Chapter 14 Notes The presidency of Andrew Jackson, the first president to come from West of the Appalachian Mountains,

exemplified the inexorable march of Americans westward. By 1840 the demographic center of America had shifted across the Alleghenies, by the civil war it had crossed the Ohio River, a move perpetuated by the fact that in 1850 over half of Americans were under 30 years of age. Life on the frontier was grim with settlers going without human contact outside their family for long periods of time (sometimes driving them, most often the women who had very little female contact, mad or depressed) and the hasty houses they lived in left them at the mercy of the elements often resulting in diseases and premature deaths. Pioneers, although fiercely individualistic often had to rely on their neighbors or the government for tasks beyond their individual abilities (barn raising, road building, etc.), yet in accordance with Emersons essay, Self-Reliance, (which summarized the popularity of individualism at the time) pioneers were often almost completely self sufficient. This march westward did not only shape the pioneers, it shaped the land as pioneers who planted tobacco often left behind them exhausted, useless fields; similarly, in Kentucky it was discovered that when cane grass was burned off English bluegrass (aka Kentucky Bluegrass) grew well and was an excellent staple for livestock. By 1820 fur trappers were trapping animals as far West as the Rocky Mountains, which meant that the beaver, sea otter, and the buffalo, their skins highly prized, were driven to near extinction precariously tipping the ecosystems to the west (often known as ecological imperialism). This led to men like George Catlin, a painter and student of Native American life, to advocate the preservation of nature as a deliberate government policy; this came about when observed Sioux Indians killings an entire herd of buffalo to trade for Whiskey and Catlin, appalled, petitioned for the creation of a national park which was created in 1872 as Yellowstone National Park. By 1850, the Americans who were moving were also doubling the population of the U.S. every 25 years, and by 1860 there were enough people to have 33 states in the Union (the U.S. was the fourth most populous country in the western world). In 1790 there were only 2 cities with more than 20,000 people but by 1860 there were 43 cities with populations of 20,000 and over 300 cities claiming 5,000+ people. Unfortunately, this explosion in the urban population often increased crime rates, led to inadequate sewer systems and improper garbage disposal, and made clean water a scarce resource (when water was piped into Boston and New York by the 1840s the problem of mosquitoes was unwittingly eliminated). Additionally, hundreds of thousands of immigrants were pouring into the U.S. (before 1840 there had been about 60,000 immigrants coming into the country a year, which tripled in 1840 and quadrupled in 1850); most of these immigrants were German and Irish who had come because by the 1800s Europes population had doubled resulting in many people without a home who decided to look for a future in America. By 1840 almost half of Europes population of 60 million had left it, but only 5 million went to the U.S. while 25 million went to other countries in the Americas. Yet, America was the most popular destination of immigrants in the 1840s because of the religious freedom it offered and the easiness with which land was secured, all of which prompted higher immigration which was sped up by the invention of the transoceanic steam ship which sped trips from 10 weeks to 10 days (although sanitation on board was terrible and still caused many deaths). Ireland was still under the rule of British overlords in the 1840s and when a rot struck the potato crop (upon which the Irish people greatly depended) and about 2 million Irish had died when the potato famine ended. In the Black Forties the greatest thing that Ireland exported was its population, with tens of thousands moving to the United States and remaining in the east because they

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were too poor to move and buy land (New York became the city with the largest Irish population in the world); most of these immigrants lived in slums and were regarded as a social menace by the protestant Bostonians and were often forced to work as house servants or on public projects such as canal building; the influx of cheap labor often made local workers angry at the Irish and there were racial tensions between the Irish and Blacks who shared societies basement (prompting race riots in many eastern cities), which made the Irish skeptical of the abolitionist movement. The Ancient Order of Hibernians, a society initially formed in Ireland to fight the English overlords, helped Irishmen unable to fend for themselves in the U.S. and spawned an Irish miners Union (Molly Maguires) that was extremely powerful in the Pennsylvania coal districts. Most Irish were forced to perform hard labor-low wage jobs, but some managed to acquire land and improve their standing (although few were able to afford educations in their quests to acquire a home) which was a grand success. The Irish also quickly gained control of city machines (such as New Yorks police department) and as politicians worked to tap the Irish vote the Irish began to gain more power; soon, politicians began to attack Britains treatment of Ireland, something the immigrants never forgot, in order to win Irish votes. The same influx of immigrants came from Germany between 1830 and 1860 and amounted to over 1.5 million German immigrants, most of whom came to America because of crop failures; yet, there also political refugees who fled Germany after the collapse of the democratic revolutions of 1848. These political refugees (notably Carl Schurz) became enemies of American slavery and worked to fight political corruption, enriching American politics. Interestingly, many of these German immigrants had a modest amount of possessions and quickly moved West, most notably to Wisconsin where they formed efficient, profitable, farms and quickly gained great political influence (although their political strength was lessened by the fact that they were spread across the entire West). The Germans also contributed to American life with their tradition of the Christmas Tree, the Kentucky rifle, and excellent education (they established the first Kindergartens) while becoming stalwart abolitionists throughout the civil war. Yet, like the Irish, the Germans were often disliked because of their raucous drinking habits, their tendency to settle in small communities in order to preserve their culture, and lack of Protestantism. Actually, most Americans disliked this influx of German and Irish immigrants who they believed were going to out populate, take jobs from, and eventually out vote them. Likewise, the fact that most of them were Catholics (who soon built a catholic system of education) and the Catholic Church, rapidly growing in numbers (1.8 million) and power, was widely regarded as a foreign church, which served to create nativist tendencies in Americans (a dislike of immigrants). These nativists and protestant activists formed the Order of the Star Spangled Banner which advocated restrictions on immigration and deportation laws against poor immigrants. Violence soon began to erupt as a Catholic convent near Boston was burned in 1834 and several Catholic schools were attacked, although the worst instance of this was in 1844 in Philadelphia where the Irish Catholics fought back 13 were killed and 50 wounded (the fighting lasted several days). It is actually a wonder that these episodes of violence were not more frequent and violent, but a boom in the American economy allowed these immigrants to prosper without threatening the wealth of Americans, and they actually served to fuel the economic expansion. Without these immigrants the industrial revolution may not have taken place, and America would remain today a largely agrarian society. In 1750 in Britain the Industrial Revolution took place following the development of mechanization in the textile industry which served to be more lucrative and efficient than human run

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mills, which spawned faster methods of transport and communication. Yet, this system took at least a generation to catch on in the U.S. because land extremely cheap and most immigrants preferred to work in the agricultural industry rather than be cooped up in dangerous factories (and there was also very little capital to invest in factories); labor had also been very hard to find until the influx of immigrants in the 1840s made cheap labor readily available on the eastern coast. Unfortunately, the country also lacked a large enough consumer market to make the use of factories profitable, and what small factories sprang up were forced to compete with already established British factories; the British parliament, anxious to protect the British secrets of industrialization also enacted the laws which forbid the immigration of mechanics or exportation of machinery giving them a monopoly on mechanization for about 50 years. For these reasons it would not be until the end of the 1800s that the production of factories would be greater than that of farms in the U.S. Samuel Slater, a young British mechanic of 21, first brought the industrial revolution to the U.S. when he immigrated disguised and won the backing of a Quaker capitalist, Moses Brown, which gave him the funding necessary to build a textile plant in 1791 from plans he had memorized. Yet, cotton was scarce as it was extremely difficult to separate the seeds from the fiber and remained a rare commodity until Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin (a machine that quickly separated seeds and cotton) in 1793. Originally wanting to become a lawyer, Whitney invented his cotton gin after journeying to the south to be a private tutor, a device that proved to be 50 times as effective as hand separation of cotton and its seeds. Almost over night the South suddenly became a gold mine of cotton and slavery (an institution which had been proving to be unprofitable) was rejuvenated as huge plantations worked by slaves became prominent sources of money. This meant that while the south profited producing cotton, the north also profited refining the cotton in fabrics; this meant that the establishment of factories soon became a lucrative industry in the U.S. and soon local factories were competing with British factories for control of the textile industry. The first factories appeared in New England (New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) because the conditions there made farming all but impossible and the near by population centers provided ready sources of labor and sea ports to import raw materials and export finished products for lucrative gains; additionally, the rapid rivers (the Merrimack and Massachusetts) provided hydropower to the machines of the factories and by 1860 more than 400 million pounds of cotton passed through New England. This meant that the North and the South were now inescapably tied to industrialization and slavery respectively. The spread of factories was slow at first until the Embargo and Nonintercourse acts were passed and finally under the naval blockade following the war of 1812. This meant that substitutes for European products were now required and led to a temporary respite from competition with European manufacturers, and prompted a boom in the manufacturing industry (the lack of trade meant many tradesmen would now find employment in factories); the increased nationalism following the war of 1812 also prompted a rise in American self sufficiency with substitutes of European products being made in the U.S. This expansion was rapidly halted after the Treaty of Ghent was signed in 1815 and British suppliers eagerly flooded the American market with their products and never before seen low prices; this prompted the closing of many American mills and in order to protect local American industry the protective Tariff of 1816 was enacted by Congress. Yet, cotton was not the only thing to be mass produced, Eli Whitney again revolutionized the firearm industry when he began to work to mass produce firearms for the U.S. military; Whitney decided to make all musket parts machine tooled so that they would be standard and interchangeable so that if one piece should break another could be bought and substituted (before rifles had been handmade to part sizes differed and were often irreplaceable). By 1850 this principal of interchangeable parts became standard in most American

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products and paved the way for mass-production of goods other than textiles; additionally, this massive military mass production in the north served to ensure the military dominance of the North over the unindustrialized South in the Civil War (ironically Whitney made slavery invaluable and then ensured that slavery could be better fought by the North during the Civil War). Other inventors, such as Elias Howe and Isaac Singer, perfected inventions like the sewing machine which served to stimulate the American economy and invention of new production methods; by 1800 there were only 306 registered American patents but by 1860 there were 28,000 registered American patents. This also changed the way businesses operated and the legal idea of limit liability allowed for mass investment in factories (and the formation of corporations after the free incorporation laws were passed in New York in 1848) in which investors were not responsible for more than their share of investment in the corporation should it break the law or become bankrupt; this so increased investment that fifteen Boston families eventually formed the backbone of the Boston Associates and came to own all textile, railroad, insurance, and banking in the state of Boston. The telegraph (invented by Samuel Morse and demonstrated in 1844) further aided the dominance of the business world by allowing companies operating in different parts of the state to quickly and effectively communicate. From industrialization labor problems inevitably sprang as small business were put out of business by large factories where communication between managers and workers became increasingly limited; this led to unsanitary factory conditions, low wages, and limited meals for factory families who were forbidden by law to form unions which were considered criminal conspiracies (this unsurprisingly caused 24 workers strikes by 1835). Even worse, children were also exploited by factories and by 1820 over half of the factory workers in America were children who were normally physically stunted, emotionally starved, and brutally beaten if they performed poorly (in Samuel Slaters 1791 mill the first laborers were 7 boys and 2 girls under the ages of 12); sharply contrasting the worsening conditions of child labor, adult laborers conditions improved in the 1820s and 30s when workers were granted the right to vote by Andrew Jackson who many supported because of his dim views on the emerging elite rich class and capitalist institutions like the Bank of the United States. Jackson made workers parties legal and workers were soon clamoring for 10 hour shifts, higher wages, better working conditions, and educations for their children as well as an end to the practice of imprisoning debtors. Factory owners fought these measures but when President van Buren established a ten hour workday for all federal employees, many states soon adopted similar legislation regarding work forces. Dozens of strikes in the 1830s and 40s, despite being illegal, soon proved to be the most effective method of forcing change even though employers often won by paying strike beakers (bruisers often fresh from the Old World) to break up strikes (which caused many laborers to hate immigrants). Yet, by 1830 there were 300,000 trade union members in the U.S., but this was stunted by the economic depression of 1837 which spread unemployment and made striking virtually impossible although the 1842 case of Commonwealth v Hunt provided that unions were legal so long as their methods were honorable and peaceful. Unfortunately, this did not legalized strikes but paved the way for trade unions and their eventual ability to stand toe to toe with the management of huge factories. Women also gained increasing importance in factories spinning yarn, weaving cloth, making cheese, soap, and butter, and soon women at home could not hope to compete the low priced home materials pouring out of factories; ironically, many of these women were employed by the factories that put them out of business which improved their quality of living with higher incomes. Yet, these women (rather, mostly young girls) often worked 12-13 hour shifts, 6 days a week, and were constantly supervised in the factory and in company boarding houses by matrons; forbidden to form

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unions these girls had little opportunity to express dissatisfaction with their working conditions. At this time, it can be noted that any form of employment outside the house for women was rare and so these jobs were few and far between with most women becoming nurses or teachers. Poor women also worked as housekeepers in the homes of many rich families; it is interesting to note that the majority of working women in the 1800s were single and when married often returned to the business of keeping a home, a position from which they commanded immense moral power over familial decisions. Families became closer as marriages based on love rather than arrangement became more common and helped insulate family members from the impersonality of big-city industrialization. Families also grew smaller, from an average of 6 members to fewer than 5, and by the end of the 1800s the fertility rate in white women had been cut in half; although birth control in all forms was taboo, it was clearly being practiced by countless American women in both the cities and country around this time; this decision to have fewer children gave women more power in the family (often called domestic feminism) and also meant that the families could spend more time with their fewer children, although they were still disciplined for bad behavior. This gave rise to a parenting system where children were not broken like animals but rather shaped by their parents into adults who were independent and made decisions based on their own moral beliefs. This child centered family provided women with respite from the factories and fields in which their mothers had toiled and was a great improvement in their quality of life. The Ohio-Illinois territory, as opposed to the industrial northeastern states was quickly becoming the nations breadbasket, and would eventually become the breadbasket of the world. Pioneer families would first clear a tract of land then proceed to plant fields of corn, corn was a favored staple because it could be fed to pigs and be distilled into liquor both of which could be transported much more easily than the grain itself. Hogs quickly became a basic food staple in the west and eventually so many of them were killed, traded, and shipped in Cincinnati that the city had become known as the countries Porkopolis. Most of the western produce was first floated down the Ohio-Mississippi river to feed the southern states, and like their southern counter parts the farmers and livestock raisers were constantly looking to cultivate more land. The biggest problem posed to these farmers was the thick soil, which often broke wooden plows, but this problem was overcome in 1837 by the invention of the steel plow by John Deere (Illinois) which was light enough to be pulled by horses and strong enough to till the thick soil. Cyrus McCormick also contributed the mechanical mower-reaper drawn by horses which allowed a single man to harvest grain faster than five men using standard harvesting methods. This quickly transformed farms into gold mines and farmers began to scramble to buy more land: such was the harvesting power of the machine that farmers began large scale production (farming to produce excess products to sale) rather than subsistence farming; eventually these farmers were providing more food than the south (which was beginning to produce its own food) could eat and began to export their food to the east coast and consider international shipping. Unfortunately, unless a transportation revolution occurred it would be impossible to ship products anywhere other than the south because that was the only direction that rivers flowed. In 1789 travel was still extremely primitive with roads being bogged down by mud and travel by river/ocean (the most reliable method of travel at the time) was dangerous and slow. In order to ship goods across the U.S. to factories on the east coast and finished products back to the west and consumers a more efficient method of transportation was needed. In the 1790s a private company the Lancaster Turnpike in Pennsylvania was completed, this hard surface highway went sixty-two miles West from Philadelphia to Lancaster; the road was paid for over the years by tolls collected at toll boots where the road was lined with spikes that were not turned away until the toll was paid. This returned as high as 15% dividends per annum to its

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investors and sparked a turnpike boom that lasted for 20 years and stimulated development and travel in the west; naturally these roads met opposition as some states protested the building of turnpikes as the federal government exerting unconstitutional authority over the states, and the eastern states protesting their falling populations as their populations began to move westward. Similarly, in 1811 the federal government began to construct a National Road (Cumberland Road) which stretched from Cumberland, Maryland to Vandalia, Illinois (a distance of 591 miles) that was completed in 1852 with state and federal funding. A similar improvement in transportation manifested itself in the steamboat craze, which was started by a painter and engineer Robert Fulton; by installing a steam engine in his boat he traveled from New York to Albany (up the Hudson river), a distance of 150 miles, in 32 hours. This revolutionary model allowed goods and people to move, free of currents, winds, and tides and in a few years most American rivers became two way trade routes crossed by steam boats, which doubled the amount of trading a steam boat captain could do at a time (quickly replacing the slow and expensive process of keel-boating). By 1820 there were 60 steam boats on the Mississippi, but by 1860 there were 1,000 some of them being the luxurious pleasure ships of the idle rich. These ships played an important role in opening the South and the West to trade, both of these areas contained an abundance of rivers, which were used for transport in the absence of roads, which quickly resulted in population centers along the banks of a river; additionally, raw materials could be quickly and cheaply shipped to cities for refinement and finished products could be exported to towns on the even the fringe of the U.S. The canal cutting craze occurred simultaneously with the turnpike and steamboat craze, and although initially scoffed at was championed by New Yorks Eerie Canal which was began in 1817 and finished by 1825 and linked the Great Lakes to the Hudson River. This greatly improved trade in New York State decreasing the time a ton of grain took to reach New York from Buffalo from 20 to 6 days and the cost from $100 to $5. Additionally, the value of the land around the canal rapidly increased and new cities (Syracuse and Rochester) were established; immigrants were attracted to the promise of abundant land and quick transport in Ohio, Illinois, and as far west as Michigan; small villages like Detroit, Chicago, and Cleveland, quickly turned into major transport cities as goods were moved across the Great Lakes in ever increasing quantities. As a result of this the price of potatoes was halved and many farmers in New England abandoned their work in the fields for work in factories speeding the Industrial Revolution, began to grow fruits, vegetables, or milk cows, or moved farther west to acquire more land. The canal served to embody the shift from small local markets to the first economies of scale in the U.S. Yet, the most significant transportation development proved to be the railroad which was faster, more reliable, and cheaper to construct than canals or steamboats (and didnt freeze in the north during the winter). The first railroad appeared in the U.S. in 1828 and thirty two years later (1860) there were 30,000 miles of railroad tracks in the U.S. with three fourths of it in the industrial North. Railroads were shunned by anyone who had a marked investment in canals, and in 1833 the New York legislature banned railroads from carrying cargo, and early railroads were considered a menace as sparks from the track could set nearby houses and haystacks on fire. Railroads themselves also faced problems such as the weak breaks on trains which could cause the engineer to miss the station he was arriving in, and the varying distance (and measurements) between stations meant passengers often had to change trains in order to reach their destinations. But by 1840 better brakes were adopted, safety features prevented

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train accidents, and gauges between stations became standardized, and the Pullman sleeping palace (a train car designed to let overnight passengers sleep) was introduced paving the way for a country connected by railroads. In 1858 Cyrus Field, stretched an underwater telegraph cable all the way from Newfoundland to Ireland (which promptly stopped working in 3 weeks and had to be replaced with a heavier cable in 1866) that finally linked telegraphs from the U.S. to Europe. By the 1850s American shipyards (notably Donald McKays in Boston) began to produce clipper craft which were long and narrow and could travel fast enough to outrun even steamers, although to do so they had to sacrifice cargo area for speed. But captains were still able to make great profits by quickly hauling valuable cargos at incredible speeds and actually replaced the British merchant marine when trading tea from the Far East and passengers to California and Australia. Yet, by the Civil War the British irontrap steamers had outmoded the clipper craft because while they were slower they were more reliable, steadier, and offered much more cargo room which made them more profitable. And on land, stagecoaches were familiar sights as they ran from the Missouri River all the way to California by 1858. The Pony Express had also revolutionized communication by 1860 because it allowed mail to be sent across the wild west, making the trips from Missouri to California in record times of 10 days; yet the Pony Express failed in 18 months and was quickly replaced by telegraphs and Morse code. By the early 1860s steam and electricity had forever outmoded wind and horses in terms of speed and reliability. In the 1830s most of the products of the west had either been consumed in the largely agrarian south or been sold in New Orleans, a process that was aided by the invention of the steam boat. But this system was vastly improved by the construction of both canals and railroads, which greatly increased the efficiency and number of locations to which products could be shipped. Eventually, the Mississippi lost its flare as a trade highway when railroad tracks crossed its banks, and Buffalo was quickly transformed by the building of the Eerie Canal into a commerce giant larger than New Orleans. By the civil war the U.S. economy of scale was truly born and provided increased productivity and profits to the entire nation with each region now specializing in a specific economic activity (the South in cotton, the West in grain production, and the East in finished Industrial products. By the emergence of the civil war the states of the South were forced not only to content with the northern armies, but with their economic dependence on the industrial gods shipped from the North to the South via the Mississippi river and the new railroad system. The Market Revolution was just as important as the transportation revolution because it transformed the old system that had relied of self sufficiency in small isolated communities and farms into a giant interconnected national economy. Farmers now began to look for work in factories, and industrial products became available across the U.S. which caused a social revolution in terms of labor and status; traditional housekeeping (which included the making of household products by women) became inefficient, the home itself (which had once been a place where family members worked to earn a living) became a largely feminized shelter from the daily toil in factories. Advances in manufacturing and transportation also increased American prosperity in the U.S., yet widened the gulf between the rich and poor (with men such as John Jacob Astor, a real estate speculator and fur trader, leaving $30 million to their descendants), as cities began to breed economic inequalities into workers; unskilled laborers

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drifting between cities looking for menial jobs, leaving nothing behind them: remember that men who moved from rags to riches were relatively few and far between even during this often exaggerated economic boom. Yet, compared to Europe, America was rich with economic opportunity which prompted many immigrants to come to the U.S. to experience real improvements in wages and their over all standards of living; between 1820 and 1860 low income worker wages rose at approximately 1% a year which resulted in happier workers and served to defuse any potential conflict that might have broken out between economic class in America as it did in Europe.

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