32 ChaPter^1
Britain, France and Germany in manufacturing output, yet by 1900 it exceed-
ed the combined production of those nations. And, as we have seen, this was
overwhelmingly a northern economic activity. The industrial production of
the entire south in 1890 was merely half of just the state of New York.Creating Industrial Labor
Industrial growth and great wealth turned the U.S. into a powerful nation,
ready to go out and extend its reach into new areas. But it had its drawbacks
too [which will be discussed further below]. The transition to an industrial
economy caused the proletarianization of working people—the development of
a huge class of people who worked, usually at unskilled labor, for someone
else in exchange for pay. Prior to the Civil War, most Americans were farm-
ers or craftsmen, working for themselves or in smaller workplaces. While
there had always been different economic classes in the United States, it was
easy for the ruling elite to maintain the fiction that everyone was roughly
equal and had the opportunity to rise to greater heights. With industrializa-
tion, millions of workers lost that independence and began to work for some-
one else, often in a factory, for a daily or hourly amount of money.
Wage labor had become the dominant form of work in capitalist America.
A worker now sold his labor [or 10-14 hours of his time per day] to an
employer in exchange for a wage. Various factors led to the creation of an
industrial working class. First, the proletarianization process led to a shift
from an agrarian to a factory-based economy [which was the key result of the
Union’s triumph in the Civil War]. In 1860, about 60 percent of the American
population was rural or worked in agriculture, but by 1900 about two-thirds
of the labor force worked in non-agricultural occupations. The manufacturing
workforce grew most dramatically with a four-fold increase--from 1.5 million
workers in 1860 to about 6 million in 1900 [in that same period, the U.S.
population rose from 31 to 76 million, a 2.5 fold increase, so the industrial
working class grew at more than twice the rate of the general population].
Along with the shift away from agriculture, self-employment declined as large
manufacturers ran craftsmen out of business [much like major corporations
like Wal-Mart or Starbucks eliminate small “Mom and Pop” operations]. As
one Colorado worker and labor organizer explained it, with anger and humor,
“twenty years ago, [a workingman] could, by being industrious and econom-