Chapter 10

Railroad Consolidation

An important change in railroad development was the trend toward the consolidation (unification) of short lines into longer lines. By 1853, four major railroad trunk lines had crossed the Appalachian barrier to connect the Northeast with the Northwest. These four trunk lines were; the New York Central railroad, the New York and Erie line, the Pennsylvania railroad, and the Baltimore and Ohio railroad. From the ends of these lines, other railroads into the interior touched the Mississippi River at eight points. Chicago became the railroad center of the West as it was served by 15 lines and more than a hundred daily trains. The consolidations of the railroads were significant because they diverted traffic from the main water routes of the Erie Canal and the Mississippi River. These new railroads helped weaken further the connection between the Northwest and the South.

Merchant Capitalists

By the 1850s, the US had developed a modern capitalist economy and an advanced industrial society. There was more money to be made in the nation, but the new wealth didn't affect everyone equally. American business greatly increased. Retail stores were becoming more efficient and systematic. Dominating figures in business were merchant capitalists, who had sole ownership of their enterprises. However, in larger businesses, the merchant capitalist was giving away their power to a corporation.

Turnpikes

From 1790 until the 1820s, the so-called turnpike era, Americans had relied largely on roads for internal transportation. However, in a country as vast as the United States was becoming, roads alone were not adequate for the nation's expanding needs. Turnpikes are significant because they demonstrated that the United States could no longer rely on them and needed to invent other and more efficient means of transportation.

Factory System

Gradually, improved technology and increasing demand produced a fundamental change. It cam first in the New England textile industry, where entrepreneurs were beginning to make use of new and larger machines driven by water power. These machines allowed them to bring textile operations together under a single roof. This factory system spread rapidly in the 1820s. The development of the factory system is significant because it began to make serious changes from the old home-based system of spinning thread and weaving cloth.

Immigration

Immigration was a huge factor that led to the grand increase in the population of the United States. The number of foreigners arriving in the US in 1840 (84,000) was the highest for any one year to that point in the 19th century. However later, between 1840 and 1850, more than 1.5 million Europeans moved to America. Of the 23 million people in the United States in 1850, 2.2 million were foreign-born. In the 1850s, over 2.5 million were present in America. In the major cities like New York City, St. Louis, Chicago, and Milwaukee, the immigrant population was greater than the American population. On the contrary, few immigrants settled in the South and even more insignificant amount in the slave states. This rapid immigration growth is significant because it demonstrates the increasing diversity of the United States and contributes to the growth of industry as many of the immigrants settled in bigger towns and cities.

Factory Girls Association

In 1834, mill workers in Lowell organized a union called the Factory Girls Association. This association staged a strike to protest a 25 percent wage cut. Later they would strike against a rent increase in the boardinghouses. However, both strikes failed and a recession in 1837 destroyed the organization. The Factory Girls Association is significant because it was a strong effort by the Lowell mill girls to increase their wages and living conditions. Despite the effort, it was evident that the strike could not last and that eventually women would opt to move out of factory work and into new occupations.

Associated Press

In 1846, Richard Hoe invented the steam cylinder rotary press, making it possible to print newspapers rapidly and cheaply. This invention, along with the development of the telegraph, made possible for a much speedier collection and distribution of news. In 1846, newspaper publishers from around the nation formed the Associated Press to promote cooperative news gathering by wire; no longer did they have to depend on the inconvenient exchange of newspapers for out-of-town reports. The Associated Press is significant because major-metropolitan newspapers would begin to appear in larger cities of the Northeast. The Associated Press was an efficient way for national and even international news to circulate throughout the nation.

Unions

In larger cities, groups of skilled workers came together for mutual aid and formed trade unions. Since the economies of these cities were interconnected, these unions had many advantages. In 1834, delegates from six cities made the Nation Trades' Union, and in 1836, printers set up their own unions. These were largely unsuccessful in the beginning, due to poor economic conditions and common law.

Corporations

In some larger businesses, the individual merchant capitalist was giving way to the corporation. Corporations began to develop particularly rapidly in the 1830s, when some legal obstacles to their formation were removed. Previously, a corporation could only obtain a charter by a special act of the state legislature however by the 1830s, states were beginning to pass general incorporation laws, under which a group could secure a charter merely by paying a fee. The rise of these new corporations made possible the accumulation of much greater amounts of capital and hence made possible much larger manufacturing and business enterprises.

Rural Life

In the highly populated areas east of the Appalachians and in the easternmost areas of the Northwest, farmers were usually part of relatively vibrant communities and made extensive use of the institutions of those communities. Such institutions included churches, schools, stores, and taverns. As white settlement moved further west, farmers were more isolated and rarely contacted people outside their own families. Religion was a unifying force in the farm communities since so many areas had people of common religious backgrounds. Weddings, baptisms, and funerals also brought communities together for a common purpose. Other than religion, farmers also came together to complete tasks that were too difficult for a single family to complete on their own. Large families gathered together for festive barn raisings or for harvest time to help bring in crops. Although the communities had many social gatherings, they lived in a world of much less public social life than people who lived in larger towns and cities. Many valued their separation from urban culture and cherished the freedom that farm life gave them.

Cult of Domesticity

It became women's responsibility to provide religious and moral instruction to their children and to counterbalance the secular (non-religious) impulses of their husbands. The "cult of domesticity", brought benefits and costs to middle-class women. It allowed them to live lives of greater material comfort than in the past, and it placed a higher value on their "female virtues" and on their roles as wife and mother. However, it also left women increasingly detached from the public world, with fewer outlets for their interests and energies.

Urban Growth

Many of these new European immigrants settled in rapidly growing cities. There was substantial internal migration to the eastern cities as the agricultural regions became less profitable. New York City, in particular, flourished due to its natural harbor and the construction of the Erie Canal. The population of cities along the East Coast, such as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia doubled between 1840 and 1860. A growing agricultural economy also contributed to significant urban growth in western regions of the nation. Small towns evolved into major trading cities. The Mississippi river provided a central location for trade to occur.

Erie Canal

New York had the natural advantage of a good land route between the Hudson River and Lake Erie through the only real break in the Appalachian chain. However, the distance was more than 350 miles, several times as long as the existing canals in America. After a long debate over whether the idea to build a canal was practical, De Witt Clinton, a canal advocator, became governor in 1817 and the digging would begin shortly after. The Erie Canal would be the greatest construction project the United States had ever undertaken. The Canal was both an engineering triumph and an immediate financial success. It opened in October of 1825 and within 7 years of tolls, the cost of the construction was entirely repaid. The canal gave New York direct access to Chicago and the growing markets of the West. The Erie Canal is significant because it gave New York the ability to compete with or even replace New Orleans as a destination for agricultural goods and other products of the West. New York was now a booming economic center and one of the most powerful American cities.

Interchangeable Parts

One of the principal results of the creation of better machine tools was that the principle of interchangeable parts, which Eli Whitney and Simeon North had once tried to introduce, now found its way into many industries. Eventually, interchangeability would revolutionize watch and clock making, the manufacturing of locomotives (trains), and steam engines. It would also help make possible such newer devices as bicycles, sewing machines, typewriters, cash registers, and eventually the automobile. The increasing use of interchangeable parts is significant because it would lead to an immense amount of new inventions and the expansion of industry.

Commonwealth v. Hunt

Perhaps the greatest legal victory of industrial workers came in Massachusetts in 1842, when the supreme court of the state, declared that unions were lawful organizations and that the strike was a lawful weapon. Other state courts gradually accepted the principles of the Massachusetts decision. Commonwealth v. Hunt is significant because it ruled the formation of unions legal. Despite the new law, unions were generally ineffective and the unions that did form were neither large nor strong enough to stage successful strikes.

Nativism

Some Americans viewed the growing foreign-born population with alarm. These fears led to "nativism", a defense of native-born American and hostility to the foreign-born. Their desire was usually to stop or slow immigration. Nativism was partially a result of racism, as many Americans believed that the new immigrants were inferior to Americans. Many nativists avoided racist arguments but argued that the immigrants were socially unfit to live alongside the Americans and that they did not bring with them sufficient standards of civilization (many lived in rural slums). The working class Americans believed that since the foreigners would work for low ages, they were stealing jobs from the native labor force. The rise of Nativism is significant because it demonstrated how strongly several Americans viewed themselves as superior to the immigrants. They believed that there was no place in society for them and that they added no positive contribution to the society they had been living in for years.

Telegraph

Telegraph lines extended along the train tracks, connecting one station with another and aiding the scheduling and routing of trains. The telegraph also permitted instant communication between distant cities, tying the nation together as never before. However it also helped reinforce the schism between the North and South. Telegraph lines more present in the North than the South, and helped link the North to the Northwest, thus isolating the South even more. By 1860, more than 50,000 miles of wire connected most parts of the country; and a year later, the Pacific telegraph, with 3,595 miles of wire, opened between New York and San Francisco. By then, all the telegraph lines had combined to form the Western Union Telegraph Company. The invention of the telegraph is significant because although it provided another link of communication between the North and Northwest, it also separated the South from the rest of the country even more.

Know-Nothings

The "Know-Nothings" were groups of native-born Americans who combined in 1850 to form the Supreme Order of the Star-Spangled Banner. The group endorsed a list of demands that included banning Catholics or foreigners from holding public office, more restrictive naturalization laws, and literacy tests for voting. The Know-Nothings would eventually turn their attention to party politics and would later create a new political organization that they called the American Party. In the elections of 1854, the Know-Nothings cast a large vote in PA and NY and won control of the state government in MA. However in the West, the party didn't have the same degree of success and after 1854 the strength of the party declined. The Know-Nothing Party is significant because it contributed to the collapse of the existing party system and the creation of several new national political alignments.

Lowell Mill Girls

The "Lowell System" relied heavily and almost exclusively on young unmarried woman. Compared to the factory conditions many women in England faced, Lowell mills were considered a female paradise. The Lowell mill girls lived in clean boardinghouses and dorms, which the factory owners maintained for them. They were well fed and carefully supervised. The factory owners placed great emphasis on maintaining a proper environment for their employees, enforcing strict curfews and requiring regular church attendance. Wages for the Lowell girls were low but generous by the standards of the time. Despite these generous treatments, many workers found the transition to factory work difficult, and sometimes even traumatic. The tedious, unvarying chores made the adjustment to factory work especially painful for the women but they hade few other options.

NYC

The Erie Canal gave New York direct access to Chicago and the growing markets of the West. New York could now compete with or even replace New Orleans as the destination for agricultural goods and other products of the West. New York could become a source for manufactured goods to be sold in the region. New York City all of the sudden was becoming a booming economic city and one of the most powerful American ports.

McCormick Reaper

The most important machine that contributed to the revolution in grain production was the automatic reaper, the invention of Cyrus H. McCormick of Virginia. The reaper enabled a crew of 6 or 7 men to harvest in a day as much wheat (or any other small grain) as fifteen men could harvest using older methods. McCormick established a factory in Chicago, in the heart of the grain belt, in 1847. By 1860, more than 100,000 reapers were being used by western farmers. The McCormick Reaper is significant because it allowed for a more effective harvest method than older methods western farmers had been using for years. Using McCormick's new invention, much more grain could be obtained to satisfy the growing markets in the Northeast.