Gonzalez 1

Rachel Gonzalez
AP U.S. History
Mr. Cranston
20 March 2015
Chapters 12 and 13 Essay Assignment
Major themes of history evolve as time progresses. From the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, massive shifts occur. Regarding work, exchange, and technology; America in the World; politics and power; as well as ideas, beliefs, and culture, the evolution between the centuries have changed the significant themes throughout the United States.
Work, exchange, and technology play a huge role in Americans lives throughout each century. People rarely used money; services and products were paid for mostly through trades and barters. Home and work were not separated; they were the same place. Nobody stuck to a schedule; things were done as needed. Skills were acquired through apprenticeship. An apprenticeship lasted from three to seven years. Apprentices lived with their masters during this time period, while trading knowledge for labor.
However, women were not allowed to have such apprenticeships. Women gained knowledge of domestic skills through their mother, as it was assumed that the women would marry. Some women would work respectably as: servants, laundresses, seamstresses, cooks, and food vendors—or not respected as prostitutes. Men directed the lives of family members and apprentices: deciding occupations for sons, marriages for daughters, etc. Women (the wives) were responsible for: food, clothing, child rearing and

Gonzalez 2

tending to apprentices, yet still subject to man’s direction. Traveling by road was difficult as the roads themselves were poor. The federal government funded exclusively interstate projects. In 1808, the federal government crafted the national road. $7 million was spent on this project, but connected the east to the west. Waterborne travel was cheapest, but you could only move north to south, but east and west routes (Canals) needed to be built.
The Erie Canal was an idea proposed by DeWitt Clinton. Clinton envisioned a link between NUC and the Great Lakes via the Hudson River, as well as a 364 mile canal from
Albany all the way to Buffalo. The New York legislature was convinced by Clinton and some private interests gave $7 million. Thousands traveled west and shipping soared.
Labor was built by farmers for $8/month until wiped out by malaria; it was replaced by Irish who were paid $.50/day, although many died. Towns near the canal quickly grew into important shipping cities (Utica, Rochester, Buffalo). Robert Fulton demonstrated the feasibility of steamboats in 1807, leading to a shipping boom for the MS River as well as its tributaries. Cities that produced steamboats received major economic stimulation.
Railroads began in 1830 with Baltimore and Ohio railroad and grew to 31,000 miles in
1860. To move the locomotives had to be heavy and thus the railroad had to be iron not wood so this forced the iron industry into modernization. Heavy also meant a solid gravel roadbed and strong wooden ties. They had to standardize the width of the track, because without a standardized track width there would have to several train changes and when shipping things this was very difficult. Railroads started being put into real use in the
1850’s before this it was cheaper to use sea travel due to the problems with railroads.
This Transportation Revolution created a myriad of effects for the United States. The

Gonzalez 3

transportation revolution meant that people could access markets that were farther away.
When people saw that there was money to be made off of the new methods of transport investors started supporting the transportation revolution. Created a larger market which commercialization and industrialization depended upon. A negative consequence was that diseases spread just as fast as the people who carried them, which meant that epidemics of diseases like cholera broke out. The Market Revolution was composed of transportation, industrialization, plus commercialization. In the northern states, the business community was composed largely of merchants in seaboard cities. When international trade faced difficulties the nation’s wealthiest men turned to local investment.
Much of the capital came from banks, both those for international trade and those for local investments. Americans had an increasing willingness to take monetary risks. The
Putting-Out System was composed of the production of goods under the supervision of a merchant. System gave control of production to merchant capitalists. Technological developments lead to farmers permanently moving toward commercialization. Land was cheaper now, but most still either squatted or relied on credit to buy their land. New farming technology was created, including: the steel plow, seed drills, and the reaper.
Industrialization started in Britain and Americans thought that the best way to industrialize was to copy the Brits. Samuel Slater, Father of the American Factory System, brought
British textile technology to America. Slater established tenant farms and towns around his textile mills. He used primarily children in his factories (that was who Britain used). The
Brits tried to put Americans out of business by lowering their prices and so congress defended the American businesses by passing a protective tariff in 1816.

Gonzalez 4

Undoubtedly, America was a prominent figure in the world. Immigration increased began in the 1820s and increased dramatically after 1830. It rose from 20,000 in 1831 to
430,000 in the year 1854. Proportion of immigration in the population increased from
1.6% in 1820 to 11.2% in 1860. By 1860, almost half New York’s population was foreign born. Most immigrated from Germany or Ireland. The political unrest and poor economy in
Germany, as well as the potato famine in Ireland, played a major role in the massive immigration. Many of the changes in industry and transportation that accompanied the market revolution would have been impossible without immigrants. Young people who wished to own land, but knew they could not in Ireland came to the US. By 1790, Germans made up 1/3 of Pennsylvania’s population. The typical German immigrant was a small farmer of artisan dealing with the same problems of the market revolution.
America had tremendous power and strong willed politics. Traditional political leadership of wealthy elite was replaced by professional politicians. By the 1830s, the status of the artisans and independent craftsmen in the nation’s cities had changed. Open antagonism between workers and employers was new. Workers realized they had to depend on other workers, not their employers, for support. The Union Movement composed of urban workers protesting, taking on the form of party politics. The
Workingmen’s Party (founded in Philadelphia 1827) included “Workies” campaigning for
10 hour day and the preservation of the small artisanal shop. Jacksonian Democrats picked up on their themes. Neither of the major political parties vocalized for the workers.
Unsatisfied with the political parties, workers turned to labor organizations. Between 1833 and 1837 there was a wave of strikes in NY. Workers wanted higher wages and the strike

Gonzalez 5

was won because a bunch of other workers helped. The General Trades Union (GTU) was created in nine different trades. Forty strikes took place between the years 1833 and
1837. There was a formation of over fifty unions. The National Trades Union (NTU) was formed due to employers being upset with the Union. The GTU collapsed during the Panic of 1837. Workers were not able to create strong unions or political parties that favored their interests, but they managed to shape urban politics. As the population grew, so did the number of voters.

Old system of leadership included social unity of eighteenth century

cities; new machine system involved the class structure of nineteenth century cities.
Feelings of community were now cultivated politically. Legally, three years of residence were required before citizenship, but evidence of faster naturalization was evident. Irish typically were Democrats while Germans, who were less politically active, voted
Republican. Additionally, the Irish and Germans eliminated the Whig party. The Tammany
Society was a fraternal organization of artisans begun in the 1780s that evolved into a key organization of the new mass politics in New York City, affiliated with the Democrats. Tight system of political control began at the neighborhood level with ward committees and topped by a chairman of a citywide general committee. Machine politics were bosses, at the citywide level, bartered the loyalty and votes of their followers for positions on the city payroll for party members and community services for their neighborhood. The machines offered personal ties and loyalties to recent arrivals in big cities and help during hard times to the workers who voted for them. Critics said the big-city machines were corrupt; they often were. During social reform movements, middle class people tried to deal with the social changes in their community by joining groups dedicated to reforms. Printing

Gonzalez 6

presses greatly intensified the messages of the reforms. The Evangelical religion was fundamental to social reform. “Perfectionism” meant it was possible for all Christians to personally understand and live by God’s will and thereby become “as perfect as God.”
Members of evangelistic religions really expected to convert the world and create the perfect moral and religious community on earth. Furthermore, the new middle class set the agenda for reform movements. Reformers realized that large cities had to make large-scale provisions for social misfits and that institutional (i.e. insane asylums) rather than private efforts were needed. Evangelical reformers promoted dangerous hostility towards Catholics (Irish and German immigrants). Strong nativism infected American politics between 1840-1860. Regional and national reform organizations grew from local projects to dealing with drinking, prostitution, mental illness, and crime. Lyman Beecher was the General Union for Promoting the Observance of the Christian Union. Beecher was the leader of anti-Catholic and anti-immigration movement as well. Sabbatarianism involved the reform movement that aimed to prevent business on Sundays. Six-day workers were distraught about how their taverns were forced closed on Sundays. They were unable to stop the traffic of passenger and freight boats.
Women became involved in reform movements through the churches. Educational reformers believed children needed gentle nurturing and encouragement. Schooling for white children aged five to nineteen was common. The uniformity in curriculum and grading spread rapidly to other states. The spread of public education created the first real career opportunity for women. Moreover, the American Society For the Promotion of
Temperance was the largest reform organization of its time dedicated to ending the sale

Gonzalez 7

and consumption of alcoholic beverages. Temperance was a reform movement originating in the 1820s that sought to eliminate the consumption of alcohol. A social and political issue was how excessive drinking was a problem affecting the nation as a whole.
Women did not typically drink in public; drinking was a part of the man’s working life.
Spending money on alcohol impeded families economically. Drinking led to violence and crime, within families as well as the society. New industrial machinery was dangerous and workers needed to be sober to operate them. Employers eventually banned alcohol in the work setting. Whigs favored it, Democrats opposed it. Germans and Irish were hostile against the temperance movement. The Female Moral Reform Society involved an anti-prostitution group founded by evangelical women in New York in 1834. Evangelical believers believed that prostitutes needed to be saved and offered them salvation and shelter and real jobs.
Cultural life, separate ideologies, and different beliefs were prominent during this era. Women’s equality began to rise to the surface of society’s attention. The Seneca
Falls Convention was the first convention for women’s equality in legal rights, held in upstate New York in 1848. The Shakers were the followers of Mother Ann Lee, who preached a religion of strict celibacy and communal living. Opposite them was the Oneida community (John Humphrey Noyes) who practiced “complex marriage” of very high sexual activity. Only few “spiritually advanced” men could father children, who were raised by everyone. Chiefly, free African Americans, Quakers, and militant white reformers sought an end to slavery. By 1800, slavery had been either abolished or gradual emancipation was enacted in most of the Northern states. The American Colonial Society was an

Gonzalez 8

organization, founded in 1817 by anti-slavery reformers, that called the removal of freed blacks to Africa. Most Northerners were happy to send their free blacks to Africa because they were ignorant, degraded, miserable, mentally diseased, and broken-spirited. The
Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World was written by David Walker, a published insistence that “America is more our country, than it is the whites’—we have enriched it with our blood and tears.” Most free blacks rejected colonization and demanded the immediate end to slavery and equality among races. Best known group of antislavery reformers was headed by William Lloyd Garrison. He began to publish his own newspaper, entitled the
“Liberator.” Garrison demanded the immediate abolishment of slavery. Though he did not expect all slaves to be free at one time at that moment, but he wanted everyone to see the immorality of slavery. Theodore Weld joined Garrison in 1833 and formed the
American Antislavery Society. Religion played a crucial role in the development of new attitude in the country. The 2nd Great Awakening had supplanted the orderly and intellectual Puritan religion of early New England. The 2nd Great Awakening was most successful on the western frontier, but it reached a new audience by the 1820s; it gave hope to the workers whose lives were changed by the market revolution. Women were particularly religious and prayed and pleaded to the men they lived with. Middle class chose to have fewer children, because now they cost more (education, training, care, etc.).
They did so through methods of birth control although condoms were not used very often since most associated them with prostitution rather than family planning. Abortion began to be used as birth control in the 1830s (1 in 4 pregnancies ended in abortion), states found out about this and for some reason decided to ban it (20 states by 1860). Women were

Gonzalez 9

urged in books to tell their husbands to limit their sexuality for reasons of “morality.” This reduction in the amount of children people had is an example of how economic changes affect people personal lives. Continually, The individualistic competitiveness engendered by the market revolution caused members of the new middle class to place emphasis on sincerity and feeling. For guidance women turned to the sentimental novel; thus women became more literate. The novels quickly became more popular than the sermons and essays that would have been read before. Transcendentalism is a group of ideas in literature and philosophy that developed in the 1830s and '40s as a protest against the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard
University and the doctrine of the Unitarian church taught at Harvard Divinity School.
Among transcendentalists' core beliefs was the belief in an ideal spirituality that
"transcends" the physical and empirical and is realized only through the individual's intuition, rather than through the doctrines of established religions. The social order was ranked as follows: large landowners/plantation owners, merchants, artisans and Yeomen farmers, tenant farmers, followed by farm laborers. Social status and rank was distinguished by dress and manner; people of one class did not intermingle with the others.
Most mills opened in existing farm communities and hired entire families of people from nearby (thus why they are called family mills). The workforce was comprised of 50% children, 25% adult women, and then 25% adult men (who consequently were paid more).
Before factory work the work day ended at sunset, but Slater demanded that people worked at night by candle light. Workers slowly adjusted, but still considered the owners of the mill and the communities’ tyrants. Time became divided between work and leisure.

Gonzalez 10

Longer work day equated to less leisure time). Men started going to taverns after work and cities began to replace community wide celebrations with spectator sports.
The eighteenth and nineteenth century expressed these major things differently than in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, as they evolved. During the twentieth century, wages rose, fringe benefits grew, and working conditions improved. The
American workforce was much better off at the end of the century than it was at the beginning. The size of the Nation’s workforce increased roughly six fold during the 20th century. The composition, compensation, workplace, and very nature of work also changed during the century. Over the course of the 20th century, the composition of the labor force shifted from industries dominated by primary production occupations, such as farmers and foresters, to those dominated by professional, technical, and service workers.
Female participation in the labor market grew dramatically in the 20th century. In 1900, only
19 percent5 of women of working age participated in the labor force. Child labor was common at the turn of the century, and many families needed the income earned by their children to survive. The 1900 census counted 1.75 million individuals aged 10 to 15 who were gainful workers. At that time, these children comprised 6 percent of the labor force.
There were no national laws that governed child labor, and while some States enacted and enforced such laws, most did not. Continually, The new middle class sparked the rise of consumer culture well as more democratic forms of entertainment, or popular culture. as As printing became cheaper, newspaper prices were slashed. News baron Gordon
Bennett's Sun was the first penny newspaper. Department stores grew and spread in the second half of the nineteenth century, which helped foster a consumer culture spread and

Gonzalez 11

sustained by mass media. The "high" culture of the rich, and the "low" folk culture of the poor were synthesized into a new "middle" culture. The concomitant rise in technology and industrialization created a "democratic" entertainment for the mainstream. From the mid-1800s on, entertainment began to be mass-produced and literacy boomed. Books were considered expensive until paperbacks were invented. Popular authors at this time were Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper. There were also female authors, whose books often expressed anti-male, pro-domestic, and puritanical sentiments. Western and southwestern fiction expressed
Calvinist
attitudes, and often portrayed blacks and
Mexicans as inferior.
Native Americans
, however, were viewed ambivalently. Poetry was very popular, such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Voices of the Night. Poems from this period were primarily optimistic, encouraging progress. Theaters were another well-loved form of entertainment. Expensive tickets were 75 cents, while gallery seating was 12 and a half cents. At the Bowery in York
New
, tickets went for 10-30 cents. Theaters offered both high-class and pop culture entertainment, sometimes even melding the two into a kind of
"high pop. " The most popular play was Uncle Tom's Cabin. Other popular plays included those by Shakespeare, or based on the works of Charles Dickens. During the late nineteenth century period, Republicans favored a protective tariff and the Democrats a
The
tariff for revenue only, but even this traditional distinction was not rigidly kept. However, the
Republican tariff policy was the work of leaders of the new industrial capitalism. Where defenders of the Union had once envisioned a social order and an economic system reshaped by an activist state, now in the 1880s, the nation’s political leaders retreated to a more modest conception of state power. The dominant rhetoric celebrated the government

Gonzalez 12

that governed least. The presidency was treated more passively. As seen in President
Calvin Coolidge, in office from August 2nd, 1923 to March 4th, 1929, was nicknamed
“Silent Cal” for his quiet, steadfast, and frugal nature. He was a quiet and serious man.
Coolidge had a no-nonsense approach to the presidency and a somber nature, in contrast to other presidents. During the roaring 20s, citizens were in favor of this type of leadership.
Starting July 28th, 1914 and ending November 11th, 1918, World War One took place.
America did wish to get involved in other countries (Europe’s) affairs; we wished to be isolated. Yet, during this time, America began to get involved in the war and in the world, becoming a more prominent participant than in previous centuries. In regards to technology, new inventions took place. The assembly line, the airplane, the ballpoint pen, the band-aid, the bar code, and the cellular phone are examples of the myriad of technological changes and advancements.
Major themes in history evolved over time. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were separate and different from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In regards to work, exchange, and technology; ideas, beliefs, and culture; America in the
World; as well as politics and power, life evolved and shifted. Americans lives began to transition into an era filled with changes.