CHAPTER XXXV CHANGING SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC After 1830 conditions and forces which had been coming to the surface during the preceding period began to produce definite results. The nation was growing, unmistakably, in a variety of directions, and the conditions of American life were undergoing significant changes. Eastern industrialism, struggling for existence in 1815, dominated its section by 1850, while slavery, which seemed to be on the decline, at least before 1810, became so important that it threatened to divide the union. At the same time the West was fulfilling its early promise, and more. Along with the growth national consolidation in the North and West was proceeding rapidly, fostered by the continually improving transportation facilities, and by a steadily widening market. In the East, both in New England and in the Middle Atlantic states, perhaps the outstanding characteristic was the wide variety of economic interests. Diversified farming, commerce, and the fisheries were still important, not yet overshadowed by the rapidly increasing industrial system. In manufacturing, both hardware and textile, new industries were appearing, and new methods were being introduced, all of which resulted in more profitable returns on investments. New spinning and weaving machinery, and the sewing machine reduced costs, and so increased sales. Because of the better means of transportation, for business purposes the size of the country was greatly reduced, or, perhaps more accurately, the manufacturer's market underwent remarkable expansion. Business operations could take in the whole country. Because the greater opportunities demanded more capital and a more efficient organization, corporations began to take the place of individuals and partnerships. Had it not been for the overshadowing gloom of the slavery problem, this tendency toward industrial and commercial concentration would have attracted wide attention. As it was, the country did not awake to the possible consequences of the change until after the Civil War. The story of this industrial expansion can be read in statistical tables showing the increasing number of spindles in operation, and in the census reports, which reveal the steady relative increase of the town population. LABOR TROUBLES Aspects of the same story, and especially some of the consequences of the change can be seen in the new American problem of the industrial laborer. During the colonial period, in fact down to the beginning of the nineteenth century, the only labor problem had been to find enough of it. Labor shortage had long been a chronic complaint. With the establishment of the factory system, and with the heavy influx of immigrants during the middle of the century, this condition began to change. Workmen especially were imported from abroad to run the new machines, and to teach others to run them. As the size of a given plant increased, the owner found himself separated more and more completely from his employees. With the new conditions brought about by the railroads, he found it more profitable to devote himself to matters of management and selling than, as formerly, to work with his men. As a result the workers began to realize that they were being set off by themselves, as a more or less distinct class. The first laborers to realize this process clearly enough to act with reference to it were the shoemakers, the tailors, and the printers. The inevitable result was organization, for the purpose of improving their situation, that is, getting shorter hours, higher wages, or better conditions in the shops. The first real "strike," concerning which there is satisfactory evidence, was that of the Philadelphia shoemakers in 1805. They demanded higher wages, and in trying to get them they adopted the most approved modern methods. Every journeyman who came to Philadelphia was supposed to join the union, the few who refused to join in the strike were subjected to unpleasant pressure, and the employer was threatened with violence. After 1825 labor agitation became more important. The "societies" or unions were demanding a standardized working day of ten hours, instead of the traditional day of from sunrise to sunset. In 1827 hundreds of Philadelphia carpenters struck for the ten hour day. As the various trades established their organizations, they naturally turned to politics to get what they wanted; workingmen's parties began to appear. These movements, however, brought few if any results, because the workingmen could not compete to advantage with the professional politicians. Beginning with the great era of speculation which started around 1830, the laborers laid less emphasis upon the ten hour day, and more upon increased wages. Some advance, they felt, was essential to offset the steady rise in commodity prices. Between 1833 and 1837 one hundred fifty trade "societies" were in existence in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. In 1834 these unions had a membership of twenty-five thousand. During these same few years the country was given the opportunity to watch no less than one hundred sixty-eight strikes, most of which were for higher wages. These strikes were well distributed among all the organized trades. Factory workers too began to strike, even those at Lowell, in protest against a reduction in wages. The Panic of 1837 brought widespread unemployment, thereby making both unions and strikes ineffective. With all business at a standstill, people generally became more interested in the task of keeping themselves alive than in shorter hours or increased wages. During this time of calamity, immigrants from Europe began to circulate the various theories of communism and primitive socialism which were then beginning to attract attention in Europe. Under their influence schemes of coöperative manufacturing and selling were tried out, without any appreciable success. After 1850, the industrial sections became more generally like those of the early part of the present century. The founders of the factories had ceased to take any active part in business, and the ownership was distributed among stockholders, whose primary aim was profit. At the same time the personnel of the operatives underwent a change. The first operatives had been drawn from the American farming population; the newer ones were immigrants from Europe. Then too, work was becoming much harder, as the machines were speeded up. Formerly fairly well off as compared with the skilled workers in the various trades, the factory workers found conditions of life and of work becoming more uncomfortable. Even in Lowell, where Charles Dickens had found conditions so eminently satisfactory, after 1850 the mill operatives had ample cause to complain. Working ten hours a day, in the midst of unhygienic surroundings, under the imperious demands of power-driven machines, the lot of the industrial laborer was in some respects not so good as that of slaves on the southern plantations. They at least were working out-of-doors, and the ordinary overseer was certainly no worse than the combination of foreman and machinery. As for habitation, if slave cabins were not always noted for cleanliness and sanitation, mill town "tenements" were not uniformly attractive and healthful. This comparison was made at the time, and it has been made since, with a certain amount of justification. Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that organized labor became more determined in its struggle for a share of "the promise of American life." By 1860 it had won the ten hour day, and general recognition of its right to organize, and it had managed to advance wages along with advancing costs. AGRICULTURE The great industrial development in the East was made possible by the rapid agricultural progress in the West. In the newer section, still showing some of the effects of its recent pioneering days, farming was the primary interest. The unit there was the small farm, worked by the owner, in some respects the most satisfactory system ever devised. With fewer social demands, the cost of living was less than in the other sections, while the uniformity of economic conditions created a homogeneous, hard working, thoroughly democratic community. If there were fewer signs of wealth than in the East and South, signs of poverty and dependence were also rarer. This was the section which produced food for the other two. And the western farmer was thoroughly alive to the desirability of improved methods for his work. Instead of investing his money in more land and in slaves, he put his surplus into labor-saving machinery, making it possible to get along with comparatively little "hired help.” The McCormick reaper, invented in 1833, was in general use by 1840. By 1860, these machines were being manufactured at the rate of twenty thousand per year. During the two decades before the Civil War, other machines came into use, such as the mowing machine, and the threshing machine. Down to the time of the introduction of these improved implements, farmers had done their work with tools not greatly different from those used by the ancient Egyptians. The nineteenth century was above everything else the age of machinery, and the farmer came in for his share of its advantages. THE RAILROAD The exchange of food and manufactured products was greatly facilitated by the railroad building, then going on actively in the United States. In 1840, there were perhaps twenty-three hundred miles in actual operation; this had been increased to six thousand miles by 1848. Between 1849 and 1857, about sixteen thousand five hundred miles were built. Although the earliest lines were short, designed to serve merely as connecting links between waterways, rather than as independent carriers, improved rolling stock demonstrated that the railroad had numerous advantages over canals. The first collection of short roads, to link the region of the Great Lakes with the Tidewater was the series subsequently joined in the New York central system. By 1850 it was possible to travel from New York to Buffalo by rail, though there was no through service. The first long line planned out in advance was the Erie, completed in 1851. In 1852 the Pennsylvania lines reached Pittsburg, and in 1853 the Baltimore and Ohio reached Wheeling. In the same year the Canadian Grand Trunk connected Portland, Maine, with Montreal. Although the first genuine steam railroad was built to connect Charleston, South Carolina, with the Savannah River in Georgia, the South lagged behind the North in railroad construction. The lines built during the early fifties for the most part ran east and west, between the Lakes, the Ohio, or the Mississippi River and the Atlantic seaboard. These new transportation means swung the whole current of American trade in a new direction, and so transformed the economic relationships of the country. It was now possible for the West to send supplies east, instead of down the Mississippi. As a result the West was divided, and the Northwest was tied solidly to the East. The significance of this change will appear later in connection with the Civil War. If the steam locomotive had been invented somewhat earlier, it is probable that the states would have built the railroads. They had built the canals, bankrupting themselves in their too-ambitious enterprises. As a result, when the railroad era opened, the work was undertaken by private corporations, aided however by liberal grants of public land from the federal government. In 1850 the Illinois Central received two and a half million acres, and by 1856, nineteen million acres had been granted to railroads in eight states. |