Forging the National Economy

Forging the National Economy Chapter 14

The Westward Movement • Pioneer life – ill fed, ill clad, houses were shanties, disease, loneliness and isolation • Farming tobacco exhausted the land • Farmers were constantly in search of virgin land to grow tobacco • Trappers traded hides of beaver and buffalo with Natives

The March of Millions • 1860 – 33 states in the Union • The population was doubling every 25 years • 43 cities boasted populations over 25,000 – New York, New Orleans and Chicago • Rapid population growth led to smelly slums, feeble street lighting, inadequate policing, impure water, foul sewage, rats and improper garbage disposal

Immigration • In the 1840s the number of immigrants from Ireland and Germany tripled. • Reasons – Europe was running out of room (lack of available land), Irish Potato Famine, and crop failures • Influx of immigrants led to nativism - fear that foreigners would outbreed, outvote, and overwhelm the old native stock

Industrial Revolution • 1750s – The British perfected a series of machines for the mass production of textiles • Industrial Revolution was the modern factory system • Samuel Slater “Father of the Modern Factory System” in America memorized the plans for the machinery and came to America

Notable Inventions of the Nineteenth Century • Eli Whitney inventor of the cotton gin and interchangeable parts • Sewing Machine invented by Elias Howe perfected by Isaac Singer • Samuel F.B. Morse – telegraph

Factories Exploit Workers • Factory workers had long hours, low wages and child labor • 1840 – Martin Van Buren established the 10 hour day • 1830s and 1840s dozens of strikes led to owners hiring strikebreakers, scabs or hiring immigrants • One victory for unions was Commonwealth vs. Hunt ruled that labor unions were not illegal conspiracies

Women and the Economy • Young women often were employed by factories • Allowed women greater independence • Lowell Mills hired young New England women; girls lived in a boarding house at the factory site • Most working women were single • Upon marriage they left the work force and worked in the home aka “cult of domesticity” • Families got smaller – women having fewer children or domestic feminism

The West • West became the bread basket • Western farms produced food for southerners growing cotton and eastern factory workers • Inventions that made farming out west easier • John Deere 1837 invents the steel plow • Cyrus McCormick invents the mechanical mower reaper in the 1830s

Transportation improves… • 1790s The Lancaster Turnpike in Pennsylvania sparked a 20 year building frenzy • 1811 Cumberland Road began construction (completed in 1858) • Robert Fulton invents the first steamboat, the Clermont made it up the Hudson from NYC to Albany (150 miles) in 32 hours • 1st railroad was invented in 1828, by 1860 the US boasted 30,000 miles of track

Transportation • 1858 the first cable was laid under the Atlantic connecting the US to Europe • The invention of the clipper ship in the 1840s allow cargo to be delivered in record time • 1860 – the Pony Express was designed to carry mail

Market Revolution • The market revolution transformed a subsistence economy into a national network of industry and commerce