Bellwork

• Describe in 3 sentences what you think it would have been like to work in a factory during the 1800’s. Describe what you might see, smell, hear, etc.

American History

Section 10, Unit 1The North and Middle West

Objectives

• Identify who made up the new middle class• Explain how northern workers reacted to labor

conditions• Analyze what lead to increased immigration

during the mid-1800’s• Describe the effects of the nativism resistance

Market Revolution

• In the early 19th century, new industries and growing cities changes how and where people worked.

• Before, most people worked at home and provided for themselves.

• However, this began to change as people began to increasingly work outside the home– in factories, businesses, and on other people’s farms.

Market Revolution

• The Market Revolution profoundly affected the North and the Middle West.

• The growing economy brought better living conditions for many Americans and attracted various immigrants from Europe. – However, as we will see, economic growth did not

always lead into improved living conditions for all, as many business owners paid very little and provided poor working conditions.

The Market Revolution-Wealthy

• The market revolution created a wide gap between the rich and the poor.

• Prosperous merchants, bankers, manufacturers, and their families made up the wealthy upper class.

• These families often lived the life of luxury, with spacious homes, elegant furnishings, and the latest conveniences.

The Market Revolution-- Poor

• The poor, however, often had very little.

• Many were cramped into small homes with little modern conveniences– including sewage services.

• Poor neighborhoods were often plagued by crime, soot, filth, and disease.

Middle Class

• However, a new social class arose between the wealthy and the poor during this time– the middle class.

• Prosperous farmers, lawyers, and artisans (among others) made up the new middle class.

Middle Class

• Some free blacks– despite racial discrimination– shared in the economic prosperity of the growing middle class.

• Middle class peoples lived in modesty, but generally had comfortable lives with the modern conveniences of the time.

Middle Class

• Middle class families had the income to buy food, clothing, and other products made available by the market revolution– often at a relatively cheap price.

• With more products on the market, families need no longer work at the home to produce their own goods, such as food and clothing.

Middle Class• Men were expected to work

outside the home and earn money to buy these goods.

• Women were expected to work at home and care for the children and children were expected to go to school.

• These new middle class family roles became the ideal for most families--- but not all could meet this economic and social arrangement.

Changing working conditions

• The market revolution also changed how people worked.

• Workers still made most products, like shoes and barrels.– However, workers began making more items in

factories, which needed many employees.

Working Conditions

• Before changes really took place, New England factory owners recruited whole families to work in textile mills.

• Employment opportunities– that took entire families– usually offered housing.

• However, the system of housing entire families became impractical as factories needed hundreds of employees.

Lowell Girls

• By the early 19th century, some mill owners in Lowell, MA., overcame this problem by hiring young single women who had the skills for textile mills.

• They were also cheaper to hire, since the mill owners could pay women less than men and did not have to pay for a mans’ family.

Lowell Girls• These single women– known

as Lowell girls– lived in closely supervised, company owned boardinghouses.

• Mill owners organized cultural activities to provide “moral education” for the workers and required them to attend church.

• Housekeepers enforced curfews, banned alcohol, and reported on the girls’ behavior.

Changing Conditions

• While previously mentioned working conditions were acceptable early on– such as keeping working girls under strict supervision at all times– conditions began to change around the 1830’s.

Changing Conditions

• By the 1830’s, owners– who were seeking larger profits– began to cut wages and increase working hours.

• Protests and early attempts to form labor unions had little success, however, as more job seekers competed for factory positions.

Changing Conditions

• As a result of the Panic of 1837, which cost many workers their jobs, there were many unemployed laborers willing to work for long hours and little pay, regardless of working conditions. – To understand the number of

people willing to work, in New York alone, around 50,000 people were unemployed.

Changing Conditions

• Even in prosperous times, workers barely got by.

• In New York City’s garment-making district, entire families labored through the night, making barely enough money to survive.

• They lived mainly on bread and tea– even beans were too expensive and time-consuming to prepare.

Child Labor• Children often worked as

hard as their parents. • Child labor was common on

farms, so manufacturers took it for granted that they could work in factories.

• In 1832, 2/5 of New England factory workers were children. – These children faced horrible

working conditions, as they were often forced to work late into the night and were kept awake by a supervisor splashing water into their face.

Labor Fights Back

• As conditions worsened by the 1830’s, workers began to organize more than 60 unions.

• Labor leaders held their first national convention in 1834 and founded the National Trades Union, which campaigned for a 10 hour workday. – In response, some states began to pass legislation to

give workers what they wanted, and President Van Buren gave the 10 hour workday to federal employees.

Labor Unions

• Labor Unions used many methods to press for reforms.

• A common tactic was the strike– a refusal to work until demands are met.

• During the 1830’s, workers led more than 100 strikes, mostly to protest low wages or avoid wage reductions.

Women and Labor Unions

• Women were very important early on in the labor movement.

• After wages were cut in 1834, the Lowell girls went on strike.

• Reacting to the strike, the Massachusetts legislature established a committee to investigate conditions in the textile mills.– This was the first official investigation of labor

conditions in the United States.

Sarah G. Bagley• Sarah G. Bagley was a Lowell girl

who lead the others to form a union after her mill began to force them to speed up production without more pay.

• In 1844, she organized the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association.

• As it’s first president, Bagley denounced labor conditions and collected more than 2,000 signatures on a petition urging the Massachusetts legislature to support a 10 hour workday.

Sarah G. Bagley

• After leaving the mill in 1945, Bagley traveled across New England and organized other mill workers.

• While Bagley did not win her fight to limit working hours, her efforts did point the way for future labor organizers.

African Americans

• While some early labor unions fought for better wages for white men and women, most unions excluded African Americans.

• Whites often refused to work with blacks, sometimes calling for laws to bar Africans Americans from particular trades. – Some African Americans began to form their own

trade organizations to promote their own interests.

Question

1. Why did labor unions form?2. Who were the Lowell girls?3. What was the lifestyle like for middle class

peoples?

Changes in Immigration

• While battles for labor rights continued, the labor force grew dramatically during the 1830s, as more than 500,000 immigrants poured into the country. – By 1860, this number was nearly 4.3 million people. – This massive migration was aided by the

transportation revolution in Europe, which made it so that people could get to ports cheaply by railroad.

Irish Immigrants

• The largest group of immigrants– about 1.9 million– were the Irish.

• Poverty, hunger, and mistreatment by the British had driven them from their homeland.– British Protestants had seized much of Ireland’s

farmland by the 1600’s, which forced most of the country’s primarily Roman Catholic population to buy/rent land from Protestants.

Irish Immigrants

• As Ireland’s population nearly doubled from 1780 to 1840, the land could no longer support that population.

• The situation only worsened during the potato famine– a major Irish food source– which the Irish suffered through for two years.

Irish Immigrants

• Many immigrants were poor farmers, and most could not afford farmland in the United States.

• In this, many crowded in the cities, competing for the lowest paying and most dangerous jobs available.

• Many of these laborers helped build the nations canals, mined coal, and cleaned streets.

Irish Immigrants

• Irish women cleaned the houses of the wealthy, took care of their children, and worked in factories.

• Due to these needs, many Irish Americans had a very short lifespan.

Irish Immigrants• In addition to harsh working conditions, the Irish lived

in horrible conditions. • Most lived in dark, poorly ventilated spaces. – Disease spread through Irish neighborhoods due to poor

waste management services of both sewage and garbage.

Irish Immigrants

• However, Irish immigrants did form their own communities.

• They established hundreds of Catholic churches, making Catholicism the largest denomination in the nation by 1860.

• The Irish were also active in politics, running in major cities such as New York and Boston and promising their supporters– usually Irish– that they were provide them with emergency food and money, city jobs, and legal aid.

Question: how do you think the Americans will respond to increased presence of Roman Catholicism in the states?

German Immigrants

• The second-largest group of immigrants in the mid-19th century was from the independent states that make up modern day Germany.

• From 1831 to 1860, more than 1.5 million Germans came to the United States.

• Some came for political reasons or religious reasons, but the majority came in the search of economic opportunity.

German Immigrants

• German industrialization had left many without work in their respective countries.

• Lacking economic opportunity, they began to stream into the United States.

• Many German immigrants went into skilled occupations, becoming brewers, bakers, butchers, machinists, craftsmen, and more.

German Immigrants

• German women who sought employment outside the home tended to work in family shops or businesses that served German immigrants.

German Immigrants

• Unlike the Irish, most German immigrants were protestant– mostly Lutheran.

• Some were Roman Catholic, while some 25,000 were Jewish. – Between 1825 to 1860, the influx of German Jews

increased the Jewish population in New York City from 500 to about 40,000.

German Immigrants

• Many German immigrants settled in small towns and rural areas of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Missouri, and Texas.

• Those in larger cities usually lived in tightly knit communities.

• Many communities printed newspapers in German and in some areas, public schools taught in German rather than English.

Response to Immigrants

• Some native-born Americans were troubled by the new immigrants.

• They disapproved of the beer gardens and the “clannishness” of the Germans, and opposed the Catholicism and gaining political influence of the Irish.

• Such feelings gave rise to Nativism– the policy of favoring native-born Americans over foreign-born.

Nativism

• Nativists viewed the immigrants, particularly the Irish, as politically corrupt and socially inferior. – They argued that many of those in jail were Irish,

and crime caused by Irish gangs was becoming common place.

Question: How would this argument help the nativists?

Nativism

• From the 1830s through the 1850s, anti-Catholic riots hit eastern cities.

• Vandalism against Catholic institutions was so common that insurance companies would not insure Catholic schools and churches.

• Some nativists urged limiting immigrants rights to vote and hold public office.

Nativism

• In 1849, a secret society of nativists, the Order of the Star-Spangled Banner, emerged.

• Members swore to support only native-born Protestants for public office, to lobby for a 21 year waiting period for naturalization, and to fight the Roman Catholic church.

Nativism

• The organization soon formed as the American Party.

• When asked about their nativists activities, party members would answer “I know nothing”.

• Thus, these people were known as the Know-Nothings and their party was called the Know-Nothing Party. “The Mortar of Assimilation– and the one

element [the Irish] that wont mix”– political cartoon

Know-Nothing Party

• The Know-Nothing Party– American Party- won numerous city and state elections.– They ran on the slogan, “Americans Shall Rule

America”.• The Know-Nothings nominated a candidate for

the presidency– Millard Fillmore– but were unsuccessful.

• Soon after, by 1853, the nativist movement began to fade away.

The Middle West

• Many of these immigrants sought new opportunities in the Middle West.

• Growing northeastern factories and cities needed more farm products, which middle west farmers could supply.

• Some middle western areas developed lumber and mining, but commercial farming dominated most of the region.

The Middle West

• As the market revolution made many manufactured products less expensive, farm families began to purchase items they had previously made at home. – For example, women bought cloth rather than

made it cause it was cheaper. • The Middle West also became so populous

that they were able to attract merchants selling manufactured goods.

The Middle West

• Thanks to these merchants in the middle west, many families could now buy household items and farm machines to help with production.

• With these machines, farmers could cultivate more land and began to focus on producing a single crop in mass amounts.

The Middle West

• Women also began making items to sell. • Farm women, who already knew how to make

butter and cheese, could now produce more at a lower cost and began to sell their surplus.– In Ohio, for example, the dairy industry became a

specialized area of farming.

The Middle West

• The Middle West, unlike the North, was very different in it’s treatment of women.

• Because women were so skilled at agriculture– primarily dairy farming– they were able to contribute directly to the family income. – This characteristic of the

Middle West was a factor that made women one of the most hardworking members of the family.

Southern Society

• While the market revolution changed the North and Middle West, the South would also change overtime.

• However, while other areas of the nation moved away from slavery, we will see how the South fully embraced slavery as a corner stone of their agricultural society.

Questions

• If you have any questions, please ask now.

Next lesson

• In the next lesson we will review the South’s economy during the Market Revolution

Review1. What caused factory workers to form unions? What were some

of their demands?2. What sort of restrictions did nativists try to impose on

immigrants?3. Why were the Irish coming to the United States in such large

numbers?4. How did women support the home in the Middle West? How

did this affect how they were treated? 5. What were some characteristics of the Middle Class? 6. Why did families no longer have to produce goods at the home? 7. Connection to Today: Do you see any similarities between the

Know-Nothing Party’s beliefs concerning immigrants and modern views on immigration in America?