Technical innovations in transportation such as the railroad had different social and structural effects on the three major regions of the country. The greatest social effect the railroad had was its ability to make the continually expanding United States a little smaller for it’s residents. The amount of time and effort it took to travel from one city to another was less and less as the nineteenth century progressed. However, this was truer for the northeastern and western states than for the South. In 1850 northeastern and western states such as Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana had 1042, 1409, 900, 590, and 226 miles of railroad track respectively. Because the northeastern and western states were structurally linked, people and ideas could move about more freely. A person who may have only been able to see a relative on rare occasions because it took weeks to travel there by foot or wagon may have been

able to visit that person more often because trains could make the trip in days or even hours. The train allowed for more interactions between people of the Northeast and West. Ideas on politics, agriculture, religion, and medicine could move from one end of the country to the other in a shorter period of time. This was not necessarily the case for the South. States such as Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina, and Tennessee had only 60, 112, 249, and 481 miles of track respectively. Not only was there a lack of developed track in the South, but very little of it connected with any of the Northeastern and Western lines. This underdeveloped infrastructure of the South led them to become even more socially and structurally isolated from the Northeast and West.

The population boom in the nineteenth century caused by immigration had far-reaching structural and social effects on America. Millions of people from all over Europe were drawn to the United States in hopes of bettering their lives. The places they moved to pushed the borders of the United States and changed the shape and social structure of previously populated areas. The largest population of immigrants was Irish and they gravitated toward northeastern cities because factories offered unskilled work. These people lived in tenement buildings, which were constantly being built to house the massive number of immigrants. The Irish had to endure other problems besides the low paying factory jobs. Many natives born Americans were weary of the Irish Catholics because they felt they would show their allegiance to the Pope instead of becoming loyal Americans. While many Irish immigrants were occupying urban areas, German and Scandinavian immigrants were moving west and starting farms. As with the Irish, Germans to would have to assimilate into American culture if they really wanted to prosper. Americans frowned upon many of their customs like beer drinking and speaking their native language.

Some topics in this essay:
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