Lesson 1: The Industrial Revolution and Life in the North Flashcards

Question

Where did the Industrial Revolution start? When? What were James Hargreaves' and Edmund Cartwright's contributions to the textile industry during this time?

Answer 1

The Industrial Revolution started in Britain in the mid-1700s. British inventors developed new machines that transformed the textile industry. Since the Middle Ages, workers had used spinning wheels to make thread. A spinning wheel, however, could spin only one thread at a time. In 1764, James Hargreaves developed the spinning jenny, a machine that could spin several threads at once. Other inventions speeded up the process of weaving thread into cloth. In the 1780s, Edmund Cartwright built a loom powered by water. It allowed a worker to produce a great deal more cloth in a day than was possible before. These technological innovations would change how goods were made not only in Britain, but also in America and around the world.

Answer 2

New inventions led to a new system of producing goods. Before the Industrial Revolution, most spinning and weaving took place in the home. Industrial production involved large machines, however, and these had to be housed in large mills near rivers. Water flowing downstream or over a waterfall turned a wheel that captured the power to run the machines. To set up and operate a spinning mill required large amounts of capital, or invested money. Capitalists supplied this money. A capitalist is a person who invests in a business in order to make a profit, or the difference between the cost of a good and its selling price. Capitalists built factories and hired workers to run the machines. The new factory system brought workers and machinery together in one place to produce goods. Factory workers earned daily or weekly wages. They had to work a set number of hours each day. In Britain, investors saw an opportunity. Because a single worker could produce much more with a machine than by hand, the cost of goods made by machine was much lower. As a result, more of those goods could be sold. If an investor built a factory that could produce cloth more cheaply, the investor could make a profit. Investors' desire to make a profit brought about rapid industrialization.

Answer 3

Lucy Larcom wrote about her experience as a girl working in the textile mills in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Answer 4

During the Industrial Revolution, the demand for factory-made products grew. In economics, demand is the readiness of people to purchase goods or services. The supply, or amount of goods available to sell, depended in part on the natural resources factories could get. To make products, factories needed raw materials, power, and laborers to run machinery. Some resources, such as cotton and iron, were in short supply. This scarcity, or limited supply, resulted in high prices. In response to high prices, farmers began to grow more cotton to supply spinning mills. Miners and others searched for new sources of iron and other materials used in machinery. The growing demand for products and for the supplies needed to make them led to a great change in standards of living.

Answer 5

Britain wanted to keep its technological innovations, or new technologies, secret. It did not want rival nations to copy the new machines. Therefore, the British Parliament passed a law forbidding anyone to take plans of the new machinery out of the country.

Answer 6

Samuel Slater soon proved that this law could not be enforced. Slater was a skilled mechanic in a British textile mill. He knew that his knowledge and skills would be in demand in the United States. In 1789, Slater boarded a ship bound for New York City. British officials searched the baggage of passengers sailing to the United States to make sure they were not carrying plans for machinery with them. Slater, however, did not need to carry any plans. Having worked in the British mills from an early age, Slater knew not only how to build the mills and machinery, but also how to operate them.

Answer 7

Slater soon visited Moses Brown, a Quaker capitalist who had a mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The mill was not doing well because its machinery constantly broke down. Slater set to work on improving the machinery. By 1793, in Pawtucket, he built what became the first successful textile mill in the United States that was powered by water. Slater's wife, Hannah Slater, contributed to the success of the mill. She discovered how to make thread stronger so that it would not snap on the spindles.

Answer 8

Slater's factory was a huge success. Before long, other American manufacturers began using his ideas.

Answer 9

American manufacturers also benefited from the pioneering work of American inventor Eli Whitney. Earlier, skilled workers made goods by hand. For example, gunsmiths spent days making the barrel, stock, and trigger for a single musket. Because the parts were handmade, each musket differed a bit from every other musket. If a part broke, a gunsmith had to make a new part to fit that particular gun. Whitney wanted to speed up the making of guns by having machines manufacture each part. All machine-made parts would be alike—for example, one trigger would be identical to another. Identical parts would fit together with all other parts, and gunsmiths would not have build each gun from scratch. Interchangeable parts would save time and money. Because the government bought many guns, Whitney went to Washington, D.C., to try to sell his idea. At first, officials laughed at his plan. Carefully, Whitney sorted parts for 10 muskets into separate piles. He then asked an official to choose one part from each pile. In minutes, the first musket was assembled. Whitney repeated the process until 10 muskets were complete. The idea of interchangeable parts spread rapidly. Inventors designed machines to produce interchangeable parts for clocks, locks, and many other goods. With such machines, small workshops grew into factories.

Answer 10

The War of 1812 provided a boost to American industries. The British blockade cut Americans off from their supply of foreign goods. As a result, they had to produce more goods themselves. American merchants and bankers sought new ways to meet the increased demand. To profit from the efficiency provided by manufacturing, they built more factories. As American investors took advantage of new technologies and built more factories, the American economy grew.

Answer 11

The first factories were built where physical features favored them. In Pennsylvania factories used charcoal, which could be made from abundant local timber, for power. These factories turned iron ore, which was mined and smelted locally, into machines, tools, and guns. In New England, textile factories were built alongside the hilly region's numerous falling streams, which provided power for mills. Investors modified the environment by building dams and canals to power the mills. These modifications spurred economic growth. Local wool and cotton from the South provided the raw materials for thread, yarn, and fabric. In Lynn, Massachusetts, businesses systematized shoemaking, starting shoe factories in the early 19th century. The large factories attracted new workers to the town, and the economy grew rapidly. New England became the first region in the United States to develop manufacturing on a wide scale.

Answer 12

In the United States, the Industrial Revolution took place in a period marked by the growth of a laissez-faire market economy. British restrictions on trade had been lifted. Hamilton's reforms had strengthened the banking system, and banks were able to lend more money. New access to credit, or borrowed money, allowed people to start mills and factories in cities and in rural places where swift streams provided power. These and other businesses operated, for the most part, without much government control. Nor did the government own factories or intervene heavily in the market. The government, however, protected contracts and property. People could buy, sell, or use property as they saw fit. Most Americans wanted the freedom to try new things. They believed in competition, which encouraged new inventions. In 1792, a group of 24 investors started the New York Stock Exchange. This stock market raised private capital to pay for new ventures. Success meant profits and brought new wealth to investors. Profits led to new investment and further economic growth. Low taxes allowed businesses to hold onto large amounts of capital and use it to expand and create even more wealth. The desire for profit and accumulated wealth sparked new ventures under new investors.

Answer 13

Investors looked to the market to decide where to invest or what businesses to start. In a market economy, goods are bought and sold, and wages are determined, by the market. If a product is in high demand and the supply is limited, the price will be high. Entrepreneurs started businesses to supply high-priced or high-demand products. They abandoned businesses where the demand and price were low. Workers faced the same market forces. People with skills that were in demand in factories could expect higher wages than those whose skills had less value in the market.

Answer 14

Slater and Whitney's innovations were just the first steps in America's Industrial Revolution. During the early 1800s, entire cities began to emerge around factories.

Answer 15

During the War of 1812, Francis Cabot Lowell, a Boston merchant, found a way to improve on British textile mills. In Britain, one factory spun thread and a second factory wove it into cloth. Why not, Lowell wondered, combine spinning and weaving under one roof? The new mill that he built in Waltham, Massachusetts, had all the machines needed to turn raw cotton into finished cloth. After Lowell's death, his partners took on a more ambitious project. They built an entire factory town and named it after him. In 1821, Lowell, Massachusetts, was a village of five farm families. By 1836, it boasted more than 10,000 people. Visitors to Lowell described it as a model community composed of “small wooden houses, painted white, with green blinds, very neat, very snug, very nicely carpeted.”

Answer 16

To work in their new mills, the company hired young women from nearby farms. The Lowell girls, as they came to be called, usually worked for a few years in the mills before returning home to marry. These young women, and women like them in other mill towns, made an important economic contribution to American society by providing labor for the Industrial Revolution. Most sent their wages home to their families. At first, parents hesitated to let their daughters work in the mills. To reassure parents, the company built boardinghouses, or buildings with many shared bedrooms and a kitchen that served meals. The company also made rules to protect the young women. Although factory work was often tedious, hard, and dangerous, many women valued the economic freedom they got from working in the mills. One worker wrote her sister Sarah back on a farm in New Hampshire: Since I have wrote you, another pay day has come around. I earned 14 dollars and a half … I like it well as ever and Sarah don't I feel independent of everyone! — from Lowell Offering: Writings by New England Mill Women In Lowell and elsewhere, mill owners hired mostly women and children. They did this because they could pay women and children half of what they would have had to pay men.

Answer 17

Organized child labor was common during the Industrial Revolution. Many American children worked in factories like the English factory shown here.

Answer 18

Boys and girls as young as seven worked in factories. Small children were especially useful in textile mills because they could squeeze around the large machines to change spindles. Today, most Americans look upon child labor as cruel. Yet in the 1800s, farm children also worked hard. Most people did not see much difference between children working in a factory or on a farm. Often, a child's wages were needed to help support the family.

Answer 19

Working hours in the mills were long—12 hours a day, 6 days a week. True, farmers also put in long hours. However, farmers worked shorter hours in winter. Mill workers, in contrast, worked nearly the same hours all year round. In the early 1800s, conditions in American mills were generally much better than in most factories in Europe. As industries grew, however, competition increased and employers took less interest in the welfare of their workers. This eventually led to worse working conditions.

Answer 20

The Industrial Revolution had a great impact on home life. As the factory system spread, more family members left the home to earn a living. These changes affected ideas about the role of women. In poorer families, women often had to go out to work. In wealthier families, husbands supported the family while wives stayed at home. For many husbands, having a wife who stayed at home became a sign of success.

Answer 21

In 1800, the vast majority of Americans lived in rural areas. During the Industrial Revolution, many people left farms for cities, attracted by the job opportunities to be found in factories.

Answer 22

As investors found that factories produced a profit, they invested those profits in building more factories, which attracted still more workers from farms. Older cities expanded rapidly, while new cities sprang up around factories. This movement of the population from rural areas to cities is called urbanization. Urbanization increased as industry grew. Urbanization was a steady but gradual process. In 1800, only 6 percent of the nation's population lived in urban areas. By 1850, the number had risen to 15 percent. Not until 1920 did more Americans live in cities than in rural areas. By today's standards, these early cities were small. A person could walk from one end of any American city to the other in as little as 30 minutes. Buildings were only a few stories tall. As the factory system spread, the nation's cities grew.

Answer 23

Growing cities had many problems. Many of these were negative consequences of human modification of the environment. Dirt and gravel streets turned into mud-holes when it rained. Cities had no sewers, and people threw garbage into the streets. A visitor to New York reported that “The streets are filthy, and the stranger is not a little surprised to meet the hogs walking about in them, for the purpose of devouring the vegetables and trash thrown into the gutter.” Untreated sewage and garbage often seeped into wells or flowed into streams and rivers, polluting the water. The contaminated water spread disease. Epidemics of influenza and cholera (KAHL ur uh) raged through cities, killing thousands.

Answer 24

At about the same time, coal became an important source of industrial and home heating power. The smoke and soot from burning coal seriously modified the environment, polluting the air and dirtying cities. It also caused health problems.

Answer 25

Cities had attractions besides work opportunities. Theaters, museums, and circuses created an air of excitement. In cities, people could shop in fine stores that sold the latest fashions from Europe. Some offered modern “ready-to-wear” clothing. While most women continued to sew their own clothes, many enjoyed visiting hat shops, china shops, shoe stores, and “fancy-goods” stores.

Answer 26

Northern industry grew steadily in the mid-1800s. Most northerners still lived on farms. However, more and more of the northern economy began to depend on manufacturing and trade. The 1800s brought a flood of new inventions in the North. “In Massachusetts and Connecticut,” a European visitor exclaimed, “there is not a laborer who has not invented a machine or a tool.” Americans of the period were a practical people. Americans, and especially northerners, looked to science for new and useful applications that could be put to work at once. They expected technology to bring economic development and to change the way people lived. Technology refers to ways of doing things, sometimes involving advanced scientific knowledge, or tools that make use of advanced knowledge. Innovation is coming up with new ways of making or doing things.

Answer 27

New technologies during the colonial period, such as Franklin's lightning rod, had brought limited and modest changes to daily life in America. By comparison, the new technologies of the 1800s transformed how Americans lived and worked.

Answer 28

In 1834, Philo Stewart developed a cast-iron stove small enough for use in an average kitchen. His factory-built wood-burning stove was a great success. About 90,000 were sold. The cast-iron stove was only one sign of the way northern factories were changing the lives of ordinary people.

Answer 29

Joseph Henry, a New Yorker, showed that electric current could be sent through a wire over long distances to ring a bell. His work paved the way for later inventions. Thomas Davenport, a blacksmith, invented a type of electric motor in 1834. Both inventions were adapted and marketed.

Answer 30

Competition among inventors brought about more innovation. In 1846, Elias Howe patented a sewing machine. A few years later, Isaac Singer improved on Howe's machine. Soon, clothing makers bought hundreds of the new sewing machines. Workers could now make dozens of shirts in the time it took a tailor to sew one by hand.

Answer 31

Some new inventions made work easier for farmers. In 1825, Jethro Wood began the manufacture of an iron plow with replaceable parts. John Deere improved on the idea when he invented a lightweight steel plow. Earlier plows made of heavy iron or wood had to be pulled by slow-moving oxen. A horse could pull a steel plow through a field more quickly. In 1847, Cyrus McCormick opened a factory in Chicago that produced mechanical reapers. The reaper was a horse-drawn machine that mowed wheat and other grains. McCormick's reaper could do the work of five people using hand tools. Other farm machines followed. There was a mechanical drill to plant grain, a threshing machine to beat grain from its husk, and a horse-drawn hay rake. These machines helped farmers raise more grain with fewer hands. As a result, thousands of farmworkers left the countryside. Some went west to start farms of their own. Others found jobs in new factories in northern cities.

Answer 32

Samuel F. B. Morse received a patent for a “talking wire,” or telegraph, in 1844. The telegraph was a device that sent electrical signals along a wire. It was a new technology that was made possible by scientific discoveries about electricity. The signals were based on a code of dots, dashes, and spaces. The dots stood for short tones, the dashes for long tones. Later, this system of dots and dashes became known as the Morse code. Congress gave Morse funds to run wire from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore. On May 24, 1844, Morse set up his telegraph in the Supreme Court chamber in Washington. As a crowd of onlookers watched, Morse tapped out a short message: “What hath God wrought!” A few seconds later, the operator in Baltimore tapped back the same message. The telegraph worked! Morse's invention was an instant success. Telegraph companies sprang up everywhere. Thousands of miles of wire soon stretched across the country. As a result of the telegraph, news could now travel long distances in a matter of minutes. The telegraph helped many businesses to thrive. Merchants and farmers could have quick access to information about supply, demand, and prices of goods in different areas of the country. For example, western farmers might learn of a wheat shortage in New York and ship their grain east to meet the demand. The availability of instant information about markets changed the way goods were marketed across the country and contributed to the development of a nationwide market.

Answer 33

The quick and widespread use of the telegraph connected the nation in a completely new way. Almost every American town eventually had a telegraph, providing nearly instant communication from coast to coast. By the late 1850s, a telegraph cable connected the United States with Europe. Just as the telegraph transformed national marketing, it also helped change the way goods were marketed internationally. Not only commerce and industry benefited from the telegraph, but ordinary people could communicate quickly with distant family and friends. The presence of telegraph offices in cities and towns was yet another of the many attractions that helped drive urbanization. The telegraph is an example of how scientific discoveries influenced daily life during the 1800s.

Answer 34

This telegraph key sent electrical impulses down a wire. Receivers at distant locations allowed operators to hear the impulses, which made up a message.

Answer 35

At first, railroads were used to provide transportation to canals. In time, however, the railroad became a more practical means of transportation than canals. The first railroads were built in the early 1800s. Horses or mules pulled cars along wooden rails covered with strips of iron. Then, in 1829, an English family developed a steam-powered locomotive engine to pull rail cars. The engine, called the Rocket, barreled along at 30 miles per hour.

Answer 36

Not all Americans welcomed the new railroads. Workers who moved freight on horse-drawn wagons feared that they would lose their jobs. People who had invested in canals worried that competition from the railroads might cause them to lose their investments. There were problems with the early railroads. They were not always safe or reliable. Soft roadbeds and weak bridges often led to accidents. Locomotives often broke down. Even when they worked, their smokestacks belched thick black smoke and hot embers. The embers sometimes burned holes in passengers' clothing or set nearby buildings on fire. Part of the problem was the way in which railroads were built. Often, instead of two tracks being laid—one for each direction—only one was set. Signals to control traffic on a single track did not yet exist. This increased the likelihood of a collision. Another problem with early railroads was that there was no standard gauge, or distance between the rails. As a result, different railroads often used different gauges. To transfer from one railroad line to another, people and goods had to be moved off one train and then loaded onto another.

Answer 37

Gradually, railroad builders overcame problems and removed obstacles. Engineers learned to build sturdier bridges and solid roadbeds. They replaced wooden rails with iron rails. Railroads developed signaling systems and agreed on a standard gauge. Such improvements made railroad travel safer and faster. By the 1850s, railroads crisscrossed the nation. The major lines were concentrated in the North and West. New York, Chicago, and Cincinnati became major rail centers. The South had much less track than the North. Railroads played an important role in urban growth. Cities with good rail connections attracted factories and other businesses. Railroads also made it possible for people to migrate more easily to new cities, increasing urban populations.

Answer 38

Railroads increased commerce within the United States. At the same time, trade also increased between the United States and other nations. At seaports in the Northeast, captains loaded their ships with cotton, fur, wheat, lumber, and tobacco. Then, they sailed to other parts of the world. Speed was the key to successful trade at sea. In 1845, an American named John Griffiths launched the Rainbow, the first of the clipper ships. These sleek vessels had tall masts and huge sails that caught every gust of wind. Their narrow hulls clipped swiftly through the water. These new technologies gave up cargo space for speed, which gave American merchants an advantage. In the 1840s, American clipper ships broke every speed record. One clipper ship sped from New York to Hong Kong in 81 days, flying past older ships that took many months to reach China. The speed of the clippers helped the United States win a large share of the world's sea trade in the 1840s and 1850s. The golden age of clipper ships was brief. In the 1850s, Britain launched the first oceangoing iron steamships. These sturdy vessels carried more cargo and traveled even faster than clippers.

Answer 39

In the late 1700s and early 1800s, scientists and inventors had found ways to harness heat, in the form of steam, to power machines. By the 1830s, factories began to use steam power instead of water power. Machines that were driven by steam were powerful and cheap to run. Also, factories that used steam power could be built almost anywhere, not just along the banks of swift-flowing rivers. As a result, American industry expanded rapidly.

Answer 40

At the same time, new machines made it possible to produce more goods at a lower cost. These more affordable goods attracted eager buyers. Families no longer had to make clothing and other goods in their homes. Instead, they could buy factory-made products.

Answer 41

Railroads allowed factory owners to transport large amounts of raw materials and finished goods cheaply and quickly. Also, as railroads stretched across the nation, they linked distant towns with cities and factories. These towns became new markets for factory goods. Railroads greatly increased the size of the American marketplace and fueled even more factory production. The growth of railroads also affected northern farming. Railroads brought cheap grain and other foods from the West to New England. New England farmers could not compete with this new source of cheap foods. Many left their farms to find new jobs in towns and cities as factory workers, store clerks, and sailors.

Answer 42

The early rise of industrialization in the United States under a market economy brought striking economic and social benefits. Mass producation lowered prices and raised Americans' purchasing power and standard of living. Wages increased for average workers. Food canned in factories improved peoples' year-round diets. The use of stoves improved meals and home heating. Factory-made clothing was cheaper than homemade. Great numbers of newspapers and magazines reported regularly about the new inventions and advertised the new products. Along with these changes, though, there were also challenges.

Answer 43

Factories of the 1840s and 1850s were very different from the mills of the early 1800s. As industrialization grew, life changed for workers. The factories were larger, and they used steam-powered machines. Laborers worked longer hours for lower wages. Usually, workers lived in dark, dingy houses in the shadow of the factory.

Answer 44

The emphasis on mass production changed the way workers felt about their jobs. Before the growth of factories, skilled workers, or artisans, were proud of the goods they made. The factory owner, however, was more interested in how much could be produced than in how well it was made. Workers could not be creative. Furthermore, unlike the artisan who could have his or her own business, the factory worker was not likely to rise to a management position.

Answer 45

As the need for workers increased, entire families labored in factories. In some cases, a family agreed to work for one year. If even one family member broke the contract, the entire family might be fired. The factory day began when a whistle sounded at 4 A.M. The entire family—father, mother, and children—headed off to work. Many factories, at that time, employed young children. The workday did not end until 7:30 P.M., when a final whistle sent the workers home.

Answer 46

Factory workers faced discomfort and danger. Few factories had windows or heating systems. In summer, the heat and humidity inside the factory were stifling. In winter, the extreme cold contributed to frequent sickness. Factory machines had no safety devices, and accidents were common. There were no laws regulating factory conditions, and injured workers often lost their jobs.

Answer 47

With the emphasis on mass production in the mid-1800s, workers like the ones in this rubber processing factory worked long hours for low wages.

Answer 48

Poor working conditions and low wages led workers to organize into groups to improve their conditions. The first workers to organize were artisans. In the 1820s and 1830s, artisans in each trade united to form trade unions. Trade unions were part of a labor reform movement. The concentration of workers in cities helped the formation of unions by allowing people working in the same industry for different companies to organize together. Their trade unions called for a shorter workday, higher wages, and better working conditions. Sometimes, unions went on strike to gain their demands. In a strike, union workers refuse to do their jobs until managers agree to address their concerns. In the early 1800s, strikes were illegal in many parts of the United States. Strikers faced fines or jail sentences. Employers often fired strike leaders. Employers were politically opposed to workers organizing.

Answer 49

Slowly, however, the labor reform movement made progress. In 1840, President Van Buren approved a ten-hour workday for government employees. Workers celebrated another victory in 1842 when a Massachusetts court declared that they had the right to strike. Artisans won better pay because factory owners needed their skills. Unskilled workers, however, were unable to bargain for better wages since their jobs required little or no training. Because these workers were easy to replace, employers did not listen to their demands. During the Industrial Revolution, a new awareness of class differences began to emerge. As a farming people, Americans had long viewed labor with deep respect. The changing conditions of factory labor and the gaps between the wages of unskilled workers, managers, and business owners led to a sense of people grouped in classes with shared interests. The interests of these classes were often different. By bringing together workers and managers in the same factories and cities, urbanization led to a rise in conflicts resulting from differences in social class.

Answer 50

The success of trade unions encouraged other workers to organize. Workers in New England textile mills were especially eager to protest cuts in wages and unfair work rules. Many of these workers were women. Women workers faced special problems. First, they had always earned less money than men did. Second, most union leaders did not want women in their ranks. Like many people at the time, they believed that women should not work outside the home. In fact, the goal of many unions was to raise men's wages so that their wives could leave their factory jobs. Despite these problems, women workers organized. They staged several strikes at Lowell, Massachusetts, in the 1830s. In the 1840s, Sarah Bagley organized the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association. The group petitioned the state legislature for a ten-hour workday.

Answer 51

By the late 1840s, many factory workers in the North were immigrants. An immigrant is a person who enters a new country in order to settle there. In the 1840s and 1850s, about 4 million immigrants arrived in the United States. They were attracted, in large part, by the opportunities for farming the land or working in the cities. Among them were immigrants from Britain who came to earn higher wages. There was a greater demand in the United States for skilled machinists, carpenters, and miners.

Answer 52

In the 1840s, a disease destroyed the potato crop in Ireland, which was the main food of the poor people. Other crops, such as wheat and oats, were not affected. At the time, Ireland was under British rule and most Irish crops were exported to England. When a large part of the potato crop was lost to disease, British landowners continued to ship the wheat and oats to England. There was little left for the Irish to eat. This situation caused a famine, or severe food shortage. Thousands of people died of starvation. Nearly as many died from disease. Between 1845 and 1860, over 1.5 million Irish fled to the United States seeking freedom from hunger and British rule.

Answer 53

Meanwhile, many Germans were also arriving in the United States. Harsh weather conditions from 1829 to 1830 resulted in severe food shortages in Germany. By 1832, more than 10,000 Germans were coming to the United States in a single year seeking fertile land to farm and a better life. In 1848, revolutions had broken out in several parts of Germany. The rebels fought for democratic reforms. When the revolts failed, thousands had to flee. Attracted by its democratic political system, many came to the United States. Many other German immigrants came simply to make a better life for themselves. Between 1848 and 1860, nearly one million Germans arrived in the United States.

Answer 54

Immigrants supplied much of the labor that helped the nation's economy grow. Although most of the Irish immigrants had been farmers, few had money to buy farmland. Many settled in the northern cities where low-paying factory jobs were available. Other Irish workers transformed the environment by helping to build many new canals and railroads. Irish women often worked as servants in private homes. Immigrants from Germany often had enough money to move west and buy good farmland. These immigrants transfomed the environment by turning prairie into farmland. Others were artisans and merchants. Cities of the Midwest such as St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Cincinnati had German grocers, butchers, and bakers. A small minority of the immigrants from Germany were Jewish. German Jews began immigrating to the United States in the 1820s. By the early 1860s, there were about 150 communities in the United States with substantial Jewish populations. Most Irish immigrants and many German immigrants were Catholic. By contrast, most Americans in the early 1800s were Protestant. Because many immigrants, especially from Ireland, were drawn to America's growing cities, the process of urbanization led to an increase in both ethnic and religious diversity.

Answer 55

Not everyone welcomed the flood of immigrants. One group of Americans, called nativists, wanted to preserve the country for native-born, white citizens. Using the slogan “Americans must rule America,” they called for laws to limit immigration. They also wanted to keep immigrants from voting until they had lived in the United States for 21 years. At the time, newcomers could vote after only 5 years in the country. Some nativists protested that newcomers “stole” jobs from native-born Americans because they worked for lower pay. Furthermore, when workers went out on strike, factory owners often hired immigrant workers to replace them. Many distrusted the different language, customs, and dress of the immigrants. Others blamed immigrants for the rise in crime in the growing cities. Still others mistrusted Irish newcomers because many of them were Catholics. Until the 1840s, the majority of immigrants from Europe had been Protestants. As American cities attracted Catholic immigrants, these cities became centers of conflicts over religion.

Answer 56

By the 1850s, hostility to immigrants was so strong that nativists formed a new political party. Members of the party were anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant. Many meetings and rituals of the party were kept secret. It was called the Know-Nothing party because members answered, “I know nothing,” when asked about the party. The message of the party did gain supporters, but its support was limited to the North, where most immigrants settled. In 1856, Millard Fillmore, the Know-Nothing candidate for President won 21 percent of the popular vote. Soon after, however, the party died out. In time, conflicts between ethnic groups were resolved as immigrants or their children became part of American society. Also, different ethnic groups became incorporated into the nation's political fabric as political parties, particularly the Democratic Party, began to speak for their interests.

Answer 57

During the nation's early years, slavery was legal in the North. By the early 1800s, however, all of the northern states had passed laws to bring an end to slavery. In some states, only the children of slaves gained freedom at first. Many did not completely abolish slavery until the mid-1800s. Still, thousands of free African Americans lived in the North, and their number grew steadily during the early 1800s. Free African Americans in the North faced discrimination. Discrimination is a policy or an attitude that denies equal rights to certain groups of people. As one writer pointed out, African Americans were denied “the ballot-box, the jury box, the halls of the legislature, the army, the public lands, the school, and the church.” Even skilled African Americans had trouble finding good jobs. One black woodworker was turned away by every furniture maker in Cincinnati. At last, a shop owner hired him. However, when he entered the shop, the other woodworkers dropped their tools. Either he must leave or they would, they declared. Similar experiences occurred throughout the North. In addition, African Americans faced competition from immigrants who settled in northern cities.

Answer 58

Despite such obstacles, free blacks in North had some choice over where they lived and worked, unlike enslaved blacks in the South. In fact, some northern African Americans achieved notable success in business. William Whipper grew wealthy as the owner of a lumberyard in Pennsylvania. He devoted much of his time and money to fighting slavery. Henry Boyd operated a profitable furniture company in Cincinnati. African Americans made strides in other areas as well. Henry Blair invented a corn planter and a cottonseed planter. In 1845, Macon Allen became the first African American licensed to practice law in the United States. After graduating from Bowdoin College in Maine, John Russwurm became one of the editors of Freedom's Journal, the first African American newspaper.