Men who worked in the factories were paid twice as much as the girls but were often hard for manufacturers to keep. Most young American men preferred to take a chance on farming with the hope of owning land and becoming independent. Businessmen encouraged immigration because many of the people arriving from other countries were grateful for the chance to get any kind of job. Life was better for American factory workers than it was for the struggling and often unemployed people in Europe.
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England: the largest and most populated portion of Great Britain
distribute: to give out something to other people raw materials: the basic material that can be used to make or create something
Samuel Slater: the man who stole the textile factory method from Great Britain and brought it to America
Moses Brown: Samuel Slater's partner who, with Slater, opened the first American textile mill in Rhode Island
Thomas Jefferson: wanted the United States to be an agricultural nation; did not want the United States to become a factory nation
agricultural: having to do with faming and raising livestock
Alexander Hamilton: secretary of the Treasury under George Washington who wanted the U.S. to industrialize rapidly
industrialize/industrialization: 1.) the process of using power-driven machinery to manufacture goods. 2.) the process by which a country moves from being a society that makes its money mainly by farming to a society that makes its money mainly by manufacturing goods and services
patent law:ensured inventors’ legal control over their inventions and the sale of these inventions for 17 years
Eli Whitney: inventor of the cotton gin whose patent did not help him because his invention was easy to duplicate
cotton gin: a machine invented by Eli Whitney that separated the seeds from cotton 50 times faster than could be done by hand
institution:a custom, practice, or law that is accepted and used by many people
seamstress: a woman who has a job sewing for a living
boarding house:a house where people pay to live and have daily meals
drudgery: boring, difficult, or unpleasant work
IndustrialRevolution: the time period in history during the 1700s and 1800s when there was so much industrialization going on