Title: Industrialization and Urbanization in the United States, 1880–1929 | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History
Headings: Industrialization and Urbanization in the United States, 1880–1929
Industrialization and Urbanization in the United States, 1880–1929
Summary
Keywords
The Electrical Grid and Improvements in Transportation
Structural Steel and Skyscrapers
The Assembly Line
The Origins of Mass Production
Discussion of the Literature
Primary Sources and Links to Digital Materials
Further Reading
Notes

Content: Industrialization, meaning manufacturing in factory settings using machines plus a labor force with unique, divided tasks to increase production, stimulated urbanization, meaning the growth of cities in both population and physical size. During this period, urbanization spread out into the countryside and up into the sky, thanks to new methods of building taller buildings. Having people concentrated into small areas accelerated economic activity, thereby producing more industrial growth. Industrialization and urbanization thus reinforced one another, augmenting the speed with which such growth would have otherwise occurred. Industrialization and urbanization affected Americans everywhere, but especially in the Northeast and Midwest. Technological developments in construction, transportation, and illumination, all connected to industrialization, changed cities forever, most immediately those north of Washington, DC and east of Kansas City. Cities themselves fostered new kinds of industrial activity on large and small scales. Cities were also the places where businessmen raised the capital needed to industrialize the rest of the United States. Later changes in production and transportation made urbanization less acute by making it possible for people to buy cars and live further away from downtown areas in new suburban areas after World War II ended. Keywords
industrialization
urbanization
transportation
electricity
skyscrapers
assembly line
Henry Ford
Andrew Carnegie
Subjects
20th Century: