Chapter 9: The Dynamics of Growth

• Hundreds of Thousands of people streamed westward to the Mississippi River and beyond

• Spread of plantation slavery

• 3 powerful regions (sectionalism): north, south, and west

• 1815-1850: The US became a transcontinental power

• In the west → corn, wheat, and cattle

• South → cotton

• Conestogas: larger horse-drawn wagons

Transportation and the Market Revolution

• New Roads

• Spurred the development of a national economy

• 1795- Wilderness Road (Daniel Boone) went from Cumberland Gap → Kentucky → Walton Road → Tennessee

• Philadelphia Lancaster Turnpike (1794): road that takes toll to be traveled on

• Water Transportation

• River steamboats, flatboats, + canal barges

• Cheaper than wagons

• Robert Fulton and Robert R. Livingston sent the Clermont up to the Hudson River in 1807

• Steamboats transformed inland transportation

• The Erie Canal

• New York

• Important catalyst for the creation of a national economy

• 1825

• Took eight years to build (primarily by Irish immigrants)

• “River of Gold”

• Small towns become major commercial cities → Syracuse, Rochester, + Buffalo in New York; Cleveland, Ohio; and Chicago, Illinois

• Speeds things up

• Railroads

• Financial panic of 1837 + depression cooled the canal fever

• Gained supremacy due to its speed, carrying capacity, and reliability

• Reduced cost of transporting

• Expanded capitalism

• Corrupt political life + decline Native American culture

• Ocean Transportation

• 1845 - launch of first clipper ship (the Rainbow)

• 2x the speed of older merchant ships

• Lure of Chinese Tea (perishable item)

• California gold

• The Flying Cloud took 89 days + 8 Hours to travel from New York → San Francisco

• Lacked ample cargo space

• Role of Government

• Transportation improvements were financed by both state government and private investors

• National government bought stock in canal and turnpike companies

• Extend land grants to western states

• Reduced tariff on iron (used in railroads)

• (1850) Senator Stephen Douglas (Illinois) + others extended land grants to support a north-south railroad line from Chicago, Illinois → Mobile, Alabama

A Communication Revolution

• Innovations in Transportation sparked improvements in communications

• 1830 took 16 hours for Andrew Jackson’s inaugural address to go from Washinton D.C. → New York City; 6 days to reach New Orleans

• Express mail: riders would mount a fresh horse at a relay station

• Appalachian Mountains struggled to get timely deliveries and news

• Sewer system, underground water lines, and machines that made clothes

• Newspapers + magazines more abundant

• (1844) Charles Goodyear: vulcanized rubber to make it stronger and more elastic

• (1845) Elias Howe

• sewing machine

• Later improved by Isaac Merrit Singer

• (1844) first intercity telegraph message from Baltimore → Washington D.C.

• Samuel F.B. Morse inventor of the telegraph

• Social changes

• 1840 all major cities were connected by telegraph lines

• First national brands, department stores, and advert agencies

Agriculture and the National Economy

• Cotton

• “Cotton Belt” = South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas

• Used in clothing

• water and steam-powered textile mills

• Fluffy fiber

• Eli Whitney (Yale Grad)

• Visited Mulberry Grove

• cotton gin (gin = engine)

• Cause demand for cotton to skyrocket as did its price

• New Orleans → active port for the slave market

• South → natural resource providers

• North → handling the resources

• Cotton caused slavery to expand because it needed 70% more labor than corn

• Slaves become so valuable that stealing slaves was common

• West

• Flow of planter + slaves

• Indians forced west

• National Land Law of 1820: lowered the price of federal land after the panic of 1819

• Preemption Act of 1830: squatters could get 160 acres at a minimum price of $1.25 per acre

• Graduation Act of 1854: Price of unsold lands was to be lowered in stages over 30 years

• Iron plows

• Jethro Wood (New York)

• 1819

• 1840: New mechanic seeders

• (1831) Cyprus Hall McCormick (Virginia) invented a mechanical reaper to harvest wheat

• By reducing the number of farm workers many went to work in textile mills, iron foundries, and etc.

Industrial Revolution

• Technology altered the economic landscape: factory systems

• (1789) Samuel Slater arrived from England with a detailed plan of a water-powered spinning machine in his head

• Jefferson’s embargo in 1807 stimulated the production of cloth

• Post War of 1812, cheap British cloth nearly killed the infant American textile industry

• More tariffs = higher costing materials/products

• Adam Smith: Wealth of Nations (1776)

• Tariff Bill of 1816 placed a $0.25 per yard tax on imported cloth

• (1813) Boston Associates constructed the 1st textile mills

• (1822) Lowell Mills was developed by the Boston Associates along the Merrimack River

• The Boston Associates

• Were idealistic capitalists

• Sought to design factory communities

• Located their mills in the countryside

• Young women worked there (“Lowell Girls”): tolerable work, meals, boarding houses, moral discipline, and educational & cultural opportunities

• Lowell idea worked for a while but lost its innocence as it experienced mushrooming growth

• Filled the air with smoke, noise, and stench

• 1820-1840: Manufacturing increased by 8fold

• 1830s

• wages dropped

• Relations between workers and managers deteriorated

• New generation of owners sought efficiency + profit over community values

• Caused women to go on turn out/strike

• Cities: more density ⇒ more skill ⇒ more businesses

• Urban = more than 8,000 people (3% to 16% population)

• 4 leading cities

• New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston

• New Orleans (5th)

• Chicago + St. Louis too

• Pittsburgh: Iron production; Cincinnati: meat packing; St. Louis: fur trade

• Great Lakes leading cities: Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and Milwaukee

The Popular Culture

• Urban recreations

• Social drinking

• Bloodsports → cockfighting, dog fighting; and prize fighting (boxing)

• Performing Arts (theatre stuff)

• Shakespeare’s tragedies, “Blood and Thunder” melodramas, comedies, minstrel shows, operas, acrobatic troupes, and local pageants

• Predominately males

• Minstrel shows: whites dressed as blacks

• Stephen Foster: famous Minstrel show composer

Immigration

• Irish (1.6 Milion): 

• Irish Potato Famine

• City dwellings

• Poor

• Catholic

• Hated blacks

• Formed powerful voting blocks

• Drawn to the democrats

• Catholics were hated by many protestants; largest denomination by the 1860s

• Alexander T. Stewart: owner of nation’s longest department store

• Michael Cudahy

• Lead of Cudahy Packing Company

• Developed a process to cure meats via refrigeration

• Victor Hubert: one of America’s most revered composers, Irish dancers, and playwrights

• Germans (1.2 Million)

• Protestant (Lutherans), ½ Catholics, Jews, + atheists or agnostics

• Went rural

• Migrated as families

• Ferdinand Schumacher: Quaker Oats Company

• Heinrich Steinweg (Steinway): instruments

• Levi Strauss: blue jeans aka Levi’s

• Brits (558,000)

• Scandinavians (Norway and Sweden) → Wisconsin

• Chinese → California; heavy work of construction (35,500 by 1860s)

• Not all Americans welcomed immigrants; Protestants vs Catholics

• Lyman Beecher

• Popular congregationalist minister

• anti-Catholic sermons

• Incited mob attacks on a Catholic Convent in Massachusettes

• The Order of the Star-Spangled Banner (New York City 1849)

• 3rd party

• known as the American Party or Know-Nothing Party

• Anti-Catholic movement subsides when slavery becomes focal

Organized Labor

• Slavery - controversy

• The Baltimore Carpenter’s Society: only admitted members who refused to use slave labor

• Unions: faced legal issues

• Commonwealth v Hunt (1842): unions not illegal

• Unions vanished in the Panic of 1837, but return after that

• Labour Politics

• Unsuccessful

• Workmen’s party = board reformist groups devoted to labor

• Vulnerable to charges of social radicalism, courts sided with management

• Promoted free public education + abolition of imprisonment for debts

• 10 hours work days (Jackson passes this in 1836 at the naval shipyard in Philadelphia)

• 1840 - President Martin van Bren extended the 10 hours limit to all government offices & projects

• Strike of Lynn and Natick (Massachusetts) stood out cause the workers won

• (1852) National Typographical Union revived the efforts to organize skilled crafts on a national scale

The Rise of Professions

• New towns = new jobs → retail stores, printing shops, post offices, newspapers, schools, banks, law firms, medical practices, etc

• Professional workers: those who have specialized knowledge and skills that ordinary people lack

• The Democratic ideal: an idea that reworded hard work, ambition, and merit

• (1849) Henry Day delivered a lecture called “The Professions” at the Western Reserve School of Medicine

• Teaching was one of the fast-growing vocations: 

• Young males taught as a starter job

• Church groups and civic leaders started private academies/seminaries

• For girls: later added the liberal arts: philosophy, music, literature, and Greek & Latin

• Common stepping stone for men who became lawyers

• Often an absence in education levels for lawyers and physicians

• Industrial Revolution introduced engineers; largest professional occupation

• Women

• Worked at home

• Nursing (midwifery)

• Teaching

• religious/benevolent work

• Harriet Hunt (Boston)

• Teacher → self-taught physician (1835)

• Rejected 2x by Harvard Medical School

• Elizabeth Blackwell (Ohio)

• Gained admission to Geneva Medical College of Western New York

• Finished 1st in her class (1849)

• Founded the New York Infirmary for Women and Children

• Professor of gynecology at London School of Medicine for Women

Timeline:

• 1776: Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations

• 1789: Samuel Slater arrived from England

• 1794: Philadelphia Lancaster Turnpike

• 1795: Wilderness Road

• 1807: Jefferson’s Embargo

• 1813: Textile Mills

• 1816: Tariff Bill of 1816

• 1819: 

• Panic 1819

• Jethro Wood → Iron Plows

• 1820: National Land Law of 1820

• 1822: Lowell Mills

• 1825: Erie Canal

• 1830: Preemption Act of 1830

• 1831: Cyprus Hall McCormick → mechanical reaper

• 1835: Harriet Hunt ⇒ self-taught Physician

• 1836: 10 hours workdays begin with Naval shipyard

• 1837: Panic of 1837

• 1840:

• New mechanic seeders

• 10 hours workday for all government workers

• 1842: Commonwealth v Hunt

• 1844: Charles Goodyear → vulcanized rubber

• 1845: 

• Rainbow

• Elias Howe → sewing machine

• 1849:

•  The Order of the Star-Spangled Banner

• Elizabeth Blackwell 

• 1852: National Typographical Union

• 1854: Graduation Act of 1954

Chapter 10