Chapter 9 Documents-APUSHistory
Eric Canal
In the days before the railroads, canals were seen as thebest way to move both people and goods into the interior.
Map of the Erie Canal
Cotton Mills/Lowell Mills
The Harbinger, Female Workers of Lowell (1836)
We have lately visited the cities of Lowell [Mass.] and Manchester [N.H.] and have had an opportunity of examining the factory system more closely than before. We had distrusted the accounts which we had heard from persons engaged in the labor reform now beginning to agitate New England. We could scarcely credit the statements made in relation to the exhausting nature of the labor in the mills, and to the manner in which the young women-the operatives-lived in their boardinghouses, six sleeping in a room, poorly ventilated.
We went through many of the mills, talked particularly to a large number of the operatives, and ate at their boardinghouses, on purpose to ascertain by personal inspection the facts of the case. We assure our readers that very little information is possessed, and no correct judgments formed, by the public at large, of our factory system, which is the first germ of the industrial or commercial feudalism that is to spread over our land. . . .
In Lowell live between seven and eight thousand young women, who are generally daughters of farmers of the different states of New England. Some of them are members of families that were rich in the generation before. . . .
The operatives work thirteen hours a day in the summer time, and from daylight to dark in the winter. At half past four in the morning the factory bell rings, and at five the girls must be in the mills. A clerk, placed as a watch, observes those who are a few minutes behind the time, and effectual means are taken to stimulate to punctuality. This is the morning commencement of the industrial discipline (should we not rather say industrial tyranny?) which is established in these associations of this moral and Christian community.
At seven the girls are allowed thirty minutes for breakfast, and at noon thirty minutes more for dinner, except during the first quarter of the year, when the time is extended to forty-five minutes. But within this time they must hurry to their boardinghouses and return to the factory, and that through the hot sun or the rain or the cold. A meal eaten under such circumstances must be quite unfavorable to digestion and health, as any medical man will inform us. After seven o'clock in the evening the factory bell sounds the close of the day's work.
Thus thirteen hours per day of close attention and monotonous labor are extracted from the young women in these manufactories. . . . So fatigued-we should say, exhausted and worn out, but we wish to speak of the system in the simplest language-are numbers of girls that they go to bed soon after their evening meal, and endeavor by a comparatively long sleep to resuscitate their weakened frames for the toil of the coming day.
When capital has got thirteen hours of labor daily out of a being, it can get nothing more. It would be a poor speculation in an industrial point of view to own the operative; for the trouble and expense of providing for times of sickness and old age would more than counterbalance the difference between the price of wages and the expenses of board and clothing. The far greater number of fortunes accumulated by the North in comparison with the South shows that hireling labor is more profitable for capital than slave labor.
Now let us examine the nature of the labor itself, and the conditions under which it is performed. Enter with us into the large rooms, when the looms are at work. The largest that we saw is in the Amoskeag Mills at Manchester. . . . The din and clatter of these five hundred looms, under full operation, struck us on first entering as something frightful and infernal, for it seemed such an atrocious violation of one of the faculties of the human soul, the sense of hearing. After a while we became somewhat used to it, and by speaking quite close to the ear of an operative and quite loud, we could hold a conversation and make the inquiries we wished.
The girls attended upon an average three looms; many attended four, but this requires a very active person, and the most unremitting care. However, a great many do it. Attention to two is as much as should be demanded of an operative. This gives us some idea of the application required during the thirteen hours of daily labor. The atmosphere of such a room cannot of course be pure; on the contrary, it is charged with cotton filaments and dust, which, we are told, are very injurious to the lungs.
On entering the room, although the day was warm, we remarked that the windows were down. We asked the reason, and a young woman answered very naively, and without seeming to be in the least aware that this privation of fresh air was anything else than perfectly natural, that "when the wind blew, the threads did not work well." After we had been in the room for fifteen or twenty minutes, we found ourselves, as did the persons who accompanied us, in quite a perspiration, produced by a certain moisture which we observed in the air, as well as by the heat. . . .
The young women sleep upon an average six in a room, three beds to a room. There is no privacy, no retirement, here. It is almost impossible to read or write alone, as the parlor is full and so many sleep in the same chamber. A young woman remarked to us that if she had a letter to write, she did it on the head of a bandbox, sitting on a trunk, as there was no space for a table.
So live and toil the young women of our country in the boardinghouses and manufactories which the rich an influential of our land have built for them.
Henry Clay, "Defense of the American System" (1832)
I have now to perform the more pleasing task of exhibiting an imperfect sketch of theexisting state of the unparalleled prosperity of the country. On a general survey, webehold cultivation extended, the arts flourishing, the face of the country improved; our
people fully and profitably employed, and the public countenance exhibiting tranquility,contentment and happiness. And if we descend into particulars, we have the agreeablecontemplation of a people out of debt, land rising slowly in value, but in a secure and
salutary degree; a ready though not extravagant market for all the surplus productions ofour industry; innumerable flocks and herds browsing and gamboling on ten thousand hillsand plains, covered with rich and verdant grasses; our cities expanded, and whole villagesspringing up, as it were, by enchantment; our exports and imports increased andincreasing; our tonnage, foreign and coastwise, swelling and fully occupied; the rivers ofour interior animated by the perpetual thunder and lightning of countless steam-boats; thecurrency sound and abundant; the public debt of two wars nearly redeemed; and, tocrown all, the public treasury overflowing, embarrassing Congress, not to find subjects oftaxation, but to select the objects which shall be liberated from the impost. If the term ofseven years were to be selected, of the greatest prosperity which this people have enjoyedsince the establishment of their present constitution, it would be exactly that period ofseven years which immediately followed the passage of the tariff of 1824.
This transformation of the condition of the country from gloom and distress to brightnessand prosperity, has been mainly the work of American legislation, fostering Americanindustry, instead of allowing it to be controlled by foreign legislation, cherishing foreign
industry. The foes of the American System, in 1824, with great boldness and confidence,predicted, 1st.The ruin of the public revenue, and the creation of a necessity to resort todirect taxation. The gentleman from South Carolina, (General Hayne,) I believe, thoughtthat the tariff of 1824 would operate a reduction of revenue to the large amount of eightmillions of dollars. 2d. The destruction of our navigation. 3d. The desolation ofcommercial cities. And 4th.The augmentation of the price of objects of consumption, andfurther decline in that of the articles of our exports. Every prediction which they madehas failed-utterly failed. Instead of the ruin of the public revenue, with which they thensought to deter us from the adoption of the American System, we are now threatened withits subversion, by the vast amount of the public revenue produced by that system. . . .
If the system of protection be founded on principles erroneous in theory, pernicious inpractice-above all if it be unconstitutional, as is alledged, it ought to be forthwithabolished, and not a vestage of it suffered to remain. But, before we sanction thissweeping denunciation, let us look a little at this system, its magnitude, its ramifications,its duration, and the high authorities which have sustained it. We shall see that its foeswill have accomplished comparatively nothing, after having achieved their present aim of
breaking down our iron-founderies, our woollen, cotton, and hemp manufactories, andour sugar plantations. The destruction of these would, undoubtedly, lead to the sacrifice of immense capital, the ruin of many thousands of our fellow citizens, and incalculable
loss to the whole community. But their prostration would not disfigure, nor producegreater effect upon the whole system of protection, in all its branches, than the destructionof the beautiful domes upon the capitol would occasion to the magnificent edifice whichthey surmount. Why, sir, there is scarcely an interest, scarcely a vocation in society,which is not embraced by the beneficence of this system.
It comprehends our coasting tonnage and trade, from which all foreign tonnage isabsolutely excluded.
It includes all our foreign tonnage, with the inconsiderable exception made by the treatiesof reciprocity with a few foreign powers.
It embraces our fisheries, and all our hardy and enterprising fishermen.
It extends to almost every mechanic and: to tanners, cordwainers, tailors, cabinet-makers,hatters, tinners, brass-workers, clock-makers, coach-makers, tallow-chandlers, tracemakers,rope-makers, cork-cutters, tobacconists, whip-makers, paper-makers, umbrellamakers,glass-blowers, stocking-weavers, butter-makers, saddle and harness-makers,cutlers, brush-makers, book-binders, dairy-men, milk-farmers, black-smiths, typefounders,musical instrument-makers, basket-makers, milliners, potters, chocolatemakers,
floor-cloth-makers, bonnet-makers, hair-cloth-makers, copper-smiths, pencilmakers,bellows-makers, pocket book-makers, card-makers, glue-makers, mustardmakers,lumber-sawyers, saw-makers, scale-beam-makers, scythe-makers, wood-sawmakers,
and many others. The mechanics enumerated, enjoy a measure of protectionadapted to their several conditions, varying from twenty to fifty per cent. The extent andimportance of some of these artizans may be estimated by a few particulars. The tanners,curriers, boot and shoe-makers, and other workers in hides, skins and leather, produce anultimate value per annum of forty millions of dollars; the manufacturers of hats and capsproduce an annual value of fifteen millions; the cabinet-makers twelve millions; themanufacturers of bonnets and hats for the female sex, lace, artificial flowers, combs, &c.seven millions; and the manufacturers of glass, five millions.
It extends to all lower Louisiana, the Delta of which might as well be submerged again inthe Gulf of Mexico, from which it has been a gradual conquest, as now to be deprived ofthe protecting duty upon is great staple.
It effects the cotton planter himself, and the tobacco planter, both of whom enjoyprotection.
The total amount of the capital vested in sheep, the land to sustain them, wool, woolen manufacturers, and woollen fabrics, and the subsistence of the various persons directly orindirectly employed in the growth and manufacture of the article of wool, is estimated at
one hundred and sixty-seven millions of dollars, and the number of persons at onehundred and fifty thousand.
The value of iron, considered as a raw material, and of its manufacturers, is estimated attwenty-six millions of dollars per annum. Cotton goods, exclusive of the capital vested inthe manufacture, and of the cost of the raw material, are believed to amount annually, toabout twenty millions of dollars.
These estimates have been carefully made, by practical men of undoubted character, whohave brought together and embodied their information. Anxious to avoid the charge ofexaggeration, they have sometimes placed their estimates below what was believed to be
the actual amount of these interests. With regard to the quantity of bar and other ironannually produced, it is derived from the known works themselves; and I know some inwestern States which they have omitted in their calculations. . . .
When gentlemen have succeeded in their design of an immediate or gradual destructionof the American System, what is their substitute? Free trade? Free trade! The call for freetrade is as unavailing as the cry of a spoiled child, in its nurse's arms, for the moon, or thestars that glitter in the firmament of heaven. It never has existed, it never will exist. Tradeimplies, at least two parties. To be free, it should be fair, equal and reciprocal. But if wethrow our ports wide open to the admission of foreign productions, free of all duty, whatports of any other foreign nation shall we find open to the free admission of our surplusproduce? We may break down all barriers to free trade on our part, but the work will notbe complete until foreign powers shall have removed theirs. There would be freedom onone side, and restrictions, prohibitions and exclusions on the other. The bolts, and thebars, and the chains of all other nations will remain undisturbed. It is, indeed, possible,that our industry and commerce would accommodate themselves to this unequal andunjust, state of things; for, such is the flexibility of our nature, that it bends itself to allcircumstances. The wretched prisoner incarcerated in a jail, after a long time becomesreconciled to his solitude, and regularly notches down the passing days of his
confinement.
Gentlemen deceive themselves. It is not free trade that they are recommending to ouracceptance. It is in effect, the British colonial system that we are invited to adopt; and, iftheir policy prevail, it will lead substantially to the re-colonization of these States, under
the commercial dominion of Great Britain. . . .
Gentlemen are greatly deceived as to the hold which this system has in the affections ofthe people of the United States. Theyrepresent that it is the policy of New England, andthat she is most benefitted by it. If there be any part of this Union which has been moststeady, most unanimous, and most determined in its support, it is Pennsylvania. Why isnot that powerful State attacked? Why pass her over, and aim the blow at New England?New England came reluctantly into the policy. In 1824 a majority of her delegation wasopposed to it. From the largest State of New England there was but a solitary vote infavor of the bill. That enterprising people can readily accommodate their industry to anypolicy, provided it be settled. They supposed this was fixed, and they submitted to the
decrees of government. And the progress of public opinion has kept pace with thedevelopments of the benefits of the system. Now, all New England, at least in this house(with the exception of one small still voice) is in favor of the system. In 1824 allMaryland was against it; now the majority is for it. Then, Louisiana, with one exception,was opposed to it; now, without any exception, she is in favor of it. The march of publicsentiment is to the South. Virginia will be the next convert; and in less than seven years,if there be no obstacles from political causes, or prejudices industriously instilled, themajority of eastern Virginia will be, as the majority of western Virginia now is, in favorof the American System. North Carolina will follow later, but not less certainly. EasternTennessee is now in favor of the system. And finally, its doctrines will pervade the wholeUnion, and the wonder will be, that they ever should have been opposed.
The Monroe Doctrine (1823)
…In the discussion to which this interest [Russia's on the northwest coast] has given rise, the occasion has been judged proper for asserting, as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for the future colonization by any European powers....
…The political system of the Allied Powers [Holy Alliance] is essentially different in this respect from that of America. This difference proceeds from that which exists in their prospective [monarchical] governments; and to the defense of our own, which has been achieved by the loss of so much blood and treasure, and matured by the wisdom of their most enlightened citizens, and under which we have enjoyed unexampled felicity, this whole nation is devoted. We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety…