Technology, Culture, and Everyday life

1
Chapter 11

• Technology, Culture, and Everyday life
• 1840-1860

2
Introduction

• In the 1840s and 1850s, most Americans believed
  God had ordained that man should progress
  (morally and materially)
• The means to progress of both kinds was through
  technology
• Americans defined as the application of science
  to improve the conveniences of life
• We will look at the changes in the everyday life
  of ordinary citizens brought about by the new
  technology of the period of 1840-1860
• Also looking at the ways people responded to
  those transformations

3
Introduction (cont.)

• 1.) How did technology transform the daily lives
  of middle-class Americans between 1840 and 1860?
• 2.) How did American pastimes and entertainment
  change between 1840 and 1860?
• 3.) How did Americans express their
  distinctiveness in their literature and art?

4
Technology and Economic Growth

• Introduction
• Pre-Civil War decades were affected and
  transformed American life by
• The steam engine
• Cotton gin
• Reaper
• Sewing machine
• Telegraph
• This new technology increase productivity and
  eased travel and communication
• Also it brought down costs and prices

5
Introduction (cont.)

• Most Americans between 1840 and 1860 enjoyed
  improved standards of living
• But the new technology hurt other Americans
• The cotton gin encouraged the expansion of the
  plantation-slave economy
• Sewing machines and new manufacturing techniques
  rendered traditional crafts and the artisans who
  practiced them obsolete

6
Agricultural Advancement

• Between 1830 and 1860, settlers moved onto the
  grasslands of IN, MI, and IL
• John Deers steel-tipped plow was developed in
  1837
• Used to break up the tough prairie soil

7
Agricultural Advancement (cont.)

• Cyrus McCormick
• 1847
• Massed produced mechanical reapers
• Farmers could harvest grain 7 times faster than
  before and use 1/2 the labor
• Wheat became the dominate crop of the Midwest

8
Agricultural Advancement (cont.)

• Americans quickly adopted these laborsaving
  inventions
• But they generally farmed wastefully
• Rapidly depleted the soil
• Then moved on to virgin land
• In the East some farmers introduced fertilizers
• Increased their yields so they could compete with
  the new western fields
• In the South farmers had little incentive to
  invest in laborsaving machinery (used slaves)

9
Technology and Industrial Progress

• Americans of the antebellum period readily
  invested in new technology
• Eli Whitney
• Interchangeable parts
• Greatly facilitated by improved machine tools
• Europeans called interchangeable parts American
  System of Manufacturing

10
Technology and Industrial Progress (cont.)

• Readiness to invest in innovations,
  interchangeable parts, and better machine tools
• Resulted in
• Rapid acceptance
• Mass production
• Use of the new inventions
• Samuel Colts revolving pistol
• Elias Howes sewing machine
• Samuel F. B. Morses telegraph

11
The Railroad Boom

• By 1860, the United States had 30,000 miles of
  track
• More than the rest of the world combined.
• Most of the new rail lines linked the East and
  Midwest.
• Much of the produce of the Midwest was now
  shipped via railroads radiating from Chicago
  eastward.

12
The Railroad Boom (cont.)

• Positives of the railroad growth
• simulated the settlement of the Midwest
• Growth of wheat farming
• Aided the development of cities, towns, and
  industry
• Several states barred funding of the railroads
• Encouraged a shift toward private investment

13
The Railroad Boom (cont.)

• Railroad was Americas 1st big business
• Railroads pioneered new forms of financing in the
  1850s
• Sale of stock and other securities
• Many of the transactions were handled through
  Wall Street
• Made NY the nations leading capital market

14
Rising Prosperity

• Technological improvements reduced the price of
  commodities to consumers
• Contributed to an average 25 rise in the real
  income of American workers between 1840 and 1860
• The increased annual income of working families
  also was attributable to the use of steam power
• Allowed factories to operate in all seasons
• Offer work to more laborers

15
Rising Prosperity (cont.)

• The growth of towns and cities that accompanied
  industrialization opened new employment
  opportunities for women and children
• Often had to work to supplement the inadequate
  wages of the husband/father
• There was a steady stream of American to cities
• economic opportunities plus the comforts and
  conveniences of urban life

16
The Quality of Life

• Introduction
• Technological advances improved the quality of
  life in the middle class
• Now enjoyed luxuries formerly reserved for the
  rich
• These changes were slower to reach the poor
• Increasingly came to congregate in cramped urban
  tenements

17
Introduction (cont.)

• Medical knowledge lagged behind the strides made
  in industry and agriculture
• Many Americans looked to popular health fads for
  the prevention and cure of illness

18
Dwellings

• In the cities the typical dwellings of the period
  were row houses
• Middle class row houses became elaborate
• Poor were forced into crowded row houses that
  were further subdivided by several families and
  boarders

19
Dwellings (cont.)

• Log cabins
• On the frontier
• Often times 1 room
• As the communities matured and prospered
• Log cabins were replaced by more comfortable
  houses
• Larger homes

20
Dwellings (cont.)

• Upper class and middle classes favored ornate
  home furnishings in the rococo style
• rococo furniture
• Wealthy imported furniture from Europe
• Middle class bought mass-produced imitations from
  new furniture manufacturing centers
• Cincinnati
• Grand Rapids

21
Conveniences and Inconveniences

• Industrialization and improved affected home
  heating, cooking, and diet
• By 1840s, coal-burning stoves were replacing
  fireplaces for heating and cooking
• These stoves were more convenient
• Made it possible to cook several dishes at once
• Coal burning contributed to fouling the urban
  environment

22
Conveniences and Inconveniences (cont.)

• Railroads brought fresh produce to city dwellers
• Only the rich could afford fruits out of season
• Home iceboxes were rare before 1860
• Most Americans still ate meat preserved by
  salting rather than fresh meat

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Ice Boxes
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Conveniences and Inconveniences (cont.)

• By the 1840s and 1850s, cities such as New York
  began to construct aqueducts, reservoirs, and
  water works
• Brought pure water to street hydrants
• The majority of houses were not yet hooked up to
  the water main
• Americans of the time bathed infrequently
• Few cities had sanitation departments
• Most people used outdoor privies (outhouses)
• American cities often stunk

25
Disease and Health

• Transportation boom increased and widened the
  risks of epidemics
• Recurring epidemics of cholera, yellow fever, and
  other diseases
• The medical profession was held in low esteem
• Divided and uncertain about the causes and cures
  of epidemic diseases

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Disease and Health (cont.)

• Anesthetics were developed in 1840s
• Crawford Long
• William T.G. Morton
• Allowed advances in the field of surgery
• Still failed to recognize the importance of
  disinfection

27
Popular Health Movements

• Neither public-health boards nor doctors seemed
  able to prevent disease
• Many Americans put their faith in various popular
  therapies
• Hydropathy
• Grahamite regimen

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Phrenology

• Most popular of the scientific fads of the
  antebellum period
• An accurate analysis of an individuals character
• Examining the contours of his skull
• Promised to teach the principles of life
• Give the individual control over his/her own fate
• Science was believed to be a tool to improve ones
  life

29
Democratic Pastimes

• Introduction
• New technology transformed leisure as well as
  work between 1830-1860
• Imaginative entrepreneurs used new inventions and
  advances in manufacturing to sell the kinds of
  entertainment they believed the public wanted

30
Newspapers

• James Gordon Bennett
• Publisher of New York Herald
• Used new techniques in paper making and printing
• Used the telegraph
• Build a mass circulation

31
Newspapers (cont.)

• Realized you could make by building a mass
  circulation
• Slashed the price of the paper to a penny
• Used newspaper boys to sell hundreds of thousands
  of copies daily
• The number of weekly papers grew from 65 to 138
  (between 1830 and 1840)

32
Newspapers (cont.)

• The penny papers filled their columns with
  human-interest stories of crime and sex
• Bennetts New York Herald and Horace Greeleys
  New York Tribune also pioneered in modern
  financial and political reporting

33
The Theater

• Antebellum theaters were filled with large, rowdy
  audiences from all social classes
• People liked romantic melodramas best
• William Shakespeares plays were performed the
  most of any other dramatist

34
Minstrel Shows

• Minstrel showsperformances of songs, dances, and
  skits by white men in blackface
• Minstrel shows became popular in the 1840s with
  the white working-class audiences
• Catered to and reinforced the prejudices of
  whites
• Depicted blacks as stupid, comical, musical, and
  irresponsible

35
P.T. Barnum

• Displays of curiosities
• Flair for publicity
• Development of the American Museum in New York
• The ultimate entrepreneur of popular
  entertainment in the antebellum era

36
The Quest for Nationality in Literature and Art

• Introduction
• Europeans in the early 19th century looked down
  on American writing
• Washington Irving
• Most successful American writing in early 1800s
• Rip Van Winkle
• The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
• Biography

37
Introduction (cont.)

• American Renaissance
• After 1820
• a flowering of literature
• James Fenimore
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Walt Whitman
• Some sought to develop a new, unique American
  literature

38
Introduction (cont.)

• The painters of the Hudson River School and
  Frederick Law Olmsted in his landscape design
  also offered distinctively American visions

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Roots of the American Renaissance

• 1820s and 1830s
• 2 things transformed the writing of fiction in
  the U.S.A.
• The transportation revolution
• Opened a nationwide market for books
• Spread of the romantic movement
• Romanticism stressed feelings rather than
  learning
• Suited fiction well

40
Roots of the American Renaissance (cont.)

• Women still were not admitted to most colleges
• Women could publish best-selling romantic novels
• Harriet Beecher Stowes Uncle Toms Cabin

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Cooper, Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller and Whitman

• James Fenimore Cooper
• The 1st of the new writers
• Introduced frontiersman Natty Bumppo
• Particularly American character
• Cooper's works

42
Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Wrote mostly essays
• Transcendentalism
• American brand of romanticism
• Emerson' works

43
Ralph Waldo Emerson (cont.)

• Emerson rejected the importance of education and
  reason in seeking the truth
• He contented that every individual is capable of
  knowing God, truth, and beauty by following his
  feelings
• Young, democratic America had nothing to learn
  from Europe
• American could produce its own great literature
  and art

44
Henry David Thoreau

• Emersons disciple
• Not only expressed his radical insights but lived
  them
• He went to jail rather than pay taxes to support
  what he considered the evil Mexican War
• He defended the right to defy unjust govt.
  policies in his essay Civil Disobedience (1849)

45
Henry David Thoreau (cont.)

• Thoreau's works
• he seems to have wanted most to use words to
  force his readers to rethink their own lives

46
Margaret Fuller

• Emerson discipline
• Combined transcendentalism and feminism
• Women in the Nineteenth Century (1845)

47
Walt Whitman

• Leaves of Grass
• Broke new ground in poetry
• lusty and bold
• Free verse
• Celebrated the American common man
• Whitman's works

48
Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe

• Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Scarlet Letter
• Hawthorne works

49
Herman Melville

• Moby Dick
• Melville's works

50
Edgar Allen Poe

• Poe's works
• Poems and short stories
• The Raven

51
Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe (cont.)

• They were more interesting in writing in
  analyzing moral dilemmas and probing
  psychological states
• Shared an underlying pessimism about the human
  condition
• Explored questions of human nature

52
Literature in the Marketplace

• Most 19th century U.S. authors hoped to gain
  recognition and a living from their writings.
• Poe sold short stories to popular magazines
• Emerson, Thoreau, Melville made by lecturing
  for lyceums
• Most lyceum speakers were men

53
Literature in the Marketplace (cont.)

• Women could and did earn excellent livings by
  turning out sentimental novels
• Susan Warners The Wide, Wide World
• Neither the writers nor most of the female
  readers who consumed the sentimental novels were
  active feminists
• Many of the works did illustrate the moral that
  women could overcome trials and improve their
  worlds.

54
American Landscape Painting

• American artists sought to depict their native
  land
• Especially in its primitive grandeur before
  pioneers deforested and plowed it

55
American Landscape Painting (cont.)

• George Catlin
• Catlin exhibit
• Portrayed Indians as noble savages doomed by
  the march of progress

56
American Landscape Painting (cont.)

• Thomas Cole
• Painted allegorical scenes on themes of
  importance to a young republic
• Cole's works

57
American Landscape Painting (cont.)

• Hudson River School
• Cole, Asher Durand, and Frederic Church
• Subordinated realism to emotional effect
• Reflected the romanticism of the period
• PBS Hudson River School

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American Landscape Painting (cont.)

• New Yorks Central Park
• Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Clavert
  Vaux
• Shared a romantic view of nature
• They aimed to refresh the souls of harried
  urbanites by creating an idealized pastoral
  landscape in the midst of the city
• Central Park History
• Central Park map

59
Conclusion

• Between 1840 and 1860, new technology changed the
  lives of Americans
• Advances in transportation and manufacturing
  helped the following
• improved the American diet
• made a greater variety of necessities and
  luxuries available at lower prices
• transformed leisure pursuits
• encouraged efforts to diffuse and popularize
  culture

60
Conclusion (cont.)

• Negative effects of technology
• Increased the gap between the lifestyles of the
  reasonably affluent and the poor
• Increased the gap between middle-class men and
  women
• Led to assaults on Americas beautiful natural
  environment

61
Conclusion (cont.)

• The despoliation troubled writers such as Thoreau
  and artists such as the painters of the Hudson
  River school
• Hawthornes and Melvilles fiction showed that
  material progress and political democracy did not
  liberate man from the dark places in his own soul