Chapter XV
America in the Middle of the 19th Century
In the middle of the 19th century, many new inventions changed the life of the people. One of the most important was the reaper in 1834. This was a machine pulled by horses that cut wheat and other grain. Before people cut wheat with a sickle. Now people could cut two or three times as much as before. So farms became larger and soon averaged 81 hectares per farm. Farmers began selling wheat to England. Some of the other important inventions were the sewing machine. Now people could sew clothing by machine. Howe invented the sewing machine in 1846. A man named Goodyear discovered in 1839 that if he put sulfur into very hot rubber, that it would be much stronger. He called this process vulcanizing. Soon, vulcanized rubber was used in more than 500 products.
Another important invention was the telegraph. Morse invented it in 1844. Morse could only send short and long signals. He called a short signal a dot and a long signal a dash. To send messages, he invented a code in which each letter of the alphabet is a series of dots and dashes.
During this period, rich people in England wanted to buy stock in American railroads. American railroads paid high dividends. More and more railroads were built. Many of them were built with British money. In 1834, the first national labor union was organized.
In Massachusetts, people wanted better schools in the 1830's and 1840's. The leader of this movement was Horace Mann. In Massachusetts, the school year was lengthened to six months, teachers' salaries were doubled, schools were built in every community, and a law was passed saying that all children had to attend school. Massachusetts passed many new laws. Before, people were sent to prison if they could not pay their debts. But Massachusetts ended this practice. Earlier, insane people were kept in prison, but Massachusetts began building hospitals for the mentally ill. Organizations against the drinking of alcohol appeared. During this period, many states opened state universities. Most of the people who supported these reforms were also members of the American Antislavery Society.
The women who were members of the American Antislavery Society began to think that if they were supporting freedom for the slaves, they should also work for freedom for themselves. In 1848, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, both of whom were activists in the antislavery movement, called a women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Three hundred women and forty men came. They formed an organization to get the right to vote for women. It took them 72 years, but in 1920, they finally got a constitutional amendment that gave women the right to vote.
In the middle of the 1840's, the potato blight appeared in Ireland. This was a disease of the potato plant that caused the leaves of the potato plant to curl up and dry out. During this period, the potato was the most important food in Ireland. Many of the potato plants died and the Irish people had no food. Famine appeared in Ireland. Ireland was a British colony, but England did not help Ireland. The Irish people were hungry and they had to leave their country. They came to America, but they were very poor. Most of them had no money and no education. They became citizens, but their own problems were so great that they were not interested in the problem of slavery. Most of them supported the Democratic Party because at that time the Democratic Party wanted to help poor white people. More than half of the population of Ireland left their country, so today there are many more Irish people in America than in Ireland.
In 1848, a revolution broke out in Germany. People wanted to put an end to feudalism and to bring democracy to Germany. However, the revolution was defeated. There was repression against the people who had been active in the revolution, so many thousands of Germans fled to America. By 1860, there were more than a million new German immigrants living in America. Today there are many more people of German ancestry in America than of any other. Many of the Germans had money, so they were able to buy farms or start businesses. Because they had fought for freedom in Germany, most of them were against slavery. Many of them became citizens and joined the Republican Party.
The population of America increased rapidly. More and more land was taken from the Indians so that this larger population would have a place to live. Many new states were formed.
Manufacturing grew rapidly. In 1840, the total value of manufactured goods was 483 million dollars. In 1850, it was over one billion and in 1860, it was almost two billion dollars.