Case:               Technology and Rural America in the Gilded Age

 

Theme:           Industrial and Technological Change

 

Time Period: 1876-1900

 

I. Overview of Case Topic:

 

            American industry and society changed dramatically during the Gilded Age which stretched between the end of the Civil War and the dawning of the twentieth century.  Government aided private industry much more directly than it had before the Civil War, and investments in factories multiplied.  Industrialization spurred both urbanization and immigration.

            But technological change also transformed the countryside during these years.  The spread of railroads allowed more and more farmers to produce crops for distant markets and to purchase machinery that made their work more efficient and profitable.  More and more farmers joined the middle class, broadly defined, and were able to purchase a growing number consumer goods for their homes.  At the same time, small towns found themselves competing with distant industrial centers, and farmers and residents of small towns often felt at the mercy of powerful corporations and other outside forces.

 

II. Connection to Theme/Time Matrix:

           

            This time period was one of unprecedented industrial and economic growth that saw the nation become a global economic and military power. Immigrants grew more numerous and diverse; cities grew much more quickly than the rest of the nation.  Inventions such as electricity and the telephone eased communication and made urban life, especially, more comfortable.

 

III. Historical Questions:

 

How did rural people feel about the arrival of the railroad?

 

Which rural people profited most and least from economic growth?

 

What sort of rural people were most and least likely to move?

 

How did the application of steam affect logging and saw mills?

 

What sort of reservations, if any, did rural people have about industrialization?

 

How did rural people view cities at this time?

 

How did economic growth change household technology during these years?

 

How did economic growth change the nature of farming during these years?

 

 

IV. Resources

 

A. Secondary

 

Atherton, Lewis.  Main Street on the Middle Border.  Bloomington: Indiana University

            Press, 1954.

 

Barron, Hal. W.  Mixed Harvest: The Second Great Transformation in the Rural North,

            1870-1930.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

 

Cronon, William.  Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West.  New York: W. W.

Norton, 1991.

 

Dodds, Gordon.  The Salmon King of Oregon: R. D. Hume and the Pacific Fisheries.

            Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959.

 

May, Dean L.  Three Frontiers: Family, Land, and Society in the American West, 1850-

            1900.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

 

Meinig, D. W.  The Great Columbian Plain: A Historical Geography, 1805-1910.

            Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968.

 

Ostler, Jeffrey.  The Roots of American Radicalism in Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa,

1880-1892.    Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993.

 

White, Richard.  Land Use, Environment, and Social Change: The Shaping of Island

            County, Washington.  Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1980.

 

 

 

B. Primary

 

Small-town Oregon newspapers available at the University of Oregon and some in Douglas County.

 

The manuscript census for 1870, 1880, and 1900, available at the University of Oregon and some at the Douglas County Historical Society and online at: http://www.usgenweb.com/   Aggregate census data for 1870, 1880, 1890, and 1900 shows crop production for counties.

 

Sears and Montgomery Wards catalogues.

 

Hamlin Garland, Main-Travelled Roads.  (A collection of short stories first published in 1891.)

 

Wills at the Douglas County or Oregon State Archives list household and farm goods.

 

 

 

David Peterson del Mar, 30 May 2005