Introduction

As people in northern Europe and North America industrialized their societies, they transformed the scale and the social setting of work and created opportunities for the use of new skills. They consumed forest and mineral resources, diverted rivers, and discarded wastes on a scale previously unknown. They placed rural and urban workplaces and transportation networks on the face of the land and increasingly detached patterns of daily life from their agricultural roots. With their new transportation and communication systems, Europeans, joined later by Americans, spread the influence of Western industry worldwide, first in the exploitation of distant, natural resources for use by the industrial nations and, later, by the delivery of industrial products to traditional societies. Until about A.D. 1000, Europeans used technology in much the same way as peoples in other parts of the world, but their adoption of water power for industry was a harbinger of change. In 1086, the Domesday survey of England revealed one water-powered grain mill for every fifty households. Europeans began using mechanical power in tasks that included beermaking, fulling, tanning, and ironmaking. A conjunction of conveniently available natural resources, weak national governments, and religious beliefs that assigned dignity to work and that did not hinder technological enterprise helped Europeans to nucleate industrialization. They subsequently brought their industrial heritage to North America. In the early decades of the republic, Americans began the stage of industrialization that soon came to dominate much of the landscape and most people’s lives. The rate at which Americans created an industrial society was slow compared with the rapidity with which they are now dismantling it. Already young Americans have lost most of their opportunities to see or experience the transformation of materials into finished products or to learn about the properties of wood and steel or about the handling of tools through personal experience. During the years of industrial growth, the village smithy often stood under a spreading chestnut tree, a place where . . . . . . children coming home from school Look in at the open door; They love to see the flaming forge, And hear the bellows roar, And catch the burning sparks that fly Like chaff from a threshing-floor. . .