CHAPTER XX

NEW BUSINESS METHODS (1829-1860)

218. Land (1830-1860). From 1830 to 1860 was a good time for wide-awake men and women. The poor settler in the backwoods might live to see his farm worth thousands of dollars. The day laborer often came to be the owner of a great factory. The small dealer might become a wholesaler or a banker.

One of the reasons for this prosperity was the abundance of good farming land. It was the policy of the federal government to get rid of its lands as soon as possible. Therefore, bounty lands were given to soldiers of the various wars. Down to 1850 one section, or square mile, in every thirty-six was turned over to each new state for the support of schools; after that time each got two sections. Vast areas were given to states as funds for internal improvements, especially canals; this avoided the objection to Congress's voting money for the purpose.

It was felt that the settlers were rather neglected by this policy, and therefore a Preëmption Act was passed (1841) by which the first chance at the lands was reserved for them. Any head of a family, widow, single man, or single woman over twenty-one years of age, might once in a lifetime buy. 160 acres of land for $200. A strong and plucky man, with a few head of stock, and provisions to last during the first winter, could support himself and family almost from the start. This generous policy drew hundreds of thousands of natives and foreign immigrants into the West. In one year (1854) 430,000 foreigners landed at the ports of the United States, and they hastened the growth of new states like Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota.

219. Northern Farming (1830-1860). In every northern and western state the landowning farming families at this period made up the most numerous class. They kept horses for farm work, and cattle and hogs, which gave the families a milk and meat diet; and their surplus butter and cheese found a ready sale. Happy the boy or girl who could sit at a farmer's table and share in its chicken, turkey, beef, and ham; its potatoes, squashes, beets, and corn; its fruit, preserves, buckwheat cakes, mince pies, maple sirup, and cream gravy!

Along the northern belt from Vermont to Minnesota, wheat was a valuable crop; wheat and flour were easily carried to the seacoast for shipment, by canals, railroads, and the Mississippi River. Immense quantities of hay were put up for the winter. Tobacco was a good crop in Connecticut and Pennsylvania. Indian corn could be grown anywhere, but the corn belt of central Illinois and Iowa proved to be especially rich. The hogs, cattle, and horses enriched the land, and the surplus animals could always be turned into cash.

The northern farmers were happy and wide-awake. They had many churches, literary societies, Sunday schools, academies, books, and newspapers; they made journeys, and laid by money from year to year.

220. Southern Farming. The farming conditions of the border states (§ 196) were much like those of the North; but in the "cotton states" the whole system was different. Many food crops could be grown there to advantage, and immense quantities of corn were grown; but it was cheaper to raise cotton and buy part of the food from the outside. Quantities of salt meat and hog products were bought from the packing houses of the northwestern states.

Cotton had large value in small bulk. Banks and cotton buyers would advance money to the planter on the security of the next crop that he was going to raise; and when his crop was sold and his debts paid, he had little left for the next year and was soon in debt again. Hence many planters

could not get ahead, and the big planters who made the most money could buy out their poor neighbors, who migrated westward or were pushed back on poor land.

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221. Manufactures (1815-1860). From the beginning of the colonies, manufactured goods were made in the home (§§ 82, 178), or else in small workshops, such as the blacksmith's or tanner's, employing a few men. After 1830 most of the goods produced in the United States were made by bringing together workmen and workwomen into buildings and groups of buildings. There, aided by machines, they produced goods on a large scale, intended for sale far and wide (§ 183).

This so-called "factory system" of making textiles was not possible until the invention of machines, first for spinning thread and then for weaving cloth. Shortly before the Revolution, an Englishman named Hargreaves invented the "spin. ning jenny," which

would twist a thread out of flax, or wool, or cotton; then Arkwright invented a spinning frame, and Cartwright invented a power loom which would weave such threads into cloth. These machines were introduced into the United States about the year 1790.

Arkwright's first spinning frame. This machine made a harder and stronger thread than the "jenny"

Some factories ran by water power; but steam engines were improved (§ 177) and could be used to advantage near cheap wood or coal. Under the protective tariff of 1816 and later (§ 212) the American mills had an advantage; and after a lower tariff was passed in 1846, they were still able to hold their own and increase. By 1860 there were over 2000 cotton and woolen mills, turning out a product worth nearly 200 million dollars every year.

The building of machines and railroads caused every branch of iron manufacture to flourish. Raw iron is made in a furnace by mixing iron ore, limestone, and a fuel, which for a long time was charcoal. Air is forced in by a blower; the

intense heat causes the limestone to combine with the earthy part of the ore and leaves liquid iron, which is then run off into bars about two and a half feet long, called "pigs." About 1840 it was found that anthracite (hard coal) could be used instead of charcoal; and a little later the Clay Furnace in western Pennsylvania was the first to use bituminous or soft coal for the same purpose. The cheap fuel made pig iron cheap. Nowadays coke made from soft coal is the usual fuel. Cheap pig iron gave business to the rolling mills, which melted the pig iron and worked it over in a special furnace into lumps of tough wrought iron, which were then rolled into bars, or wire, or railroad iron. Cheap wrought iron helped the manufacture of hardware, tools, axes, nails, and the parts of looms and engines.

222. Mining. Soft coal had been mined in a small way in western Pennsylvania for many years, and now the magnificent hard coal deposits of eastern Pennsylvania came into use. Bituminous or soft coal was eventually found in almost every state south of the Great Lakes. Steam engines made it possible to keep deep mines free from water. Little tramways were built in the mines, and some of them ran a few miles to a canal or a railroad. Girls never worked in the mines, but many thousands of boys were employed.

In course of time rich iron mines were found near Lake Superior (about 1860), from which the ore could be shipped down to Lake Erie. To meet the ore, coal was brought to such towns as Erie and Cleveland, which grew into cities. Pittsburgh shared in this prosperity.

The first gold miners in the Rocky Mountains and in California worked "placers "; that is, the deposits of gold-bearing gravel in the beds of streams. They would build a flume of timber to carry the water around the bed of the stream, and then could dig down to the bed rock where they found gold dust and nuggets. Within five years after the discovery of gold, most of the placers were worked out, and miners began to follow back to find the quartz veins from which the gold had been washed. This required machinery and underground work. There were also hydraulic mines, in which great banks of earth contain

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ing a small amount of gold were washed out by streams of water under very high pressure.

223. Labor Unions (1830-1850). —A new class of foreign wage laborers built railroads and canals, and helped to operate factories and workshops. Local trades unions arose soon after the Revolution, but their members were looked upon by employers and courts almost as criminals. In 1827 the first association of mechanics' unions was formed. In 1834 came the first attempt to unite the trades unions of the cities into a national organization. The labor men began to put up candidates for office, and in some districts elected members of the legislature and Congressmen. They were much interested in free schools and cast their votes for those who would give better opportunities to their children. They objected to child labor, for four out of ten of the workers in cotton and woolen mills were under seventeen years of age.

An early purpose of the unions was to secure shorter hours of labor. Ten hours was fixed on as a sufficient day's work, and in 1840 President Van Buren made the rule that ten hours should be the working day in the government navy yards and arsenals. It was many years before that schedule was accepted by private employers, and many more years before working women and children were properly protected.

The country was full of work. The stage lines, steamboats, and railroads wanted clerks and bookkeepers; the mills and factories needed foremen and skilled mechanics. Sailors and fishermen numbered thousands. The domestic servants included many farmers' daughters who took employment as "hired girls" in the neighborhood. Intelligent young men and women in the country and villages found work as school teachers, though the pay was but a few dollars a week for a few months in the year.

224. Inventions. The making of machinery was aided by the liberal patent laws of the United States. Any person who thinks out a new device for doing things in a way which nobody has thought of before, can file a description of his invention in the Patent Office at Washington. If the experts in that office decide that he is the first discoverer of this method

HART'S SCH. HIST. — 16