The Industrial Revolution Highs And Lows - 1975 Words

Esther Lee Mrs. Lordi Honors English 9 18 April 2016 The Industrial Revolution: Highs and Lows A paradox is a statement that seems self-contradictory, but it can sometimes express the truth in life. Charles Dickens once referred to the French Revolution in his novel A Tale of Two Cities as â€Å"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . .† (Dickens 1). The statement is easily applied to many other time periods in history like the American Industrial Revolution. From the early 1800s to the early 1900s, this revolution had many pros and cons that affected the American society. The United States was predominantly an agricultural nation in the 1800s. The early stages of the American Industrial Revolution started in the†¦show more content†¦It is evident that the American Industrial Revolution was composed of good times and bad times. The use of assembly lines for faster production played a major part in the Industrial Revolution since the strategy generated large profits for the factory owners. Assembly lines were used in the Ford Company which was the practice of moving the work from one worker to another until the product was finished (Nardo, United States 63). The strategy was shown to be very efficient and fast. For example, in 1909, Ford was making almost 11,000 Model Ts compared to the 65 cars the company had been building each year before assembly lines were used. In 1910, almost 19,000 Model Ts were built (Evans 18). A year after Ford’s introducing the assembly line, the amount of time to assemble a car reduced from 12 hours and 28 minutes to two hours and 38 minutes. After another year, the production time dropped to an hour and 33 minutes (DiBacco 125). By 1914, a car was coming down the assembly line every 40 seconds (Evans 19). Ford not only made millions of cars by 1920, but he also had specta cular sales. In 1916, Ford made and sold 739,000 Model Ts, which was half of all new cars made in the US (Nardo, United States 63). Assembly lines would later be used in other companies who hoped to bring a similar success rate in mass production and in sales as Ford did. Additionally, inventors in the Industrial Revolution created new technology that reduced the extensive