JimBoylan wrote:


I respectfully disagree on two counts.

With the iron furnace industry, the changes were technological as well, involving the virtual extinction of charcoal smelting in a short time comparable to the steam-diesel transition, and the abandonment of the associated stone masonry blast furnaces in favor of brick-lined steel furnaces. With the concurrent coming of the Bessemer process, etc, jobs in iron and steel production became more specialized, and the all-around expert, skilled workman began to see his own extinction come to bear. The industry did not just relocate, either, it concentrated geographically. Nearly every coastal and Appalachian state from New England to the Gulf of Mexico, as well as California, Oregon, and some of the Midwestern states, had a good sized, well-spread smattering of charcoal furnaces (located convenient to local iron deposits and good charcoaling forests) before the steel industry began concentrating in the Poconos, Birmingham area, Lake Erie shore, Ohio Valley, Northern Indiana, and Colorado. The transition didn't take significantly longer than the transition on the railroads.

As for water-powered, stone milling, it was even more widespread before it, too was concentrated in a few locations and supplanted by mechanically-driven machinery and steel grinding equipment. Granted that this was a much longer transition, but the upheaval was still significant enough to call "national" in its scale. Every region that was settled by the 1880s and that could grow wheat, corn, oats, barley, flax, or any other grind-able grain in quantity had water powered mills, and most were frequent enough to occur every 5-15 miles along your average turnpike road. In an era when most Americans made their living in farming, these mills were an indispensable part of the economy in communities from coast to coast.

Those turnpike roads were also a major upheaval. In an era today when good roads are the most often-cited reason for the support of taxation, it may do well to remember that most roads east of the Mississippi were built and operated on tolls. Railroads did them in, and tollbooths and contract maintenance outfits shut down one-by-one as more and more people chose to ride steam trains and interurbans. As they did, the counties and states took them over, putting their maintenance on the tax rolls. The only thing that prevented this from becoming a nationwide phenomenon was, again, the railroad - by the time the Great Plains and the Rockies were being occupied, the railroad was the way to get there.

The whole issue of industrial, agricultural, and urban development is really interesting.

At the risk of going off-topic, I'd recommend a classic paper which traces the development of Harvard Forest and its surrounding area from colonial days to the mid 1960's. The interplay between changes in the national transportation infrastructure and local land use is fascinating.

http://www.foresthistory.org/Publications/FHT/FHT1997/SandersonsFarm.pdf

One of the biggest changes, was the introduction of commercially available electricity. The entire gasworks industry for lighting disapeard. Industries could locate where they wanted, and not be tied to water power, steam poser, etc. Whole new technologies were invented that were not updates or replacements of previous infrastructure. So, elecricity changed existing infrastructure just about everywhere. In the railroad industry, you had lighting, signaling, power tools in the shops, communications of all sorts. Life as we know it changed. Living, entertainment, food safety, well I could go on, but you get the idea.

Just by luck, I found this item while researching something else.

One chapter title is "Replacement Technology: The Diesel as a Case Study"

Klein, Maury "Unfinished Business, The Railroad in American Life" University Press of New England, 1994