Chapter 10
I.
The Coming of Industry: Northeastern Manufacturing
A.
Division of Labor and the Factory
1.
Industrialization came to the
output
of goods by reorganizing work and building factories.
2.
The “outwork system” was a more efficient division of labor and lowered the
price of goods, but it eroded workers’ control over the pace and conditions of
work.
3.
For tasks not suited to outwork, factories were created where work was
concentrated under one roof and divided into specialized tasks.
4.
Manufacturers used newly improved stationary steam engines to power their mills
and used power-driven machines and assembly lines to produce new types of
products.
5.
Some Britons feared that American manufacturers would become exporters not only
to foreign countries but even to
B.
The Textile Industry and British Competition
1.
Americans copied and then improved upon British technology.
2.
Samuel Slater brought to
3.
America had an abundance of natural resources, but British companies were
better established, had less-expensive shipping rates, lower interest rates,
and cheaper labor.
4.
Congress passed protective legislation in 1816 and 1824 levying high taxes on
imported goods; tariffs were reduced again in 1833, and some textile firms went
out of business.
5.
The
6.
Women often found this work oppressive, but many gained a new sense of freedom
and autonomy.
7.
By combining improved technology, female labor, and tariff protection, the
Boston Manufacturing
Company
sold textiles more cheaply than did the British.
C.
American Mechanics and Technological Innovation 1. By the 1820s, American-born
craftsmen had replaced British immigrants at the cutting edge of technological
innovation.
2.
The most important inventors of the 1820s were members of the Sellars family,
who helped found the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia in 1824.
3.
As mechanic institutes were established in other states, American mechanics
pioneered the development of machine tools, thus fueling the spread of the
Industrial Revolution.
4.
In the firearms industry, interchangeable and precision-crafted parts enabled
large-scale production.
5.
The volume of output and subsequent availability caused some products—Remington
rifles, Singer sewing machines, and Yale locks— to become household names.
6.
After the 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition in
and
soon dominated many European markets.
D.
Wage Workers and the Labor Movement
1.
More and more white Americans left self employment and became wage earners, though
they had little job security or control over their working conditions.
2.
Some journeymen formed unions and bargained with their employers, particularly
in hopes of setting a ten-hour workday; the Mechanics’ Union of Trade Associations
set forth a broad program of reforms.
3.
The Working Men’s Party, founded in 1828, called for the abolition of banks,
equal taxation, and a system of public education.
4.
By the mid-1830s, many urban employers had been forced to accept a ten-hour
workday.
5.
Artisans whose occupations were threatened by industrialization—shoemakers,
printers, etc.—were less successful, and some left their employers and set up
specialized shops.
6.
The new industrial system divided the traditional artisan class into two
groups: self-employed craftsmen and wage-earning craftsmen.
7.
Under English and American common law, it was illegal for workers to organize
themselves for the purpose of raising wages because they prevented other
workers from hiring themselves out for whatever wages they wished.
8.
In 1830, factory workers banded together to form the Mutual Benefit Society to
seek higher pay and better conditions, and in 1834, the National Trades Union
was founded.
9.
Union leaders devised a “labor theory of value” and organized strikes for
higher wages; these strikes prompted strikes by women textile workers as well.
10.
Men replaced many of the women leaving the mills, foreshadowing the emergence
of a predominately male system of factory labor.
11.
By the 1850s, supply exceeded demand, and unemployment rose to 10 percent,
resulting in a major recession with the Panic of 1857.
II.
The Expansion of Markets
A.
Migration to the Southwest and the
1.
People migrated to the West for several reasons; some were looking for land for
their children, others hoped for greater profits from the western soil.
2.
Migration occurred in three great streams: southern plantation owners moved
into the Old Southwest; small-scale farmers from the upper South moved into the
Northwest Territory; and crowded New Englanders flowed into New York and the
Old Northwest.
3.
Congress reduced the price of federal land in 1820, and by 1860 the population
center of
B.
The Transportation Revolution Forges Regional Ties
1.
The National Road and other interregional, government-funded highways were too
slow and expensive to transport goods and crops efficiently.
2.
Americans developed a water-borne transportation system of unprecedented size,
beginning with the government-subsidized
3.
The canal had three things in its favor: the support of city merchants, the
backing of the governor, and the gentleness of the terrain west of
4.
The
5.
The Erie Canal brought prosperity to central and western
6.
The invention of the steamboat ensured the success of the water-borne
transportation system.
7.
The Supreme Court encouraged this national system of transportation by striking
down state controls over interstate commerce (Gibbons v.
8.
The development of the railroad created ties between the Northeast and the
9.
By the 1830s,Midwestern entrepreneurs were producing goods—John Deere plows, McCormick
and Hussey reapers—to replace the ones Americans had been importing from
10.
Southern investors concentrated their resources in cotton and slaves and passed
up industrialization, preferring to buy manufactures from the Northeast and
11.
The South remained predominantly agricultural and did not provide a majority of
its people with a rising standard of living.
C.
The Growth of Cities and Towns
1.
Due to the expansion of industry and trade, the urban population grew fourfold
between 1820 and 1840.
2.
The most rapid growth occurred in the new industrial towns that sprang up along
the fall line, where it was necessary for the loads to be moved from rivers and
canals to another form of transportation.
3.
By 1860 the largest cities in the
4.
In 1817,
5.
III.
Changes in the Social Structure
A.
The Business Elite
1.
The Industrial Revolution shattered the traditional rural social order and
created a society of classes, each with its own culture.
2.
In the large cities the richest 1 percent of the population owned 40 percent of
all tangible property and an even larger share of the stocks and bonds.
3.
The government taxed tangible property but almost never taxed stocks, bonds, or
inheritances; thus government policies allowed the richest to accumulate even
more wealth at the expense of poorer men.
4.
The wealthiest families began to consciously set themselves apart, and many
American cities became class-segregated communities.
B.
The Middle Class
1.
A distinct middle-class culture emerged as the per capita income of Americans
rose about 2.5 percent per year between 1830 and the Panic of 1857.
2.
Middle-class Americans secured material comfort for themselves and education
for their children, and they stressed discipline, morality, and hard work.
3.
The business elite and the middle class regarded work as socially beneficial.
4.
The upper and middle classes were tied together by the ideal of the “self-made
man,”
which
became a central theme of American popular culture.
C.
The New Urban Poor
1.
The bottom 10 percent of the labor force, the casual workers, owned little or
no property, and their jobs were unpredictable, seasonal, and dangerous.
2.
Other laborers had greater job security, but few prospered; many families sent
their children out to work, and the death of one parent often sent the family
into dire poverty.
3.
By the 1830s, urban factory workers and unskilled laborers lived in
well-defined neighborhoods of crowded boardinghouses or tiny apartments, often
with filthy conditions.
4.
Many wage earners turned to alcohol as a form of solace; by 1830 the per capita
consumption of alcohol was over three times present-day levels.
5.
Grogshops and tippling houses appeared on almost every block in working-class
districts, and police were unable to contain the lawlessness that erupted.
D.
The Benevolent Empire
1.
During the 1820s, Congregational and Presbyterian ministers linked with
merchants and their wives to launch a program of social reform and regulation.
2.
The Benevolent Empire targeted drunkenness and other social ills, but it also
set out to institutionalize charity and combat evil in a systematic fashion.
3.
The benevolent groups encouraged people to live well-disciplined lives, and
they established institutions to assist those in need and to control people who
were threats to society.
4.
In the Benevolent Empire, upper-class women supported and staffed a number of
charitable organizations.
5.
Some reformers believed that one of the greatest threats to morality was the
decline of the traditional Sabbath.
6.
Popular resistance or indifference limited the success of the Benevolent
Empire.
E.
Revivalism and Reform
1.
Presbyterian minister Charles Grandison Finney conducted emotional revivals
that stressed conversion rather than instruction; Finney’s ministry drew on and accelerated the
Second Great Awakening.
2.
Finney’s message that man was able to choose salvation was particularly
attractive to the middle class.
3.
Finney wanted to humble the pride of the rich and relieve the shame of the poor
by celebrating their common fellowship in Christ.
4.
The business elite joined the “Cold Water” movement, establishing savings banks
and Sunday schools for the poor and helping to provide relief for the
unemployed.
5.
The initiatives to create a harmonious community of morally disciplined
Christians were not altogether effective, so Finney added a new tactic: group
prayer meetings in family homes.
6.
The American Temperance Society adapted methods that worked well in the
revivals and took them into northern towns and southern rural hamlets.
7.
Evangelical Protestantism helped to lower alcohol consumption, reinforce work
ethics, and strengthen a sense of common identity between the upper and middle
classes.
F.
Immigration and Cultural Conflict
1.
Between 1840 and 1860, millions of immigrants— Irish, Germans, and Britons—were
placing new strains on the American social order.
2.
Most avoided the South, and many Germans moved to states in the
3.
The most prosperous immigrants were the British, followed by the Germans; the
poorest were from
4.
Many Germans and most Irish were Catholics and fueled the growth of the
Catholic Church in
5.
In 1834, Samuel F. B.Morse published Foreign Conspiracy
against the Liberties of the United States, which
warned of a Catholic threat to American republican institutions.
6.
Anti-Catholic sentiment intensified: mobs of unemployed workers attacked
Catholics, and the Native American Clubs called for limits on immigration.
7.
Many reformers wanted to prevent the diversion of tax resources to Catholic
schools and to oppose alcohol abuse by Irish men.
8.
In most large northeastern cities, differences of class and culture led to
violence and split the North in the same way that race and class divided the
South.