The United States of America

Yankee Doodle not so dandy

England lost its eastern American mainland colonies in 1783 as a consequence of the American War of Independence: however it was to retain its sugar producing island colonies in the West Indies following a major, and victorious, sea battle with the French navy in the Caribbean Sea. These islands, with their reliable rainfall and rich volcanic soils, were perhaps of greater value than the lost colonies to a major sea power such as England at this time. The plantations, in both the lost mainland colonies and in the Caribbean Islands, were to retain their slave labourers following the successful rebellion.

The location of early industrial mills or factories in the United State was, to a large degree, influenced by the availability of water power – which required the fast-flowing rivers provided by relatively steep stream bed gradients. This requirement was met in the north-east of the country, a geographic circumstance that no doubt had a major influence on the rationale for, and the outcome of, the tragic civil war of the 1860’s.

In this war the country lost somewhere in the vicinity of 600,000 combatants; a greater number than those lost in all other American wars combined. This was partly because of the intensity of the combat and, more critically, because the country sustained casualties on both sides of the conflict. Here, as in Britain, there had been serious friction between the free-trade demanding industrialists of the north and the protectionist inclined, land rich plantation owners of the agrarian south.

It was cotton from the south, but milled in the north, that provided the impetus for the United States’ industrialisation. The construction of these cotton mills commenced in the 1790’s and they were located largely in the Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts areas, where the establishment of mills on the Blackstone River became regarded as the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution.

Child labour was as important to American industry as it was to the British. However in the United States, where trade unionism had much less influence, the use of child labour continued up to the 20th century. Following Ireland’s Great Famine immigrants from that country also provided a significant source of cheap labour to the developing industries.

Prior to and during the civil war, the southern states, with no means of harnessing water-power, had to rely upon the much less efficient power of horses to provide for their industrial muscle.

Steam power - the reconstruction of a Mississippi Steam Boat

It was not until after the civil war that southern cotton mills would become economically viable by utilizing the power of that new deliverer of energy, coal fired steam.

The victorious northern states’ elimination of the agriculturalists’ slave labour, previously used to provide cheap labour to the southern plantations, ensured that the southern economy suffered a further dramatic weakening as employers of agricultural labour now had to compete (if possible) with the industrial wages of the north.

The reduction in competition provided by the American Civil War, with its consequent elimination of the slave labour based workforce, provided a boon to Australian agriculture. However this boon did not extend to the production of cotton where the passage of much time and the acquisition of considerable experience were needed before this particular industry was to become viable in Australia.

To the west of the country, in California, gold had been discovered and a flood of immigrants, the forty-niners, flooded into the state. Many of these miners would subsequently relocate to the Victorian gold rush fields and were to make their presence felt at the Eureka Stockade and, by dispersion, into other industries including sugar cane production. (For example Mr. Faulkner of Woodlands, Woongarra).