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APUSH Intro:

Ch. 14

The 19th century (1800s) not only saw Americans and European immigrants (German and Irish) pushing WEST, but newly invented machinery forced people into labor under new, more demanding job expectations (the individual would become part of a labor force) Better roads, canals, streamboats and railroads moved raw materials and manufactured goods from coast to coast This momentum gave rise to a dynamic, market-oriented, national economy

The Westward Movement The West typifies what America is Emerson wrote: Europe stretches to the Alleghenies; America lies beyond. The country was young half of the population were under 30 and always on the move westward Frontier life was hard disease, depression, loneliness and premature death were often the opportunities the West offered pioneers Westward pioneers were INDIVIDUALISTIC Emersons popular lecture-essay, Self-Reliance struck a deeply responsive chord

Question: Describe the West and the pioneers of 19th century America? Shaping the Western Landscape Westward movement changed the physical environment: Pioneers often left exhausted, barren, rain-gutted fields behind Fur-trappers almost made the beaver extinct as well as the sea-otters Lead to the annihilation of the bison herds Yet Americans admired the beauty of the West this natural beauty fed the spirit o f nationalism - a unique blend of unspoiled, untouched wilderness that became a kind of national mystique that inspired literature, painting and eventually a powerful conservation movement George Catlin, a painter and student of Native American life was among the first Americans to advocate preservation of nature as a national policy Catlin proposed the creation of a national park A national park system, beginning with Yellowstone in 1872 became a reality

Question: How was the West symbolic of America?

The March of Millions By mid-century the population was doubling every 25 years By 1860, America was made up of 33 states The US was the 4th most populous country in the western world Urban growth exploded Philadelphia, New York, New Orleans, and Chicago were the largest Rapid urbanization brought with it slums, inadequate policies, impure water, rats, open sewage and improper garbage disposal Animals roamed the streets and disease-carrying mosquitoes swarmed High birthrates accounted for the population increase, but ALSO waves of immigrants flooded the country about 240,00 per year by the 1850s Most were Germans and Irish Why did they come? Overcrowding in Europe and freedom from aristocratic social caste and state church issues - All equals OPPORTUNITY and they could get here in 10-12 days not weeks

Question? How did Americas population explode in the 19th century? Who came and why? The Emerald Isle Moves West Ireland was still under the British overlords Potato famine killed millions Too poor to move west once they got to America, they crowded into the larger seaboard cities like Boston and New York before long more Irish would live in the US than in Ireland They were treated horribly crammed into slums and considered social menaces; forced into manual labor service jobs The masses of Irish willing to work caused wage-depressing and so were hated by natives competing for jobs No Irish Need Apply was a common sign posted at factory gates (NINA) Blacks and Irish resented each other and race riots flared up in port cities and the Irish were generally cool to the abolitionist cause Politics quickly attracted the Irish and soon began to gain control of powerful city machines, especially New Yorks Tammany Hall they dominated police forces and politicians took notice of the swelling numbers of Irish (2 million by 1860) and courted their vote

Question? Why did so many Irish immigrate to the US in the 19th century? What was life like for them in the US?

The German Forty-Eighters Uprooted farmers and some political refugees - fled the autocratic govt of Germany They came with some money and most pushed out to the Middle West especially Wisconsin and established farms Not as politically potent as the Irish because they were more widely scattered Came with isolationist sentiments Supported public schools Enemies of slavery due to their struggles for freedom in Europe Tend to keep language and customs and so seemed suspicious to nativists Drank their native beer and made merry on Sundays

Flare-ups of Antiforeignism These waves of immigration caused prejudices in American nativists They feared being out numbered, out voted and overwhelmed in all areas including the church, since so many were Roman Catholic These Catholic immigrants started their own form of education with Catholicism intertwined from fear of Protestant indoctrination By 1850 were the number one religious population Protestant worries brought about the Know-Nothing party b/c of their secretiveness they wanted restrictions on immigration and naturalization and deportation laws Occasional mass violence broke out in larger cities like Philadelphia With this pluralistic society Why had not more cultural clashes occurred? Partly due to the strong economy, most could share in American wealth w/out infringing upon other groups - Immigrants and the American economy NEEDED one another

The March of Mechanization By 1750, a group of gifted British inventors had perfected machines or the mass production of textiles and ushered in the modern factory system, and with it the Industrial Revolution It was accompanied with new machines for agricultural production AND methods of transportation and communication This factory system spread from GB to other parts of the world Why was America so slow to embrace the machine? Land was cheap and people were not to willing (desperate) to work in a noisy, nasty factory all day when they could farm their own land SO, LABOR was scarce UNTIL immigrants began to pour into the US in the 1840s - MONEY was not plentiful for investment Raw materials lay UNDEVELOPED and UNDISCOVERED - also, CONSUMERS

were scarce and the British made superior products and GB kept many machines secret so they could not be reproduced elsewhere Not until the middle or the 19th century did factories output exceed the farms

Whitney Ends the Fiber Famine Samuel Slater Father of the factory system in 1791 he made the 1st efficient American machinery for spinning cotton Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin which was 50 times faster than manual labor in separating seeds from cotton fibers Cotton gin changed America and the world because it made the raising of cotton profitable and unfortunately, put slavery more in demand than ever South and North both prospered - South grew it, North manufactured it but GB bought most of the cotton from the US The North flourished in factories, but the South continued with the planting and not much manufacturing because its population was made up of the poor and slaves, not much of market for manufactured goods

Marvels in Manufacturing After the War of 1812, American manufacturing had been retarded due to embargos and the war blockades, etc so, Americans began to use homegrown goods that was attached to patriotism After 1815 and the Treaty of Ghent (ended the War of 1812) the British flooded the American market with cheap goods until in 1816, Congress passed the protective Tariff (earliest example of the govt to control the shape of the economy) Eli Whitney came up with the principle of interchangeable parts for guns and machinery and became the basis of modern mass-production and assembly line methods Ironically, Eli Whitney by perfecting the cotton gin gave new life to the institution of slavery and perhaps made the Civil War inevitable At the same time, with his interchangeable parts helped factories in the North give the Union the advantage in the Civil War Sewing machine (Elias Howe and Issac Singer) brought women out of their homes into the factories Massive inventions overwhelmed the Patent Office and changed the form and legal status of business organization First telegraph wire (Samuel F.B. Morse) ran from Washington to Baltimore by the eve of the Civil War revolutionizing news gathering, diplomacy and finance.

Here is the summation of the rest of Ch. 14 Workers and Wage Slaves: no gov't intervention yet, so workers were abused with low wages, safety, and long hours - especially abused were children and unmarried women -

"factory girls" - labor unions were thought of as conspiracies and outlawed, but that decision was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1842 - As America turns industrial, two sides emerge: Business vs. Labor Women and the Economy: worked long hours and lived in mill apartments - note the Lowell mills were known for young unmarried farm girls as the labor force - Once married, women left paying jobs and ran the household in a "cult of domesticity" - most strikingly, families became smaller - women played a role in this decision and this newly assertive role has been called "domestic feminism" b/c it signified the growing power and independence of women Western farmers Reap a Revolution in the Fields: corn was major staple crop (fed to hogs and turned into whiskey) - Revolutions in agriculture include steel plow, mowerreaper which brought on large scale farming and running small farmers off their land and into factories for work Highways and Steamboats: Lancaster Turnpike transformed road systems and then the Cumberland Road from Maryland to Illinois -- Steamboats are faster and fill the Mississippi - Erie Canal - linked the Hudson Bay to the Great Lakes lowerd the cost of shipping and the land along the route skyrocketed and new cities sprung up along the way the economy boomed The Iron Horse: cheaper than canals - now goods can be transported East to West, not just North and South Cables, Clippers, and Pony Express: - cable pulled under the ocean to Europe for transcontinental communication (telegraph) - Clipper ships could sail faster and carried valuable cargo for fast delivery - then the Pony Express which delivered mail from Missouri to Southern California The Transport Web Binds the Union: trade now from all directions and transformed into a continental economy not just sectional The Market Revolution: the market revolution had morphed into a network of commerce and industry from a subsistence economy of scattered farms and tiny workshops - Division of labor took place in the homes as well, women's work in the household becomes devalued and grew into a place of refuge from work instead of the center of work as it had once been in self-sufficient times - these Revolutionary advances in manufacturing and transportation brought increased prosperity to all Americans, but also widened the gap between rich and poor - cities had greatest extremes of inequality - the rags to riches American stories did exist but were rare - however, more opportunities than anywhere in Europe

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