathe that could produce wooden gunstocks. It was first used at
the arsenal in Springfield.4 These early machine developers
were called mechanics or artisans, rather than inventors. They
shared their work with each other as they moved from one
factory to another, and from the government armories to the
private arms companies and then back to the armories.
Knowledge of the new gun making methods began to spread.
By the 1840s, it had arrived in Windsor, Vermont.
Nicanor Kendall and Richard Lawrence met at the Vermont
State Prison in Windsor. Neither was a convict. “Cain” Kendall
had been trained as a blacksmith and wheelwright, but found
that he preferred custom gun making. When he married the
daughter of the prison warden, Kendall set up shop at the
prison and put some of the inmates to work making gun parts.
As early as the 1780s, the French had experimented with guns
made from interchangeable parts. In the 1790s, the U.S.
government armory in Springfield, Massachusetts, began to use
labor-saving machinery, and a few private gun makers began to
try to create weapons with interchangeable parts. In 1819, John
Hall began installing machines for making gun parts at the
government arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, and he completed his
first batch of interchangeable rifles in 1824. In the following
In 1838, a twenty-one-year-old named Richard Lawrence
arrived in town on a stagecoach that had brought him across
the Green Mountains from upstate New York. A young man at
loose ends, he had recently spent three months in the army
guarding the frontier during the Canadian Rebellions (also
known as the Patriot War). He then had traveled and done odd
jobs for several more months. When he stopped in Windsor to
visit friends and relatives, he made known his skill and interest
in gun making, and before long he had signed on to work for
Kendall. By 1843, Kendall and Lawrence were partners with a
shop of their own downstream on Mill Brook.5
5
They were still using a combination of machinery and handcrafting to produce custom guns when Samuel E. Robbins
came by one day in the winter of 1844 and made a bold
proposal. Hostilities were building between the United States
and Mexico, and the government was looking for a private
contractor to supply 10,000 Harper’s Ferry-type U. S. Army
rifles. Robbins persuaded Kendall and Lawrence to form a new
company and submit a bid. Their bid was lower than any other,
and they won the contract.6 New buildings sprang up in
Windsor, both for factory space and for housing. Workers were
recruited from the gun shops of Eli Whitney in Hartford,
Connecticut; from the machine shops at textile mills in New
Hampshire; and from the government armories. From the
Silver & Gay company in North Chelmsford, Massachusetts,
came Frederick W. Howe, who would turn out to be one of the
most creative machine tool inventors of his time. Together, he
and Richard Lawrence gathered, developed, and invented an
array of tools that brought the Windsor armory to the forefront
of both machining and arms making.
It was not just the use of new machines, however, that put
Robbins, Kendall & Lawrence at the head of a revolution in
manufacturing. The production of interchangeable parts
depends upon the use of measuring tools and templates to
ensure that each part is, within a certain tolerance, like every
other corresponding part. The use of these tools; the powered
machines; the automatic, repeatable metal cutting; and the
division of labor in the factory produced a new system of
manufacturing that came to be known as the American System.
At first, guns produced with this system were just as expensive
as handcrafted guns, but the government felt a great need to
produce guns in quantity, with interchangeable parts. And the
national treasury had the resources to make sure that the
technology was developed.
Soon the results of this new system attracted attention in other
parts of the world. In 1854, the British government sent a
committee to study the machinery of the United States and to
order not only guns but also machines to outfit a British
armory. They ordered 25,000 rifles and 150 machines from
Robbins & Lawrence. The little company in Windsor seemed
headed for great success, but a series of business misadventures weakened them. Then a drought in Pennsylvania
disrupted the supply of wood for
gunstocks. Finally, the Crimean
War ended abruptly, leaving the
British with a less urgent need
for rifles. By 1856, Robbins &
Lawrence Company was
dissolved in bankruptcy
proceedings. Nevertheless, work
continued in the armory
buildings under other names, and
workers trained at Robbins &
Lawrence moved to other
factories where they continued to
innovate.
6
New Uses for Armory Practice
The American System
was not confined to gun
making for very long.
Sewing machines may
have been the first
consumer product to be
made using armory
methods. In the 1850s,
American inventors
succeeded in designing
machines that could
sew straight seams far
more quickly than a skilled seamstress could sew by hand.
Each sewing machine was made of dozens of metal pieces. If
those parts could be made by machine and could be
interchangeable, sewing machines could be inexpensive
enough for purchase by middle class families. And in new
factories, rows of sewing machines could be set up so that lowskilled garment workers could quickly turn out ready-to-wear
clothing. Fifty years after the first large textile mill was built in
New England, there was finally a process of sewing that could
keep up with the vast amount of cloth being turned out by
weaving and spinning machines.
When the Civil War broke out, the armory in Windsor sold off
its sewing machine business and went back to making guns and
the machines to make guns. Additional gun-making equipment
was sold to the government armories as well as to private arms
makers, including the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company in
Manchester, New Hampshire.7 By this time the armory in
Windsor had passed into the hands of the Lamson family, and
at the end of the war E.G. Lamson began to expand the product
line to a wide array of peacetime products. In the 1870s, the
building was converted to a cotton mill employing young
women to operate the looms, while across the brook, the
business that would become the Jones & Lamson machine tool
company was getting its start.
Over the years, the machinery, tools, and techniques developed
for gun making took two different directions. First, an industry
for making machine tools—the powerful machines that make
other machines and tools—grew to be one of the most
important industries in America. Second, these tools, machines,
and techniques made possible an explosion of consumer goods.
As new products were developed, machine makers worked
with other manufacturers to solve production problems,
working out new ways
to cut and shape metal
parts.8 Sewing
machines were
followed by bicycles,
which were followed
by automobiles.
7
Industrialization Changes Everyday Life
This industrial revolution had an enormous impact on
communities in New Hampshire and Vermont. People moved
from farms into mill towns. Many people who might have
headed west to find better farmland stayed home, instead, and
became mill hands. At first, in the 1820s, the mills were staffed
by local families—sometimes entire families worked together
in one textile mill. In some of the textile towns, factories were
at first staffed by large groups of young women who came
from New England farms to work for a few years before
getting married. They lived in dormitories, bought fashionable
clothes, and saved for their dowries. Some of them wrote
poetry or learned to play the piano in their spare time. The
factories and towns close to railroads grew, since their products
could more easily be taken to U.S. markets and to harbors that
would take them around the world. New schools were built,
roads were improved, newspapers flourished, and shops
provided more and more ready-made goods.
By 1840, a large influx of European and French Canadian
immigrants began to provide a new pool of labor. The
immigrants were willing to work for lower wages than the New
England mill girls, and the work was speeded up both by
decree from the mill owners and by developments in machine
design. The young women drifted away, and their dormitories
gave way to housing for immigrant families.
Anna Grenier at the Chase Cotton Mill in Burlington, Vermont, 1909.
By the 1920s, child labor began to fade, and more children
went to school. As young people stayed in school longer, they
developed skills and knowledge that made them more valuable
in the job market. As American industry grew, the material
world changed rapidly.
Accurate machining made it possible to create tight-fitting
pistons and cylinders, and those pistons and cylinders made
steam power work better. Then the pistons and cylinders made
possible the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine.
When Thomas Edison set up his “invention factory” in Menlo
Park, New Jersey, he outfitted it with skilled machinists and
machine tools as well as with scientists and inventors. Edison’s
8
group made important contributions to the telegraph, the
telephone, motion pictures, and dozens of other new products
and systems. When Henry Ford developed the moving
assembly line and full-blown mass production of automobiles,
he was essentially improving on a system that had been
developed in the armories in the 1800s. When the Eastman
Kodak Company developed the first consumer-grade box
camera, the screws that held it together were made in quantity
on screw-cutting lathes. When the first skyscrapers were built
in New York, they included parts made by machine tools.
Developments in agriculture and medicine have all resulted
from advancing technology.
Not all effects of industrialization are good. Water and air
pollution have damaged the natural environment. New
weapons can be used for offense as well as defense. Although
industrial agriculture, sanitation systems, and modern medicine
have decreased human suffering, they have also dramatically
increased the human population. And that increased human
population has driven other species to extinction. Mass
production, mass consumption, and the rapid development of
consumer technology have created an enormous waste stream,
but we have not yet figured out how to dispose of all of our
trash. We need to think about how we use technology, and
about how we can use it in the future to improve the world. We
cannot simply dismiss it. We must understand it.
What does it all mean?
To begin with, we should understand the connection between
industrialization and democracy. Our economic and political
systems reward innovation. As machine work replaced skilled
handwork, it became possible for unskilled workers to produce
both necessities and luxuries; but the need for skill and
innovation did not disappear. It moved from creation of the
product to creation of new machines, new tools, and new
systems of production. These innovations allowed lower skilled
workers to produce an abundance of goods at affordable prices.
Industrialization brought about a kind of democratization of
food, clothing, medicine, books, tools, toys, and transportation.
Today it is not just the wealthy who can afford a clock, or a
telephone, or orange juice in the winter.
As you study the history of industry in your own community,
you will be looking for ways in which industrialization
changed your world. You can find these changes by looking in
your own pockets, or by looking at the stores downtown, or by
looking at the distant ridges with their relay stations and cell
phone towers. You might also want to look toward the future.
What new technologies need to be developed? Who will the
next innovators be? How will their work change the lives of
your children and grandchildren?
9
Notes
1
Brooke Hindle and Steven Lubar, Engines of Change: The American
Industrial Revolution, 1790-1860, (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1986), 219.
2
Guy Hubbard, Windsor Industrial History, (Windsor, Vermont: The Town
School District, 1922), 6-7.
3
Guy Hubbard, 9.
4
Ruth Cowan, A Social History of American Technology, (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997), 80-81.
5
Hubbard, 35, 39, 58.
6
Richard Lawrence memoir, in Joseph Wickham Roe, English and
American Tool Builders (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1916; rpt.
Lindsay Publications, 1987), p. 286.
7
Hubbard, 128-29.
8
David Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production, 18001932, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), p. 4.
Machine, Manufacturer and builder, Volume 24, Issue 7, p. 150, courtesy
of Cornell University Library.
7. Lewis Hine photo, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division,
National Child Labor Committee Collection, LC-DIG-nclc-01731.
9. Lewis Hine photo, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division,
National Child Labor Committee Collection, LC-DIG-nclc-01834.
Back Cover: Ascutney Shoe Factory, courtesy of the Windsor Historical
Society.
Photo Credits
Cover: The Robbins & Lawrence Armory, from an old engraving, artist and
date unknown, Collection of the American Precision Museum.
Page 1. Illustration from Theatrum machinarium, c. 1725, Library of
Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-110460.
2. Water wheel in New London, CT, Historic American Buildings Survey,
James Rainey, Photographer, May 10, 1936, courtesy of the Library of
Congress, digital ID: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/hhh.ct0196.
3. Clock parts illustrated in Developpement de la montre à Roue de
rencontre, c. 1750-1809, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs
Division, LC-USZC4-1213.
4. 1847 Robbins, Kendall, & Lawrence rifle, photo by Frank Lather,
collection of the American Precision Museum.
5. Detail from cover illustration, collection of the American Precision
Museum.
6. Willcox & Gibbs sewing machine, photo by Frank Lather, collection of
the American Precision Museum., Brown and Sharpe No. 8 Plain Milling
Noon hour at a cotton mill in Bennington, Vermont.
The Industrial Revolution in Northern
New England: an Overview
196 Main St., PO Box 679
Windsor VT 05089
[email protected]
www.americanprecision.org
802-674-5781
802-674-2524 (fax)
Industrial Revolution Kit
Module 1
Background: 1750 – 1850
Essential Questions:
What is industrialization?
What are interchangeable parts?
Windsor VT 05089
[email protected]
802-674-5781
802-674-2524 (fax)
Module 1: Background, 1750-1850
Essential Questions: What is industrialization? What are interchangeable parts?
A. Overview
• Opening Activity: Clocks (see-through clock provided)
• Interchangeable Parts Activity with Ballpoint Pens and trays
• Reading for Teachers and Advanced Students: Overview essay on Industrial History and
the Precision Valley
B. Natural Resources/Water Power
• Topographic map—learning to read a topo (optional lesson); finding water power sites
using “Windsor Quadrangle” map and Beers Atlas map
• Find a topo map of your own town and locate the early mill sites, if any
• Web site and watermill construction activity
C. Social and Cultural Conditions
• For advanced students: Ben Franklin Autobiography section on his early life* and
discussion questions
D. Also included: 4 matted images for display (including two maps)
American Precision Museum Industrial Revolution Kit
Module 1: Background - 1
MODULE 1 Opening Activity
What is industrialization? What are interchangeable parts?
1. Write this on the board:
In the year 1800, among white adults in America, only one in fifty
had a clock, and one in thirty-two had a watch.
Have the students discuss what this actually means; for example,
there are 25 students in this class and 25 in the class next door.
How many of our families would have had a clock?
2. Write this on the board with room for listing answers:
How many clocks are there in your home?
The list should include not just the alarm clock in each bedroom, but also the clock on
the microwave, the clocks in every cell phone, the clock in the computer, and so on.
Then ask:
What happened?
Pass around the see-through clock. Ask students to think about how carefully they would
have to make all of those parts if they wanted the clock to work.
For hundreds of years, clocks had been made by hand, one at a time. They were made by
clockmakers who had spent years learning how to do it, and who spent many months making
each clock. Only rich people could afford a clock.
In the early 1800s, inventors created new clock designs and new tools for making them. With
the new tools, workers could make many clocks quickly. By 1850, ordinary people could buy a
clock with the money that they could earn for a few days’ work.
The Industrial Revolution is a term used to describe this change in society.
Before The Industrial Revolution:
Most people lived and worked on farms
Most products were made by hand, one at a time
Clothing was made in homes and villages
Most mechanical devices were very expensive
After the Industrial Revolution:
Most people worked in factories or offices
Many products were made on machines
Clothing was made in factories
Many mechanical devices could be
purchased by ordinary people
The process of getting from “before” to “after” is called Industrialization.
The Modules in this kit will help you explore how industrialization happened and how it
affected our lives.
The “Interchangeable Parts” activity that follows will help explain why the new clocks could
be made more quickly.
In MODULE 3 (“Life and Labor”) there is a “Wages and Purchasing Power” activity that asks
students to figure out how many hours a worker needed to work to buy a clock in 1897, 1923,
and today, using old Sears and Roebuck catalogs.
Further Activities and Resources:
• Water Power (How to Read a Topographic Map, with supplemental lesson)
• Advanced Activity: Transcription of pages from The Autobiography of Benjamin
Franklin (a primary resource exercise with questions).
• Photographs of Old Mill (waterwheel), Watchmaker, Topographic map of Windsor,
Beers Atlas map of Windsor.
Interchangeable Parts Activity
In 1851, England hosted The Crystal Palace Exhibition—a world’s fair designed to
showcase the best of art, science, and industry at mid-century. The Robbins & Lawrence
Company of Windsor, Vermont, sent a representative to display their rifles and to
demonstrate their achievement of creating guns with interchangeable parts.
For the demonstration, a group of rifles was disassembled, the parts were scrambled, and
then the rifles were put back together. People who saw the demonstration were
astounded, and Robbins & Lawrence won a prize for their rifles.
For this activity, several students should work together at a table. Each should take one of
the click-style ballpoint pens and one of the small trays. Working over the tray, take the
pen apart as far as you can without forcing anything. Then pass some of the parts around
the table so that everyone has all of the necessary parts, but not all parts from the same
original pen. Now re-assemble the pens. Do they go back together easily? Does the
clicker still work? Are the parts interchangeable?
The Exhibition of 1851 was housed in an enormous building made of iron and glass.
American products with interchangeable parts attracted attention and prizes.
Two other illustrations of the Crystal Palace are on the back of this sheet.
Left: A view inside the Crystal
Palace.
London Crystal Palace
Exhibition, Courtesy of the
Library of Congress, LC-DIG-
Below: Opening of the London
Crystal Palace Exhibition
Courtesy of the Library of
Congress, LC-USZ62-93899
Water Power
Module 1 includes a small wooden water wheel and two sample maps.
You may want to divide the class into groups that will work separately and then report
back to the class.
1. How do you read a topographic map?
A. If a student who does orienteering or hiking already knows how to read a topo, he
or she may be able to explain it to the class. If not, you may choose to use the lesson
on “How to Read Topographic Map.” One copy is provided in this module (pp. 7-10).
Before moving on to the next step, students should be able to explain how to read
contour lines on a topographic map.
B. Using the topographic map of “Windsor Quadrangle” provided in the kit, find the
site of the dam on Mill Brook. Then locate sites downstream that might have
provided water power. Are there buildings on the map that probably represent waterpowered factories? You may want to have students compare the topographic map
with the Beers Atlas map. What different kinds of information do the maps show?
C. Ask students to find a topographic map of their own town or a nearby town at
http://store.usgs.gov/locator/index.html
First, the students will type in the name of the town and state. Then they will follow
instructions for finding and downloading the map. They may want to scroll around on
the map to zoom in on a particular area. Once they have begun to feel familiar with
the map, they should try to understand the contours of the land and identify familiar
features.
Can they tell from the map where a water-powered mill might be placed? Is there any
evidence that such a mill did at one time exist?
2. How does water power work?
An excellent resource for understanding water power can be found at
http://www.osv.org/explore_learn/waterpower/index.html
If this link does not take you directly to the water wheel page, go to the Old
Sturbridge Village site, click on “Explore and Learn,” and select Water Power.
Have students assemble the water wheel provided in the kit. Can they set it up so that
it demonstrates how water can power machinery?
IMPORTANT: The “fins” that the water wheel uses may fit loosely into the grooves
at first; they will tighten when the wood swells as the wheel gets wet. If they are too
tight to fit, they may still be damp. Let the water wheel kit dry out before repacking.
Thank you!
Preface to “How to Read a Topographic Map”
If you choose not to do the entire lesson on reading topographic maps, you may want to provide
these hints as your students examine the Windsor topo:
•
•
•
•
A topographic map shows details of the terrain and what is actually on the ground.
Manmade structures are usually drawn in black. Water is blue; vegetation is green. Major
highways are red lines. Brown lines are contour lines, showing elevation of the terrain.
The closer the contour lines, the steeper the terrain. On the thick contour lines, a number
indicates the elevation above sea level. You can tell whether a slope is going up or down
by seeing if the numbers are getting larger or smaller.
Contour lines that form a complete, closed shape indicate mountains and hills.
How to Read a Topographic Map
The following lesson on reading topographic maps was developed by the Centers for Ocean
Sciences Education Excellence at the University of California Los Angeles
http://www.usc.edu/org/cosee-west/glaciers/HowToReadTopoMaps.pdf.
A topographic map is different from a road map because it shows the shapes and elevations (the
height) of land with contour lines. Contour lines are lines that connect places with the same
elevations and are sometimes called level lines because they show points that are at the same
level. For example, if the number 5 is written on a contour line of a topographic map, you know
that every place along that line is 5 feet high.
Here's how topographic maps work.
The diagram above shows two different ways of looking at the same landscape. The top part of
the diagram is a topographic map of the hills illustrated in the lower part of the diagram. In the
topographic map, you are looking down at the hills from above, but in the lower drawing, you
are looking sideways at the hills. If this is confusing to you, do this exercise with your hands.
Interlock the fingers of both your hands together and hold them in front of your stomach. Look
down at the top of your hands. This is what you "see" in the topographic map. Keeping your
fingers together, move them up in front of your eyes so that you're looking at your thumbs. This
is what you're "seeing" in the lower drawing. The dashed lines connect the same places on both
the map and the drawing.
In the drawing you'll notice that the height or elevation of the hills goes up by 10 foot steps. The
contour lines on the topographic map are also in 10 foot intervals.
1.) Which is higher, hill A or hill B? Which is steeper, hill A or hill B?
2.) How many feet of elevation are between the contour lines?
3.) How high is hill A? How high is hill B?
4.) Are the contour lines closer together on hill A or hill B? What does it mean when the
contour lines are close together?
Now look at this next drawing. It shows a river valley, a spit of land extending out into the
ocean, and several nearby hills.
Use colored pencils to circle the places you’ll locate on this drawing. Locate and draw a colored
circle around each of the following:
1.) a road along the coast;
2.) a stream that flows into the main river;
3.) a bridge over the river; and
4.) a hill that rises steeply on one side and more smoothly on the other.
Below is a topographic map showing the same area. Topographic maps use symbols for certain
features like roads and bridges. Look at the topographic map on the next page and find the same
places that you found on the figure above.
1.) Put a square around the map symbol for a bridge and then draw the bridge symbol here.
2.) Put an X on the oceanside cliff.
3.) What is the elevation of the contour line at the top of that cliff?
4.). Locate a stream that flows to the main river. Draw a colored line down that stream. Put an
asterisk (*) where the stream joins the main river. On an actual topographic map, streams are
shown in blue and contour lines are shown in brown.
5.) Draw a colored line along the road that is found along the coast.
***ADVANCED ACTIVITY***
From The Autobiography
of Benjamin Franklin,
1706-1790
What to look for as you read:
1. What does this passage tell you about literacy in colonial New England?
2. What can you learn from this passage about social mobility and trade or career
choice mobility in Franklin’s day?
3. What does the passage suggest about the political voice of the individual in
eighteenth century Boston?
4. What does the passage tell you about Franklin’s attitude toward innovation and
tinkering?
5. Why does life as a farmer in Massachusetts not seem to be an option for Franklin?
Josiah, my father, married young, and carried his wife with three children into New
England about 1682. The conventicles [meetings of religious groups other than the
established Church of England] having been forbidden by law and frequently disturbed
induced some considerable men of his acquaintance to remove to that country, and he was
prevailed with to accompany them thither, where they expected to enjoy their mode of
religion with freedom. By the same wife he had four children more born there, and by a
second wife ten more, in all seventeen; of which I remember thirteen sitting at one time at his
table, who all grew up to be men and women, and married; I was the youngest son, and the
youngest child but two, and was born in Boston, New England. My mother, the second wife,
was Abiah Folger, a daughter of Peter Folger, one of the first settlers of New England, of
whom honorable mention is made by Cotton Mather, in his church history of that country. …
My elder brothers were all put apprentices to different trades. I was put to the
grammar school at eight years of age, my father intending to devote me, as the tithe of his
sons, to the service of the church. …I continued, however, at the grammar school not quite
one year… my father, in the meantime, from a view of the expense of a college education,
which having so large a family he could not well afford, and the mean living many so
educated were afterwards able to obtain—reasons that he gave to his friends in my hearing—
altered his first intention, took me from the grammar school, and sent me to a school for
writing and arithmetic. …I acquitted fair writing pretty soon, but I failed in the arithmetic,
and made no progress in it. At ten years old I was taken home to assist my father in his
business, which was that of a tallow-chandler [candle maker] and soap-boiler; a business he
was not bred to, but had assumed on his arrival in New England, and on finding his [silk and
wool] dying trade would not maintain his family, being in little request. Accordingly, I was
employed in cutting wick for the candles, filling the dipping mold and the molds for cast
candles, attending the shop, going of errands, etc.
I disliked the trade, and had a strong inclination for the sea, but my father declared
against it.
[My father] had an excellent constitution of body, was of middle stature, but well set,
and very strong; he was ingenious, could draw prettily, was skilled a little in music, and had a
clear pleasing voice, so that when he played psalm tunes on his violin and sung withal, as he
sometimes did in an evening after the business of the day was over, it was extremely
agreeable to hear. He had a mechanical genius too, and, on occasion, was very handy in the
use of other tradesmen’s tools; but his great excellence lay in a sound understanding and
solid judgment in prudential matters, both in private and public affairs. In the latter, indeed,
he was never employed, the numerous family he had to educate and the straitness of his
circumstances keeping him close to his trade; but I remember well his being frequently
visited by leading people, who consulted him for his opinion in affairs of the town or of the
church he belonged to, and showed a good deal of respect for his judgment and advice: he
was also much consulted by private persons about their affairs when any difficulty occurred,
and frequently chosen an arbitrator between contending parties. At his table he liked to have
as often as he could some sensible friend or neighbor to converse with, and always took care
to start some ingenious or useful topic for discourse, which might tend to improve the minds
of his children.
6. Does the society that Franklin describes seem likely to produce innovation and technological
progress? Why?
Module 2
Invention and Technology
How did new inventions happen?
What is “precision manufacturing”?
Windsor VT 05089
[email protected]
802-674-5781
802-674-2524 (fax)
Module 2: Invention and Technology
Essential Questions: How did new inventions happen? What is
“precision manufacturing”?
A. Richard S. Lawrence, Vermont innovator—Biography and Industrial
Timeline activity
B. Invention and Technology Activities
• Machines in the Shoe Shop Essay
• Precision Measuring nuts and bolts with dial calipers activity
• Fork vs. Spoon activity
• Invention Diary
• 1841 British quotation*—understanding a written primary source
C. Other Resources
• 7 matted images, including advertisements
• 3 books:
Barbara and Hetty Mitchell, Shoes for Everyone: A Story About Jan
Matzeliger;
Tom Tucker, Brainstorms: The Stories of Twenty American Kid
Inventors; and
Carrie Brown, Pedal Power: The Bicycle in Industry and Society
Module 2: Invention and Technology - 1
Module 2 Background and Opening Activity
Richard S. Lawrence
This Vermonter helped make the
U.S. an Industrial Power
Richard Lawrence was born in Chester, Vermont,
in 1817—just 40 years after the signing of the
Declaration of Independence. When he was still
very young, his family moved to New York State
to find new farmland. His father died when young
Lawrence was only nine years old, and the boy
had to give up going to school and help his mother
and grandfather run the farm. When he was 15, he
went to work for one of his uncles, making
carpenters’ tools. In his spare time, he learned how
to repair guns. He did not yet know that gun
making would become the “high tech” industry in America in a just a few years, and that he
would become one of the important developers of that industry.
As a young man, Lawrence worked in a window and door factory. He also worked at a hotel,
caring for the horses of hotel guests and of traveling stagecoaches. When he was 21 years
old, Lawrence spent three years in the army, helping guard the frontier. He then returned to
Windsor to visit relatives, and there he finally had a chance to develop his skill as a gun
maker.
Interchangeable Parts
In 1844, Lawrence joined with Nicanor Kendall and Samuel Robbins to form a company and
bid on a government contract to build 10,000 rifles for the army. At that time, most gun
shops made guns one at a time by hand. Every gun was different from every other gun. When
they won the contract from the army, Robbins, Kendall and Lawrence built a brick factory
building and put together a large collection of the newest gun-making tools available. They
also invented many new machines of their own. With the
new machines and with very careful use of measuring and
testing, they were able to build 10,000 guns that were all
alike. All of the parts for every rifle fit every other rifle.
Robbins, Kendall, and Lawrence helped perfect the system
of “Interchangeable Parts.” Soon experts from England
were traveling to the United States to learn about the new
“high tech” American methods.
How new ideas spread
When large orders came in for another type of gun, the Sharps rifle, Lawrence moved to
Hartford, Connecticut and opened branch factory for making the new rifle. He stayed at the
Sharps factory through the Civil War, but gave up gun making in the 1870s. At that point, a
new company took over the Hartford factory. They made sewing machines using the tools
that Lawrence had helped develop. They hired many of the workers that Lawrence had
trained.
After the Civil War, Col. Albert Pope hired a section of the sewing machine factory for
building high wheel bicycles, using those same machines and many of the same workers.
Eventually, Pope also made gasoline-powered cars there. The development of
interchangeable parts made it possible to build many new products at very low prices. In
addition to the timeline activity below, there is an advanced activity related to the spread of
ideas using the Robbins and Lawrence Family Tree on pages 11 and 12.
Timeline Activity
Unroll the timeline included in the box. Ask students to work in three groups, and provide
each group with three or four photographs of “new products”, provided in the envelope. Ask
the students to agree where on the timeline they think each card should be attached. (Cards
can be attached using the Velcro circles on the back.)
As optional activities, have each student write a short paragraph for one of the cards,
describing what events or technological innovations made their “new product” possible; or
have students research a product that is not included among the cards, find or draw a picture
of it, and explain where on the timeline it would fit and why based on their research.
Further Activities and Resources:
More activities that go with the contents of Module 2 are listed on pages 3 and 4. In addition,
there is an essay called “Machines in the Shoe Shop”, eight mounted photographs, and three
books (Pedal Power, Shoes for Everyone, and Brainstorm!).
Invention and Technology Activities
1. Machines in the Shoe Shop
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The “Machines in the Shoe Shop” essay (pp. 5-8) provides background information for
teachers and for advanced students.
Give students a chance to handle and study the wooden shoe last. What do they think it is?
Explain that a shoe could be shaped and put together around a shoe last. In the early days of
shoe making, middle class and wealthy people had their shoes custom made by skilled
cobblers (shoe makers). Inexpensive shoes were made in bulk—still by hand—but there
were no uniform sizes. You would go to the local general store, dig through a barrel of
shoes, and try to find some that fit.
Show a video recreation of the Blanchard gunstock machine in operation. (Go to:
http://www.forgeofinnovation.org
and click on SITE MAP. Scroll down to THEME 1, #7: "Successful achievement of
mechanized interchangeable production [1822~1842]."
VIDEO - Operation of Blanchard Lathe
and
VIDEO - Demonstration of Blanchard Lathe.
Once shoe lasts were made on machines, a “size 7” could be the same, from one shoemaker
or one shoe factory to the next. Now you could order the right size shoe from a Sears
Catalogue.
The kit contains two photographs from the Ascutney Shoe Factory, which was near
Windsor, Vermont. Let students examine the two shoes in the kit. Can they tell which
stitching was done by hand and which was done by machine?
2. Precision Measurement
To make things from interchangeable parts, you must begin with parts that are very nearly
alike. To make sure they are accurate, you must test and measure parts. This activity lets
students learn how to use a precision measuring tool.
The dial caliper
The marks on the face of the dial caliper represent thousandths of an inch.
• Place a sheet of notebook paper between the large jaws of the caliper and turn the
wheel until the jaws completely close on the paper. What reading do you get on the
dial?
• Now do the same thing to measure a sheet of newspaper. How different are the
measurements?
• Now measure the thickness of a single strand of human hair. The early guns made
with interchangeable parts had many parts that were accurate to within a hundredth
of an inch. Today, many products are made that require accuracy within a
thousandth of an inch.
Nuts and Bolts
The two sets of nuts and bolts look very much the same, but they are actually different sizes.
• Can you match up the sets?
• Does the smaller nut fit onto the larger bolt?
• Using the dial caliper, measure the outside diameter
of the two bolts. How much different are they?
• Can you figure out how to use this measuring tool to
measure the inside diameter of the hole? (Hint: use
the smaller jaws on the other side of the caliper.)
The parts for this gunlock were made by
Robbins, Kendall and Lawrence in 1848. They
made 10,000 rifles in two years. Every lock
screw had to fit every lock plate, and every lock
plate had to fit every gunstock.
4. The fork as an invention
Compare the shape and the uses of a fork and a spoon. Create a grid showing the benefits and the
drawbacks of the fork. What is it good for? What is it not so good for? How was it an
improvement over the use of a spoon or fingers? Students may also want to compare the fork
with chopsticks.
5. Invention Diary
Ask students to keep a diary for one week, recording everyday problems and frustrations and
their own ideas for inventions or innovations that might solve the problems. For example, a
student who has trouble getting up in the morning might decide to “invent” a timer that will open
the bedroom curtains in the morning.
Machines in the Shoe Shop
CONSIDER the shoe last: a block of wood carved
into the shape of a human foot. It can serve two
purposes. First, you can make a pattern for cutting
shoe leather by placing damp pieces of tissue
paper on the shoe last and marking where the parts
of the shoe will come together. Second, you can
wrap the cut pieces of leather around the last and tack them in place while you shape and
stitch the shoe. Now imagine that each shoemaker must carve his own shoe lasts by hand.
Unless he is your personal shoemaker and has made the wooden last to represent your
individual foot, how will you find a pair of shoes that fit? In a world of hand-carved shoe
lasts, how can there be any such thing as a standard women’s size 9 or men’s size 11½
shoe?
For several hundred years, going back at least to medieval times, cobblers had made
shoes using handcrafting techniques and simple tools: the knife for shaving and cutting
leather, the awl for punching holes, the needle for stitching, the hand-carved last for
shaping. Then, about the time of the American Revolution, shoe making began to change,
as part of the broader industrial revolution.
Whether the early shoemaker was a professional cobbler or a farmer making shoes for his
family beside his fire in winter, each shoe was made by one person, from start to finish.
Or, at most, it might be made jointly by a master cobbler and his apprentice. But in the
second half of the eighteenth century, entrepreneurs in New England began to break the
process down into separate parts. The first task to be isolated was the cutting of leather.
Leather cutters at a central location could make far more efficient use of leather, creating
fewer scraps by cutting many pairs of shoes at the same time. The shop owner would then
send the cut parts out to smaller shops to have the uppers stitched together. They might
be moved to a second shop to have the insole and the outer sole fastened to the upper.
The tools and techniques were the same as they had been for hundreds of years, but the
movement toward a factory system created efficiencies that made production higher and
prices lower. In little one-story shops all over New England, and in kitchens where
women did piece work at home, workers stitched quickly the one or two parts that they
had practiced over and over again. And from these shops, finished shoes went out to
communities around the northeast, and to the southern colonies and the West Indies.
During the American Revolution, New England supplied all of its own shoes and those of
the other colonies—boots for soldiers, fine shoes for ladies, and cheap shoes for southern
slaves.1
Around 1810, change became more rapid. First, some unknown Yankee genius came up
with the idea of using wooden pegs, instead of thread, to fasten the sole, insole, and
upper. Laborious stitching through several thicknesses of leather could be replaced by a
swiftly punched hole and a quick tap with a hammer. When one pegger could outproduce two or three stitchers, the obvious next step was to build a machine that could
make the pegs, which were originally carved by hand. Such a machine was developed by
Paul Pillsbury of Newburyport, Massachusetts.2 About the same time, William Edwards,
in Northampton, Massachusetts, established a water-powered grinding mill for grinding
bark used in tanning leather, and a water-powered rolling mill that replaced the hand
pounding that softened shoe leather.
As often happens with advances in technology, at about this time military research and
development led to changes in consumer goods—including shoes. During the
Revolutionary War, the government had established an arms storage site in Springfield,
Massachusetts, and in 1794 that site became an official armory making weapons for the
United States army. The government of course wanted to find ways to make guns more
quickly. Military leaders also wanted to make firearms with interchangeable parts, so that
broken weapons could easily be repaired on the battlefield. For these reasons, leaders in
Washington and at the armory placed great emphasis on the use of machinery to
standardize and speed up production.
One of the mechanics
brought into the armory
was Thomas Blanchard,
who had developed two
important gun-making
machines. The first
allowed a metal-shaping
lathe to create not just a
cylindrical barrel (which
lathes had been capable
of doing for many years),
but a barrel with a
flattened section on one
end, where it would be
attached to the gunstock. Blanchard’s second major development, patented in 1819, was a
wood-cutting lathe that could turn the irregular shape of a gunstock. Before Blanchard’s
innovation, making gunstocks involved time-consuming hand shaving, boring, and
chiseling. Blanchard’s lathe had a cutting tool connected to a tracing wheel. While the
tracing wheel ran over the surface of an iron gunstock pattern, it controlled the movement
of the cutting tool, which moved in and out of the wood being cut, creating the shape of
the gunstock. By 1827, Blanchard had developed 14 different machines for making the
entire gunstock, from cutting the crude blank, to turning the final shape, to carving out
the indentations that would receive the gun lock.3
By 1827, Blanchard’s lathe had also found its way into other industries. It was quickly
adapted for making ax handles, wheel spokes, oars, hat blocks, and shoe lasts. Shoe
manufacturers had already created efficiency by sub-dividing shoe making into quicklymastered small tasks and by bringing workers together into shops. That greater efficiency
helped create cheaper shoes and increased the market size for New England shoemakers.
Given the large market opportunities, it now made sense to invest in machinery that
would create even more efficiency. A Blanchard lathe could carve a shoe last in a minute
and a half, and by 1840 most shoe lasts were being made by Blanchard-style machines.4
By the late 1850s, shoe factories commonly contained a great variety of new machines
for making heels, stitching together uppers, and attaching insoles and outer soles.
The new methods created not just more shoes, but better shoes for the general public.
Where low-priced shoes had often been shaped the same for right and left foot, they now
came in matched sets. Where shoes had once been
delivered to the general store in a barrel to be
pawed through in an effort to find something that
fit, now they came in standard sizes, and in newlyinvented shoe boxes. Once you knew your size,
you could order shoes after seeing only a sample in
a store or a picture in the new Sears Roebuck
catalog. High quality shoes had previously come
only from England, but by 1830 they also came
from shops in New England.5
And still mechanization increased. By the late
1850s, the machines in American shoe factories
were more often powered by steam than by water.
Here again, machines originally developed for military use helped create the change. If
steam power is going to be useful and efficient, the cylinders that drive it must be made
of pistons and cylinders that fit tightly together so that steam does not escape.
Englishman John Wilkinson, developed a new, more precise method for boring holes in
cannon in 1774, and in the process made it possible for James Watt to manufacture a
steam engine efficient enough to be practical. After half a century of gradual
improvement, steam engines began to power American industry.6 Once steam engines
could power factories, the factories no longer needed to be sited beside falling water.
Cities with easier access to outside markets began to dominate New England industry. In
the shoe industry, steam power replaced water-powered mills for machines that ground
bark for tanning leather, and that pounded and split leather.
By 1860, there were about 74,000 shoe workers in New England. The workers in Lynn,
Massachusetts, alone produced about six million pairs of shoes that year.7 Lynn was by
far the largest and most productive American shoe town, but there were smaller boot and
shoe shops in Vermont and New Hampshire as well. In 1829, Abdiel Kent established a
small shoe shop in Calais, Vermont. At any one time, he had about nine employees,
mostly unmarried young men who boarded with him and who frequently took days off
from the shoe shop to go home and plow or cut hay on the family farm. Kent operated his
shop year round, selling both locally and in Montpelier, which was the closest
commercial center. The men in Kent’s shop were not traditional apprentices, but hired
laborers who often left the trade after a few years. Although Kent’s establishment was
part of the transition from the old style of shoe making to the truly industrial model, he
stayed in the business for more than twenty years and had, over those years, more than
fifty men working for him.8
Census records for Windsor, Vermont, also show a transition in the shoe industry. The
census forms from 1850 list a fifty-seven-year-old “shoemaker” named David Lawrence.9
He lived in a household that included his wife, six children aged 16 to 26, a daughter-inlaw, a granddaughter, and four boarders. One of David’s sons, Lauren, is also listed as a
shoemaker. Another son is listed as a farmer. The four boarders were a butcher and three
“artisans.” David Lawrence’s 1850 establishment was probably one of the transitional
shoe-making shops where day workers and boarders assembled shoes using a
combination of ancient methods and newer tools, and where to some extent the work was
still combined with the running of a farm.
By the 1870 census, there is no record of David, although his 73 year-old wife and three
single adult daughters still lived in Windsor along with three boarders. In the next
household interviewed, the census taker found Lauren, now 46, his wife Elizabeth, and
their daughter Kate. Lauren is listed not as a shoemaker but as a “manufacturer of boots
and shoes.” He had become a manufacturer who lived alone with his family while his
workmen lived elsewhere.
In the same 1870 census, Ebenezer Lamson is listed as a manufacturer of machinery. The
Jones & Lamson Company was about to become one of the most important machine tool
manufacturers in the world. While machine tools were not directly used to make shoes,
they were used to make many of the machines that made the shoes. Cutting and rolling
machines, shoe lasts, and sewing machines all contain parts made on the machine tools
perfected in the machine tool companies of the Connecticut River Valley.
Food for thought: In the 1950s, it was common knowledge that shoes made in Italy
and France were made on narrower shoe lasts than those used for American shoes.
The average Anglo-Saxon American simply had larger, wider feet than the average
European. Today, most of the shoes that you wear are made in India or China. Why
do they fit your feet?
1
Diana Muir, Reflections in Bullough’s Pond: Economy and Ecosystem in New England
(Hanover:University Press of New England, 2000), 90-91.
2
Ross Thomson, The Path to Mechanized Shoe Production in the United States (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1989), 34-35.
3
Edwin Battison, “Muskets to Mass Production: The Men and the Times that Shaped American
Manufacturing” (Windsor, Vermont: The American Precision Museum, 1976), 14.
4
Thomson, 42-43.
5
Thomson, 38.
6
Muir, 173.
7
Brooke Hindle and Steven Lubar, Engines of Change: The American Industrial Revolution, 1798-1860
(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1986), 214.
8
Mudgett, 108.
9
I have not been able to determine whether this Lawrence family was related to Richard Lawrence, one of
the founders of the Robbins & Lawrence armory in Windsor. But we do know that when Richard Lawrence
arrived in Windsor in 1838, he had relatives living there.
PRIMARY DOCUMENTS ACTIVITIES
The British Point of View
On page 10 is a quotation from the Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalog of the Great
Exhibition 1851 that describes American industry from the British point of view. Have students
work in groups or individually to put this quotation into their own words. What does the
quotation suggest about the differences between American and British life (and attitudes toward
wealth and ownership) in these two countries?
Article One of the Constitution
Article One of the United States Constitution describes the legislative branch of the government
(Congress). The powers of this branch are listed in Section Eight of Article One (see page 11).
Distribute copies of section 8 to students. Have them work in groups or individually to answer
the questions: Which of these powers do you think would help increase manufacturing and
encourage innovation? Why?
The Robbins & Lawrence Industrial Family Tree
Distribute copies of the Robbins & Lawrence family tree on page 12. Ask students to pick one of
the companies in the middle or lower half of the diagram, and put the company name on the back
of their copy. Ask them to try to find out what products the company made and who founded it.
Ask the students to create something to place on the back of the family tree—perhaps a picture
of the product made, some information about the workforce, or a paragraph describing what the
company was known for. Students may want to use primary documents such as old newspapers
for their research.
American Democracy and Industry, from the British Point of
View, 1851
“The absence in the United States of those vast accumulations of wealth…and the general
distribution of the means of procuring the more substantial conveniences of life, impart to the
productions of American industry a character distinct from that of many other countries. The
expenditure of months or years of labour upon a single article…is not common in the United
States. On the contrary, both manual and mechanical labour are applied with direct reference to
increasing the number or quantity of articles suited to the wants of a whole people.”
From the Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Great Exhibition 1851 (London,
1851), 1431, quoted in Hindle and Lubar, Engines of Change, p. 256.
Bicycle manufacture at the Weed Sewing Machine Company
Scientific American, March 20, 1880
Collection of the American Precision Museum
Article One of the United States Constitution
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The congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to
pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United
States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the
Indian Tribes;
To establish an uniform rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of
Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of
Weights and measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the
United States;
To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to
Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses
against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning
Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a
longer Term than two Years;
To Provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress
Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such
Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the
States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the
Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not
exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance
of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise
like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in
which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and
other needful Buildings; And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the
foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of
the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
Module 3
Life and Labor
How did life change during the industrial revolution?
How did it change at work, at home, and throughout society?
Windsor VT 05089
[email protected]
802-674-5781
802-674-2524 (fax)
Module 3: Life and Labor
Essential Question: How did life change during the industrial
revolution? How did it change at work, at home, and throughout
society?
A. Textile Mill Workers
• Opening activity: examine the artifacts: two fabric swatches, one
homespun and one factory-made
• “A Mill Girl Remembers”*; Bell poem*; and Letter from a mill girl*
• Photo analysis lesson worksheet (and essay by Elizabeth Winthrop)
to use with 9 Lewis Hine photos of mill workers
B. Discovering People through Census Records
• Use the CD and discussion questions provided to explore general
trends in Windsor census data (research questions provided). Note the
more advanced Census Lesson in Module 4.
C. Wages, prices, and purchasing power activity using Sears Roebuck
catalogues (1897, and pages from 1923)* (requires some simple math)
D. Also included: 5 additional matted images; CD of Labor Songs; Video
On the Line, 1924 (DVD and VHS); and 2 Books: Elizabeth
Winthrop, Counting on Grace and Mark McCutcheon, Everyday Life in
the 1800s
Module 3: Life and Labor - 1
MODULE III OPENING ACTIVITY
Give students a chance to examine the two pieces of fabric. Ask them to think about how fabric is made.
What do they know about spinning and weaving? Have they ever woven potholders on a small loom?
How much harder would it be to weave very fine thread into a tight, smooth cloth? Can students tell
which of the fabric samples was made by hand and which was made on a machine?
Background
At the time of the American Revolution, spinning,
weaving, and sewing were still largely done at home, but
gradually people began to specialize. A farm wife who
wanted to make clothes for her family, using the wool
from her own sheep, would send the wool first to a
nearby water-powered carding mill to be prepared for
spinning. She then might spin the wool into yarn herself.
Next, she might take the yarn to a neighbor who had a
large loom and who wove cloth for the whole
community. The woven cloth then needed to be turned
into a garment—perhaps a skirt or a coat. Gradually,
small businesses—cottage industries—began to grow.
Bringing workers together to share tasks and equipment
made the work more efficient. Products could be made
more quickly.
By the early 1800s, machines had been built that could spin fine threads quickly. Large looms also wove
the threads into cloth. These machines were powered by water wheels, and the people who operated the
machines did not need much skill or knowledge. In some of the textile towns, factories were at first
staffed by large groups of young women who came from New England farms to work for a few years
before getting married. They lived in dormitories, bought fashionable clothes, and saved for their
dowries. Some of them wrote poetry or learned to play the piano in their spare time. Later, the jobs were
taken over by immigrant families. These newcomers, who often didn’t speak English, were willing to
work for lower wages than the New England farm girls. Working and living conditions became worse,
and for a time child labor was common.
Further Activities:
1. Primary source readings: Bell Poem, Letter from a Mill Girl, A Mill Girl Remembers
2. Photo analysis work sheet
3. Census records activity
4. Wages and purchasing power activity
The Factory Bell – A Poem from Exeter
Loud the morning bell is ringing,
Up, up sleepers, haste away;
Yonder sits the redbreast singing,
But to list we must not stay.
Not for us is morning breaking,
Though we with Aurora rise;
Nor for us is Nature waking,
All her smiles through earth and skies.
Sisters, haste, the bell is tolling,
Soon will close the dreadful gate;
Then, alas we must go strolling,
Through the counting-room, too late.
Now the sun is upward climbing,
And the breakfast hour has come;
Ding, dong, ding, the bell is chiming,
Hasten, sisters, hasten home.
Quickly now we take our ration,
For the bell will babble soon;
Each must hurry to her station,
There to toil till weary noon.
Mid-day sun in heaven is shining,
Merrily now the clear bell rings
And the grateful hour of dining,
To us weary sisters brings.
Now we give a welcome greeting,
To these viands cooked so well;
Horrors! Oh not half done eating,
Rattle, rattle goes the bell!
A schedule posted for workers at Lowell Mills in 1851.
Sol behind the hills descended,
Upward throws his ruby light;
Ding dong ding – our toil is ended,
Joyous bell, good night, good night.
Factory Girl’s Garland, Exeter, NH, May 25, 1844
From www.labor-studies.org
Transcription of Priscilla Howe letter to her sister Laura Howe Ford
in Granville, Vermont
Courtesy of the Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History, Middlebury, Vermont
Priscilla Howe left her family in western Vermont in 1851 to work in a textile mill in Lowell,
Massachusetts. Many girls from her town had gone before her. Some also worked in mills closer to
home, in Middlebury, Vermont. Their letters home report long working hours, but they also speak
of a busy social life. Most of the girls worked only a few years in the mills before returning home.
____________________________________
Lowell, Massachusetts
December 28, 1851
Dear Sister,
I received your welcome letter some weeks ago but have neglected to answer it for various reasons
the most prominent one is this, that Procrastination is a sin I am ever in the habit of indulging in,
especially when there is a letter to be written. I have some half a dozen to write now, or at least
ought to be written but can’t get time, only Sundays and then want to go to Church and read some.
I do really think if I was to read a great deal I should have to learn the Alphabet over again. I never
read so little in my life as I have the last year, and have not written home but once since I came
down.
Perhaps you would like to know what I busy myself about, but if you were here you would not ask.
We work from seven in the morning till half past seven at night. The days are shortest now and we
don’t make so much as we shall in the summer. I run four looms, and average little more than two
dollars and a half besides my board. My evenings, which are very short, are spent in various ways
such as shopping sewing, making calls, attending Lectures, &c. I have attended two parties and
had a first rate time, The Royalton folks are having a very nice time this winter. They have two
dancing schools and balls and parties in abundance.
There have been quite a number of deaths since I left which was thirteen weeks ago. The days
seem long but the weeks are so short, they seem but a dream. I cant realize it is so long since I
kissed my Royalton friends good bye and found myself here in Lowell.
I never was so pleasantly situated as at the present time. I have a good pious boarding woman
formerly from Chelsea, and a good room with a stove and good rousing fire to keep me warm. I
wish you would send down a handful of wood in the next letter. It would be quite acceptable.
Wood is from five to seven dollars a chord and I don’t know but more.
Collection of the Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History, Middlebury, Vermont
My three room mates are from Royalton, and couldn’t ask for better girls. There is a good many
here from Royalton now, and it makes me feel quite at home to see them here. But as well as I
enjoy myself, I would not wish to stay here always and not go to Vermont to see my friends again.
I think on the whole that I would prefer to live there rather than here, provided I could have every
thing to my mind but think Lowell the best place for me at present. I would like to come to your
house and stay with you but cant possibly before Spring. I want to see you all very much, and you
must write as often as you can. I am going to write to Mother soon. I have received her letter, and
must and will answer it. I can’t blame you if you are all our to patience with me, but hope you will
forgive my negligence, as I make good promises for the future. I can’t remember when I heard
from Anna but I wonder if she would answer letter if I should write to her. And where is Anson? I
do not hear from him ever. Give my love to Mother Melissa and the children, and all enquiring
friends. Write to me often as you can, and please accept this [?] from your sister, PC Howe
A Mill Girl Remembers*
To the Editor of the Boston Daily Evening Voice
February 23, 1867
Thirty years [1837] ago I was a factory girl in the city of Lowell. I was ambitious to do
something for myself in the way of earning money to pay my expenses at an Academy; and
being too young to teach school in the country, not strong enough to do housework or learn a
trade I went into the card-room on the Tremont Corporation. My work was easy; I could sit down
part of the time, and received ($1.75) one dollar and seventy-five cents per week beside my
board. Being fond of reverie, and in the habit of constructing scenes and building castles in the
air, I enjoyed factory life very well.
After a few months my parents removed from a country town to Lowell, and I went to board
with them on the street, and then I began seriously to reflect on the realities of life.
For a delicate girl of fourteen years of age to be called out of bed and be obliged to eat her
breakfast without any light, and then frequently wallow through the snow to the factory, stay
there until half-past twelve, then run home and swallow her dinner without mastication, run back
and stay there until half-past seven, is, to say the least, very unpleasant and unnatural, and
exceedingly hurtful to the constitution.
I attended school three months during the following summer; then worked about eighteen
months longer in the factory; afterwards worked in the weave-room, in all three years, but only
about six months at a time, as my health would not allow me to work longer. The labor of
attending three or four looms thirteen hours per day, with no time for recreation or mental
improvement is very severe.
The habit of standing on the feet frequently produces varicose veins; and though the girls seldom
complain, for they know it is useless, yet it is a fact that factory girls are great sufferers in this
respect.
In those days the morals of the girls were well guarded, and they were generally treated
respectfully by the overseers, and I think lived well on the corporations.
They were generally daughters of our New England farmers and mechanics, some of them were
well educated. Many of them had learned trades. Some of them were of a literary turn and [got]
up improvement circles. And I will say in truth that if the hours of labor had been only eight
instead of thirteen, I should prefer working in the mill to house work, enjoyed the society of the
girls, and the noise of the machinery was not displeasing to me; but after one has worked from
daylight until dark, the prospect of working two or three hours more by lamp light is very
discouraging.
In 1849 I was thrown into the society of several young women who were daughters of mill
owners; and the contrast between their condition and that of the operatives was so great that it
led me to serious reflection on the injustice of society. These girls had an abundance of leisure,
could attend school when and where they pleased, were fashionably dressed, were not obliged to
work any except when they pleased; indeed, they suffered for want of exercise; and while they
were so tenderly cared for, lest the “winds of heaven should visit their faces too roughly,” the
operatives toiled on through summer's heat and winter's cold; many passing into an early grave in
consequence of protracted labor, and many others making themselves invalids for life.
For one, I could never see the justice of one set of girls working all the time in order that another
set should live in ease and idleness. Cowper says, “I would not have a slave to till my ground, to
fan me while I sleep, and tremble when I wake, for all the wealth that sinews bought and sold
have ever earned.” But many of our people in Massachusetts are quite willing to make fat
dividends on the labor of anybody they can hire, widows and orphans, boys and girls of tender
age; and when they cannot obtain American girls, they send across the ocean for operatives, and
then allow them just enough to keep them from starvation.
I am satisfied from my own experience, as well as from observation of the working classes for
many years, that nothing can be done for their education or elevation, until the hours of labor are
reduced. After one has worked from ten to fourteen hours at manual labor, it is impossible to
study History, Philosophy, or Science.
I well remember the chagrin I often felt when attending lectures, to find myself unable to keep
awake; or perhaps so far from the speaker on account of being late, that the ringing in my ears
caused by the noise of the looms during the day, prevented my hearing scarcely a sentence he
uttered. I am sure few possessed a more ardent desire for knowledge than I did, but such was the
effect of the long hour system, that my chief delight was, after the evening meal, to place my
aching feet in any easy position, and read a novel. I was never too tired, however, to listen to the
lectures given by the friends of Labor Reform, such as John Allen, John C. Cluer or Mike Walsh.
I assisted in getting signers to a Ten Hour petitions to the Legislature, and since I have resided in
Boston and vicinity have seen and enjoyed the good results of that improvement in the condition
of the working classes.
A WORKING WOMAN
Discussion Questions
1. List the positive and negative aspects of working in the mill, as described by the writer.
2. Does the writer seem to be arguing for a particular political point of view or a particular
action?
Research Question: How were the New England textile mills different in 1867 (when this
piece was written) from when the writer worked in the mills (1830s-40s)? What might have
prompted the writing of this letter to the newspaper?
Photo Analysis Activity
Have students read the article entitled Searching for Addie: The Story behind a Famous Photograph by
Elizabeth Winthrop (included separately in the kit). It tells how the author became fascinated with a
photograph and how she found out about the 8-year-old mill girl it depicted. She eventually wrote a
novel called Counting on Grace based on the girl in the photograph. (The novel is also included in the
kit as optional reading.)
For the Photo Analysis activity, you may want to divide students into groups. Provide copies of the
Photo Analysis worksheet on page 8 to each group, one for each photograph they will examine. Have
the students look at and analyze one or more of the 14 mounted photographs in Module 3 (many of
which depict 19th century mill workers like Addie).
Note: Step 1A of the Photo Analysis Activity suggests that students “divide the photo into quadrants” to
study details. Students may cover sections of the photographs with blank paper, use magnifiers, or pass a
“frame” (a rectangle cut out of a blank sheet of paper) over the photograph to help them see details.
Photo Analysis Worksheet
Step 1. Observation
A. Study the photograph for 2 minutes. Form an overall impression of the photograph and then
examine individual items. Next, divide the photograph into quadrants and study each section to
see what new details become visible.
B. Use the chart below to list people, objects, and activities in the photograph.
People
Objects
Activities
Step 2. Inference
Based on what you have observed above, list three things you might infer from this photograph.
Step 3. Questions
A. What questions does this photograph raise in your mind?
B. Where could you find answers to them?
Designed and developed by the
Education Staff, National Archives and Records Administration
Washington, DC 20408
Working with Census Data
The U.S. Constitution requires that the population of the country be counted every ten
years. The results are used to determine how many representatives each state may send to
the House of Representatives, how many electoral votes each state will have, and how
much funding each state will get from various federal programs.
Here are the estimated number of people in the U.S. from some of the early census data:
1790: 3,929,214
1830: 12,866,020
1850: 23,191,876
1870: 38,558,371.*
The Windsor Census Data CD reproduces the census sheets for the town of Windsor,
Vermont for the census of 1830, the census of 1850, the census of 1870, and the census of
1910. We can learn many things from a close study of the census data. Here are some
things to look for:
1830
1. Look at any page in the 1830 census and note the kind of information gathered
(look across the top of the page). What seems most important in this census?
2. On pages 33 and 34 of the 1830 census you will see the total population of a
number of Vermont towns.
1850
1. What kinds of information were asked for in this census?
2. Look at any page and make a list of occupations for heads of household. What
information do you see about other people in the household?
3. On page 33, find Nicanor Kendall and Richard Lawrence, the gunmakers who
founded Robbins, Kendall, and Lawrence. Who lived in the Kendall household?
What trade is listed for Kendall and Lawrence? Did anyone in the household attend
school that year?
1870
1.
2.
3.
4.
What information is asked for?
On pages 28 and 29, what occupations are listed?
On page 22, examine the person listed on Line 1. How old is he? What does he do?
On page 22, examine the family listed on Lines 23-28. Where are they from? What
do they do?
1910
1. What information is asked for?
2. On pages 18 and 22, how many different occupations are listed?
3. On page 15, who lived in the lodging house of Mr. and Mrs. White?
*
Census data from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Census, accessed October 1, 2006.
4. On page 21 you will find several people who work in a shoe shop. Might some of
them be pictured in the shoe factory photo in Module 2 of the kit?
Notes:
•
•
•
•
•
The N in New Hampshire looks like an S.
Some phrases are difficult to read—for example, “Dealer in Furniture.”
“Keep House” is probably the term used for full-time homemaker.
“At Home” seems to refer to unemployed, unmarried adults still living with their
parents.
In the columns on school attendance during the year and on ability to read and
write, a vertical line (1) seems to mean yes and a plus sign (+) means no.
Wages, Hours, and Purchasing Power
Imagine that you are a young mill worker in 1843, earning about $3.25 each week for
working an 11-hour day, 6 days a week, doing unskilled labor. How many hours would
you have to work to buy a pair of shoes? How many hours would you need to work to
send a letter from here to Boston?
If you worked at a fast food restaurant today, how many hours would you have to work to
buy a pair of everyday shoes? How many hours to send a letter to Boston?
1800s
Prices
1.rent, food, laundry per week (1843)
1800s
Hours
needed
to earn
Prices
Today
women
$1.25
men $1.75
2. gold watch (1843)
3. six concerts for two people (1843)
4. novel (1843)
5. young ladies' leather walking shoes
(1843)
6. boys' dancing shoes (1843)
7. Ladies' World of Fashion and Literature
(monthly magazine; price per year; 1843)
$20-$25
$1.00
$.25
$.75-$1.00
$1.00-$1.75
$2.00
8. postage for a letter (1842)
2 pages, >30< 80 miles
$.20
3 pages, >80< 150 miles
$.25
9. library fee (per year; 1843-1883)
$.50
10. Lowell to Boston train fare (1845)
$.75
11. one pound of sugar (1839)
$.10
12. daguerrotype in leather case (1843)
$4.00
13. shawl (1839)
$2.00
Price data from http://www.uml.edu/tsongas/activities/value_dollar.htm
Today
Hours
needed
to earn
Using the large Sears catalog and the pages from the 1923 catalog, the Westclock ad, and
the wage information below, compare the price of a small clock in 1897 and 1923. If you
were an adult earning average wages in each of those years, how many hours would you
have to work to buy a simple clock? Can you find a similar clock today? How much does
it cost?
Weekly Wages and Hours in Manufacturing
Average Work
Week in Hours
Hourly Wage
Average Annual
Wage
1890
60
20 cents
1900
59
22 cents
1910
56.6
26 cents
1920
51
66 cents
$1,424
1930
42
55 cents
$1,368
1940
38
66 cents
$1,300
1950
40.5
$1.46
$3,008
$400-500
Wage data from http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/us26.cfm
Module 4
Legacy & Impact
(for advanced students & high school)
How did factories transform the geography of the town?
How was your community different after industrialization?
Windsor VT 05089
[email protected]
802-674-5781
802-674-2524 (fax)
Module 4: Legacy/Impact – for Advanced and High
School Students
Essential Question: How did factories transform the geography of
the town?
A. Collecting and Analyzing Photographs Activity
• Find old postcards or photographs of landmarks in your community (6
sample postcards included)
• Compare them with new photos of how the site looks today. What do
photos from various time periods tell you about technology? (Lesson
plan provided.)
B. Also included: Photo analysis worksheets
Essential Question: How was your community different after
industrialization?
A. Immigration – How did migration, work, and settlement change within
your community as a result of the Industrial Revolution? Using Census
Data and on-line research to analyze immigration patterns in your town
(complete lesson provided)
B. Leisure activities – What leisure activities were available in a New
England town 1910-1920? Community News pages from the Springfield
Reporter* and basketball team photo
C. Legacy and Impact: Display 6 additional photos for discussion
Module 4: Legacy & Impact - 1
Introduction
Since the early 1800s, America has seen
enormous technological changes. Often,
American history students are taught about
these changes as national or regional events,
but industrialization affected all Americans, no
matter the region, including the places where
students live. Module 4 encourages students to
discover the enormous transformations that
occurred within their own community as a
result of industrialization. It focuses on the
essential questions:
• How did factories transform the
geography of the town?
• How was your community different
after industrialization?
Manchester, New Hampshire circa 1937
Two complete lessons are included in this module, both of them developed and written by Stevens High
School history teacher Nancy Lewis. The first explores changes in the geography of the town through a
photograph comparison lesson; the second explores immigration patterns through census records and
online research. Both lessons, along with worksheets and assessments, are included in this module. In
addition, the module includes:
• A packet of six postcards to use if desired with the photo comparison lesson;
• Sample census pages from 1830, 1880, and 1930 in Windsor;
• A primary resource activity exploring leisure time activities in the early 1900s through sample
newspaper pages (provided), and
• Seven mounted photographs which may be used with a final “Legacy and Impact” activity.
DISCOVERING THE INDUSTRIAL RE VOLUTION THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHS
Overview
Unlike much that is taught in history class,
the tangible results of technological
change can be discovered without ever
opening a history textbook. Students in
New England are fortunate to live within
driving distance of places where the
industrial revolution first began. Many
small towns throughout the area were host
to or even the product of this revolution.
One way for students to discover the
Industrial Revolution right where they live
is by examining photographs. Fortunately,
photography became a reasonably
accessible technology at the height of
American industrialization. Because they
are often saved for posterity, photographs can still be found in attics and albums. Photographs were often
taken in public places whose whereabouts can be identified through comparison with what remains. By
examining photographs taken at different time periods in the same location, students recognize how the
landscape of their town has been transformed. Using clues from the photos and primary source logs,
students learn to document primary sources, and assess the impact of industrialization on their own
community over time.
Note: Postcards have a connection to the industrial revolution—as workers gained time, extra income and
mobility, they took to the roads and bought postcards to share their travels with others.
Materials and Sources
• At www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/special/ppcs/types.html a brief history of postcards can be found.
Students can investigate and identify dates, messages and post office marks of postcards and share
their information with the class. (A composite page of information from this site is included at the
end of this booklet.) Some postcards may also be found on www.ancestry.com.
• Maps of the community can be found from a variety of sources, including local bookstores,
Chambers of Commerce, libraries or on the internet. Historical societies and libraries often have
historical maps of downtowns and communities.
• Photographs can come from private collections, historical societies, libraries or town government
offices. Old postcard collections are ideal for this lesson and are available for reproduction or
purchase through private collectors, online commercial sites and non-profit databases. We have
provided a set of six sample postcards for use with this lesson, but we strongly encourage you to find
your own.
Part 1: Collecting and Analyzing Photographs Activity
1. Copy and distribute the Photo Comparison Logs and Photo Analysis worksheets provided in the
Photographs Activity packet. (Students will need a log and worksheet for each of the two or more
photographs/postcards they are comparing.)
2. Have students locate at least two photographic images of a recognizable place in the town where
they live or go to school. Photographs must come from two different time periods. The best
photographs for this lesson are easily recognizable sites within a community with multiple images
captured over different time periods. Though people are often the center of attention in the picture,
it’s the place that matters most.
3. Extension: Broaden the comparison by having students locate as closely as possible where the
old photographs were taken, then take their own photos. Using a digital camera, they can add
to the series and evaluate the change. (If you have access to global positioning tools, students can
accurately identify location so that the photographic series may be updated or used for community
projects or other educational purposes.) Have students fill out a Contemporary Photo Worksheet,
also provided in the packet.
4. Extension: Have students predict changes in the future: Using the following scenarios, students
determine what this location will look like in 50 years. Consider its function within the community
in the past, present and future.
• The population continues to dwindle as industry struggles and fails to adapt.
• The population booms as new technologies locate in the area.
• The population remains largely the same but the socio-economics change: If it is a relatively
affluent community, it slips. If it is a poor community now, it will become a bedroom
community for upper-middle class professionals.
• New, more efficient technologies transform the way we travel, work, communicate, play and
interact.
• The centers of industry continue to shift and expand as we become an increasingly mobile
society.
Part II. Finding the Industrial Revolution in your home town
Students conduct primary research on the places where they live to determine how labor and technology
changed the lives of people in their town.
Note: Visit www.doinghistory.org to discover what kinds of maps are available and where to locate them.
There is a Beers Atlas map of Windsor in Module 1 that will show students what kinds of information they
can discover from these kinds of maps, and www.ancestry.com also offers maps and images.
1. Have students use maps of the same area but over two different time periods to determine
changes.
2. Have students complete the following tasks:
•
Map businesses over a 20 year period—1890-1910 and 1925-1945.
•
Find original owners, map where they lived and worked.
•
Compare directories to see how business changed as technology changed.
•
Figure out who were the wealthiest members of the community and map where they lived.
Compare to today.
•
Identify wages and hours for workers. Which of the manufacturers paid the best?
•
Find out if there was any union organizing. Did workers strike?
•
Who were hired? Did women work in the factories?
•
How did the wars affect industry in your town?
•
How transient was the worker population?
Photograph Assessment Rubric
1= not there
2= minimal effort
3= OK
4= above average 5= exceptional
Quality of work demonstrates:
____ Accurate and careful completion of information
Comments:
____ Thorough identification of details within the images
Comments:
____ Extensive examination of change over time
Comments:
____ Further investigation to determine facts, dates, location and change
Comments:
____ Thoughtful and original formulation of ideas to draw conclusions
Comments:
_____ Total
Performance demonstrates:
____ Appropriate use of technology
Comments:
____ Knowledge of primary source materials
Comments:
____ Preparation and planning
Comments:
______ Total
Behavior demonstrates:
____ Initiative, interest and enthusiasm
Comments:
____ Cooperation within a group
Comments:
____ Respect and concern for others
Comments:
____ Appropriate use of class time
Comments:
______ Total
IMMIGRATION IN YOUR TOWN: USING CENSUS DATA
Overview
Students will examine data from the U.S. census, specifically demographic movement in the 19th and
early 20th centuries, between the years 1830 and 1930. Census information is viewable online at sites like
Ancestry.com, or can be found in local libraries and in local and state record offices. The website
www.doinghistory.org/ (created by the Flow of History and a Teaching American History grant) is helpful
to orient students to using primary documents and finding them in their own towns. There’s plenty to
discover from these reports, but for this assignment, students will focus on migration, work, and settlement
change within a community they live in or are familiar with. This lesson uses:
• Searchable census databases: Ancestry.com (Subscription required)
• Copies of a page of the census from the focus community nearest the students (obtainable from
your local historical society/library/town office; sample pages are provided)
• One copy for each group of the ethnic data collection worksheet (provided on p. 8)
• Maps of the local community
• Poster-sized graph paper
• Colored pencils or markers
• Microsoft Excel or other database management system with graphing capabilities
Note: Depending on the kind of work available in your town over time, your town may or may not have
attracted many immigrants, who often did not speak English and therefore had to find low-wage jobs in
textile manufacturing and food processing.
Part 1: Learning to find clues from the Census
Introduce the lesson with a brief discussion about the uses of the U.S. Census. Remind students why the
framers of the Constitution considered it necessary to have a regular count of the American population.
Ask what kinds of data students would expect to find on the census. How would data questions change
over time?
Give students (working in small groups) a sample page of the 1830 census from their focus community.
Instruct students to take a close look at the page, especially the information that was collected and how the
information was entered. Jot down initial impressions of the people who were counted on the page; their
ages, ethnicities, education and occupations. Note what is omitted. Then have each group create
generalizations about the lives of the people in their community in 1830.
Part 2: Online database search
Once students are familiarized with the format of the census pages and the challenges of deciphering it,
assign each student group one of the ethnic groups discovered. Students will be looking for patterns of
migration and charting them with a corresponding color-code. NOTE: The groups chosen below reflect
migration to Northern New England, specifically New Hampshire. Students from other regions should
choose ethnic groups who settled there. For example, in Windsor, Vermont, the 1880 census reveals
immigrants from England, Ireland and Canada (see sample pages).
Red- Irish
Orange- Russian
Yellow- Polish
Brown- Italian
Blue- French
Canadian
Green- English
Black- Other
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
One or two students from each group should be the computer researchers; others are the
information gatherers. Students log into Ancestry.com or another searchable census database.
Note: Encourage students to explore options on the Search Page of ancestry.com before they begin
to print records; there are many ways to limit their searches and save time.
Starting with 1830, the first decade for this lesson, fill in the town, county, and state information.
Select “Match all terms exactly”. Click search to find out the total population of the town (i.e.,
the number of records found, listed at the bottom of the screen.) Write that number at the bottom of
the data collection sheet.
Return to the previous page, but this time, under Birthplace, type in the origin of the ethnic
group. For example, if the ethnic group is French Canadian, write Canada. Click Search.
The total number of people living in the community from that ethnic group will be displayed.
Write this information on the top of the Ethnic Data Collection worksheet (p.8), where it asks for
the total number.
On the website, choose 16 people at random from the ethnic group. Do not choose people as they
are listed on the webpage. Mix it up! If there are fewer than 16 people, use all listed.
Open the census information on the individuals chosen. Using the Ethnic Data collection
worksheet, fill in as many fields as possible.
Repeat the data collection for other census years through 1930. NOTE: If students have trouble
accessing information, or if there are time constraints, the lesson can be abbreviated by skipping
the years between 1830 and 1930. Have students collect data from 1830 and 1930 (or 1880) only.
Part 3: Nationality Graph
Once students have gathered data, the next step is to create a visual model of change over time.
1. In their groups, have students graph migration of their ethnic group over time, using as the X axis
the census years, and as the Y axis the total population of the community.
2. Have the students examine and share their results with the other groups.
Extension: Have student groups combine their results on a poster-sized graph, using the color code.
Part 4: Pulling It All Together
Once the graphs are complete, have student groups do the following tasks.
1. Create a list of the trends that become evident from the graph.
2. Create some generalizations about living in the town over the decades after 1830, then compare
them with the first generalizations they made in Part 1. Examine the occupations of people in 1830
and then in 1930/1880. What sights, sounds, smells might have changed as a result? How would
daily life be different? How did it shape the landscape? Why did people come or leave?
3. Once students have had time to analyze their data and make generalizations, have them report their
findings to the class.
Extension: Students may choose to find out more about a person listed in the census from their
ethnic group to perform genealogical research or to write a fictional narrative about his/her life.
Assessments
Through accurate and thorough completion of the data sheet and in their report of findings to classmates,
students will demonstrate the ability to:
• Interpret primary source documents in the context of the time and place they were written and their
original purpose
• Draw conclusions from primary source documents
• Compare and contrast primary sources to identify historical changes
• Represent people from other times and cultures
• Perform internet research and data gathering
Primary Document Activity
Leisure Time: What leisure activities were available in a New England town
1910-1920?
1. Show students the photograph of the Sullivan Machine Company basketball team. How does the
photograph compare with a photo of their school’s basketball team now?
2. Divide students into groups and have them examine one of the four local news pages reprinted
from the Springfield Reporter, 1910 and 1916 (provided). Here are some questions they can look
for answers to (in no particular order):
• Who was elected captain of the Fellows Gear Shaper Company football team?
• What frightened Fred Howe’s horse team on Monday noon near the Jones and Lamson shop?
• How old is Putney resident Ruth Allen Smith?
• Who won the basketball game between Springfield and Hanover on Friday evening?
• What was hidden inside the alarm clocks at Dodge’s Drug Store? Why?
• Who provided an ice cream dessert at the intermission of the McEnnely’s Orchestra concert
and dance?
• What exciting entertainment will be sponsored by the Basket Ball Team?
• Who pulled a shoulder out of joint at the Jones and Lamson machine shop?
• What group enjoyed a “straw ride” to the M. A. Beal farm on Friday evening?
• Who was sent to Industrial School when he was caught thieving?
• How did George Plummer hurt his hand while working at the Fellows Gear Shaper Company?
Note: Alternatively, the teacher or students can find reprints of newspapers from their own
towns in the local historical society or library, and develop their own investigative questions.
3. After students have had a chance to review the pages, have them list all the entertainments and
leisure activities they can find in the articles on their page, and pool the results with the other
groups. How did leisure time activities in the decade from 1910 to 1920 compare with their own
leisure activities today? Are any the same? What was different?
Legacy and Impact
Industrialization has profoundly affected how we spend our leisure time, how we produce and transport
food and goods, how we communicate, how we travel, how we are cared for when we’re ill or injured, and
countless other aspects of our lives. Have students examine the mounted photographs in Module 4 (and
find others that exemplify how the ability to mass produce goods has changed our lives). Encourage a
group discussion of both the positive and negative consequences of mass production and/or have students
write an essay on the subject.
A USGenWeb Archives Web Site
Home | About the Website | Types of Postcards | Submissions | Contributors
Prior to 1898, only the U. S. Post Office could
manufacture post cards. These were generic post
cards, blank on one side where the sender could
write a message and printed postage on the other
side with space for a mailing address.
Private Mailing Cards (1898 1901)In 1898, Congress authorized the use of
cards manufactured by others. These cards could
not be called "postcards", as this term was
restricted to cards printed by the Post Office.
They were often called "Private Mailing Cards"
or "Private Cards". One side was reserved for the
address; the other side could contain any printed
or written matter. Notice that on this one the
picture was small and the sender wrote his
message in the white space.
Undivided Back (1901 - 1907)In
1901 the manufacturers of private mailing cards
were allowed to use the term "PostCard". Many
manufacturers tried to leave some white space so
the sender could add a written message. Often the
sender would write across the picture.
Divided Back (1907 - 1915)In
1907, Congress allowed the back to be divided so
that the sender could write a message on the left
side of the back and the address to whom the post
card was to be sent on the right side. At first, the
message area was much smaller than the address
area, but eventually the two areas became the
same size. Most of these cards were printed in
Germany. When World War I broke out, this
industry suffered greatly and many of the printing
plants were never re-built after the war.
White Border (1915 - 1930)
U. S. Publishers tried to fill the void in the post card market. To save on the
amount of ink per postcard, publishers left a white border around the edge.
Linen (1930 - 1945)
These colorful postcards were mass produced on a fiber board that had a
linen-y texture.
Chrome (1939 - Present)
These cards look like a color photograph.
Real Photo Postcards (1900 - Present)
These cards are real, black and white photos. On the back, the
publisher put the photo process in the stamp box: Kodak, AZO,
EKC, KRUXO, VELOX

entire teacher guide - American Precision Museum

Transcription

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