Railway System
Major improvements in transportation systems
occurred, causing changes within city life. One
significant invention that contributed to urban
expansion was a street railway system in cities.
Street cars
hauled by horses carried people all over
the cities. Then, in the 1870s,
cable cars
replaced
the horse. A cablemoved by a centrally located
steamgenerator was set inmotion just below the
surface near steel rails.
Later in the early 1900s,
trolley cars
replaced
the cable car. Their motion was powered by electrical
lines overhead. More passengers rode these vehicles
than the railroads. Because of these inventions, the
introduction and growth of
suburbs
slowly evolved!
Today, our rail system is still a formof
transporting large and heavy industrial materials.
Today, major freight yards exist in Philadelphia,
Pittsburgh, and
Erie
. From these port cities, goods
are further transported by ships to various
destinations in our country and the rest of the world.
Water Transportation
Water transportation is still very valuable to our
industries. Our major industrial areas andmajor cities
are located near waterways, which are used as ports.
Large volumes of goods and products are transported
on our waterways. It would be very difficult to
efficiently transport several tons of steel from
Pittsburgh by air, but with available water routes, the
process ismuch easier.
Pennsylvania boasts threemajor port cities for
receiving
imports
andmoving
exports
– Philadelphia,
Pittsburgh, and Erie. Remember that imports are
goods and services brought into our country or state
through our port cities. Exports are goods and
services sent to other countries and states through
our port cities. Philadelphia’s access to the Atlantic
Ocean creates an inland port andmakes Philadelphia
the second greatest port city today. Vast quantities of
crude oil fromSouthwest Asia are imported by ship
into Philadelphia and are
refined
into numerous oil
products. Thismakes the city one of the world’s
greatest oil refining centers. Other major export
products the port of Philadelphia handles are
machinery, grain, and chemicals.
Pittsburgh is known for its steel production.
Because of soft coal and iron ore deposits in the
western part of our state, Pittsburgh uses its three
rivers—the
Allegheny
,
Monongahela
, and the
Ohio—
to
receive rawmaterials and to transport finished products.
TheMonongahela River is one of the busiest
rivers in our country for shipping tonnage. The river is
used to ship large volumes of coal and coke to the
steel mills of Pittsburgh and to ship finished steel
products as far south as NewOrleans, Louisiana via
the Ohio andMississippi Rivers.
In the northwest corner of our state, Erie touches on
the shore of Lake Erie. The city has access to all of the
Great Lakes
as well as the
St. Lawrence Seaway,
which
flows fromLake Ontario to the Atlantic Ocean. Many
exports, such as wood and its by-products, coal, and
plastics are shipped fromErie’s docks.
Farming
Farming continued to be a very important industry
in our state. In the 1800s, following the introduction
of work-savingmachinery, fewer workers were needed
on the farms. Oldmethods of plowing, sowing, and
harvesting were replaced by the newmachines.
It was not until after 1900, however, that farm life
as we know it today came to Pennsylvania. Around
1910, the introduction of the automobile, electricity,
and tractors with gasoline engines changed the lives
of rural farm families. For instance, it took from ten
to fourteen days to plow a ten-acre field with a team
of horses. With the use of a tractor, the same field
could be plowed in two days. Because of work-saving
machinery, many young adults were no longer needed
on the farm. So, they found jobs in the factories of
nearby towns and cities. As a result, by the early
1900s, more than one-half of our state’s population
lived in towns and cities.
100
Understanding Pennsylvania
Our waterways allow for transportation of
goods throughout our state, the country,
and the rest of the world.
