Uneven Industrial Growth: Comparing Illinois and Georgia, 1870–1900

Kaitlyn Lasswell

Pictured: Carding room of a cotton mill in Augusta, Georgia, 1892. Library of Congress.

Two States with Two Different Starting Points

The decades following the Civil War transformed the American economy, but the growth didn’t happen at the same speed or in the same way throughout the country. Illinois and Georgia offer an interesting comparison because both states experienced significant manufacturing growth between 1870 and 1900. Even though they began the postbellum period under very different circumstances, Illinois already had a much larger industrial economy and benefited from rapidly expanding transportation networks, while Georgia remained agricultural and faced the additional challenge of rebuilding its economy after the Civil War. By 1900, though, manufacturing had grown substantially in both states.

Alfred Chandler’s discussion of the “Second Industrial Revolution” helps explain why these important decades brought such dramatic changes to both states. Chandler argues that by the 1880s, expanding railroad, telegraph, steamship, and cable networks allowed goods and information to move in volumes that had never before been possible. These developments encouraged technological innovation and helped transform commercial and agricultural economies into increasingly modern and industrial ones.¹ Looking at Illinois and Georgia together shows that both states participated in this transformation, but it also reveals just how uneven their growth was when compared with the other.

Looking at the Numbers

Measuring economic growth over more than thirty years presents some challenges, especially when the evidence comes from nineteenth-century census records that are sometimes hard to find and analyze. This comparison uses manufacturing statistics published by the United States Census for 1870, 1880, and 1900, with attention specifically given to the number of manufacturing wage earners and the reported value of manufactured products. The 1900 Census bulletins for Illinois and Georgia are especially helpful in this research because they include comparative tables containing figures from the earlier censuses.²

These numbers still have to be used carefully, though; the Census itself acknowledged that changes in the way information was collected made some comparisons between census years imperfect.³ The reported value of manufactured products also represents the dollar value at the time and isn’t adjusted for inflation. For that reason, product value can’t tell the entire story by itself. Looking at employment and establishments alongside dollar amounts, though, helps provide a clearer picture of how manufacturing changed.

David Freedman makes a similar point about the use of statistics in historical and social research; he warns that statistical methods can’t take the place of good research design and testing conclusions against what the evidence actually shows.⁴ Andrew Popp and Susanna Fellman also highlight the importance of historical research being an ongoing process in which sources can reshape the story a historian expects to find at first.⁵ When this happens, it is especially important because the numbers don’t support a simple story in which Illinois industrialized while Georgia merely remained economically stalled.

The Growing Divide

In 1870, Illinois already had an advantage over Georgia. The Census reported 82,979 manufacturing wage earners in Illinois and manufactured products valued at $205,620,672. In comparison, Georgia had 17,871 wage earners and products valued at $31,196,115.⁶ Illinois began this period with almost five times as many manufacturing workers and more than six times the reported value of manufactured products.

Ten years later, both states had grown significantly. By 1880, Illinois employed 144,727 manufacturing wage earners and reported $414,864,673 in manufactured goods. Georgia employed 24,875 wage earners and reported $36,440,948 in goods.⁷ Interestingly, and even though its manufacturing workforce and product value increased, Georgia’s number of manufacturing businesses actually fell from 3,836 in 1870 to 3,593 in 1880. This difference shows why only counting the number of factories or businesses doesn’t always provide an accurate picture of economic growth.

By 1900, the changes were even more dramatic; Illinois reported 395,110 manufacturing wage earners and more than $1.25 billion in products, and Georgia reported 83,842 wage earners and approximately $106.7 million in manufactured goods.⁸ Between 1870 and 1900, Illinois’s manufacturing workforce increased by 376 percent. Georgia’s increased by approximately 369 percent. Although Illinois was ahead in actual numbers, the percentage increase in manufacturing employment was very close.

The value of those manufactured goods tells a different story, though. Illinois’s reported product value increased by approximately 513 percent during the same time period, while Georgia’s increased by approximately 242 percent. Because these figures aren’t adjusted for inflation, they can’t be treated as a precise measurement of true economic growth. When considered alongside the dramatic increase in manufacturing employment, though, they show that Illinois’s industrial economy was expanding on a much faster and larger scale.

The reasons behind this difference become even more clear when the states themselves are analyzed. The Census emphasized Illinois’s geographic and transportation advantages, including Lake Michigan, the Mississippi River, Chicago as a major distribution center, new and important railroad connections, and access to coal.⁹ These advantages are similar to the conditions Chandler identifies as important to the Second Industrial Revolution. He argues that many industrial enterprises depended on the ability to maintain this steady movement of raw materials into factories and finished products into the market, and Illinois happened to be well-positioned to benefit from that new economic system than Georgia. ¹⁰

Georgia’s numbers, though, do show that industrial development in the South was taking place; the Census describes slower but steady manufacturing growth and pointed to the Atlanta Cotton Exposition of 1881, as well as the growth of technical education, as being important factors to this growth.¹¹ Cotton manufacturing became especially important, and it connected Georgia’s growing industrial sector to an economy that had historically depended on agriculture. Instead of showing an industrial North and an economically stunted South, the evidence shows the two states were participating in the same national transformation, but from very different starting points.

Final Thoughts

The economic growth of Illinois and Georgia between 1870 and 1900 demonstrates how widespread and uneven postbellum industrialization was. Georgia experienced significant manufacturing growth, and its manufacturing workforce increased at almost the same percentage rate as Illinois’s. Illinois, though, began with a stronger industrial economy and was able to expand on a scale that Georgia was never able to match during this postbellum period.

1. Alfred D. Chandler, “Organizational Capabilities and the Economic History of the Industrial Enterprise,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 6, no. 3 (Summer 1992): 80–81.

2. United States Census Office, Manufactures: Illinois, Census Bulletin No. 142 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1902), 3; United States Census Office, Manufactures: Georgia, Census Bulletin No. 118 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1901), 3.

3. United States Census Office, Manufactures: Illinois, 2–3.

4 . David A. Freedman, “Statistical Models and Shoe Leather,” Sociological Methodology 21 (1991): 291–93.

5. Andrew Popp and Susanna Fellman, “Writing Business History: Creating Narratives,” Business History 59, no. 8 (2017): 1251–56.

6. United States Census Office, Manufactures: Illinois, 3; United States Census Office, Manufactures: Georgia, 3.

7. United States Census Office, Manufactures: Illinois, 3; United States Census Office, Manufactures: Georgia, 3.

8. United States Census Office, Manufactures: Illinois, 2–3; United States Census Office, Manufactures: Georgia, 2–3.

9. United States Census Office, Manufactures: Illinois, 3.

10. Chandler, “Organizational Capabilities,” 80–81.

11. United States Census Office, Manufactures: Georgia, 3.