Many small industries, such as grain mills and sawmills, were often located in rural areas close to flowing rivers in order to power machinery. The industrial sector, as late as 1870, consisted primarily of small firms and workshops that relied on artisan technology to produce tools, furniture, building materials, and other goods for local markets ( Abramovitz and David 2000: 45). In 1880, when the agricultural frontier had largely disappeared, almost one-half of the American workers were still farmers and only one in seven workers (less than 15%) worked in manufacturing of any sort. Theses changes were the direct result of the American industrial revolution that was founded on rising investment, employment, and productivity in the manufacturing sector. By 1920, one half of northern farms had automobiles and telephones ( Olmstead and Rhode 2000: 712–713). Many of these goods, which did not even exist a few decades earlier, were manufactured, marketed, and transported through a rapidly expanding national network of rail lines and highways. This changed dramatically in the early decades of the 20 th century, as the supply and lowered costs of manufactured goods created a consumer revolution for both urban and rural households. Except for towns that were connected to railroads or water borne shipping, isolation and the costs of overland transportation meant that many rural communities were largely self sufficient in food, clothing, and many other essentials of everyday life. Prior to the American industrial revolution, most Americans were reared in largely isolated agricultural households and small towns that were linked to the external world by horse drawn wagons ( Olmstead and Rhode 2000: 711). Within the span of a few decades from the late 19 th to the early 20 th century, the United States was transformed from a predominately rural agrarian society to an industrial economy centered in large metropolitan cities.
The closing of the door to mass immigration in the 1920s did lead to increased recruitment of native born workers, particularly from the South, to northern industrial cities in the middle decades of the 20 th century. Although higher wages and better working conditions might have encouraged more long-resident native-born workers to the industrial economy, the scale and pace of the American industrial revolution might well have slowed. Immigrants and their children comprised over half of manufacturing workers in 1920, and if the third generation (the grandchildren of immigrants) are included, then more than two-thirds of workers in the manufacturing sector were of recent immigrant stock.
The size and selectivity of the immigrant community, as well as their disproportionate residence in large cities, meant they were the mainstay of the American industrial workforce. In this study, we measure the contribution of immigrants and their descendents to the growth and industrial transformation of the American workforce in the age of mass immigration from 1880 to 1920.
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