From: Andrea Pawlowski
Date: 2/29/00
Time: 12:34:13 AM
Remote Name: 155.247.156.224
Andrea Pawlowski February 29, 2000 Text Assignment–Week Seven The questions that I chose to answer are "What was the role of technology in the new republic?" and "Did it have implications?" The role of technology in the new republic made the production process a lot faster and more efficient. Although it was a tremendous help to their society some people, for example hand spinners were very mad about some new inventions. They had a problem with the jenny and saw it as a threat to "their wheel". Most craftsmen resisted mechanization and continued to follow the ways of their fathers. These craftsmen like the idea of being able to set their own hours and work at the rate that they wanted to. But soon enough technology had become too strong to ignore. In Connecticut, the clockmakers had increased their amount of production due to the aide of the newest technologies. They were able to produce more clocks within one month than the traditional clockmaker could do in one lifetime. Another benefit was the availability of more jobs. Craftsmen used to do everything, even the simplest task but since technology came along those simple tasks were now available jobs for other civilians. Therefore technology not only increased the production of materials it increased the employment rate also. The role of technology helped Americans come closer to freedom although Thomas Jefferson urged the people of the new republic to keep the workshops in Europe. The craftsmen though wanting to keep the production ways the same, did not want to rely on England for all of their materials. Implications were brought because there was uncertainty about where to move the factories. It also put skilled craftsmen "out of business" and left them with no options except having to accept the new industrial world. It was the beginning of a new era and although some people were not pleased they just had to realize that this was the way production was going to be done.