Forging the National
Economy
Chapter 14
The Westward Movement
• Pioneer life – ill fed, ill clad, houses were
shanties, disease, loneliness and isolation
• Farming tobacco exhausted the land
• Farmers were constantly in search of virgin land
to grow tobacco
• Trappers traded hides of beaver and buffalo
with Natives
The March of Millions
• 1860 – 33 states in the Union
• The population was doubling every 25 years
• 43 cities boasted populations over 25,000 – New
York, New Orleans and Chicago
• Rapid population growth led to smelly slums,
feeble street lighting, inadequate policing,
impure water, foul sewage, rats and improper
garbage disposal
Immigration
• In the 1840s the number of immigrants from
Ireland and Germany tripled.
• Reasons – Europe was running out of room
(lack of available land), Irish Potato Famine, and
crop failures
• Influx of immigrants led to nativism - fear that
foreigners would outbreed, outvote, and
overwhelm the old native stock
Industrial Revolution
• 1750s – The British perfected a series of
machines for the mass production of textiles
• Industrial Revolution was the modern factory
system
• Samuel Slater “Father of the Modern Factory
System” in America memorized the plans for the
machinery and came to America
Notable Inventions of the
Nineteenth Century
• Eli Whitney inventor of the cotton gin and
interchangeable parts
• Sewing Machine invented by Elias Howe
perfected by Isaac Singer
• Samuel F.B. Morse – telegraph
Factories Exploit Workers
• Factory workers had long hours, low wages and
child labor
• 1840 – Martin Van Buren established the 10
hour day
• 1830s and 1840s dozens of strikes led to owners
hiring strikebreakers, scabs or hiring immigrants
• One victory for unions was Commonwealth vs.
Hunt ruled that labor unions were not illegal
conspiracies
Women and the Economy
• Young women often were employed by factories
• Allowed women greater independence
• Lowell Mills hired young New England women; girls
lived in a boarding house at the factory site
• Most working women were single
• Upon marriage they left the work force and worked in
the home aka “cult of domesticity”
• Families got smaller – women having fewer children or
domestic feminism
The West
• West became the bread basket
• Western farms produced food for southerners
growing cotton and eastern factory workers
• Inventions that made farming out west easier
• John Deere 1837 invents the steel plow
• Cyrus McCormick invents the mechanical
mower reaper in the 1830s
Transportation improves…
• 1790s The Lancaster Turnpike in Pennsylvania
sparked a 20 year building frenzy
• 1811 Cumberland Road began construction
(completed in 1858)
• Robert Fulton invents the first steamboat, the
Clermont made it up the Hudson from NYC to
Albany (150 miles) in 32 hours
• 1st railroad was invented in 1828, by 1860 the US
boasted 30,000 miles of track
Transportation
• 1858 the first cable was laid under the Atlantic
connecting the US to Europe
• The invention of the clipper ship in the 1840s
allow cargo to be delivered in record time
• 1860 – the Pony Express was designed to carry
mail
Market Revolution
• The market revolution transformed a
subsistence economy into a national network of
industry and commerce