The Market Revolution

1800-1840

The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 was important because it

• A. established the role of the federal government in internal improvements.

• B. strengthened the ties between the eastern manufacturing and western agricultural regions.

• C. made the invention of the steamboat economically viable.

• D. spurred innovation in the railroad industry.

• E. was the last major canal project before the Civil War.

The completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 resulted in all of the following EXCEPT

• A. increased profitableness of farming in the Old Northwest.

• B. encouraging the emigration of European immigrants and New England farmers to the Old Northwest.

• C. forcing many New Englanders either to abandon their farms or to switch to dairy, fruit, and vegetable farming.

• D. a weakened political alliance between the farmers of the Old Northwest and the planters of the South.

• E. strengthening the dependency of farmers in the Old Northwest on the Mississippi River system for access to markets.

Expansion of U.S. Markets

• In the early 1800s Americans were-self sufficient

• By mid-century due to industrialization workers specialized

• Bought goods and services from others

• Benefit

– Could buy more of everything

Road Building

• Major problem for western settlers was transportation– Horseback, ox, or wagon– Without transportation, farmers

forced to self-sufficiency

• Transportation system would– Increase land values– Stimulate trade– Strengthen the economy.

• Major artery was North-South along the Mississippi

• The natural flow of trade however was East-West

• First trans-mountain road was the Lancaster Turnpike 1794 from Philadelphia to Lancaster.

Transportation and Government

• Most projects built as a private venture– Tolls collected– "Turnpike" comes from a barrier

placed across the road which had to be turned

• Heavy contributions from local, state, and federal government.– In other words, the United States is

not practicing laissez faire– The contributions are being given for

"internal improvements“– Funds were provided for risky but

socially desirable projects– The Old National Road– Comprehensive strategic federal

program not developed due to sectional rivalries disguised as states' rights

– Expenses on turnpikes still high

Steamboats and the West• Use of steamboats enables two-way

traffic on Western rivers

• Eastern steamboats

– John Fitch 1790

– John Stevens (improved steam boiler)

– Robert Fulton builds the Clermont

John Fitch - Design Sketch ca. 1787

• Western steamboats

– Strong currents required high pressure engines, which were therefore more dangerous

– Shallows and sandbars on the shifting rivers required a shallow draft, large superstructures, and paddle wheels rather than screws

– Rapid growth in traffic

• 1820: 60 boats

• 1830: 200 boats

– Freight costs dropped, especially up-river

– New Orleans becomes a port to rival New York and Liverpool

• The Northwest Territory begins to emerge from self-sufficient farming into the national (commercial) economy.

• Even non-steamboat traffic increased

– Rafts or keelboats would float goods down. The boat would be broken up for lumber and a steamboat taken back up-river.

Canal Boom

• Western rivers did not provide a direct link to the Eastern seaboard

• Overland traffic, even on turnpikes, was slow and costly

– 4 horses could pull 1.5 tons 18 miles/day on a turnpike

– 4 horses could pull 100 tons 24 miles / day on a canal.

The Erie Canal

• DeWitt Clinton proposes a state-built Erie Canal (1817) to run 363 miles from

• Buffalo to New York City.– Chief engineer was Benjamin

Wright– Associate engineer was James

Geddes– Canvass White designed the

locks– John B. Jervis rose to

prominence as a civil engineer.

• Canal completed in 1825– Freight costs from New York to

Buffalo dropped from 20¢/ mile to 2¢ /mile

Champlain Canal

• Completed an extensive river system to Great Lakes

– Quickly recovered its cost ($7 million)

– Profits came to $3 million / year

“Fifteen Miles on the Erie Canal“ (Low Bridge Song)

• Written by Thomas S. Allen (1905)

• The song memorializes the years from 1825 to 1880 when the mule barges made boomtowns out of Utica, Rome, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo, and transformed New York into the Empire State.

Growth of New York City

• Assisted by orderly and efficient business practices

• First regularly scheduled shipping line to England in 1818

• Auction law to prevent goods from being withdrawn (lowest price would get the goods)

• European goods destined for the Mississippi Valley entered at New York

• NYC achieves financial preeminence

• Other cities grow up along the Erie Canal

Canal Building

• Most projects were "mixed enterprises" combining government and private enterprise

– This is not laissez faire

– Western states too often over-extended themselves and built canals that did not pay

– There is nevertheless an orgy of canal building

The Railroad

• Open vast new territories of the interior to settlement

• Baltimore and Ohio (1828)

• South Carolina Canal and Railroad (1833) from Charlestown to Hamburg

• By 1860 30,000 miles

The Telegraph

• Samuel F.B. Morse invents the telegraph in 1837

• By the mid 1850s 50,000 mile of telegraph wire had been strung

Cyrus McCormick& the Mechanical Reaper

McCormick Reaper

• 1834 Revolutionized the harvesting grain

• More efficient and faster

• Factory in Chicago

Discussion Questions

• What impact did the telegraph have on business?

• What do the telegraph and the Internet have in common?

• What advantages did steam engines have over earlier forms of shipping?

• Why was water transport important?

• What advantages did railroads offer?

The Cotton Kingdom

• The textile mills of Great Britain and New England created an unprecedented demand for cotton.– Cotton prices rose, and seldom

fell below 15¢ / pound– That price tempted planters to

experiment.– Most of the world's cotton at

that time came from Egypt, India, and the East Indies.

• Sea Island cotton was grown on the islands of South Carolina and Georgia.– it was easy to separate the seeds

from the boll.– Upland cotton was impractical

since the seeds could not be separated easily.• 1 lb / day by hand, before

the cotton gin.

Eli Whitney and the Cotton Gin 1793• Invented the cotton gin at Mulberry

Grove, near Savannah• A hand powered gin (short for engine)

could process 50 lbs / day• Production jumps as more land could

be profitably planted in upland cotton– 1790 3,000 bales (at 500 lbs / bale)– 1793 10,000 bales– 1795 17,000 bales– 1801 100,000 bales– 1820 200,000 bales

• The high price (26¢-44¢ before 1800; 15¢-19¢ after 1800) created a boom economy

• Cotton is planted wherever the climate permits (200 days of sun, 24" of rain)– There is explosive growth in the

former Creek lands, the Black Belt region of Alabama and Mississippi with its rich alluvial soil.

Effect of Cotton Kingdom on the US economy

• Cotton became the most expansive force in the national economy

• It provided the bulk of the exports• Northern merchants benefit by providing

– Transportation– Insurance– Manufacturing the cloth– Selling the cloth and other manufactured goods to the

expanding South

• South– Western farmers provided hogs and corn

Effect of the Cotton Boom

• The demand for slave labor dramatically skyrocketed.

• The price of a slave doubled between 1795 and 1804.

• Slave smuggling became a problem (how much of a problem is hard to say; for obvious reasons, records are not easily obtained. Compared to the overall black population, the numbers appear to have been small)

• South Carolina reopened the slave trade in 1804 (until the federal government outlawed it)

• While the entry of new slaves from Africa or the Caribbean was not significant, the interstate trade in slaves was very significant– Laws restricting this trade were evaded– By 1820, the laws were changed and a systematic business

developed– The movement of slaves was generally from the older slave

holding regions of the Chesapeake and the Carolina coastal areas, where there were more slaves than could profitably be employed to the south and west--toward Alabama, and Mississippi where the new lands offered the opportunity for quick fortunes, if only the labor supply could be obtained

Economic Transformation

The US was on the brink of a major readjustment of the economy from

overwhelmingly agrarian to one with agriculture as well as cities and industry

Industry Changes Work

• In the early 1800s all clothing was manufactured by hand at home

• Changes in production split families, created new communities, and transformed the relationships between employers and employees

Rural Manufacturing

• Prior to 1820 only the spinning of cotton into thread was mechanized

• Manufacturing of textiles took place in a cottage industry; manufacturers provided materials for goods and services to be produced at home

• Cloth would then be taken to the manufacturer who paid the cottage worker for the item and provided new material and the process repeated

Rise of Industry• New technologies spur

growth– Samuel Slater introduced

textile machines– Eli Whitney introduced the

principal of interchangeable parts, which permitted assembly line type production in 1800

– John Fitch in 1790 introduced the first regularly scheduled steamboat route

– Oliver Evans in 1803 applied automation to flour milling

– Whitney's cotton gin was introduced in 1793• the steamboat, Slater's textile

mill and cotton gin together helped the West into the economy and helped create the Cotton Kingdom

Birth of the Factory• English advances

– John Kay invented the flying shuttle

– James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny

– Richard Arkwright perfected the water frame

• Machines spun cotton not only more cheaply but with better quality

• British law forbade the exportation of weaving machines

• British law also forbade a mechanic to emigrate

Samuel Slater

• Illegally left England in 1789• He had memorized the plans

of the machines with which he had worked

• Received financial support from Moses Brown

• First factory built in Pawtucket Rhode Island in 1793

• Slater's success spurred the growth of textile mills in New England.

• The War of 1812 stimulated this growth as the cheap British cloth could not enter

Non-Factory Production

• The dominant mode of production was a complex that went from household to handicraft to mill– Craftsmen were common– Except in textiles, factories with more than 50 workers did not exist– These craftsmen supplied a local market– The exception to this pattern was the manufacture of hats and shoes

• Towns like Danbury Connecticut shipped hats across the country, but made them from numerous small craftsmen working from their homes or shops

• Technical advances began having a cumulative effect– Pudding process in iron manufacturing– Commercial canning of sterilized foods in 1820– Improvements in water wheels

Corporations

• Mechanization requires capital investment

• Current opinion opposed corporations except in quasi-public projects such as roads, etc.

– The reason is that a corporation required a charter that was a special act the state legislature

– Corporations were therefore associated with monopoly and privilege

Francis Cabot Lowell at Waltham, Massachusetts

• Studied British textile mills, and smuggled the plans out of England.

• Lowell "combined machine production, large scale operation, efficient

• Management, and centralized marketing procedures. It concentrated on the mass production of a standardized product

• This combination of all the factors for efficient production and distribution was called the Lowell System.

Changes in Manufacturing

• Weaving factories and power looms in Waltham and Lowell, Massachusetts replaced the cottage industries

• Machinery slashed production and drastically reduced costs

• Tasks that had once been carried out by skilled artisans such as the manufacture of furniture and tools by master craftsmen who were assisted by journeyman and apprentices; could now be created by unskilled workers due to a production process that used interchangeable parts

Labor• Shortage of labor

– Most Americans would not work for wages if there was another way to make a living• Such attitudes tended to place a premium on the invention of labor saving machines

– The typical non-agricultural worker was self-employed or an apprentice (for a period of 5-7 years) or a journeyman

• As wholesalers began to take control of distribution, and as markets widen, pressure built to decrease costs– Cheap, efficient products were more important than finely finished ones– The value of the skilled craftsman tended to decline, and with that the

prestige of the worker

• Factory workers drawn from outside the usual labor market – Women, especially younger daughters from farms were hired– Children were hired. By 1820, half of the factory labor force was under 16– On a farm, all family members worked long hours from an early age.

Therefore, long hours for children did not shock contemporary society– Wages were very low, but these workers were not living exclusively off their

wages, or trying to support a family from them. Instead, they provided supplemental income for their families

The Lowell System

• Young, unmarried women were brought into the mill towns of Waltham and Lowell and housed in company boarding houses

• The women were strictly chaperoned, and social activities were organized– Curfews – Behavior and Church Attendance was closely monitored

• These women did not consider themselves part of permanent labor force– They would work for a few years, then return to the farm to marry– A 70 hour work week was not a hardship for a farmer's daughter.– The Waltham System received praise from every observer for the wages paid

(at $3.00 / week as a high wage, with half of that going for room and board), the health, food, housing, and workers' attitudes.

• There is a shift in investment from commerce to industry• Around the cities, there is a growth of commercial agriculture to feed them• By 1828 women made up nine-tenths of the workforce in the New England mills • 80 percent of them were younger than 30

Conditions at Lowell

• Work Schedule – Workday began at 5 A.M. – Eat dinner at 12:30 P.M. – Resume work at 1 P.M. – Work until 7:30 P.M.

• Heat, darkness, and poor ventilation contributed to discomfort and disease

• In the 1830s the pace of work increased – Between 1836 and 1850

owners tripled the number of spindles and looms, but hired only 50 percent more workers

• Factory rules were tightened – Imposed fines for being late

Factory Life

• By the late 1820s, conditions in the boarding houses where factory workers lived had begun to worsen. Six or eight women shared a crowded room, often squeezing three women into one bed. After working 13 hour or more hours a day, they were often fed only bread and gravy for supper.

Strikes at Lowell

• In 1834 the mill announced a 15 percent reduction in pay

• 800 women went on strike • Striking workers refused to return to work unless

wages were not reduced • The company threatened to recruit local women to

fill the striking women’s jobs • Under pressure from the local clergy and the press

the women returned to work at a reduced wage and the organizers of the strike were fired

• In 1836 mill workers stuck again when the mill tried to raise the boarding fee by 12.5 percent

• About 1,600 women participated • The company prevailed and the strike organizers were once

again fired • In the 1840s mill workers sought to use the political arena to

improve their plight• In 1845 Sarah Bagley founded the Lowell Female Reform

Association to petition the state legislature for a ten-hour workday

• The bill failed, but the association did help defeat a local legislator who opposed it

Workers Seek Better Conditions

• Conditions deteriorated for all workers in the 1830s

• Skilled artisans began to ally with unskilled workers

• Although, few workers were organized their were dozens of strikes

• Demands – Higher Wages

– Shorter Workday

• Strikes usually failed – Strikers replaced with unskilled workers

– Large increase in supply of workers due to swelling immigration

National Trades’ Union

• Journeymen formed trade unions specific to each trade

• Sought to standardize wages and working conditions

• In 1834 six trade unions united to form the National Trades’ Union

• Faced fierce opposition from employers and the courts

Court Backs Strikers

• In 1842 the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled in Commonwealth v. Hunt that workers had a right to act in their own self interest

• Despite this ruling few Americans joined labor unions

Immigration Increases

• European immigration rose dramatically 1830-1860

• Between 1845 and 1854 3 million immigrants came to America

• Mostly German and Irish • Avoided the South

– Lack of Economic Opportunities

– Southerners Hostile to Europeans

• Settled in the Upper Mississippi River and the Ohio River Valley

Sources of Immigration, 1820-40

Immigration

Push Factors► Factors that pushed immigrants

out of their native lands to America:

► Poverty-► Lack of Economic Opportunity► Political Repression - No freedom► Ethnic conflict-► War- conscription ► No jobs► No hope of a future► Famine/ starvation/drought

Pull Factors► Factors that pulled immigrants out

of their native lands to America:► Economic Opportunity► Jobs/ workers were needed► Land► $► A future of land ownership► Peace and stability► Freedom to make a better life

Second Wave

• Irish immigrants settled in cities along the eastern seaboard

• Between 1814 and 1844 about 1 million Irish immigrants came to America

• Immigration soared between 1845 and 1854 due to the Potato Famine

• Nativism• Irish immigrants faced bitter

prejudice – Roman Catholic – Poor

• Fearing that Catholics were trying to take over the country, Protestant mobs in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia rampaged through Irish neighborhoods

• Irish immigrants were seen as unfair competition by skilled workers – Work for low wages – Work in terrible conditions – Used by employers to break strikes

How did/do people react to immigrants coming to America?

► Whenever a new group enters into an established community tension is caused and a pattern of development can be seen.

► Examples:► When the Irish came in the

1840’s the established groups of British and Germans did not like the new Irish.

► Irish where different: ► Language- Irish► Religion Roman Catholic► Culture different from British► Lifestyles-

► They were looked down upon and discriminated against. See cartoons.

► Xenophobia- anti foreigner attitudes

► Nativism- The idea of blaming immigrants for problems.

► Established groups blamed the new groups for problems:

► Taking Jobs, Lazy -Famous Slogan: “No Irish Need Apply”

► People said they were responsible for: Crime

► Immorality- alcohol abuse► Catholics- not loyal to America► Dirty-► Inferior, Damaging to the United

States

Anti-Immigrant Americans

• Nativist= Native American PartyOr

• Know Nothing Party• 1850s strong • in the Northeast

• Disappear by 1860• Join New Republican • party

NINA = No Irish Need Apply

Sources of Immigration, 1840-60

Supreme Court Boosts National Power

Limiting State Powers • Fletcher v. Peck (1810)• 1810--(Yazoo Land Case) Could the Georgia legislature repeal a land

grant given under suspicious circumstances (which is a generous description of the situation)– Marshall rules that a land grant is a contract and therefore cannot be

voided regardless of the corruption involved in making the contract– First time a state law is voided because it conflicted with a provision

of the Constitution

• Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819)– New Hampshire attempted to alter– Dartmouth's charter to make it a public institution; Dartmouth

resisted and was represented by its most distinguished alumnus, Daniel Webster. Marshall ruled that charters are contracts and cannot be altered except by mutual consent.

– Charters must spell out restrictions and conditions in great detail.• This case protects all corporations from alterations in the way in which it does

business. All corporations exist by virtue of a charter granted by the state. If state's could unilaterally alter that charter at will, corporations would find it impossible to do business in any rational way.

Gibbons v. Ogden (1824)• Aaron Ogden purchased monopoly

steamboat ferry rights between New Jersey and New York form the state of New York. Thomas Gibbons set up a ferry in competition.

– Marshall ruled that a state may regulate business that begins and ends within its own borders, but not when the transaction crosses a state line

– He rules in favor of Gibbons

– "The act of Congress is supreme; and the law of the state must yield to it"

– The ruling generated sharp competition and broke monopolies

– The broad definition of interstate trade provided a tool for future regulation

Review Questions

• How would you characterize the nation’s manufacturing system before the early 1800s?

• How did mechanization change the nature of manufacturing in the United States?

• Why did factory owners tend to hire young women rather than men?

• What were the working conditions like at the Lower mills? • How did strikes for higher wages at the Lowell Mills end? • Why were women hired?• Why were the reaper and steel plow important? • For what reasons did many Irish immigrate to the United

States in the mid-1800s? How were they treated in America? • What was the National Traders’ Union, and what progress did

it make on behalf of the nation’s workers?

Writing a List of Demands

• Task

– Creating a list of demands for improving working and living conditions at the Lowell mill

– Discuss the conditions in the mills. Then agree and write a list of specific demands that can be presented to the mill owners. Write your list from the viewpoint of 1830s mill women. The tone should be respectful. The demands should refer to specific conditions in the mills and present specific, reasonable alternatives to improve those conditions. Be prepared to present your list to the class.

Agricultural Inventions

• John Deere invented the steel plow in 1837

• Cyrus McCormick invented the mechanical reaper

New Inventions

• Charles Goodyear invented vulcanized rubber in 1837

• Elias Howe invented the sowing machine in 1846

American Transcendentalism

A philosophical and literary movement that emphasized living a simple life, celebrated truth found in nature and

personal emotion and imagination, focused on self-reliance, freedom, and optimism

What relationship between humans and nature does Cole’s painting portray?

American Transcendentalism

• Played a vital part in revitalizing the American spirit

• Difficult to define Transcendentalism, which was at once a faith, a philosophy, and an ethical way of life

• Transcendentalists were eager experimenters

• No institution was sacrosanct: slavery; education; property rights; position of women; the relationship between labor and capital

"Borrowing heavily from German philosophers such as Kant, Hegel, and Schelling, and from the English writers Coleridge and Carlyle, the transcendentalists embraced a theory of the individual that rested on a distinction (first suggested by Kant) between what they called 'reason' and 'understanding'. Reason, as they defined it, was man's highest faculty; it was individual's innate capacity to grasp beauty and truth by giving full expression to the instincts and emotions. Understanding, by contrast, was the use of intellect in the narrow, artificial ways imposed by society; it involved the repression of instinct and the victory of externally imposed categories. Man's goal, therefore, should be to free himself from the confines of 'understanding' and to cultivate his 'reason'. Each individual should strive to 'transcend' the limits of the intellect and allow the emotions, the 'soul' to create an 'original relation to the universe'" (Current et al., American History, p. 354)

The Transcendental Club

• A Small group that met in 1836 in Concord

Ralph Waldo Emerson• Leader of the transcendental movement

• Unitarian minister, but gave up pulpit in 1832 to become a lecturer and writer

• Enormously influential

• "Nature" 1836 Man should look for self fulfillment with the natural world

• "Self-Reliance" 1841 "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."

• Political views: Both his individualism and his feeling that the state must be freed from the control of those who would use it to further their own economic interests led him to the Jeffersonian democratic philosophy of a state whose functions were limited, and he feared the tyranny of a strong government with power to coerce the

individual.

Henry David Thoreau • The sole purpose of Thoreau's

life was to find a basis for ideal living

• Walden (1854) on a two year stay at a cabin on Walden Pond outside of Concord--attacks artificial restraints on society and unthinking uniformity

• Civil Disobedience (1849) In 1846, he refused to pay a poll tax because he wished to protest the Mexican War, because he believed it advanced the cause of slavery– Urged people to follow their

conscious – Urged people to disobey laws

they believed were unjust – People should practice civil

disobedience

Margaret Fuller• Brilliant, enormously well-

educated• Editor of the very influential

"Dial" magazine, the propaganda arm of the Transcendentalists

• Indefatigable lecturer, involved in quite a number of reforms

• Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1844) a frontal attack on all kinds of sexual discrimination

• Left "Dial" to write literary criticism for the New York Tribune at the request of Horace Greeley

• Shipwrecked and drowned with her family in a storm

• Some historians claim her influence was out of proportion to her actual to either American thought or American letters

Theodore Parker• A preacher, and like Fuller, enormously well educated

• "Of all the Transcendentalists, he best understood the social and political trends of the day. He was a born fighter; brave; energetic; uncompromising yet intensely practical

• "He believed in the infinite perfection of God, the adequacy of man, and the sufficiency of natural religion. He identified God with nature and with man and believed that God was infinite and perfect love."

• Active in changing marriage and divorce laws, suffrage and property laws to give women equal rights; also prison reform, prevention of vice and crime, labor problems, the peace movement, education reforms, temperance, and abolition

Cultural Nationalism

Religious Movements:

Deism

Second “Great Awakening”

The Second Great Awakening

• Low levels of church attendance (1790)

• Democratized American Christianity

– 2,000 ministers (1776)

– 40,000 ministers (1845)

• Deism, a form of religious belief hostile to organized churches popular among Americans founders now waned

The Second “Great Awakening:”

Revivalist Meeting

Charles G. Finney

The ranges of tents, the fires, reflecting light…; the candles and lamps illuminating the encampment; hundreds moving to and fro…;the preaching, praying, singing, and shouting,… like the sound of many waters, was enough to swallow up all the powers of contemplation.

“soul-shaking” conversion

The “Benevolent Empire”

“Burned-Over” District

in Upstate New York

American Bible Society

Founded in 1816

Limits of Prosperity

Liberty and Prosperity

• John Jacob Astor – Immigrant from Germany– Exported furs to China and

imported silk and tea– Invested in real estate – Built Astor House – Died in 1848 the richest man

in America

• Market Revolution– Enriched bankers, merchants,

industrialists, and planters– Produced a new middle class – Created new opportunities

for farmers and for skilled crasftsmen

Race and Opportunity • Free Blacks excluded from

economic opportunities • Lived in the poorest, unhealthiest

sections of New York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati

• Barred from schools and other public facilities

• Created their own institutions – African Methodist Episcopal Church

founded by Richard Allen

• Hostility from white craftsmen• Only employed in menial positions • Whites did not wish to be served

by them • Rapid decline in economic status • Could not take advantage of the

opening of the West– Federal law banned them from

public lands– Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Oregon

prohibited them from entering

Cult of Domesticity

• Many economic opportunities closed to women as a result of the Market Revolution

• Women’s place was in the home

• Role to sustain love, friendship, and mutual obligation, and to provide men shelter from the competitive marketplace

• Virtue – sexual innocence, beauty, frailty, and dependence on men

Women and Work

• Low paying jobs

• Married women could not sign independent contracts

• Wages until after the civil war controlled by husbands

• Middle class women stayed home

The Early Labor Movement

• Widening gap between wealthy merchants and industrialists and impoverished factory workers, unskilled dockworkers and seamstresses – Massachusetts richest 5 percent controlled over

half the wealth

– Philadelphia top 1 percent controlled more wealth than everyone else combined

– Bankruptcy common those who couldn’t pay their debts ended up in prison

• Skilled workers fear of being reduced to the status of wage laborers

• Workingmen’s Parties– Mobilize lower class support

for political candidates who favor free public education, an end to imprisonment for debt, and a ten hour work day

• Unions spread and strikes become commonplace (1830s – Higher wages, free

homesteads, end of imprisonment of union leaders for conspiracy