A School History of the United States Part 43

[Ill.u.s.tration: %DISTRIBUTION OF THE POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES SEVENTH CENSUS, 1850%]

%405. Immigration to the United States since 1820.%--The people whose movements across our continent we have been following were chiefly natives of the United States. But we have reached the time when foreigners began to arrive by hundreds of thousands every year. From the close of the Revolution to 1820, it is thought not more than 250,000 of the Old World people came to us. But the hard times in Europe, which followed the disbanding of the great armies which had been fighting France and Napoleon from 1789 to 1815, started a general movement.

Beginning at 10,000, in 1820, more and more came every year till, in 1842, 100,000 people--men, women, and children--landed on our sh.o.r.e.

This was the greatest number that had ever come in one year. But it was surpa.s.sed in 1846, when the potato famine in Ireland, and again in 1853, when hard times in Germany, and another famine in Ireland, sent over two immense streams of emigrants. In 1854 no less than 428,000 persons came from the Old World; more than ever came again in one year till 1872.

%406. Modern Conveniences.%--When we compare the daily life of the people in 1850 with that of the men of 1825, the contrast is most striking. The cities had increased in number, grown in size, and greatly changed in appearance. The older ones seemed less like villages. Their streets were better paved and lighted. Omnibuses and street cars were becoming common. The constable and the night watch had given way to the police department. Gas and plumbing were in general use. The free school had become an American inst.i.tution, and many of the numberless inventions and discoveries which have done so much to increase our happiness, prosperity, and comfort, existed at least in a rude form.

Between 1840 and 1850 nearly 7000 miles of railroad were built, making a total mileage of 9000. This rapid spread of the railroad, when joined with the steamboats, then to be found on every river and lake within the settled area, made possible an inst.i.tution which to-day renders invaluable service.

%407. Express Companies.%--In 1839 a young man named W.F. Harnden began to carry packages, bundles, money, and small boxes between New York and Boston, and thus started the express business. At first he carried in a couple of carpet bags all the packages intrusted to him, and went by boat from New York to Stonington, Conn., and thence by rail to Boston. But his business grew so rapidly that in 1840 a rival express was started by P. B. Burke and Alvin Adams. Their route was from Boston to Springfield, Ma.s.s., and thence to New York. This was the foundation of the present Adams Express Company. Both companies were so well patronized that in 1841 service was extended to Philadelphia and Albany, and in 1844 to Baltimore and Washington. Their example was quickly followed by a host of imitators, and soon a dozen express companies were doing business between the great cities.

%408. Postage Stamps introduced.%--At that time (1840) three cents was the postage for a local letter which was not delivered by a carrier.

Indeed, there were no letter carriers, and this in large cities was such an inconvenience that private dispatch companies undertook to deliver letters about the city for two cents each; and to accommodate their customers they issued adhesive stamps, which, placed on the letters, insured their delivery. The loss of business to the government caused by these companies, and the general demand for quicker and cheaper mail service, forced Congress to revise the postal laws in 1845, when an attempt was made to introduce the use of postage stamps by the government. As the mails (in consequence of the growth of the country and the easy means of transportation) were becoming very heavy, the postmasters in the cities and important towns had already begun to have stamps printed at their own cost. Their purpose was to save time, for letter postage was frequently (but not always) prepaid. But instead of fixing a stamp on the envelope (there was no such thing in 1840), the writer sent the letter to the post office and paid the postage in money, whereupon the postmaster stamped the letter "Paid." This consumed the time of the postmaster and the letter writer. But when he could go once to the post office and prepay a hundred letters by buying a hundred stamps, any one of which affixed to a letter was evidence that its postage had been paid, any man who wanted to could save his time. These stamps the postmasters sold at a little more than the expense of printing. Thus the postmasters of New York and St. Louis charged one dollar for nine ten-cent or eighteen five-cent stamps. This increased the price of postage a trifle: but as the use of the stamps was optional, the burden fell on those willing to bear it, while the convenience was so great that the effort made to have the Post-office Department furnish the stamps and require the people to use them succeeded in 1847.

[Ill.u.s.tration: St. Louis postage stamp]

%409. Mechanical Improvements.%--No American need be told that his fellow-countrymen are the most ingenious people the world has ever known. But we do not always remember that it was during this period (1840-1860) that the marvelous inventive genius of the people of the United States began to show itself. Between the day when the patent office was established, in 1790, and 1840, the number of patents issued was 11,908; but after 1840 the stream poured forth increased in volume nearly every year. In 1855 there were 2012 issued and reissued; in 1856, 2506; in 1857, 2896; in 1858, 3695; and in 1860, 4778, raising the total number to 43,431. An examination of these inventions shows that they related to cotton gins and cotton presses; to reapers and mowers; to steam engines; to railroads; to looms; to cooking stoves; to sewing machines, printing presses, boot and shoe machines, rubber goods, floor cloths, and a hundred other things. Very many of them helped to increase the comfort of man and raise the standard of living. Three of them, however, have revolutionized the industrial and business world and been of inestimable good to mankind. They are the sewing machine, the reaper and the electric telegraph.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The first Howe sewing machine]

%410. The Sewing Machine.%--As far back as the year 1834, Walter Hunt made and sold a few sewing machines in New York. But the man to whose genius, perseverance, and unflinching zeal the world owes the sewing machine, is Elias Howe. His patent was obtained in 1846, and he then spent four years in poverty and distress trying to convince the world of the utility of his machine. By 1850 he succeeded not only in interesting the public, but in so arousing the mechanical world that seven rivals (Wheeler and Wilson, Grover and Baker, Wilc.o.x and Gibbs, and Singer) entered the field. To the combined efforts of them all, we owe one of the most useful inventions of the century. It has lessened the cost of every kind of clothing; of shoes and boots; of harness; of everything, in short, that can be sewed. It has given employment to millions of people, and has greatly added to the comfort of every household in the civilized world.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Wilson sewing machine of 1850]

%411. The Harvester.%--Much the same can be said of the McCormick reaper. It was invented and patented as early as 1831; but it was hard work to persuade the farmer to use it. Not a machine was sold till 1841. During 1841, 1842, 1843, such as were made in the little blacksmith shop near Steel's Tavern, Virginia, were disposed of with difficulty. Every effort to induce manufacturers to make the machine was a failure. Not till McCormick had gone on horseback among the farmers of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and secured written orders for his reapers, did he persuade a firm in Cincinnati to make them. In 1845, five hundred were manufactured; in 1850, three thousand. In 1851 McCormick placed one on exhibition at the World's Fair in London, and astonished the world with its performance. To-day two hundred thousand are turned out annually, and without them the great grain fields of the middle West and the far West would be impossible. The harvester has cheapened the cost of bread, and benefited the whole human race.

%412. The Telegraph.%--Think, again, what would be our condition if every telegraph line in the world were suddenly pulled down. Yet the telegraph, like the reaper and the sewing machine, was introduced slowly. Samuel F. B. Morse got his patent in 1837; and for seven years, helped by Alfred Vail, he struggled on against poverty. In 1842 he had but thirty-seven cents in the world. But perseverance conquers all things; and with thirty thousand dollars, granted by Congress, the first telegraph line in the world was built in 1844 from Baltimore to Washington. In 1845 New York and Philadelphia were connected; but as wires could not be made to work under water, the messages were received on the New Jersey side of the Hudson and carried to New York by boat. By 1856 the telegraph was in use in the most populous states. Some forty companies, but one of which paid dividends, competed for the business.

This was ruinous; and in 1856 a union of Western companies was formed and called the Western Union Telegraph Company. To-day it has 21,000 offices, sends each year some 58,000,000 messages, receives about $23,000,000, and does seven eighths of all the telegraph business in the United States.

%413. India Rubber.%--The same year (1844) which witnessed the introduction of the telegraph saw the perfection of Goodyear's secret for the vulcanization of India rubber. In 1820 the first pair of rubber shoes ever seen in the United States were exhibited in Boston. Two years later a ship from South America brought 500 pairs of rubber shoes. They were thick, heavy, and ill-shaped; but they sold so rapidly that more were imported, and in 1830 a cargo of raw gum was brought from South America for the purpose of making rubber goods. With this C. M. Chaffee went to work and succeeded in producing some pieces of cloth spread with rubber. Supposing the invention to be of great value, a number of factories[1] began to make rubber coats, caps, wagon curtains, of pure rubber without cloth. But to the horror of the companies the goods melted when hot weather came, and were sent back, emitting so dreadful an odor that they had to be buried. It was to overcome this and find some means of hardening the gum that Goodyear began his experiments and labored year after year against every sort of discouragement. Even when the secret of vulcanizing, as it is called, was discovered, five years pa.s.sed before he was able to conduct the process with absolute certainty. In 1844, after ten years of labor, he succeeded and gave to the world one of the most useful inventions of the nineteenth century.

[Footnote 1: At Roxbury, Boston, Framingham, Salem, Lynn, Chelsea, Troy, and Staten Island.]

%414. The Photograph; the Discovery of Anaesthesia.%--But there were other inventions and discoveries of almost as great or even greater value to mankind. In 1840 Dr. John W. Draper so perfected the daguerreotype that it could be used to take pictures of persons and landscapes. Till then it could be used only to make pictures of buildings and statuary.

The year 1846 is made yet more memorable by the discovery that whoever inhaled sulphuric ether would become insensible to pain. The glory of this discovery has been claimed for two men: Dr. Morton and Dr. Jackson.

Which one is ent.i.tled to it cannot be positively decided, though Dr.

Morton seems to have the better right to be considered the discoverer.

Before this, however, anaesthesia by nitrous oxide (laughing gas) had been discovered by Dr. Wells of Hartford, Conn., and by Dr. Long of Georgia.

%415. Communication with Europe; Steamships%.--Progress was not confined to affairs within our boundary. Communications with Europe were greatly advanced. The pa.s.sage of the steamship _Savannah_ across the Atlantic, partly by steam and partly by sail, in 1819, resulted in nothing practical. The wood used for fuel left little s.p.a.ce for freight.

But when better machinery reduced the time, and coal afforded a less bulky fuel, the pa.s.sage across the Atlantic by steam became possible, and in 1838 two vessels, the _Sirius_ and the _Great Western_, made the trip from Liverpool to New York by steam alone. No sails were used. This showed what could be done, and in 1839 Samuel Cunard began the great fleet of Atlantic greyhounds by founding the Cunard Line. Aided by the British government, he drove all compet.i.tors from the field, till Congress came to the aid of the Collins Line, whose steamers made the first trip from New York to Liverpool in 1850. The rivalry between these lines was intense, and each did its best to make short voyages. In 1851 the average time from Liverpool to New York was eleven days, eight hours, for the Collins Line, and eleven days, twenty-three hours, for the Cunard. This was considered astonishing; for Liverpool and New York were thus brought as near each other in point of time in 1851 as Boston and Philadelphia were in 1790.

%416. The Atlantic Cable%.--But something more astonishing yet was at hand. In 1854 Mr. Cyrus W. Field of New York was asked to aid in the construction of a submarine cable to join St. Johns with Cape Ray, Newfoundland. While considering the matter, he became convinced that if a cable could be laid across the Gulf of St. Lawrence, another could be laid across the Atlantic Ocean, and he formed the "New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company" for the purpose of doing so. The first attempt, made in 1857, and a second in 1858, ended in failure; but a third, in 1858, was successful, and a cable was laid from Valentia Bay in Ireland to Trinity Bay in Newfoundland, a distance of 1700 geographical miles. For three weeks all went well, and during this time 400 messages were sent; but on September 1, 1858, the cable ceased to work, and eight years pa.s.sed before another attempt was made to join the Old World and the New.

%417. Condition of the Workingman%.--Every cla.s.s of society was benefited by these improvements, but no man more so than those who depended on their daily wages for their daily bread. Though wages increased but little, they were more easily earned and brought richer returns. Improved means of transportation, cheaper methods of manufacture, enabled every laborer in 1860 to wear better clothes and eat better food than had been worn or consumed by his father in 1830.

New industries, new trades and occupations, new needs in the business world, afforded to his son and daughter opportunities for a livelihood unknown in his youth, while the free school system enabled them to fit themselves to use such opportunities without cost to him. When our country became independent, and for fifty years afterwards, a working day was from sunrise to sunset, with an hour for breakfast and another for dinner. After manufactures arose, and mills and factories gave employment to thousands of wage earners, fourteen, fifteen, and even sixteen hours of labor were counted a day. Protests were early made against this, and demands raised that a working day should be ten hours.

At last, late in the thirties, the ten hours system was adopted in Baltimore, and in 1840, by order of President Van Buren, was put in force at the navy yard in Washington and in "all public establishments"

under the Federal government. Thus established, the system spread slowly, till to-day it exists almost everywhere. Indeed, in many states, and in all departments of the Federal government, eight hours of work const.i.tute a day. Thus, by the aid of machinery, not only are articles, formerly expensive, made so cheaply that poor men can afford to use them, but the wage earners who operate the machinery can make these articles so quickly that they to-day earn higher wages for fewer hours of work than ever before in the history of the world. Not only did wages increase and the hours of labor grow shorter between 1840 and 1860, but the field of labor was enormously expanded. In 1810, when the first census of manufactures in the United States was taken, the value of goods manufactured was $173,000,000. In 1860 it was ten times as great, and gave employment to more than 1,000,000 men and women.

%418. Few Manufactures in the Slave States%.--From much of the benefit produced by this splendid series of inventions and discoveries, the people of the slave-owning states were shut out. They raised corn, tobacco, and cotton, and made some sugar; but in them there were very few mills or manufacturing establishments of any sort. While a great social and industrial revolution was going on in the free states, the people in the slave states remained in 1860 what they were in 1800. The stream of immigrants from Europe pa.s.sed the slave states by, carrying their skill, their thrift, their energy, into the Northwest. The resources of the slave states were boundless, but no free man would go in to develop them. The soil was fertile, but no free laborer could live on it and compete with slave labor, on which all agriculture, all industry, all prosperity, in the South depended. The two sections of the country at the end of the period 1840-1860 were thus more unlike than ever.

SUMMARY

1. Between 1830 and 1850 the rush of population into the West continued, but, instead of moving across the continent, most of the people settled in the states already in existence.

2. This was due to the effect of such improved means of communication as steamboats, railroads, ca.n.a.ls, etc.

3. As a consequence, but six new states were admitted to the Union in twenty-nine years, and one of them was annexed (Texas).

4. The period is also noticeable for the number of foreigners who came to our sh.o.r.es.

5. After 1849 the existence of gold in California brought so many people to the Pacific coast that California became a state in 1850.

6. As population grew denser, and transportation was facilitated by the expansion of railroads and steamboats and ca.n.a.ls, business opportunities were increased, and new markets were created.

7. Labor-saving and time-saving machines and appliances became more in demand than ever, and a long list of remarkable inventions and business aids appeared.

8. The South, owing to its own peculiar industrial and labor condition, was little benefited by all these improvements, and remained much the same as in 1800.

CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY, 1840-1860.

_The People_.

Immigration Causes.

Number of immigrants.

No. of people in 1840. 17,000,000 U. S. 1850. 23,000,000 1860. 31,000,000

Movement New States Arkansas, 1836. Slave.

Westward .. Michigan, 1837. Free.

Florida, 1845. Slave.

Texas, 1845. Slave.

Iowa, 1846. Free.

Wisconsin, 1848. Free.

California, 1850. Free.

Minnesota, 1858. Free.

Oregon, 1859. Free.

Territories New Mexico, 1850.

Utah, 1850.

Washington, 1853.

Kansas, 1854.

Nebraska, 1854.

_New Social and Business Conveniences._

Gas.