) Commonwealth vs. Hunt-In 1842 in Massachusetts a court decision for industrial workers was won in which the supreme court of the state declared that unions were lawful organizations and that a strike was a lawful weapon.
2) "cult of domesticity"-brought both benefits and costs to middle-class women. It allowed them to live lives of greater material comfort than in the past, it placed higher value on their “female virtues” and on their roles as wife and mother.
3) Cyrus McCormick-invented the automatic reaper. The reaper enabled one worker to harvest as much wheat in a day as five could harvest using older methods. He patented this device in 1834, established a factory in Chicago in the heartland of the greenbelt in 1847. By 1860 more than 1000,000 reapers were in use on western farms.
4) Erie Canal-was the greatest construction project the United States had ever undertaken. It was a ditch forty feet wide and four feet deep with tow paths along the banks. It had difficult cuts and fills which were required to enable the canal to pass through hills and over valleys, stone aqueducts were necessary to carry it across streams and eighty-eight locks of heavy masonry with great wooden gates were needed to permit ascents and descents. It became an immediate financial success.
5) Factory System—most of the manufacturing occurred in households with people making things by hand or simple machines, technology improved.
Entrepreneurs begin to make use of new and larger machines driven by water power that allowed them to bring textile operations together under one roof. The factory system spread rapidly in the 1820’s.
6) Know-Nothings-a strict code of secrecy, which included the secret password, used in lodges across the country, “I know nothing”. Members of this movement became know as the Know Nothings. They turned their attention to party politics and after the election of 1852 they created a political organization they called American Party.
7) Lowell System -a system that was common in Massachusetts. It relied heavily, on young unmarried women. They worked several years in the factories, saved their money, and returned home to marry and raise children. Some married men in the factories and or town. They lived in clean boardinghouses and dormitories which the factory owners maintained for them. They were fed and carefully supervised. The factory owners placed great emphasis on maintaining a proper environment for their employees. They had strict curfews, required regular church attendance. The wages were generous. The workers were dismissed if there was a suspicion of immoral conduct
8) Samuel Morse- The telegraph burst into American life in 1844, Samuel successfully transmitted from Baltimore to Washington the news of James K. Polk’s nomination for the presidency. The wire system was low cost and made the Morse telegraph system seem the ideal answer to problems of long-distance communication. In 1860 more than 50,000 miles of wire connected most parts of the country and a year later 3,595 miles of wire, opened between new York and San Francisco. By then, nearly all the independent lines had joined in one organization, the Western Union Telegraph Company.
9) P.T. Barnum-He was a famous showman who opened the American Museum in New York in 1842-not a showcase for art or nature, but a great freak show populated by midgets, (Tom Thumb, the most famous) Siamese twins, magicians and ventriloquist. He was a genius in publicizing his ventures with garish posters and elaborate newspaper announcements. Later in 1870’s he opened a famous circus which he is best known for.
10) Sarah Bagley-she was a militant who created the Female Labor Reform Association and began demanding a ten-hour day (some women worked twelve-hour shifts) and for improvements in conditions in the mills. The association also made demands of management and turned to state government and asked for legislative investigation of conditions in the mills.
