Teaching Packet

Industrial Revolution

Part of Uncovering America

Lewis Wickes Hine, Addie Card, 12 years old. Spinner in cotton mill, North Pownal, Vermont, 1910, gelatin silver print, Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund, 2014.164.1

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On this Page:

  1. Overview
  2. Selected Works
  3. Activity: Multiple Viewpoints
  4. Activity: Capitalism Illustrated
  5. Activity: Industry Then and Now
  6. Additional Resources
American 19th Century, Detroit Photographic Company, Mississippi Cotton Gin at Dahomey, published 1899, photo-chromolithograph, Gift of Mary and Dan Solomon and Patrons' Permanent Fund, 2006.133.130

Overview

How did the Industrial Revolution change the United States?

What makes industrialization possible?

How does art reflect the varying experiences within a capitalist economy?

In 1899 an unknown photographer documented the interior of a cotton gin operation in Dahomey, Mississippi. The image reveals the challenging and stifling work of processing raw cotton in the humidity of the southern United States. In the foreground, African Americans pack and press cotton into a massive bale. Others stand in the background next to cotton gins, machines that separated sticky seeds from plant fibers. Cotton clings to the walls and rafters of the room.

By 1860, 61 percent of the world’s raw cotton originated in the southern United States. Nearly all of this cotton was grown and processed by enslaved African Americans on lands seized from Native Americans. The cotton was shipped to industrial giant Great Britain, which imported 75 percent of its raw cotton from the United States, as well as to factories in the northern United States, where the fiber was spun, dyed, woven, and printed. Cotton was key to the United States becoming a global economic powerhouse.

The start of the US Industrial Revolution is often dated to 1793, when the first water-powered, roller-spinning textile mill opened in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. It was developed in part by Samuel Slater, an English textile apprentice who memorized British mill designs—in defiance of British laws banning their export—and then immigrated to the United States.This origin story introduces two themes that frequently feature in the larger narrative of industrialization: entrepreneurship and mechanization. It centers the Industrial Revolution in New England, where textile mills proliferated due to fast-running rivers and where workers left farms for factories over the second half of the 19th century. It also celebrates the United States as a champion of opportunity for immigrants who moved to the young country by the millions.

However, the story of the Industrial Revolution in the United States is also the story of slave labor, land exploitation, and Indian Removal. Mississippi Cotton Gin at Dahomey documents mechanized labor at what was once the world’s largest cotton plantation. Situated in the soil-rich area known as the Mississippi delta, Dahomey Plantation was named after the homeland of its enslaved workers, the Kingdom of Dahomey in present-day Benin.

The drive to industrialize, compete, and rapidly increase wealth in the United States impacted people and lands unevenly. Artists, especially photographers, were hired to celebrate industrial achievements, particularly the construction of railroads. These same works of art often reflect the unease, tension, and loss that resulted from such development. By looking at artwork from this period, how might we gain a fuller picture of the innovations and sacrifices that led to the growth of the United States?

Selected Works

  • Printed with black ink on off-white paper, twelve scenes are laid out in a grid of three rows and four columns. The sheet is titled “THE HOUSE THAT JEFF BUILT,” and most scenes show Black and white people or tools used in enforcing slavery. Each entry also has text below. They appear as follows. At the top left, the first image is of a wooden door in a wooden building with a barred window. Writing over the door lintel reads, “SLAVE PEN” and a sheet hung to the left of the door reads, “SLAVE SALE, AUCTION, Prime Lot, COTTON.” Text below the image reads, “This is the House that Jeff built.” The next scene is of three tied bales in front of the wooden wall of the house. The poster is visible on the wall, and text below reads, “This is the cotton by rebels call’d king, (Tho’ call’d by loyalists no such thing), That lay in the house that Jeff built.” Next are three Black adults and one Black child harvesting cotton. One adult holds a sack open and another carries a sack slung over one shoulder while the child picks the cotton. Text below reads, “These are field-chattels that made cotton kin, (Tho’ call’d by loyalists no such thing,) That lay in the house that Jeff built.” The final image on the top line shows two Black men sitting on a bench and two women and two children standing in front of the sale poster. Text below reads, “These are the chattels, babes, mothers, and men, To be sold by the head, in the slave pen: A part of the house that Jeff built.” Next is a white man wearing a suit and holding a gavel while standing behind a podium. The poster is laid on the surface in front of him, and text below reads, “This is the thing by some call’d a man, Whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, From yearlings to adults of life’s longest span: In and out of the house that Jeff built.” The next illustration shows a ball and chain with an open padlock at the base of a post with shackles hanging from a nail. Text reads, “These are the shackles, for slaves who suppose, Their limbs are their own from fingers to toes; And are prone to believe say all that can, That they shouldn’t be sold by that thing call’d a man: Whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, From yearlings to adults of life’s longest span: In and out of the house that Jeff built.” Next, four white men stand in line and one has a hand on the upper arm of a Black woman. Three of the men wear top hats and suits, and the fourth has a bulging belly, a floppy hat, and a slip of paper hanging from his jacket pocket. “These buy the slaves both make and female, And sell their own souls to a boss with a tail, Who owns the small soul of that thing call’d a man, Whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, From yearlings to adults of life’s longest span: In and out of the house that Jeff built.” Next, two white man wear suits and stand next to a table in front of a portrait labeled J. Davis and Gen. Beauregard. One standing man gestures at a Black man who stands to one side. “Here the slave breeder parts with his own flesh, To a trader down south, in the heart of secesh., Thus trader and breeder secure without fail, The lasting attachment of him with a tail, Who owns the small soul of that thing call’d a man, Whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, From yearlings to adults of life’s longest span, In and out of the house that Jeff built.” The final row begins with a whip and the text, “This is the scourge by some call’d the cat, Stout in the handle, and nine tails to that: Tis joyous to think that the time’s drawing near, When the cat will no longer cause chattels to fear, Nor the going, going, gone of that thing call’d a man, Whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, From yearlings to adults of life’s longest span, In and out of the house that Jeff built.” Next, a bare-chested black woman is tied to a post and a white man holds out a cat-o-nine-tails. Her back is sliced with gashes. “Here the slave driver in transport applies, Nine tails to his victim, nor heeds her shrill cries. Alas! that a driver with nine tails his own; Should be a slave to a driver who owns only one: Albeit he owns that thing call’d a man, Whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, From yearlings to adults of lifes longest span, In and out of the house that Jeff built.” Next is the head and shoulders of a white man who looks down and to our left under gathered, thunderous brows. He has a beaked nose, a long upper lip, downturned lips, and hollow cheekbones. “Here’s the arch rebel Jeff whose infamous course, Has bro’t rest to the plow, and made active the hearse, And invoked on his head every patriots curse, Spread ruin, and famine, to stock the slave pen, And furnish employment to that thing among men, Whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, From yearlings to adults of life’s longest span: In and out of the house that Jeff built.” The final image is of the iron ball among broken shackles, chains, a broken gavel, and torn up sale posters. One intact poster reads, “Execution of JEFF DAVIS the TRAITOR, Dying speech and CONFESSION” under an image of a person hanging from a gallows. Text reads, “But Jeff’s infamous house, is doom’d to come down. So says uncle Sam, and so said John Brown. With slave pen, and auction, shackles, driver, and cat, Together with seller, and buyer, and breeder, and that, Most loathsome of bipeds by some call’d a man, Whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, From yearlings to adults of lifes longest span, In and out of the house that Jeff built.”
  • We look across and down into a valley with a person sitting near a tall tree and a train puffing smoke beyond, all enclosed by a band of mountains in the distance in this horizontal landscape painting. Closest to us, several broken, jagged tree stumps are spaced across the painting’s width. A little distance away and to our left, the person wears a yellow, broad-brimmed hat, red vest, and gray pants. He reclines propped on his left elbow near a walking path beside a tall, slender tree with golden leaves. The green meadow stretching in front of him is dotted with tree stumps cut close to the ground. Beyond the meadow, puffs of white smoke trail behind a long steam locomotive that crosses a bridge spanning a tree-filled ravine, headed to our left. The ravine creates a diagonal line across the canvas, moving subtly away from us to our left. The train has climbed out of the valley, away from a cluster of brick-red buildings. The most prominent structure is a train roundhouse, a large building with a high, domed roof to the right of the tracks. Smoke rises from chimneys on long, warehouse-like buildings, and a steeple and smaller structures suggest a church and homes to our left. Hazy in the distance, a row of mountains lines the horizon, which comes about halfway up the composition. The sky above deepens from pale, shell pink over the mountains to watery, pale blue above. The artist signed the work in tiny letters in the lower left corner: “G. Inness.”

Activity: Multiple Viewpoints

Lewis Wickes Hine, Addie Card, 12 years old. Spinner in cotton mill, North Pownal, Vermont, 1910, gelatin silver print, Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund, 2014.164.1

Invite students to select a work of art from the image set that features people, such as Textile Merchant, “Wooding Up” on the Mississippi, or Addie Card, 12 years old. Spinner in cotton mill, North Pownal, Vermont. Encourage them to consider the multiple viewpoints or stakeholders, both seen and unseen, in the work. Next, ask them to identify a single individual and imagine that person’s point of view. Students might consider questions such as:

  • What does this person gain from participating in this industry? What does this person lose?
  • What does this person value or care about?
  • What actions does this person engage in? How might those actions affect his or her body, mind, and emotions?

Students may use evidence that can be seen in the work of art, as well as primary and secondary sources about the industry. Ask students to contemplate the individual’s opinion of the industry. For a greater challenge, try this activity using the environment as the stakeholder.

Activity: Capitalism Illustrated

Hugo Gellert, Primary Accumulation 3, 1933, lithograph, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.2026

The New Oxford American Dictionary defines capitalism as “an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.” The United States is a capitalist country. People from a variety of fields and backgrounds argue about the pros and cons of capitalism, and whether it is a sustainable system. (For more background, see “What ‘Capitalism’ Is and How It Affects People” in Teen Vogue.)

Distribute images from this unit to your students and ask them to identify which work of art they think best illustrates capitalism and why. Then, invite them to conduct more research into arguments for and against capitalism and ask them to take a position on the system.

Activity: Industry Then and Now

Lamar Baker, Walk Into My Parlor, 1940, lithograph, Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams, 2008.115.731

Industries developed across the United States in the 19th century as settlers spread across the country and claimed lands. New industries continue to emerge today. Ask students to investigate their community: What was its primary economic driver in the past? What is its leading business today? Consider what made these industries possible, such as geography, immigration or migration, climate, and education. Invite students to reflect on the benefits and downfalls of today’s industry, consulting with friends, family members, and neighbors in order to gain multiple perspectives on the local industry. Students should then create a portrait of industry in their community. They might try the following:

  • Create a portrait of an industry worker
  • Photograph a physical site or building
  • Tell a visual or graphic story of the industry

What colors, lines, shapes, patterns, or symbols can be employed to make the works of art more meaningful? Offer examples of symbols from the image set, such as a broken tree stump (George Inness’s The Lackawanna Valley) or a spiderweb (Lamar Baker’s Walk Into My Parlor), as well as Soledad Salamé’s use of distortion to create meaning in Gulf Distortion XII.

Additional Resources

The Industrial Revolution in the United States, teacher’s guide, Library of Congress

Caitlin Rosenthal, “Plantations Practiced Modern Management,” Harvard Business Review, September 2013

Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York: Vintage, 2015)

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