4.6 APUSH

In the early 19th century (first three decades), immigration had a minimal impact on American population growth.
By 1830, immigrants accounted for only 4% of the population.
A surge in immigration occurred due to:
- Reduced transportation costs during the Market Revolution.
- Increased economic opportunities in America.
- Deteriorating economic conditions in Europe.
By 1850, foreign-born Americans made up 10% of the population.
Between 1840 and 1850, over 1.5 million Europeans migrated to America.
In the 1850s, this number increased to 2.5 million.
By the 1850s, nearly half of New York City's residents were immigrants.
Immigration also increased in Midwestern cities like St. Louis, Chicago, and Milwaukee.
Few immigrants settled in the South due to limited economic opportunities resulting from slavery.
Most Irish immigrants, predominantly Catholic, remained in eastern cities and became part of the unskilled labor force.
German immigrants, often Catholic and from Southern Germany, arrived with some capital and generally moved to the Northwest, becoming farmers or small businessmen.

Urban growth was also driven by significant internal migration.
As agriculture in New England became less profitable, people moved to promising agricultural regions in the West and to eastern cities.
Many white yeoman farmers fled the South to Ohio to escape the economic limitations of slave society.

The growth of the immigrant population led to increased nativism, or fear/hatred of immigrants, in the mid-19th century.
Older-stock Americans argued that immigrants were racially inferior, stole jobs, and were politically dangerous.
Anti-Catholic attitudes grew alongside nativism due to the Catholic background of many Irish and German immigrants.
This contributed to the rise of the “Know-Nothing” or American political party, founded on nativist ideals, which peaked in the 1850s.

Alexis de Tocqueville observed the equality of conditions in America, noting that society seemed to have turned into one middle class.
While an oversimplification, the emerging middle class was the fastest-growing group in Antebellum America.
Solid middle-class homes lined city streets.
Urbanization led to slums with poverty and violence.
Middle-class women's acceptable domain was the household, leading to the Cult of Domesticity.
Many middle-class families in the North could afford to hire domestic servants, often immigrants.
The cast-iron stove, invented in the 1840s, replaced the fireplace for cooking in middle-class homes.
Some households acquired iceboxes to keep food fresh.
Middle-class homes grew larger, with parlor rooms and dining rooms becoming separate from kitchens, leading to the Victorian style.

The gap between the upper and lower classes widened.
Merchants and industrialists accumulated wealth, leading to a culture of wealth in cities.
The wealthy founded clubs and engaged in elaborate social rituals, building great mansions and acquiring lavish goods.
The number of laboring poor grew.
As machines replaced skilled labor, displaced workers joined the masses of unskilled wage earners.
The gap widened between factory owners and unskilled laborers, including free Black Americans, native-born women and children, and immigrants.

The Market Revolution presented opportunities for American women to work in factories.
The Lowell System in Massachusetts employed young women, mostly farmers’ daughters in their late teens and early 20s, in factories, earning them between $2.50$ and $3.25$ a week.
Women worked for several years, saved wages, and then returned home to marry and raise children.
They were housed in clean boarding houses under strict supervision with rules such as parental chaperones, bans on alcohol and gambling, and a 10 PM curfew.
Boarding houses and mill towns became social and educational centers for these women.
Women comprised 85% of the employees at Lowell Mills, but held 0% of the management roles.
By the 1830s and 1840s, as wages decreased and working conditions deteriorated, poor Irish immigrants replaced these laborers.

The growing separation between the workplace and the home due to industrialization increased the distinctions between the social roles of men and women, especially among the middle and upper classes.
As men increasingly took jobs outside the home, they were absent from home much of the time.
As a result, women took charge of the management of the household and children (domestic sphere).
This developing ideal in the 19th century was known as the cult of domesticity.
It held that women were to remain in the domestic sphere, focusing on entertaining, maintaining the home, raising children, and dressing stylishly.
Men were to navigate the more “dangerous” outer or public sphere of employment and politics.

Large numbers of international migrants moved to industrializing Northern cities, while many Americans moved west of the Appalachians, developing new communities along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
The growth of manufacturing led to increased prosperity for some, resulting in a larger middle class and a wealthy business elite, but also a large and growing population of laboring poor.
Increasing numbers of Americans, especially women and men working in factories, no longer relied on semi-subsistence agriculture, instead producing goods for distant markets.
Gender and family roles changed due to the Market Revolution, particularly with the growth of the cult of domesticity, emphasizing the separation of public and private spheres.