Sectionalism and Inudstrialization

“Must Goes”

Agenda of Powerpoint• Based on Newman Chapter 8,9• Supported by Pageant Chapter• Focus: Quick Summary of Key Points not

discussed yesterday because we are running short of time….– Wage Slaves– The changing role of women: “Cult of Domesticity”– Transportation/ Communication Revolution– Market Revolution

X. Workers and “Wage Slaves”• Workers’ conditions:– Hours were long, wages were low, workers

forced to toil in unsanitary buildings, poorly ventilated, lighted, and heated

– Significant number children under ten; often victims of work related injuries and harsh treatment

– Term “wage slave” used by southern apologists for slavery

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XI. Women and the Economy• “Factory girls”– Toiled six days a week, twelve to thirteen hours

“from dark to dark”– Textile mill at Lowell, Mass. as a showplace:

– Workers were virtually all New England farm girls– Carefully supervised on and off the job by watchful matrons– Escorted regularly to church from their company

boardinghouses– Forbidden to form unions – Few opportunities to share their grueling working condition

“Wage Slaves” fight back… sort of– While they were forbidden to form unions dozens

of strikes erupted in the 1830s and 1840s:• For higher wages, ten-hour days and goals such as the right to smoke on

the job• Workers usually lost most strikes than they won• Employers imported strike-breakers• Labor raised its voice against these immigrants• Minor successes in forming trade unions (artisans)

– Many states granted the laboring man the vote– Many would give loyalty to the Democratic Party

of Andrew Jackson:

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Women and the Economy

• Statistics:– One white family in ten employed poor white,

immigrant, or black women– 10 % white women worked outside their homes– 20% of all women had been employed at some

time before marriage– The vast majority of working women were single– Upon marriage they left their job to become

wives and mothers, without wages.

Economic Opportunities for the Middle Class – Opportunities to be economically self-supporting

were scarce– Consisted mainly of nursing, domestic services,

and teaching– Catherine Beecher urged women to enter the

teaching profession—became “feminized”– Other “opportunities” beckoned in household

services

XI. Women and the Economy

• Cult of domesticity:– A widespread cultural creed that glorified the

customary functions of the homemaker– From their pedestal:• Married women commanded immense moral power

– They increasingly made decisions that altered the character of the family itself

– Women’s changing roles:• The Industrial Revolution changed life in the home of

nineteenth-century: traditional “women’s sphere.”

Cult of Domesticity • Love, not parental “arrangement” determined the choice of

a spouse—yet parents retained the power of veto• Families became more closely knit and affectionate,

providing the emotional refuge against the threatening impersonality of big-city industrialism

• Smaller families meant child-centered families• What Europeans saw in the American families as

permissiveness was in reality the consequence of an emerging new idea of child-rearing:– The child’s will was not simply broken, but rather shaped

• Good citizens were raised not to be meekly obedient to authority, but to be independent individuals, making their own decisions on internalized morals

Cult of Domesticity

• The outlines of the “modern” family:– It was small, affectionate and child-centered– It provided a special area for the talents of

women– It was a big step upward from the conditions of

grinding toil—often alongside men in the fields.

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The Transport Web Binds the Union– The transportation revolution:

– Each region specialized in a particular type of economic activity» The South raised cotton» The West grew grain and livestock» The East made machines

• The East successfully overcome geographic barriers to tap the commerce of the westward expansion

• This bound the old Northwest more tightly with the East than to the South… but not entirely – Many southerners regarded the Mississippi as a chain linking the

upper valley states to the southern Cotton Kingdom– They believed that some or all of these states would secede with

them or be strangled

Transportation Improvement• Roads• Steamboats• Canals• Railroads• Communications

Highways and Steamboats• In 1790s a private company completed the Lancaster

Turnpike in Pennsylvania, running 60 miles from Philadelphia to Lancaster

• As driver approached the tollgate, they were confronted with a barrier of sharp pikes, which were turned aside when they paid their toll—turnpike.

• Westerners scored a notable triumph in 1811 when the federal government started the construction of the National Road—known as the Cumberland Road

• This overcame obstacles like– Noisy states’ righters, who opposed federal aid to local projects– Eastern states protested against being bled of their populations

by the westward-reaching arteries

Highways and Steamboats

• Robert Fulton started the steamboat craze:– Installed a powerful steam engine, the Clermont:

• It ran in 1807 from New York City up the Hudson River toward Albany—150 miles in 32 hours

• The success of the steamboat was sensational• Fulton had changed all of America’s navigable streams

into two-way arteries, doubling carrying capacity• By 1820 there were 60 steamboats on the Mississippi

and its tributaries• By 1860 there were one thousand.

XIV. “Clinton’s Big Ditch” in New York

• A canal-cutting craze paralleled the boom in turnpikes and steamboats (see Map 14.2):– New Yorkers, cut off from federal aid by states’

righters, themselves dug the Erie Canal, linking the Great Lakes with the Hudson River• Blessed by the driving leadership of Governor DeWitt

Clinton, the project was called “Clinton’s Big Ditch” or “the Governor’s Gutter.”

XIV. “Clinton’s Big Ditch” in New York (cont.)

• Begun in 1817, the canal was 363 mi long• Went from Buffalo, on Lake Erie, to the Hudson River,

on to New York harbor• The water from Clinton’s keg baptized the Empire State• Shipping was sped up as the cost/time dropped

– Other economic ripples• The value of land along the route skyrocketed and new

cities, Rochester and Syracuse, blossomed• The new profitability of farming in the Old Northwest-

Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois—attracted European immigrants.

XIV. “Clinton’s Big Ditch” in New York (cont.)

– Many dispirited New England farmers abandoned their rocky holdings and went elsewhere:

– Finding it easier to go west over the Erie Canal, some took new farmland south of the Great Lakes

– The transformation in the Northeast—canal consequences—showed how long-established local market structures:» Could be swamped by the emerging behemoth of a

continental economy– American goods on the international market; far-off

Europeans began to feel the effects of America’s economic vitality

Map 14-2 p298

XV. The Iron Horse

– The development of the railroad• It was fast, reliable, cheaper than canals to construct,

and not frozen over in winter• Able to go anywhere—it defied terrain and weather• First railroad appeared in 1828 and new lines spread

with amazing swiftness– Faced strong opposition from canal builders– They were prohibited, at first, to carry freight– Considered a dangerous public menace

• Other obstacles:– Brakes were so feeble that engineers might miss the station– Arrivals and departures were conjectural

XV. The Iron Horse(cont.)

– Numerous differences in gauge—required passengers to make frequent changes of trains

• Improvements came:– Gauges gradually became standard– Safety devices wee adopted– The Pullman “sleeping palace” was introduced in 1859.

• America at long last was being bound together with braces of iron, later to be made of steel.

Map 14-3 p299

IX. Marvels in Communication

• Samuel F. B. Morse:– Inventor of the telegraph– Secured from Congress an appropriation of

$30,000 to support his experiment with “talking wires”

– In 1844 he strung a wire 40 miles from Washington to Baltimore and tapped out the historic message, “What hath God wrought?”

Map 14-4 p301

XVIII. The Market Revolution• The self-sufficient households of colonial days were

transformed:– Now families scattered to work for wages in the mills– Or they planted just a few crops for sale at market– Used the money to buy goods made by strangers in far-off

factories.– Store-bought products replaced homemade products– Caused a division of labor and status in the households– Traditional women’s work was rendered superfluous and

devalued– The home grew into a place of refuge from the world of

work that increasingly became the special and separate sphere of woman.

XVIII. The Market Revolution

• Greater mechanization and robust market-oriented economy raised new legal questions:– How tightly should patents protect inventions?– Should the government regulate monopolies?– Who should own the technologies and networks?

• Revolutionary advance in manufacturing and trans-portation brought increased prosperity:– They widened the gulf between the rich and the poor– Several specimens of colossal financial success were

strutting across the national stage.– John Jacob Astor left an estate of $30 million in 1848.

XVIII. The Market Revolution(cont.)

• Cities bred the greatest extremes of economic inequality:– Unskilled workers fared worst– Became floating mass of “drifters.”– These wandering workers accounted for up to ½ the population

of the brawling industrial centers– They are the forgotten men and women of American history

• Many myths about “social mobility:”– Mobility did exist in industrializing America– Rags-to riches success stories were relatively few– American did provide more “opportunity” then elsewhere– Millions of immigrants packed their bags and headed for New

World shores.– General prosperity defused potential class conflict.

Advent of Patents– Each new invention stimulated still more

imaginative inventions:– Patents give inventor legal protection from

copycats– Insures others can’t profit from ideas

• Decade ending in 1800: only 306 patents were registered in Washington

• Decade ending in 1860: there were 28,000• In 1838 the clerk of the Patent Office resigned in

despair, complaining that all worthwhile inventions had been discovered

Advent of Corporations

• Corporations– Changes in the form and legal status of business

organizations:• The principle of limited liability aided the

concentration of capital• Laws of “free incorporation” meant that businessmen

could create corporation without applying for individual charters from the legislature

XVIII. The Market Revolution(cont.)

• Monopolies easily developed, as new companies found it difficult to break into markets• Chief justice Roger B. Taney argued that “the rights of

the community” outweighed any exclusive corporate rights– His decision opened new entrepreneurial channels– And encouraged greater competition– So did the passage of more liberal state incorporation laws.