AN INDUSTRIALIZING NATION

Interpreting Primary Sources

Early Industrialization

The operatives work thirteen hours a day in the summer time, and from daylight to dark in the winter. At half past four in the morning the factory bell rings, and at five the girls must be in the mills....So fatigued...are numbers of girls that they go to bed soon after their evening meal, and endeavor by a comparatively long sleep to resuscitate their weakened frames for the toil of the coming day.

--The Harbinger, 1846

Rule first: Each one to enter the house without unnecessary noise or confusion, and hang up their bonnet, shawl, coat, etc., etc., in the entry.

Rule second: Each one to have their place at the table during meals, the two which have worked the greatest length of time in the Factory, to sit on each side of the head of the table, so that all new hands will of course take their seats lower down, according to the length of time they have been here.

Rule three: It is expected that order and good manners will be preserved at table during meals--and at all other times either upstairs or down.

Rule fourth: There is no unnecessary dirt to be brought into the house by the Boarders, such as apple cores or peels, or nut shells, etc.

Rule fifth: Each boarder is to take her turn in making the bed and sweeping the chamber in which she sleeps.

Rule sixth: Those who have worked the longest in the Factory are to sleep in the North Chamber and the new hands will sleep in the South Chamber.

Rule seventh: As a lamp will be lighted every night upstairs and placed in a lanthorn, it is expected that no boarder will take a light into the chambers.

Rule eighth: The doors will be closed at ten o'clock at night, winter and summer, at which time each boarder will be expected to retire to bed.

Rule ninth: Sunday being appointed by our Creator as a Day of Rest and Religious Exercises, it is expected that all boarders will have sufficient discretion as to pay suitable attention to the day, and if they cannot attend to some place of Public Worship they will keep within doors and improve their time in reading, writing, and in other valuable and harmless employment.

--Rules at a mill boardinghouse

There is no class of mechanics in New York who average so great an amount of work for so little money as the journey shoemakers....There are hundreds of them in the city constantly wandering from shop to shop in search of work, while many of them have families in a state of absolute want....We have been in more than fifty cellars in different parts of the city, each inhabited by a shoemaker and his family. The floor is made of rough plank laid loosely down, the ceiling is not quite so high as a tall man. The walls are dark and damp, and a wide desolate fireplace yawns in the center to the right of the entrance. There is no outlet back and of course no yard privileges of any kind. The miserable room is lighted only by a shallow sash, partly projecting above the surface of the ground and by the little light that struggles down the steep and rotting stairs. In this...often live the man with his work-bench, his wife and five or six children of all ages, and perhaps a palsied grandfather or grandmother and often both. In one corner is a squalid bed and the room elsewhere is occupied by the work-bench, a cradle made from a dry-goods box, two or three broken, seatless chairs, a stew-pan and a kettle.

--New York Daily Tribune, 1845

We...agree to work for such wages per week, and prices by the job, as the Company may see fit to pay....We also agree not to be engaged in any combination, whereby the work may be impeded, or the company's interest in any work injured....

--Work contract, Cocheco Manufacturing Company, Dover, New Hampshire

Just as there is sun at noonday, capital, under its present hostile and unnatural state, is fast reducing labor to utter dependence and slavish beggary....This talk about the continued prosperity, happy condition, and future independence of the producing class of this country...is all fiction, moonshine.

--Voice of Industry, 1845

Are you an American citizen? Then you are a joint-owner of the public lands. Why not take enough of your property to provide yourself a home? Why not vote yourself a farm?...Are you tired of slavery--of drudging for others--of poverty and its attendant miseries? Then vote yourself a farm?...Join with your neighbors to form a true American party, having for its guidance the principles of the American revolution, and whose chief measures shall be—

1. To limit the quantity of land that any one man may henceforth monopolize or inherit; and

2. To make the public lands free to actual settlers only, each having the right to sell his improvements to any man not possessed of other land.

These great measures once carried, wealth...would consist of the accumulated products of human labor, instead of a hoggish monopoly of God's labor; and the antagonism of capital and labor would forever cease.

--True Workingman, 1846

Questions to think about:

1. What conditions did early l9th century factory operatives work and live under?

2. How was the status of craftsmen changing during the early l9th century?

3. What solutions did workers propose?

INTERPRETING STATISTICS: EDUCATION

School Enrollment, Whites ages 5-19 (1861)

Percent Enrolled Percent Actually Days in School

In School Attending Year

Northeast 62 59 150

South 76 57 116

West 30 45 80

Questions to think about:

1. Why do you think school enrollment was higher in the West than in the South?

2. What difference do you think it meant that children in the Northeast were more likely to attend school than those in other regions of the country?

Immigration

Americans must rule America; and to this end, native-born citizens should be selected for all state, federal, or municipal offices of government employment, in preference to naturalized citizens.

--1856 Platform of the American (Know Nothing) Party

Popery is a system of mere human policy; altogether of foreign origin; foreign in its support; importing foreign vassals and paupers by multiplied thousands; and sending into every state and territory in this union, a most baneful foreign and anti-republican influence....

Every Roman Catholic in the known world is under the absolute control of the Catholic Priesthood....And it is this...political influence, this power of the Priesthood to control the Catholic community, and cause a vast multitude of ignorant foreigners to vote as a unit, and thus control the

will of the American people, that has engendered this opposition to the Catholic Church.

--William G. Brownlow, 1856

It is a notorious fact that the Monarchs of Europe and the Pope of Rome are at this very moment plotting our destruction and threatening the extinction of our political, civil, and religious institutions....The Catholics in the United States receive from abroad more than $200,000 annually for the propagation of their creed.

--Texas State Times, 1855

Questions to think about:

1. How would you explain the prevalence of anti-Catholic sentiment in pre-Civil War America?

2. Why do you think anti-immigrant sentiment declined sharply in the mid-1850s?

Transformation of American Law

It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases must of necessity expound and interpret that rule. If two laws conflict with each other, the courts must decide on the operation of each.

So if a law be in opposition to the constitution; if both the law and the constitution apply to a particular case, so that the court must either decide that case conformably to the law, disregarding the constitution; or conformably to the constitution, disregarding the law; the court must determine which of these conflicting rules governs the case. This is the very essence of judicial duty.

--Marbury v. Madison, 1803

You seem...to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy....They have with others, the same passions for party, for power, and privilege of their corps....Their power [is] the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and are not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control.

--Thomas Jefferson, 1820

The government proceeds directly from the people; it is "ordained and established" in the name of the people....It required not the affirmance, and could not be negatived by the State governments. The constitution, when thus adopted, was of complete obligation, and bound the State sovereignties....

The government of the United States, though limited in its powers, is supreme; and its laws, when made in pursuance of the constitution, form the supreme law of the land....

Although, among the enumerated powers of government, we do not find the word "bank," or "incorporation," we find the great powers to lay and collect taxes; to borrow money; to regulate commerce; to declare and conduct a war; and to raise and support armies and navies....The power being given, it is the interest of the nation to facilitate its execution....The government which has a right to do an act, and has imposed on it the duty of performing that act, must, according to the dictates of reason, be allowed to select the means....

Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional.

--McCullough v. Maryland, 1819

Questions to think about:

1. What is the proper role of the judiciary in the American system of government? Should the courts be subservient to the other branches of government?

2. Should the Constitution be interpreted strictly or loosely?

INTERPRETING STATISTICS: THE ROOTS OF AMERICAN ECONOMIC GROWTH

Per Capita Levels of Industrialization

1750 1800 1860 1900 1928 1938

Great Britain 10 16 64 100 122 157

United States 4 9 21 69 182 167

Germany 8 8 15 52 128 144

Russia 6 6 8 15 20 38

100=Great Britain in 1900

Questions to think about:

1. How does the rate of increase in the level of U.S. industrialization compare with that of other countries? Was it faster or slower?

2. What barriers may have impeded industrialization in the United States in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? What factors may have encouraged rapid industrialization?

Share of World Manufacturing Output

1750 1800 1860 1900 1928 1938

Great Britain 1.9 4.3 19.9 18.5 9.9 10.7

United States 0.1 0.8 7.2 23.6 39.3 31.4

Germany 2.9 3.5 4.9 13.2 11.6 12.7

Russia 5.0 5.6 7.0 8.8 5.3 9.0

Questions to think about:

1. Describe the growth in America's share of world manufacturing output.

2. How does America's growth compare with that of other countries?

U.S. Land Policy

Price per acre Minimum purchase

1796 $2.00 640 acres

1800 $2.00 320

1804 $2.00 160

1820 $1.25 80

1832 $1.25 40

1854 $0.125 40

1862 free 160

Peak Land Sales

1816 1.7 million acres 1853 3.8

1817 1.9 1854 12.8

1818 3.5 1855 12.0

1819 3.0 1856 5.2

1820 0.8 1857 4.2

1833 3.9

1834 4.7

1835 12.6

1836 20.1

1837 5.6

Questions to think about:

1. How did American land policy change over time?

2. Did land sales occur evenly over time? At what points during the early 19th century were land sales greatest?

Agriculture

Age Distribution of Wisconsin Farmers, 1860

Age Proportion owning

no land land worth $1,000 or more

20-29 44 15

30-39 13 39

40-49 6 39

Questions to think about:

1. How likely were young men in Wisconsin to own land?

2. How likely were older men in Wisconsin to own no land?

Cost of Making a Farm, western New York State, 1821

Clearing 30 acres at $10 per acre $300

Fencing 70

Log house and frame barn 200

Outhouse, well, orchard 150

1 pair oxen 50

1 horse 50

2 cows 40

2 hogs 10

10 sheep 50

Plow, harness, tools 50

Purchase 50 acres at $2 per acre 100

Essentials for family consumption 75

before first crop

Total $1,145

Questions to think about:

1. Western land has sometimes been considered a "safety valve" for American workers. Do you think that a laboring American could afford to start a farm?

2. How would a family acquire the money to start a farm?

Percentage of American Labor Force in Agriculture

1800 83 percent

1810 84

1820 79

1830 71

1840 63

1850 55

1860 53

Agricultural Productivity

1800 1970

Wheat

worker-hours per acre 56 3

yield per acre 15 31

Cotton

worker-hours per acre 185 24

yield per acre 147 438

Occupational Distribution

1820 1860

Agriculture 79 percent 53 percent

Mining 0.4 1.6

Construction -- 4.7

Manufacturing 3 14

Trade -- 8

Transport 1.6 6.4

Service 4.1 6.4

Questions to think about:

1. Why do you think the proportion of Americans working in agriculture declined?

2. What kinds of work might non-agricultural workers do for a living?

Growth of Western Cities

1830 1840 1850 1860

Chicago 5,000 30,000 109,000

Cincinnati 25,000 46,000 115,000 161,000

Cleveland 1,000 6,000 17,000 43,000

Detroit 2,000 9,000 21,000 46,000

Milwaukee 2,000 20,000 45,000

St. Louis 6,000 14,000 78,000 161,000

Questions to think about:

1. Why do you think western cities grew so rapidly?

2. What functions did western cities serve?

Growth of the Midwest: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin

Percent of U.S. population

1800 1.0 percent

1810 3.8

1820 8.2

1830 11.4

1840 17.3

1850 20.3

1860 24.7

Questions to think about:

1. What factors may have contributed to the rapid growth of the Midwest?

2. What political consequences might the growth of the Midwest have had?

INTERPRETING STATISTICS: PRE-CIVIL WAR SOCIETY

Immigration as a Source of Population Increase

1820s 4 percent of total population increase

1830s 13 percent

1840s 23 percent

1850s 34 percent

1860s 25 percent

1870s 27 percent

1880s 41 percent

1890s 28 percent

Immigration to the U.S.

Percentage of Composition

Year Number Irish English German

1820 8,385

1830 23,322

1840 84,066 47 10 35

1850 369,980 44 14 21

1860 153,640 32 19 35

Questions to think about:

1. During which decades was immigration the greatest source of population increase?

2. Where did most pre-Civil War immigrants come from?

From Rags to Riches: The Distribution of Wealth and Income in Industrializing America

Economic Growth and Stratification of Wealth

Year Population Nonfarm Per Capita Wealth Owned By

in millions Labor Force Wealth Top l0 Percent

1800 5.3 17.4 % 64.4 45 %

1820 9.6 21.0 67.7 50

1840 17.1 36.6 100.0 55

1860 31.4 46.8 137.0 60

Distribution of Wealth

Proportion of wealth owned by:

Richest 1 Percent Richest 3 Percent

Boston, 1848 42 percent 64 percent

Brooklyn, 1841 37 --

New York, 1845 40 66 percent

Per Capita Wealth: 1840=100.0

Concentration of wealth in farming areas, 1860

Proportion of Property Held by Richest 10 Percent of Farmowners

Southern black belt counties 64

Trempealeau County, Wisconsin 39