ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the story of the American industrial metropolis in the years after 1840. It summarizes the broad range of areas in which the very terms of urban life changed during the century after the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Among these were economic cycles of boom and bust culminating in the Great Depression of the 1930s, new types of power and new types of mobility. The railroad and the steamship made the American industrial metropolis into a crossroads for the young people of Europe. Overall, during the century from 1840 to 1940, the industrial metropolis fostered patterns that never could have been anticipated. Commonly a focus on factories and machines leads a historian to neglect the essential role of animals and humans in carrying out industrialization. Overseas immigrants to American cities followed the pathways of food, cotton and coal: steamships to and from Europe, railroads among cities.
