American Industrialization, Expansion, and Reform Notes

Final Exam and Course Administration Details

• Final Exam Logistics:

  • Time Allotted: The exam period is officially three hours long (until $01:00\,PM$). While a standard semester exam usually takes about $30$ minutes, the full three hours are provided to ensure a stress-free environment for time management.
  • Format: The exam includes multiple-choice questions, matching sections, and two essays. It is written in class on paper provided by the instructor.
  • Writing Requirements: The exam must be written in pen. Bullet points are acceptable for drafting answers; the instructor is not concerned with "pretty sentences" or perfect spelling for terms like "psychedelia."
  • Grading Weight: Thursday's assessments (the Unit Exam and the Cumulative Quiz) account for one-third (approximately $33.3\%$) of the total course grade.
  • Study Materials: Quizzes $2$, $3$, $4$, $5$, and $6$ serve as primary study tools. The cumulative portion of the final will cover "big picture" items from the entire semester, including the Paleo-Indian people, Archaic peoples, and Christopher Columbus, rather than minutiae.

• Mandatory Student Engagement Activities:

  • GE Post-Test: Students must complete a post-test through the History Department, which follows up on the initial pre-test at the start of the semester. Emails regarding this are sent from Patty Farlas.
  • Student Perception of Instruction (SPI): Students are encouraged to rate their professors highly during the current period of institutional change at UCF to assist with faculty retention.

• Essay Topic Suggestions (The Three Presidents):

  • The instructor identifies three potential presidents for the essay section: Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, or George Washington.
  • Other confirmed essay topics include Political Parties and the Doctrine of Nullification.

Material Culture and Period Clothing of the 1830s

• The Professor\'s Wardrobe Demonstration:
  • The instructor wore authentic period-style clothing from the $1830s$, partially sourced from the UCF Theatre Department.
  • Layers of Clothing:
    • Apron and Dress: Exterior layers worn by a "polite lady" of the decade.
    • Crinolines: Multiple under-layers used to provide structural shape to the skirt. The demonstration included one garment with two layers and a second with six distinct layers.
    • Chemise: A full slip worn closest to the skin, typically reaching just above the knees.
    • Stays and Corset: Structural undergarments designed to shape the torso, featuring laces in the back.
    • Stockings: Essential legwear of the period.
  • Materials and Climate:
    • In $1793$, garments, including socks and suits, were predominantly made of wool.
    • Cotton was an extremely expensive luxury material until the invention of the cotton gin.
    • Wool is notoriously slow to dry; getting caught in the rain in the $1830s$ meant wearing heavy, wet wool for extended periods.

Technological Innovation: Eli Whitney and the Cotton Gin

• The Inventor - Eli Whitney:

  • Originating from a conservative, religious family in Massachusetts, Whitney was the oldest child.
  • After his mother passed and his father remarried, the new stepmother wanted Whitney to move out. Whitney agreed on the condition that his father pay for his college education.
  • It took him nine years to prepare for college. In the late $1790s$, while traveling to Georgia from Massachusetts, he became ill in North Carolina and stayed with a Mrs. Green. It was at Mrs. Green\'s plantation that he observed the manual labor involved in cotton processing.

• The Invention (The Cotton "Engine" or Gin):

  • Development Date: $1793$.
  • The Problem: Traditional cotton contains numerous small seeds and husks inside the fluff, similar to the seeds in wild oranges or grapefruits. Manual extraction was incredibly slow and labor-intensive.
  • The Solution: The cotton gin allowed for the separation of "stuff from fluff" $10$ times faster than manual labor.
  • Economic Impact: A single person using a gin could clean $55\,lbs$ of cotton per day. By the early $19th$ century, cotton accounted for $80\%$ of all American exports.

Territorial Expansion and the Missouri Compromise

• The Louisiana Purchase:

  • Acquired under President Thomas Jefferson.
  • Jefferson struggled with the decision because he believed in strict constitutional interpretation, and the Constitution did not explicitly grant the president the right to buy land. He had to rely on "implied powers."
  • The land was sold remarkably cheap, sometimes as low as $3\,cents$ per acre, eventually settling at a government price of approximately $\$1.00$ to $\$1.25$ per acre.

• Population Growth and Statehood (Missouri):

  • By $1819$, the population of Missouri exceeded $60,000$, meeting the threshold for statehood applications.
  • Missouri\'s entrance as a slave state threatened the balance of the U.S. Senate.

• The Missouri Compromise ($1820$):

  • The Great Compromiser: Henry Clay, a "Western War Hawk," brokered the deal.
  • Status of the Senate ($1819$): Balanced evenly with $10$ free states and $10$ slave states ($20$ senators for each side).
  • Provisions of the Compromise:
    1. Missouri enters the Union as a slave state.
    2. Maine (formerly part of Massachusetts) enters as a free state, maintaining the Senate balance at $11$ to $11$.
    3. A new dividing line was established at the $36^{\circ} 30'$ latitude line (the southern border of Missouri). Slavery was prohibited north of this line in the remaining Louisiana Territory.

• The Three-Fifths Clause and Political Power:

  • The House of Representatives was already skewed toward the North because immigration populations were higher in Northern urban centers.
  • The Three-Fifths Clause dictated that enslaved people were counted only as three-fifths of a citizen for representation purposes, further diminishing Southern power in the House as the North\'s population doubled (reaching nearly $20,000,000$ while the South remained near $10,000,000$).

The First Industrial Revolution: Textiles and Manufacturing

• The Evolution of the Shoemaking Industry:

  • The Cordwainer: Originally, a shoemaker was known as a "cordwainer" (or sometimes a cobbler).
  • Pre-War of 1812: Master shoemakers Bartered with local merchants, receiving raw materials like leather in exchange for finished shoes.
  • Post-War of 1812 (Era of Good Feelings): Merchants evolved into "merchant capitalists." They sought to increase production without increasing costs.
  • The Outwork/Put-out System: Also known as domestic manufacturing or piecework. Merchants provided materials to households, where women and children would perform tasks like "shoe binding" (sewing the top to the bottom). Quality control was difficult because the merchant could not oversee the home workshop.
  • The Factory System: To gain control over quality and quantity, merchant capitalists consolidated workers into single locations (factories), leading to the Industrial Revolution.

• Pioneers of the Textile Industry:

  • Samuel Slater ($1790$): Invented the "Spinning Jenny," which could turn cotton fibers into thread $24$ times faster than a traditional spinning wheel.
  • The Slater Model: Employed entire immigrant families within the factory (men, women, and children).
  • Francis Cabot Lowell ($1811$/$1812$): After visiting England and observing their machinery, Lowell developed a mechanized "Power Loom."
  • The Lowell Model: Employed young, rural Northern women. They lived in company-owned boarding houses near the river-powered mills.

Life and Labor in Lowell, Massachusetts

• Industrial Growth: In $1823$, Lowell built his first factory. Within $15$ years, the town grew to $32$ factories owned by $10$ different corporations.
• Factory Environment:
  • Each factory was roughly the size of a modern sports venue (like the UCF Venue).
  • Machinery (the looms) was the size of a modern vending machine.
  • Pace of Work: Initially, a woman worked two machines (one in front, one behind). As the pace increased, she was required to manage four machines (two in front, two behind).
• Labor Regulations and Conditions:
  • Bells: Used to signal the start and end of shifts and meal breaks for a largely illiterate population.
  • Hours: Workers averaged $72$ hours per week ($6$ days a week, $12$-hour shifts).
  • Silence: No talking or laughing was permitted on the factory floor.
  • Wages: According to a primary source (Mary\'s letter to her father), a worker might earn gross pay of partially over $\$6.00$, but after paying for room and board (often $\$4.68$), the net profit was roughly $\$1.00$ per week.
• Primary Source Analysis: Mary\'s Letter:
  • Mary reports numerous industrial accidents: a girl breaking her neck on ice, a man killed by railroad cars, a man with broken ribs, and a man killed by a falling bale of cotton.
  • Despite the hazards and long hours ($05:00\,AM$ to $07:30\,PM$), Mary expresses satisfaction with the job compared to the endless cycle of farm labor.
• Strikes ($1834$ and $1836$):
  • In $1834$, $800$ women went on strike. In $1836$, $1,500$ women struck.
  • Both strikes failed because workers were easily replaced by a growing immigrant population desperate for work.

Immigration and the Rise of the Middle Class

• The "Old Immigrants" ($1840$–$1860$):

  • German Immigrants ($1.4\,million$): Mostly skilled craftsmen. They arrived with some savings and moved to the Midwest (Wisconsin, Missouri) to set up shops. They integrated easily into the emerging middle class.
  • Irish Immigrants ($1.7\,million$): Escaping the Potato Famine and oppressive British "Penal Laws." These laws involved "partible inheritance" (dividing land among all heirs to prevent large estates), prohibitions on owning military-grade horses, and restrictions on voting and stone church construction. The Irish arrived with no money and remained in Northern port cities (Boston, New York) as the industrial working class.

• Development of the Middle Class:

  • Primarily a Northern phenomenon due to the concentration of manufacturing and urbanization.
  • Defined by the "Separation of Spheres":
    • Male Sphere: Includes work outside the home, politics, and fraternal organizations (e.g., Masons, Knights).
    • Female Sphere: Centered on the home, children, and domestic staff. A woman staying at home was a marker of middle-class status.

• Legal Status of Women:

  • Femme Covert ("Female Covered"): A legal doctrine where a woman\'s legal identity was subsumed by her husband upon marriage. The husband owned her property, her wages, and their children. This persisted in various forms; for example, many married women could not have their own bank accounts until $1974$.
  • Femme Sole ("Female Alone"): A woman who remained unmarried to maintain her legal autonomy and property rights.
  • Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell: The first American female physician. She was admitted to Geneva Medical College as a joke by the student body but graduated as valedictorian.

Social Reforms and Utopian Movements

• Key Movements of the Era:

  • Second Great Awakening: A widespread Christian revival movement.
  • Temperance: A movement to abstain from alcohol, leading eventually to the $18th$ Amendment.
  • Abolitionism: The movement to end slavery.
  • Women\'s Suffrage: The fight for voting rights, culminating in the $19th$ Amendment in $1920$.

• Utopian and Communal Societies:

  • Induced by texts like Karl Marx\'s Communist Manifesto, which argued that the proletariat (workers) should seize property from the bourgeoisie to end the "despotic inroads" of private ownership.
  • American Communes:
    • Robert Owen: Founded a communal society in Indiana.
    • John Humphrey Noyes: Founded the Oneida Community in New York. This community practiced "complex marriage," where everyone was considered married to everyone else, and private property was abolished to achieve a utopian state.