 Stitching by hand
 Pants – 3 hrs.
 Dress – 7 hrs.
 Stitching by machine
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Pants – 38 mins.
Dress – 57 mins.
 700-800 machines per year (1851) to
21,000 (1859) to 174,000 (1872)

 Installment plans were adopted by Singer
 Most machines were sold to factories
 There was an upbeat response to technological change (God’s chosen instrument of progress)
 Yet there was a darker side
 Revolvers kill
 Sweatshops formed
 The urban decay

 Hailed as democratic, the benefits of technology drew praise from all sides
 Antebellum life was transformed
 Steam engine, cotton gin, reaper, sewing machine, telegraph
 Transportation and production increases
= lower commodity prices

 Westward expansion = opportunity for innovation and increase in production

John Deere’s steel-tipped plow busts up
Midwestern soil, opening it up to wheat
 Available timber builds homes and fences
 Wheat is the Midwestern cotton

 Agriculture innovations meet business enterprise
 Cyrus McCormick’s offers deferred payments and money back guarantees
 The Reaper harvested grain 7X faster with ½ the labor force
 He sells 80,000 in 1860; 250,000 during the Civil War

 Interesting
 Whitney (Conn. Yankee) helped the South
○ Solidified Cotton as King and made it more profitable
 McCormick (Virginia Confederate) helped the North
○ North was the main market for the wheat and freed up workers to join the army

 West was not conscientious of farming innovation yet
 The East was much better – in an effort to compete with the amount coming out of the West
 Plaster in Virginia
 Guano in southern cotton

 American System
 Interchangeable parts made American manufacture distinct
○ Replacement parts available
○ Enabled entrepreneurs to push inventions swiftly into mass production
 Examples: Smith and Wesson from Colt; telegraph lines put up quickly to tackle fire communication

 Americans were travelling first class
(those allowed to ride)
 Problems though
 No brakes or lights, problems in scheduling and delays, and different gauges gradually give way to better conditions

 Important: RR connects the East to the
Midwest
 Chicago replaces New Orleans as the interiors commercial hub
 They also propels the growth of small towns on their route
 Example: Illinois Central
 Roads going E-W trees; N-S numbers
 Land speculation along the lines was big time

 Important to understand about the RR
 Government financing contributes to private investment
 Railroad financing and investing helps make the NYSE and New
York what it becomes

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From 1800 to 1850 prices drop and worker’s real income increases 25%
More work available all year long
Women and children contribute more (they have to)
Commodity prices fall
Despite some of the problems in quality of life in the cities, most in rural areas did not own farmland, etc.
Mixed messages on which is better

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Patent offices flooded
Machine-made furniture provide taste; stoves provide heat; RR provide fresh food
The middle class may be a bit closer to the upper, but they both separate from the lower
Rowhouses and tenements vs. “Place” and
“Square”
Running water and burning coal
 Baths, sewage, and hogs

 Transportation increased spreading
 Public calls for municipal health boards
 Little confidence in conclusions of medical professionals
 Contagion vs. miasma theories
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Anesthesia helps improve image
Phrenology – example of invented science that improves simple
“understanding”

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1830 – newspapers were 4 pages long with a circulation of 1,000-2,000
Journalists were loyal to some clique
Steam-driven cylindrical presses change everything
(10X increase)
Newspaper now relied on circulation, not political subsidies
1833- the Penny Press
So common newsboys sell on the streets
Topics become human-interest stories with actual reporters
New York Tribune and New York Herald

 All classes went to the shows
 They were notoriously rowdy (prostitutes, etc.)
 Most of the shows were Shakespearean, dumbed down for understanding and maybe even altered a bit
 Short performances took up the interludes

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Plays much into the American sense of racial superiority by diminishing blacks
 Especially that of working-class whites
Blacks were docile, dancing around, stumbling over words, etc.
Songs such as “Dixie”, “Camptown Races”,
“Oh Susannah”, “Old Folks Home” and
“Carry Me Back to Old Virginny” started out as songs in minstrel shows.

 Recognized the opportunity to make money off of entertainment
 He was a hustler
 He bought an old museum, called it the American Museum, and created popular entertainment
 Main goal was to prick public curiosity

 Strong lecturer on the temperance circuit
 He helped break down barriers that divided the pastimes of husbands and wives

 What helped create this development?
 Transportation innovations created a national market for books
 The rise of philosophical movement known as
Romanticism
○ it challenged the classical view of “standards of beauty being universal”
○ Also, it focused on the emotionally charged
 The democratization of literature had begun

 Writing fiction was the new genre
 It did not require knowledge of Latin or
Greek
 The novel allowed for interpretation

 James Fenimore Cooper
 Created the distinctively American character,
Natty Bumppo (Leatherstocking)

 Ralph Waldo Emerson


Most influential spokesman for American
Literary Nationalism
Transcendentalism – our ideas of God and freedom are inborn; knowledge resembles sight- an instantaneous and direct perception of truth
 The American Scholar

 Walt Whitman
 Influenced by journalism and politics – kept him in touch with ordinary Americans
 Leaves of Grass (shattered poetic conventions)
 Henry David Thoreau
 Rep. of the younger Emersonians
 More action oriented
 Civil Disobedience; Walden