AP®︎ US History: Topic 4.5 Flashcards

Early-1800s shift from local exchange and household production toward commercial farming, factories, wage labor, and regional, national, and international markets

Reorganization of manufacturing around mechanized factory production, specialized tasks, standardized goods, and wage labor

Risk-taking investors who assembled capital, machinery, raw materials, transportation, and labor to increase output and reach larger markets

Manufacturing system in which merchants supplied raw materials to rural households that completed stages of production for payment

Production system concentrating workers, machinery, power, and raw materials in one location under an owner's control

Economic arrangement in which workers sell their labor for pay rather than owning the productive property themselves

British-trained mechanic who reconstructed spinning machinery and established a water-powered cotton-spinning mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1790

Entrepreneur who helped introduce the power loom and created an integrated Massachusetts textile factory combining spinning and weaving

Integrated water-powered textile system combining spinning and weaving under one roof and initially employing young unmarried women housed in company boardinghouses

Mechanized spinning frames and power looms that greatly increased thread and cloth production and expanded demand for Southern cotton

Machine converting heat into mechanical power, reducing dependence on waterpower and transforming transportation through steam navigation

Steam-powered vessels that carried freight and passengers reliably upstream and downstream, reducing the time and cost of inland commerce

Entrepreneur whose Clermont demonstrated commercially successful steam navigation on the Hudson River in 1807

Uniform components that could replace one another without custom fitting, simplifying assembly and repair and preparing the way for mass production

Inventor who patented the cotton gin and later promoted standardized, interchangeable gun parts through a federal firearms contract

Electrical communication system that transmitted business information rapidly across long distances, separating communication from physical transportation

Inventor who, with associates, developed an effective electrical telegraph and Morse code and demonstrated them between Washington and Baltimore in 1844

Eli Whitney's 1793 machine for separating cotton fiber from seeds, which made short-staple cotton profitable and encouraged plantation expansion and slavery

Expanding cotton-growing region stretching westward across the Deep South as profitable plantations and enslaved labor moved onto new lands

Grain-harvesting machine patented in 1834 that reduced harvest labor and encouraged large-scale commercial wheat farming in the Midwest

Inventor who patented the mechanical reaper in 1834, making grain harvesting faster and supporting Midwestern commercial agriculture

Polished steel plow that cut through thick Midwestern prairie soil with less sticking, making cultivation more efficient

Inventor who developed a successful steel plow in 1837 for cultivating the heavy prairie soils of the Midwest

Expansion of roads, canals, steamboats, and railroads that lowered shipping costs, accelerated travel, and connected producers with distant markets

Improved toll roads generally built by state-chartered private companies to speed travel and overland trade

First major federally funded highway, connecting the East with the Ohio River and facilitating migration, mail, travel, and trade

Government-supported transportation projects such as roads, canals, river improvements, and railroads intended to promote commerce and national integration

New York canal completed in 1825 linking the Hudson River with Lake Erie, sharply reducing freight costs and connecting the Midwest to New York City

New York governor who led the state-financed construction of the Erie Canal after the federal government declined to support it

Fast, increasingly year-round transportation lines that reached places without navigable waterways and linked the Northeast and Midwest especially closely

State-chartered organizations legally distinct from their owners that pooled investors' capital for factories, banks, canals, turnpikes, and railroads

Federal system granting inventors temporary exclusive rights to profit from inventions, encouraging technological experimentation and investment

1819 Supreme Court ruling that treated a corporate charter as a contract protected from state impairment, increasing security for corporations and investors

1824 Supreme Court ruling invalidating New York's steamboat monopoly and broadly affirming federal power over interstate commerce

1837 Supreme Court ruling rejecting an implied monopoly in an older charter and favoring competition and public improvement

Concentration of manufacturing, finance, and shipping in the Northeast; grain and livestock in the Midwest; and cotton agriculture in the South

Mutual reliance as the Northeast supplied manufacturing and finance, the Midwest supplied food, and the South supplied cotton

Commercial system linking enslaved Southern cotton production with Northern manufacturing, banking, insurance, shipping, and British textile demand

Farming organized to produce crops and livestock for sale in distant markets rather than primarily for household use