What was the creation of the consumer economy during the late 1800s and and what were its effects on American life?

The consumer society that took shape in the United States
between the end of Reconstruction and the end of the First World War was the direct
result of the relentless process of industrialization that characterized the
nineteenth-century. The main feature of industrialization is the production of goods by
machine rather than by hand. The use of machines in factories lowered the costs of
production and, at the same time, it significantly increased the output. Thanks to the
mechanization and specialization of labor, the United States found themselves as
the world's most productive industrial state at the beginning of the twentieth
century.

This increased volume of goods allowed more
Americans than before to be able to satisfy their material desires. So products such as
toilets, canned food, ready-made clothes that were virtually absent from American life
before the Civil War became widespread at the turn of the century. Yet, although this
era has been described as "the democratization of consumption", large social
sectors still remained excluded from the benefits of consumerism and the uneven
distribution of resources among interest groups created dangerous concentrations of
power in few large corporations.

In the face of increased
mechanization, workers started to worry about their future and tried to regain control
of their production through unions. Labor unrest became a defining symptom of American
society. The creation of a consumer society also encouraged the people to move from the
country to the city, favoring urbanization.