Trigger Industry

A trigger industry is an industry which catapults a country into economic development and eventually leads to self-sustaining growth.  Trigger industries cause the following changes:

Throughout grade nine Social Studies, you have examined several trigger industries.  In 18th century England the major trigger industry was textiles.  The following map illustrates how the development of textiles could have stimulated development in other industries: 

Textile Industry in 18th Century England

The Railroad Industry

In the United States the railroad industry was the major trigger industry of the 19th century.  This was because of the large size of the United States.  In 1800 it was easier to get to Europe by ship than it was to travel west in North America.  Peter Cooper showed that constructing railroads could possibly solve this problem when he raced his famous engine, the "Tom Thumb," against a horse in the year 1830.  The engine broke down part way through the race but before that, its speed and power had proven the potential of the locomotive.  

Railways began criss-crossing the settled areas of the United States.  By 1835 more than 200 railroad companies had been started and over 1500km of track had been built.   Eventually, the U.S. government began offering large subsidies to railroad companies to encourage them to lay track into the relatively undeveloped west.  The Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 approved a plan to complete a line across the entire US.  With the help of thousands of Chinese and European immigrant laborers, the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroad companies completed the transcontinental railroad on May 10th, 1869.  But that was not the end of the railroad industry.  It continued to expand drastically throughout the 18th century as shown in the following table (table 3.1, p.29 in your text book The United states: An Economic Perspective):

This industry caused a massive boom in the steel and lumber industries which extracted and manufactured the minerals and wood needed for tracks and ties.  Agriculture was increased to provide food for the immigrant workers.  These workers also bought clothes and other commodities.  Most of the towns in the West were built as a result of the railroad industry.  In fact, in one way or another, almost all of the economic activity that has ever taken place in the American West was originally triggered by the railroad industry.  

Other Trigger Industries

Another major trigger industry was the oil industry.  In the late 19th century this industry involved everything from drilling oil wells, transporting the oil, refining it, and selling it to consumers.  As with any other trigger industry, it created a lot of spin-off economic activity.  However, one of the defining characteristic of the oil industry in the late 19th century United States was its total control by one individual, John D. Rockefeller.  Rockefeller had gained complete control of every stage of the production of oil products.  This is called vertical integration.  He also bought out most of his competitors.  This is called horizontal integration.  When one company has this kind of control over an industry we call it a monopoly.  Such control was made illegal by President Theodore Roosevelt in the early 20th century.

The major trigger industry in the early twentieth century was the automobile industry.  Cars require many complicated parts:   steel, fabric, leather and rubber.  Building them requires skilled employees.  Cars increase our consumption of fuel, the need to build roads, and other economic activities.  Henry Ford deserves credit for starting this industry by developing mass production methods that could be used to make cars cheaply.  He also was famous for the idea of "high mass consumption" sometimes known as "the Ford idea."  Simply put, he paid his employees well so that other companies would also be pressured to pay more in order to keep their best workers.  The net result was that people would be earning enough money to afford his cars.  However, they could also buy many other consumer goods.  Thus, the automobile industry was a trigger for increased economic activity in virtually every other industry in the United States!

Try This:

Look carefully at the word web above.  Try to construct one of your own for either the railroad industry, oil industry, or automobile industry.

Further Reading

1.  Click here to go to the Spartacus Internet Encyclopedia and learn more than you will ever need to know about the textile industry!

2.  Click here to go to the Spartacus Internet Encyclopedia for some more information on Henry Ford.

3.  Click here to go to the Spartacus Internet Encyclopedia for some more information on John D. Rockefeller.