The Negative Impact Of The Industrial Revolution On American Society

The Industrial Revolution has brought a major transformation to the American society. New technologies and advancements changed the way Americans viewed their world. Gender issues, social class, immigration, relations with Native Americans, and slavery were either positively or negatively impacted by the revolution. Nevertheless, the United States’ huge step toward progress during the Industrial Revolution made a lasting impression in American society.
The Industrial Revolution provided employment opportunities for women, but issues of gender was brought up in the process. According to my textbook, Americans were opening factories and mills in the country side which provided employment for single farm women. An example would be the Francis

As stated in the textbook, the wealthiest people were seaport merchants that made their business on imports, exports, banks and insurance companies, and urban real estate. An example would be the Boston Brahmins who were a cluster of old Protestant families in Boston that constituted the city’s social elite by the early 19thcentury. The upper class enjoyed the prosperity industrialization granted them as they achieved luxury and extravagance. Below the social elite was a growing middle class that included lawyers, salesmen, clerks, retail merchants, and accountants. Industrialization provided occupations that allowed people to lift themselves higher in the social strata The middle class took advantage of their increased wages by living comfortably and providing an education for their next generation in order to maintain their social standing. The only class that did not benefit from industrialization was the poor working class. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, lower class families relied on their farms for a living. Industrialization has caused entire families to leave the fields and work in factories. The working class faced harsh working conditions and low wages did not provide them any comfort or security. The Industrial Revolution has indeed formed the American social strata, but not all social classes benefited

During the revolution Native Americans were displaced from their ancestral homelands in order to make room for factories, mills, and railroads. A major displacement of Native Americans occurred when Congress passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830. According to the textbook, more than 120,000 Native American still lived between the Appalachians and the Mississippi in the early 1820s. The Cherokees, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole only comprised half of them. These tribes are also known as the Five Civilized Tribes because they have adopted aspects of the white culture. The states coveted the land the Native Americans inhabited and denied the federal government’s authority to recognize the native sovereignty within a state. President Jackson agreed with the states and decided to relocate the Civilized Tribes to a federal land where they can be protected under the federal government. Although many Native Americans resisted, most of them saw that they had no choice and gave up their lands. In 1838, federal troops marched 15,000 Cherokee Indians through a harsh journey out of their homeland into Oklahoma. This was just one of many examples of how the Industrial Revolution affected the Native