Civilizing the Machine By John F. Kasson
The purpose of this article is to discuss how technologies were dealt with such as the debates of the factories of Lowell, Massachusetts or Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. The author’s thesis is that the manufacturing centers caused dramatic changes on the character of American life. The author follows his thesis with a series of questions to get the reader thinking critically about how much the Nation’s future depended on industrialization. The thesis is supported throughout the article such as “They planned to hire as their main working force young, single women” which was different from which all the other American factory settlements had which included hiring whole families. This allowed women to have more responsibilities and gave them an opportunity for education while still being protected by company supervision. He also defends his thesis by stating that when the people adjusted to the new factory life that helped the United States of America is transition to a “mature industrial society.”This article helps add to my knowledge about this period in time because I didn’t know that companies would hire whole families at once and some also included school aged children. This also adds to my knowledge in the sense that I didn’t know how big of a role factories played during this time and how many jobs factories provided, also because of the industrialization the population grew at an enormous rate as it had before. A strength that this article had was that it went into detail in what Mr. Lowell did and how it affected America at the time. Some weaknesses that I found is that I feel like it contains alot of irrelevant information. Overall I enjoyed reading this article as I found it interesting learning how much factories really do affect us.