The document summarizes the transformation of working life in the North between 1790-1860. It describes the economic changes as farms became less viable, more people moved to cities which increased inequality. Immigration rose dramatically. Politically, rights expanded for white men as the economy changed. Rural life remained difficult as most goods had to be locally produced or traded. Westward migration increased as the population grew. Transportation improvements connected more areas but also increased pressures on farming. New industries developed but working conditions were difficult for many, including artisans, outworkers, and factory workers. Workers organized and protested through unions, strikes and newspapers. Immigrants faced challenges as well, including the Irish and Germans fleeing famine and poverty. African Americans faced seg

1. The Transformation of
Working Life in the North,
1790-1860

2. Economic Change
• Expensive land + small farms = economic pressures in
North
• People left farms and:
• went West
• went to cities - gap between rich and poor grew
• Immigration rises, 1840-1860: Irish, Germans,
Scandinavians

3. Political Change
• Republican ideal:“independent” men fit to participate
in politics
• “independence” = land ownership
• but as economy changes, pressure to democratize -
rights expand for white men
• nativism limits rights for immigrants

4. A few stats: Rural life in
Martha Ballard’s world
• Need to buy: salt, sugar, molasses, coffee, tea, tobacco,
gunpowder, guns, knives, axes
• So: sell crops, homemade goods
• But: only 20% of goods left local communities (1820)
• 2/3 of clothing was homemade (1810-1820)
• It cost as much to ship goods 30 miles inland as it did
to ship it across the ocean from Europe

5. Westward Migration
• 1780s-1815: from North
to “Northwest”
• Conflict with Shawnees
and Wyandots
• OH white population:
1800: 45,000; 1820:
581,000
Tecumseh, Left
Tenskwatawa, Bottom

6. The West, 1790s
Native American Groups, 1790

7. The Louisiana Purchase, 1803
War of 1812

8. Transportation• Investment in transportation:
• 105 turnpike roads in MA
• Erie Canal in NY (Albany to
Buffalo)
• railroad construction; short
lines by 1840
• Impact: towns and country
more connected
• cheaper to buy goods
• pressure to farm for cash -
wealth of some, failure of
others

11. Farming at
Midcentury
• Center of farming
economy shifts to
the West
• Farming in New
England mostly
smaller, vegetables
and dairy for the
cities
• Urban economies
boom in
Northeast
The Emigrants by S.V. Helander (1839–1901): a young farmer
bids a sober farewell to friends and relatives.

12. Industrial
Revolution
• Eastern cities: large
population for
workforce
• Factories: examples?
• Gap between rich and
poor grows: example,
1830

13. Workers:
Artisans
• Traditional production:
master artisans, journeymen,
apprentices
• Changing economy leads to
larger shops, less skilled
work, e.g. shoemaking:
• First: masters only do most
difficult jobs; give more and
more work to journeymen
• Next: subdivide tasks into
smaller steps, give work to
less-skilled (lower-paid)
workers
Artisans in 1800s England

14. Workers:
Outworkers
• Usually women:
• first by rural
women who used
to make their own
clothes
• but wages fell: single
mothers in cities
take over
• Outworkers isolated:
difficult to organize

15. Workers: Manual
Laborers and Factory
Operatives
• Manual laborers: build
canals, stock warehouses,
load and unload ships
• Irregular pay; pay in credit;
seasonal work
• Whole families work to
scrape by
• Factory operatives: what
do we know?

16. The Workingmen’s Movement
• Workingmen’s political
parties and newspapers
founded
• This pushes Democrats to
address working people’s
concerns

17. Strikes and
Protest
• Citizenship redefined: now need
reasonable wages and working
conditions
• So: people form unions and strike
• Work hours and wages: e.g.
Pawtucket 1824
• NewYork:Tailoresses’ Society
(1831); General Trades Union
(1834); National Trades Union
(1834)

18. Judge Ogden Edwards to NewYork union members:
in this “favored land of law and liberty, the road to advancement is
open to all, and the journeymen by their skill and industry and moral
worth soon become flourishing master mechanics.” Unions are alien
to American society “and… mainly upheld by foreigners” (Quoted in
Clark, et al, p. 358-9)

19. The rich against the Poor! Judge Edwards, the tool of the Aristocracy,
against the People! Mechanics and Workingmen! A deadly blow has
been struck at your Liberty! The prize for which your fathers fought
has been robbed from you! The Freemen of the North are now on a
level with the Slaves of the South! with no other privileges than
laboring that drones may fatten on your lifeblood! Twenty of your
brethren have been found guilty for presuming to resist a reduction
of their wages! and Judge Edwards has charged an American jury, and
agreeably to that charge, they have established the precedent, that
workingmen have no right to regulate the price of labor!, or in other
words, the Rich are the only judges of the wants of the Poor Man!
NewYork Courier and Enquirer, June 8, 1836
“The Rich Against the Poor!”:A Strikers’ Handbill

20. Women and
Labor
• Sarah Monroe:“If it unfashionable for
men to bear oppression in silence,
why should it not also become
unfashionable with the women?”
• Women form unions, strike
• But male labor organizations
generally hostile to women’s efforts
because they think women’s work =
• insult to men
• brings down wages
• takes them out of proper
domestic sphere

21. Race and Ethnicity in
Northern Labor

22. Immigration
• 1840-1859: 4
million+
immigrants
• See maps and
charts for
more info!

25. Irish Immigrants
• Flee famine, 1845-1851:
• Potato blight
• Landlord squeeze
• Prejudice greets them in U.S.
• Men do unskilled and temporary
work
• Women as domestic or factory
workers
• But better chance of survival in
U.S. than back home; and
Catholic Church helps

26. People that cuts a great dash at home, when they come here they
think it strange for the humble class of people to get as much
respect as themselves. For when they come here it won’t do to say I
had such-and-such and was such-and-such back home. But strangers
here they must gain respect by their conduct and not by their
tongue.
Patrick Dunny (Irish immigrant) in a letter home

27. German
Immigrants
• Come for similar
reasons as in Ireland:
crop failures + abusive
landlords
• But more craft workers,
more radical
• 1/3 of Germans live in
NY, PA, and NJ by 1850s
but more move to
today’s upper Midwest
• Get better jobs than
Irish: farmers,
shopkeepers, skilled
tradesmen
• Face less discrimination

28. Scandinavian Immigrants
• Mostly go to IL,WI, IA, MN
Territory, KS
• 1/2 become farmers
• Others work in rural farm-
related industries

29. African Americans in
the Free-Labor North
• Segregation in housing, schools, public
facilities
• Exclusion from white trade unions
• White employers only hire for low-
paid jobs
• Church as space to organize resistance
• Prominent spokespersons: Frederick
Douglass, James Forten

30. In January 1800, Forten was among the first to sign a petition of
Philadelphia blacks to the House of Representatives protesting the
Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and the continuing slave trade.A resolution
condemning such petitions passed the House by a vote of 85 to one.
Forten wrote a letter of thanks to Representative George Thatcher
of Massachusetts, who cast the sole negative vote. In this letter,
published by John Parrish in 1806, Forten said:
Though our faces are black, yet we are men, and though many
amongst us cannot write because our rulers have thought proper to
keep us in ignorance, yet we have the feelings and passions of men. ...
Judge what must be our feelings to find ourselves treated as a species
of property, and leveled with the brute creation; and think how
anxious we must be to raise ourselves from this degrading state. ...
Humane people will wish our situation alleviated. Just people will
attempt the task, and powerful people ought to carry it into
execution.

31. Nativism and Ethnic Conflict
• Nativism = fear of immigrants
• Protestants vs. Catholics
• 1850:American Party a.k.a.
Know Nothings
• Sometimes violent clashes
between immigrants and
nativists; more violence
between Irish and blacks

32. Racist Portrayals of
the Irish

34. Middle-Class
Reform
• Driven mostly by middle-class
and wealthy women
• Wanted to spread middle-
class Protestant values:
• “Saved” poor children by
placing them with foster
families
• Got street girls trained as
domestic servants
• Blamed men for corrupting
young girls - prostitution
• But generally blamed poverty
on poor, fed into nativism

35. Radical Reform
• Focused on empowerment
and democratic access for
poor
• Advocated for schools and
land reform, created
temperance societies
• Some established utopian
societies: Shakers, Robert
Owen and New Harmony,
IN; Oneida, NY

37. Female Reform
• Strikes
• Quakers as core of women’s
rights movement
• Abolitionism as inspiring to
women’s activism
• Seneca Falls Convention, 1848.
See Declaration, online.

38. Abolitionism
• American Anti-Slavery Society
(AASS) as leading organization
• Conflict among abolitionists:
• Radicals (William Lloyd
Garrison,Abby Kelley,
Frederick Douglass)
• Moderates: walked out in
1840; some pursued
political solutions: Liberty
Party and Free-Soil Party

39. Review
• What’s the picture we have so far? How did the northern
economy change from 1790-1830s?
• Who were workers? What were the categories of workers?
• How did workers experience those changes? Did they
improve conditions for workers or worsen them? Explain?
• How much were workers able to control their
circumstances? What did they do to try to exercise more
control over their lives?
• What are some examples of reform efforts by or for
workers?