Chapter 14 Forging the National Economy
- New Englanders, Pennsylvania farmers, southern yeomen all pushed westwarts for cheap land.
o Soon to be joined by immigrants from Europe.
o Also made way to country’s fast-growing cities.
- Newly invented machinery quickened cultivation of crops, manufacturing.
- Better roads, faster steamboats, farther canals, railroads,
The Westward Movement
- Rise of Andrew Jackson represented movement westwards.
o “Europe stretches to the Alleghenies; America lies beyond” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- 1850, half of people were under 30.
o By 1840 demographic center of American population map had moved westwards.
o By eve of Civil War, had marched across Ohio River.
- HV westward Americans victims to disease, depression and premature death.
o Loneliness especially for women who were cut off from human contact and neighbors, confined to cabin.
o Ralph Waldo Emerson’s popular lecture-essay “Self-Reliance” struck a deep responsive chord.
§ Popular literature of period was portraits of unique, isolated figures
§ Including James Fenimore Cooper’s Natty Bumppo and Herman Melville’s restless Captain Ahab.
o HV despite individualism, would still call neighbors/gov for help.
Shaping the Western Landscape
- Tobacco farmers left behind rain-gutted fields.
- Kentucky bottomlands with cane as high as 15 feet
o Settlers discovered that when cane was burned off, “Kentucky bluegrass” would thrive
o AR good for livestock and many Americans went into Kentucky.
- Furtrappers set traplines over vast Rocky Mountain region.
o Based on “rendezvous system”
o Traders would wait for trappers and Indians to arrive with beaver pelts to swap for manufactured goods from the East
§ Trade thrived for some two decades.
§ When beaver hats out of fashion + beavers gone, bison fur trade flourished > when that was gone, sea-otter pelts used, and those almost gone too.
o “Ecological imperialism”
- Nationalism fed from appreciation of American wilderness.
o No other countries had natural beauty of America
o This attitude towards wilderness soon became national inspiration for literature and painting, and eventually a powerful conservation movement.
- George Catlin first among Americans to advocate preservation of nature as deliberate national policy.
o 1832 observed Sioux Indians in South Dakoa recklessly slaughtering buffalo in order to trade animals’ tongues for white man’s whiskey.
§ Proposed creation of national park, led to creation of national park system, beginning w/ Yellowstone Park in 1872.
March of the Millions
- By 1850 population doubling approximately every 25 years.
o By 1860 original 13 states had more than doubled in number.
o 33 states
o US 4th most populous nation in western world, exceeded only by Russia, France and Austria.
- 1790 only Philadelphia and NY had 20,000 + people.
o By 1860 there were 43, and 300 claimed over 5000 each.
§ New York “metropolis”
§ New Orleans “Queen of the South”
§ Chicago “hog butcher for the world”
o AR increased low life conditions.
o 1823 Boston first sewer system.
o 1842 New York abandoned wells for piped-in water supply.
- By 1840s the tides of immigration added to population.
o Before 1840 had 60,000 per year, by 1840 tripled, by 1850 quadrupled.
o Germans and Irish came because Europe seems to be running out of room.
§ Old World population doubled in 19th century
§ Lots of emigration, but only 25/60 mil of those who abandoned Europe went to US
o America as “the land of freedom and opportunity”
§ “America letters” described glowing terms of richer life.
- Low taxes, no compulsory military service, “three meat meals a day”
- Transoceanic steamships makes journey 10-12 days instead of 10-12 weeks.
§ Boston and NEW YORK became largest Irish city in world.
- Irish were rudely crammed into slums.
- “Proper” Protestant Bostonians v. Catholic Irish.
§ “No Irish Need Apply” as Irish were wage-depressing competitors for jobs, hated by native workers.
§ Similarly resented blacks for similar reasons.
- The Ancient Order of Hibernians.
o Response to the friendless “famine Irish”
o Semisecret society founded in Ireland to fight landlords, aiding the downtrodden.
o Formed the “Molly Maguires”, a shadowy Irish miners’ union in Pennsylvania coal districts in 1860s-1870s.
- Most Irish managed to acquire modest amounts of property, considered a grand “success”
- Soon to gain political control via NY’s “Tammany Hall”
o Dominated police departments too.
- Soon Irish-Americans to nearly 2 mil in arrivals b/w 1830 – 1860.
o Due to anti-British resentment, American politicians would often be “twisting the British lion’s tail”, v. British.
The German Forty-Eighters.
- Over 1,500,000 Germans immigrated to America.
o Most were uprooted farmers due to crop failures back at home.
o 1848 revolutions collapsed and decided to leave autocratic fatherland.
§ Were mostly liberal political refugees
§ Included Carl Schurz, foe of slavery and public corruption.
· Most Germans to become enemies of slavery in Civil War.
- Unlike the Irish, most Germans had modest amount of material goods.
o Like Irish, established influential body of voters
§ Less potent because more scattered
o Mostly settled in lush lands of Middle West, like Wisconsin, and est. model farms.
o Contributed Conestoga wagon, Kentucky rifle, Christmas tree to American culture.
- Germans fled from militarism in Europe and became defenders of isolationism in upper Mississippi Valley.
o Were better educated on the whole
o Warmly supported public schools, incl. Kindergartens (children’s garden)
- Regarded with suspicion by American neighbors.
o To preserve language and culture, often settled in compact colonies and away from surrounding community.
o “Continental Sunday” – did not follow Puritan tradition and drank huge quantities of bier (beer) on Sunday.
§ Old World drinking habits, along with the Irish, spurred advocates of temperance in use of alcohol.
The Flare-ups of Antiforeignism.
- Invasion of the immigrant “rabble” in 1840s and 1850s inflamed prejudices of American “nativists”
o Feared foreigners would outbreed, outvote the natives.
o Bulk of Irish were Roman Catholics, and substantial minority of Germans.
- Roman Catholics constructed entirely separate Catholic education system in 1840s
o To protect children from Protestant indoctrination of public schools.
o Enormously expensive for poor immigrant community
§ HV revealed strength of religious commitment.
o Previously in 1840s had been weak minority, but with enormouse migration in 1840s and 1850s, became powerful religious group.
§ Ranked 5th after Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists.
o By 1850 had 1.8 million and went into first place, and still there.
- “Nativists” believed that the “alien riffraff” would “establish” the Catholic Church at the expense of Protestantism.
o In 1849 formed the Order of the Star-Spangled Banner which soon developed into the formidable American Party or the “Know-Nothing” Party
§ Know Nothing due to its secretiveness.
- “Nativists” agitated rigid restrictions on immigration and for laws authorizing deportation of aliens.
- Promoted literature exposing foreigner’s sins, most of it fiction.
o Included Maria Monk’s Awful Disclosures (1836)
- Occasional mass violence occurred
o 1834 Catholic convent near Boston burned by mob.
o 1844 Philadelphia Irish Catholics fought back against the threat from “nativists”
- Immigrants were needed to make the economy grow.
o Immigrants were ensured that they could claim share of American wealth without jeopardizing another share.
o Or else America might have watched as Industrial Revolution went through Old World
The March of Mechanization
- 1750 British perfected series of machines for mass production of textiles.
o Started the modern factory system and the Industrial Revolution.
o Accompanied by transformation in agricultural production, methods of transportation and communication.
- System gradually spread from Britain, “the world’s workshop” to other lands.
o Took a generation to reach western Europe, then to US.
- America slow to embrace industrial revolution.
o Soil was cheap and farmers tilled acres instead of working in factories
§ AR labor was scarce.
§ Until immigrants began to pour in in 1840s.
o Money for capital investment not plentiful.
§ Raw materials undeveloped, undiscovered, unsuspected.
§ Would become one of world’s leading coal producers, but in colonial times most imported from Britain.
o Lacked a domestic market to make factory-scale manufacturing profitable.
o Competition from British factories
§ Yankee manufacturers even stamped products w/ fake English™
§ British enjoyed monopoly on textile machinery where Parliament enacted laws in harmony w/ mercantile system
· Laws forbade export of machines or emigration of mechanics able to produce them.
o Only well after 1850s did output of factories exceed that of farms.
Whintey Ends the Fiber Famine
- “Father of the Factory System” in America is Samuel Slater
o Was a skilled British mechanic who memorized plans for machinery and escaped in disguise to America.
§ In America won backing of Moses Brown, a Quaker capitalist in Rhode Island.
o AR in 1791 put into operation first efficient American machinery for spinning cotton thread.
§ HV handpicking cotton was very tedious and expensive that cotton cloth was relatively rare.
o TF in 1793 Eli Whitney invented cotton gin (short for engine) that was 50 times more effective than the handpicking process.
- AR almost overnight cotton became highly profitable
o South was tied hand and foot to the throne of King Cotton.
- North and South both prospered.
o Slave owners cleared more acres. Pushed Cotton Kingdom westwards over the Piedmont and into Alabama and Mississippi
o Northern factories manufactured cotton gins.
§ Though for decades Britain would buy mostly from southern cotton.
o AR was American phase of Industrial Revolution.
- Factories first flourish most actively in New England.
o Then branched out into NY, NJ, and PA.
o South increasingly into cotton trade and capital bound in slaves
§ Local customers were mostly very poor.
- New England favored as industrial center
o Stony soil discouraged farming and made manufacturing more attractive.
o Dense population provided labor and accessible markets.
o Shipping brought in capital, seaports made easy import and export.
o Rapid river, esp. Merrimack in MA provided abundant water power to power cogs of machines.
- By 1860 more than 400,000,000 pounds of southern cotton poured annually into thousand mills, mostly in New England.
Marvels in Manufacturing
- Factories slow growth until about 1807
o Embargo, nonintercourse and War of 1812
§ Manufacturing required as substitute for normal imports
§ Stoppage of European commerce ruineous to Yankee shipping.
o AR capital and labor centered on factories.
o John Randolph: “exchanged the trident for the distaff” (the fishing tool for the factory)
- Local authorities offered bounties for homegrown goods
o “Buy American” and “Wear American”
o Patriotism prompted wearing of baggy homespun.
- Interrupted shortly by peace of Ghent in 1815
o Where British unloaded dammed up surpluses at extremely low prices.
o AR Congress passed mildly protective Tariff of 1816
- Factory system also expanded to other industries.
o Manufacturing of firearms
§ 1798 Eli Whitney developed principle of interchangeable parts
§ To be widely adopted by 1850
§ Became basis of modern mass-production and assembly-line methods.
o AR North gained vast military preponderance over South.
o Sewing machine gives boost to north industrialization.
§ Invented by Elias Howe in 1846 and perfected by Isaac Singer.
§ Foundation of ready-made clothing industry
· Took root at Civil War.
§ Drove seamstress from private home to factory.
- An age of new inventions.
o 306 patents in 1800
o 28,000 patents in 1860
- New advances in legal status of business organizations
o Principle of limited liability helped concentration of capital by permitting individual investor in cases of legal claims or bankruptcy, to risk no more than his own share of the corporation’s stock.
o Boston Associates formed by 15 Boston families
§ One of first investment capital companies
§ Would eventually dominate textile, railroad, insurance and banking business of Massachusetts.
o Laws of “free incorportation”
§ First passed in NY 1848
§ Businessmen could create corporations w/o applying for individual charters from legislature.
- Samuel Morse’s telegraph increased globalization and almost instand communication.
Workers and “Wage Slaves”
- Wage slaves emerged as negative outcome of factory system.
o Previously manufacturing done in home or small shop.
o Hours were long, wages were low.
o Environment poor
- Forbidden by law to form labor unions to raise wages.
o Cooperative activity regarded as criminal conspiracy.
- 1820 half of nation’s industrial workers were children under 10 years of age.
- HV most adult wage workers improved condition b/w 1820s and 1830s
o Due to Jacksonian democracy granted laboring man to vote.
§ Jackson strove to remove burden from worker parties
§ AR won their loyalty
o Furthermore attacked the BUS and against its form of “privilege”
§ Reflected the workers’ anxieties about the emerging capitalist economy.
o Adult wage workers demanded higher wages, tolerable working conditions, and public education for children and end to debtor’s prisons.
- Employers argued against ten-hour day
o HV President Van Buren established ten-hour day for federal employees on public works.
§ Many states would gradually do the same.
- Dozens of strikes in 1830s and 1840s, mostly for higher wages and some for ten-hour day.
o Would often not work as unrestricted inpouring of wage-depressing immigrant workers.
- Trade unionists gathered some 300,000 by 1830
o HV due to severe depression of 1837, membership declined, unemployment spread.
o HV in 1842 supreme court of MA in Commonwealth v. Hunt ruled that labor unions were not illegal conspiracies if methods were “honorable and peaceful”
§ Significant step, though 100 more years till relatively even terms.
Women and the Economy
- Farm women spun yarn, weaved cloth in preindustrial economy.
- Industrial era created goods faster than they could be made at home.
o HV factory jobs opened, promised greater economic independence for women.
o Likewise horribile conditions.
- Factory jobs generally unusual for women.
o Mostly of nursing, domestic service and teaching.
§ Catharine Beecher and sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe strong advocate of urging women to enter teaching profession.
§ Eventually men would leave for other work and schoolteaching “feminized”
o 1/10 white family employed servants by 1850 – some women became servants
- 10% women would work outside by 1850, 20% employed prior to marriage.
o Most were single – after marriage, were in a “cult of domesticity”
- Industrial Revolution changed traditional “women’s sphere”
o Less parental arrangement, though parents often could veto.
o Families grew smaller.
§ Average had 6 members at 1800, but fewer than 5 by 1900.
o Fertility rate in course of 1800s fell by half.
§ Birth control gradually began to be used.
o Played large part in decisions to have fewer children.
- Newly assertive role for women called “domestic feminism”
- Smaller families centered around children.
o Began to use other methods other than hickory stick.
§ Good citizens to be raised as independent individuals w/ moral standards.
- AR “modern family” outlined by 1850
o Small, child-centered, special arena for talents of women.
- Was a large step from toiling farms previously.
Western Farmers Reap a Revolution in the Fields
- The West, esp. Ohio-Indiana-Illinois tier fast becoming nation’s breadbasket.
- Pioneer families cleared land and planted corn, an early staple crop.
o Could be fed to hogs, distilled into liquor.
§ Could be transported more easily.
§ Many hogs traded/butchered that Cincinnati aka “Porkopolis” of West
- Most Western produce travel via Ohio-Mississippi River to Cotton Kingdom.
o John Deer 1837 invented steel plow, was sharp and effective, light enough to be pulled by horse.
§ Previously wooden plows snapped against soil of West.
o Cyrus McCormick 1830s invented mechanical mower-reaper.
§ Horse-drawn machine was the “cotton gin” of the West.
- AR of inventions humble plowmen to ambitious capitalists.
- All went for more acres.
- Substinence farming into large scale “extensive” cash-crop agriculture to dominate West
o Mounting indebtness as farmers bought more land and machinery to work it.
o Soon West harvested more than South, which was also becoming self-sufficient in food production.
§ AR West landlocked, required to go to other markets in bulk
§ Previously had river systems to move North and South.
Highways and Steamboats
- 1789 (Constitution) waterborne commerce slow, often dangerous.
o Wagons over poor roads.
- 1790s a private company completed Lancaster Turnpike in PA
o Was a broad, hard-surfaced highway from Philadelphia to Lancaster.
o Attracted rich trade to Philadelphia
o Began a turn-pike building boom that lasted about 20 years.
§ Also attracted Conestoga wagons heading west
o Stimulated Western road building (which was usually expensive
§ States’ righters opposed federal aid to local projects
§ Eastern states protested making their populations move west.
o HV 1811 federal government began National Road or Cumberland Road.
§ Western MA to IL of 591 miles.
§ Briefly interrupted by War of 1812 and states’ rights shackles but completed in 1852.
- Steamboat craze started by Robert Fulton’s invention of steam engine in vessel Clermont
o 1807 now enabled traveling in large wind, wave, tide, downstream current.
o Rivers were now two-way systems.
§ 1820 60 steamboats on Mississippi
§ 1860 had about 1000
o Vital role of opening West and South.
§ Population went West while cotton growers could now easily import and export at low cost.
“Clinton’s Big Ditch” in New York
- Canal-cutting craze paralleled turn-pike and steamboat craze.
o New Yorkers cut off from federal aid by states’ righters dug the Erie Canal and linked the Great Lakes with the Hudson River.
§ Leadership by Governor DeWitt Clinton, where project was negatively called “Clinton’s Big Ditch”.
o 1825 completed, allowed land passengers and bulky freight to be efficiently carried, cheaper methods
o MW value of land around canal skyrocketed and new cities blossomed.
§ Waterside villages exploded into mighty cities.
§ Many steamships piled in Great Lakes.
- AR new profitability in NW farming (Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and IL) attracted thousands of European immigrants as untaxed lands now available.
- MW price of potatoes fell that New England farmers (no longer able to face competition) mostly went to mills.
o AR sped up industrialization.
o Others went to other types of farming.
- Showed how long-established local markets could easily be changed by technically.
The Iron Horse
- Railroad was most significant contribution to development of 1800s economy.
o Fast, reliable, cheaper than canals to construct, not frozen over winter.
o First one in US 1828.
o By 1860 would have 30000 miles of track
§ ¾ of it to be in industrializing North.
o Faced opposition from canal backers + others
§ NY legislature 1833 prohibited railroads from carrying freight.
· To protect its investment in Erie Canal.
§ Also considered dangerous for nearby settlements as sparks easily set fire to nearby.
§ Feeble brakes might make engineer miss station
· Many different gauges meant many switches in train stations.
o HV soon to become standardized and had better brakes.
§ Pullman and his “sleeping palace” introducted in 1859, to be major railroad car until century later.
Cables, Clippers and Pony Riders
- 1858 Cyrus Field, the “greatest wire puller in history” stretched cable from Newfoundland to Ireland under Atlantic.
o Initial cable went dead three weeks after, but heavier cable 1866 permanently linked American to European continents.
- MW US merchant marines faced embargo, War of 1812, panics of 1819 and 1837
o HV 1840s and 1850s Yankee naval yards (notably Donald McKay’s at Boston) sent clipper ships.
§ Long, narrow, sleek, could outrun any steamer in fair breeze.
§ Sacrificed cargo space for speed and earned profits from fast speed
· Wrested tea-carrying trade b/w East and Britain due to slower-sailing British.
· Sped to 1000s in goldfields of California and Australia.
§ HV on eve of Civil War British came up with iron tramp steamers “teakettles”
· Were steadier, roomier, more reliable, hence more profitable.
- MW horse-drawn overland stagecoatches by 1858 a familiar sight.
o More dramatic was Pony Express est. in 1860 to carry mail speedily from MO to California.
§ Would close after 18 months due to more effective Morse system set up to California in 1861.
- Pony express and clippers marked end of non-machine technology.
The Transport Web Binds the Union
- Until about 1830 produce of west drained southward to cotton kingdom or to loaded shipyards of New Orleans.
o Steamboat aided reverse flow of finished goods, binding West and South together.
- True revolutionary changes in commerce and communication 30 years before Civil War
o Canals + railroads out from East to West, would conquer nature itself.
§ Mississippi robbed of traffic as more goods on lake boats, trains, canals.
· Clinton made it empty at sea at NYC
§ By 1840s Buffalo had more western goods than New Orleans.
§ NYC = seaboard queen of nation, gigantic port which paid to daily economic tribute.
- Each region now specialized in certain kind of export
o South exports cotton to New England and Britain, West grew gain and livestock to feed workers in East and Europe, East made machines and textiles for South and West.
- Economic pattern also tied together political and militarily
o Southern saw Mississippi as chain that naturally linked North and South
§ HV upon secession overlooked canals which tied East and North closely together.
The Market Revolution
- Revolution made scattered substinence farmers and small workshops into national network of industry
o Self-sufficient house into system where wage received used money to buy goods made by strangers.
o Traditional homemade work by women now devalued
§ Previously economic center, now refuge from work hours and increasingly special and separate sphere of women.
- Revolution widened gap between rich and poor.
o John Jacob Astor, fur-trader had $30,000,000 in death 1848
o Unskilled workers were “drifters” from town to town, sometimes up to ½ of population of industrial centers.
§ AR myths of “social mobility” often exaggerated.
o HV provided more opportunity than the contemporary countries of Old World.
§ Wages for unskilled laborers rose 1 % each year, prevented class conflicts that occurred in Old World.
§ MW many in Old World went to New World for this slightly higher opportunity.
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