Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Introduction
Population changes?
Life on the frontier? Image vs. reality?
Rugged individualism?
Why was the U.S. slow to embrace the
Industrial Revolution?
Why such rapid movement westward?
Liberal land policies
1796: minimum land purchase of 640 acres at
$2 per acre. (Federalist land policy)
1820: min. 80 acres for $1.25 (Democratic land
policy)
Robert Fulton
& the Steamboat
Clipper Ships
John Stevens
John Stevens became interested in
steam locomotion in the 1780s. He
established the world's first steam ferry,
and later built the first operating steam
locomotive in the United States.
14
The
Railroad
Revolution,
1850s
Immigrant labor
built the No. RRs.
Slave labor
built the So. RRs.
18
George Pullman designed a sleeping car including the services of supplying the
linens, housekeeping, and attendants for the sleeping cars, making train travel
much more comfortable. Pullmans car gained much attention after it housed
Presidents Lincolns body through 8 states during the funeral procession.
19
Reapers
Automatic wire binder
Threshing machine
Mechanical planter
Mechanical cutter
Huskers and shellers
Cream separators
Manure spreaders
Potato planters
Hay driers
Poultry incubators
20
21
Resourcefulness &
Experimentation
Actually invented
by a slave!
Cyrus McCormick
& the Mechanical Reaper: 1831
Samuel F. B. Morse
1840 Telegraph
Cyrus Field
& the Transatlantic Cable, 1858
1840s
Sewing Machine
*1st widely advertised consumer product
*Installment plans
Distribution of Wealth
v
Samuel Slater
(Father of the Factory System)
Lowell in 1850
Lowell Mill
New England
Textile
Centers:
1830s
Lowell Girls
Lowell Mills
Time Table
Early
Union
Newsletter
Average workday
was 11 hours per
day
From a report on Lowell, a
mill in Massachusetts,
working conditions in 1846
Thus thirteen hours per day of
close attention and monotonous
labor are exacted from the
young women in these
manufactories. . . So fatiguedwe should say, exhausted and
worn out but we wish to speak
of the system in the simplest
language-are numbers o f the
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 toils of
the coming day.
Labor Reform
Unions began to form after
the Revolutionary War in
cities such as Philadelphia
and Baltimore.
In the 1820s the Mechanics'
Union of Trade Associations,
the first to combine different
types of unions, formed.
Their goals were not only
higher wages and improved
working conditions but also
free public schools, abolition
of debtors jail, and universal
male suffrage.
The Union entered politics
to secure their goals.
Unions
In the late 1820s, unions entered politics with the
Working Men's Party. It was made up of craftsmen,
skilled journeymen, and reformers who sought a 10hour workday, free public education, abolition of debtor
imprisonment, and an end to prison contract labor..
Many of the early labor unions were destroyed by the
economic collapse caused by the Panic of 1837. Nearly
30% of U.S. workers lost their jobs.
Labor unions made a comeback in the 1840s and
1850s but were again devastated by the economic
crisis of the Panic of 1857.
Unions came back strongly after the Civil War.
Regional Specialization
EAST Industrial
SOUTH Cotton & Slavery
WEST The Nations Breadbasket
60
Irish Immigrants
Tammany Hall
patronage
German Immigrants
1830-1860 more than 1 million Germans
came to U.S.
Mostly farmers and political liberals in
search of democracy.
Many settled in the West and established
farms
More scattered than the Irish
KnowNothing
Party:
The Supreme
Order of the
Star-Spangled
Banner
ECONOMIC?
POLITICAL?
SOCIAL?
FUTURE
PROBLEMS?