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One Industrialized Nation

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Like the many winds of war that create an environment advantageous to battle, several nurturing events that occurred in the time of Antebellum America led to the exponential development of our Industrial age. Seemingly inconsequential when arising on their own in the historical setting of early Nineteenth century America, the subsequent factors collectively fostered the atmosphere needed to produce industrialization. Through an examination of the time period it will be shown that the strongest contributing factors were: the need for industrialization, the legal authorization for innovation to flourish, and the capital to physically produce industrialization. Omitting one of these influences would have jeopardized, possible even completely stalled, the exponential growth of manufacturing and its effect on United States production. In a time when America was in search of a definitive habitation in the worldwide market, industrialization presented the impeccable opportunity to utilize all manors of finance, production, and distribution within one country. But unlike our former colonial sovereigns, America was prepared to operate on a much larger scale. “The Great Migration had increased the number of agricultural producers wanting to get their crops from interior to national or international markets.” From the same passage, Daniel Howe continues to illustrate his argument that the pressure for improvements in transportation emanated from both farmers and urban inhabitants equally. While many forms of transportation and their means of travel were attempted, the first viable example of technological innovation to permit an efficient mode of moving about our expanding country was the steamboat. Turnpikes and the stagecoaches that navigated them were highly inefficient for transporting goods. “Wagon transportation of goods could seldom compete with river boats and canal barges.” Steamboats illustrate that technological innovations wer

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