Reconstruction, Expansion, and the Triumph of Industrial Capitalism 25once did almost all manufacturing work, now machines and technology
dominated the labor process; production, usually based in the home or a small
shop, moved into large factories; instead of hauling goods overland by draft
animals, canals and especially railroads did the job; and population, and immi-
gration, soared, making many more hands available for work.
Advances in technology produced huge growth also. In 1834, a blacksmith
applied for a patent on an electric motor to drive streetcars. In 1847, a man
named Walter Hunt invented the safety pin. With the invention of the corn
cutter, corporate farms could fill 15,000 cans daily, while the mechanical pea
sheller could remove as many peas from their pods as 600 workers. In 1862,
Dr. R.J. Gatling patented a ten-barreled shotgun, which evolved into the
machine gun. In 1880, an inventor working for a tobacco company built a
machine that produced 70,000 cigarettes in ten hours, and that number rose
to 120,000 in just a few years. Companies we still know today—Proctor and
Gamble, Ivory Soap, Quaker Oats, Borden, Heinz, Campbell Soup, Libby’s—likewise
saw their production expand enormously.
John Deere began producing steel plows and Cyrus McCormick in 1864 built
6000 reapers and 70,000 mowers, making it possible for farmers to purchase
agricultural tools in huge numbers, such as 100,000 harvesters in 1879 alone.
Thomas Edison, who was the primary inventor of electricity, by 1885 had
installed over 1000 central power stations and had begun the process of bring-
ing electricity to the whole country. Along those lines, the main source of
energy changed too. In 1870, wood accounted for 73 percent of energy, but
by 1920, coal produced that same percentage, and coalfields were producing
over 4 million tons of coal, as well as black lung disease and environmental
damage, annually.
While the vast amounts of wealth created were owned privately, Capitalists
had a vital ally in the government. While Americans are taught that the
United States has a “free enterprise” system and many citizens agree that the
government should be limited and stay out of the economy [a key element in
the Tea Party and right-wing political program that was so successful in the
2010-2012 elections], that is not the historical case at all. Indeed, the power
of the state was connected to the interests of big business more than ever after
the Civil War, as the government passed laws and approved of institutions to
make it easier for Capitalists to grow and gain more power. Just as the state
had protected businesses, promoted industry, and given land and capital to key