Chapter 14: Forging the National Economy 1790-1860

Intro:

• People from New England, Middle, and the South all pushed West, joined by European immigrants.
• New, better forms of transportation
• Pushed towards market economy

The Westward Movement:

• The West was the most American part of America
• By 1840, the demographic center had crossed the Alleghenies
• Pioneer life was tough and lonely "rugged individualism"

Shaping the Western Landscape:

• After burning cane off of Kentucky bottomlands, Kentucky bluegrass thrived.
• Fur-trappers extincted beavers - bison - sea otters also went extinct - "ecological imperialism"
• America's nature was beautiful - George Catlin proposed the idea of national park - Yellowstone 1872.

The March of Millions:

• Urban growth - 1860 - New York (metropolis), New Orleans "Queen of the South," Chicago "hog butcher," Cincinnati "Queen City of the West" - many immigrants
• Sewer system - Boston 1823, NY 1842.
• Immigration! Irish and Germans. Why? Europe seemed to be running out of room. Letters from previous immigrants inspired new ones.

The Emerald Isle Moves West:

• Mid-1840s: Irish potato famine - 2 million died
• Poor Irish immigrants lived in big cities (NY, Boston)
• Women: kitchen maids, men: built canals and railroads
• They were discriminated against, conflict with blacks.
• Some saved up to buy property, many became police officers, some found their place in politics.

The Irish:

• Famine => Immigration => Big cities => domestic servants or construction laborers
• Roman Catholics, they were distrusted.
• Politics - many voted (Democratic party)
• White-collar government jobs opened up: building inspectors, policemen

The German Forty-Eighters:

• Uprooted farmers and liberal political refugees.
• German liberals contributed to American political life.
• Most had enough money to push west (Wisconsin) and establish farms.
• Became enemies of slavery during Civil War
• Drank lots (beer), inspired temperance advocates.

The Germans:

• Their numbers surpassed those of any other immigrant group
• Stayed to themselves, didn't settle in cities
• "Forty-Eighters" - refugees from the democratic revolution of 1848.
• Some came for religious freedom
• Amish (Penn, Indiana, Ohio)

Flare-ups of Antiforeignism:

• Roman Catholicism flooded into America with the immigrants, in 1850, became #1 religion in America.
• American "nativists" formed "Order of the Star-Spangled Banner" - agitated for restrictions on immigration and naturalization and for laws on authorizing deportation of alien paupers [and not the ones that linger in District 9 ;)]
• Mass violence - Chatholic convent burned
• Immigrants need to industrialize economy.

The March of Mechanization:

• Industrialism was slow to reach America because no one wanted to work in factories when they had the promise of owning land - until immigration in the 1840s
• Domestic market wasn't large enough to make manufacturing profitable.
• Britain monopolized machinery and mechanics.

Whitney Ends the Fiber Famine:

• Samuel Slater "Father of the Factory System" - memorized plans for machinery in Britain and came to the US - 1791 put into operation the first American machinery for spinning cotton into thread
• Cotton was rare because the handpicking process was labor-intensive
• Eli Whitney: built cotton gin - crude machine to separate cotton seed from fiber - 50x more effective than by hand
• Revived need for slaves
• cotton in the South -> textile factories in the North - both flourished
• New England industrial center: stony soil discouraged farming, dense population -> labor, seaports -> shipping
• 1845 Elias Howe invented sewing machine - improved it in Europe w/ Isaac M. Singer

Marvels in Manufacturing:

• Treaty of Ghent in 1815 hurt American manufacturing - British goods became cheap
• Tariff of 1816 passed for protection industries
• Eli Whiteny invented muskets made with interchangable parts in 1798 - basis of assembly lines inf the 1850s.
• Invention of sewing machine in 1846 boosted northern industralization (redi-made clothing industry) =>inspired more inventions.
• 1848 - Laws of "free incorporation" - businessmen could create corporations without applying for individual charters from the legislature.
• Samuel Morse - telegraph. Communication!

Workers and "Wage Slaves":

• Hours long, wages low, meals skimpy - forbidden to form labor unions
• 1/2 the workers are children
• Allowed to vote - Jacksonian Democrats
• Martin van Buren brought it down to 10-hour days -1840
• 1842 Commonwealth vs. Hunt - labor unions were not illegal conspiracies if their methods were "honorable and peaceful"

Women and the Economy:

• Women could work in factories => more independence
• Opportunities for women to economically slef-supporting scarce: nursing, domestic service, teaching!
• Working women mostly single.
• Women chose to have fewer children "domestic feminism" - growing power and independence of women
• New "rod-sparing" forms of discipline

Western Farmers Reap a Revolution in the Fields:

• Ohio - Indiana - Illinois - nation's breadbasket
• John Deere -1837 produced a steele plow - could be pulled by horses
• Cyrus McCormick - 1830s - mechanical mower-reaper, single men could do the work of 5.
• "Cash crop" agriculture came to dominate the West

Highways and Steamboats:

• Transportation was slow and inefficient
• Lancaster Turnpike successful - many more built
• 1811 - Federal government begin to construct National Cumberland Road, Maryland -> Illinois
• Robert Fulton - steam engine => all streams became 2-way, opened up West and South

"Clinton's Big Ditch" in New York:

• 1817-1825: Eerie Canal constructed. Linked the Great Lakes with the Hudson River (under leadership of Governer DeWitt clinton)
• =>Price of potato cut in half, NE farmers left

The Iron Horse:

• Railroads: fast, reliable, cheaper to construct than canals, didn't freeze in the winter. 1st built in 1828.
• Dangerous -> sparks could combust haystacks and stuff.

Cables, Clippers, and Pony Riders:

• 1858 - Cyrus Field stretched cable underwater from Newfoundland to Ireland
• Clipper ships: long, narrow, sleek - speed! HAuled high-value cargos in record time.
• Far west: horse-drawn stagecoaches
• 1860 - The Pony Express - mail from Missouri->California carried by speeding horsemen

The Transport Web Binds the Union:

• North and south connected economically through trade: canals, steamboats, railroads

The Market Revolution:

• Subsistence economy -> national network of industry and commerce
• Home: place of refuge from world of work
• Prosperity increased, rich-poor gap increased
• Not much "social mobility"
• America was the land of opportunity in comparison to the Old World.