3. The steam engine changed the way Americans ate
In the 1820s steamboats appeared on American waterways. They were unreliable, blew up with alarming frequency, and operated on schedules dictated by the owner’s whims. Most refused to embark on a passage without a full load of cargo. Machinery and farm implements, ready-made clothing, raw materials, and other items made in eastern cities or Europe voyaged to the west, and the boats returned with the products of American farms. Farmers in Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana, drove hogs to Cincinnati and other cities along the Ohio River, where they were processed and sent by steamboat to Wheeling, then in Virginia, or Pittsburgh, or downriver to New Orleans.
Railroads developed links between the cities in the west and to the east coast prior to the Civil War. By the late 1850s, oysters harvested along the east coast arrived in Cincinnati and St. Louis weekly, packed in barrels for sale to consumers and restaurants. Both households and restaurants purchased foodstuffs from the same sources, as yet no commercial restaurant industry had emerged. Some restaurants purchased food directly from farmers. In the eastern cities, restaurants purchased foods imported from Europe and South America, often buying them directly from the ship on which they arrived.