Bellwork

1
Bellwork

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

2
American History

• Section 10, Unit 1
• The North and Middle West

3
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-1800s
• Describe the effects of the nativism resistance

4
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 peoples farms.

5
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.

6
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.

7
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.

8
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.

9
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.

10
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.

11
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.

12
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.

13
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.

14
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.

15
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.

16
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 1830s.

17
Changing Conditions

• By the 1830s, 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.

18
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.

19
Changing Conditions

• Even in prosperous times, workers barely got by.
• In New York Citys 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.

20
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.

21
Labor Fights Back

• As conditions worsened by the 1830s, 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.

22
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 1830s, workers led more than 100
  strikes, mostly to protest low wages or avoid
  wage reductions.

23
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.

24
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 its 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.

25
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.

26
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.

27
Question

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

28
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.

29
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 Irelands
  farmland by the 1600s, which forced most of the
  countrys primarily Roman Catholic population to
  buy/rent land from Protestants.

30
Irish Immigrants

• As Irelands 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.

31
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.

32
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.

33
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.

34
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?
35
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.

36
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.

37
German Immigrants

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

38
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.

39
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.

40
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.

41
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?
42
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.

43
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.

44
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
45
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.

46
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.

47
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.

48
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.

49
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.

50
The Middle West

• The Middle West, unlike the North, was very
  different in its 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.

51
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.

52
Questions

• If you have any questions, please ask now.

53
Next lesson

• In the next lesson we will review the Souths
  economy during the Market Revolution

54
Review

1. 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 Partys beliefs
   concerning immigrants and modern views on
   immigration in America?