Pinellas Schools Industrial Revolution Middle School

1. Industrial Revolution: Choices and Consequences
http://tinyurl.com/stavrosmadeintheusa
Deborah Kozdras dkozdras@usf.edu

2. Standards
• SS.8.A.4.7: Explain the causes, course, and consequences of
New England’s textile Industry.
• SS.8.E.1.1: Examine motivating economic factors . .
.scarcity, supply/demand, opportunity costs (decision-
making), incentives, profits, entrepreneurial aspects.
• SS.8.E.2.1 (also 5th grade) Analyze contributions of
entrepreneurs, inventors, and other key individuals from
various gender, social, ethnic . . .
• SS.8.A.4.5: Explain causes, course, and consequences of
19th century transportation on economy.
• SS.8.E.2.2: Assess role of Africans and other minority
groups on economic development of the United States . . .
http://tinyurl.com/historymystery4
Deborah Kozdras dkozdras@usf.edu

3. Economic Questions: EQ’s
• Scarcity: What was the scarcity problem?
• Supply and demand: How did supply and/or demand affect
choices?
• Opportunity costs: Next best choice you give up. What was
the opportunity cost of the decision?
• Incentives: What were the incentives?
• Profits: What was the profit? Who made the profit? How
did profit motivate choice?
• Entrepreneurs and Inventors: Who sold things? Who
invented things?
• Decision-making: What was the problem/decision? Were
there other choices? What were the consequences of the
decision? What do you think they should have done, based
on evidence?

5. Early Landmark Moment: Slater Mill
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ri0102/

8. http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/ww/mills.html
https://www.uml.edu/tsongas/bringing-history-home/timeline/
http://vermonthistory.org/educate/online-resources/an-era-of-great-ch

9. Cotton Gin:
Choices and Consequences
Problem: Eli Whitney learned that Southern
planters were in desperate need of a way to
make the growing of cotton profitable. Sticky
green seeds were hard to pick out of cotton.
Solution: Invent Cotton Gin.
Patent: Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 “promote
the progress of science and useful arts by
securing for limited times to authors and
inventors the exclusive right to their respective
writings and discoveries.”
Problem: Whitney installs cotton gins on
properties and charges farmers a fee. Farmers
resented his gins and paying a large “tax” (2/5
of profit). So they made “new” inventions.
Good and Bad consequences:
Good- reduced hard labor of removing seeds,
yield of raw cotton doubled. Demand fueled
by other inventions (machines to weave,
steamships to transport).
Bad- Growth of slavery because it became
profitable and increased planters’ demand for
land and slave labor.

13. First telegraphic message: 24, May, 1844

14. Occupational Portrait of a Woman Working at a Sewing Machine. Circa 1853. Daguerreotypes

16. 14 million immigrants

17. John D. Rockefeller: Standard Oil Trust

19. Alexander
Graham Bell
March 10, 1876 the birth of the telephone and
the death of the multiple telegraph.
From dots and dashes to talking with electricity.

20. Thomas Alva Edison
https://www.loc.gov/item/00694187/
https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/industrial-us.html

21. Factory Jobs

22. Breaker Boys: Coal Mines