America Past; D18; Industrial North Antebellum South

[Music] After traveling to the grimy industrial cities of Europe, Thomas Jefferson wrote that he hoped America would remain a nation of farmers whom he considered to be the most hardworking, virtuous, and democratic people on earth. His hopes were fulfilled in the South which remained agricultural before the Civil War.

But in the North, farms gave way to factories so that one visitor wrote, "America is one gigantic workshop and business is her very soul." How do you account for this change from United States being a nation of small farmers to being one great workshop? Well, to account for it you have to look at what is known as the Industrial Revolution. Well, what was that? Well, a revolution is a sudden change. The American Revolution was a sudden change from the government of Great Britain to the government of the new United States. The Industrial Revolution was a change from making things by hand to making them by machine. It may not seem all that sudden. It took place over a hundred year period throughout the Western world. But, historically speaking, a hundred years is sudden.

The Industrial Revolution began in England in the textiles industry, the making of cloth, in the middle of 18th century. (background industrial noises) By the end of that century and into the early 19th century you find it being established in the United States. Several people help do that. Certainly the best known was a young Englishman named Samuel Slater. Slater had been trained in the English textile business between the ages of 14 and about 20. He came over here and applied his managerial skills to the new technology. He built this factory in Pawtucket, Rhode Island and began manufacturing cotton thread. Later they would take all of the steps involved in producing cloth and put it into one building and when that happened you had the beginnings of a true factory system. Why were the textile mills located in New England? Why not some other section of the country?

Well, New England had what the factories wanted. It had water power. Most of the early mills were powered by water. It had a labor force. Plenty of people were getting tired of trying to scratch a living out of the rocky New England soil. They were more than willing to move into the cities and work in the factories. It had a large population that provided a market in which to sell goods. It had ports and shipping. Goods could be transported around the world and shipping could bring in cotton from the South. If you want to manufacture woolen textiles, that was even easier. New England raised sheep. Raw materials were close at hand. Now whenever you find a combination of these factors, you're apt to find industrialization taking place. Factories won't really develop Until you get the idea of interchangeable parts. Now, interchangeable

parts will be an improvement because you don't have to make replacements by hand. The old way was that if something broke - let's say one of these gears broke - you would have to get somebody to make another gear by hand. It was time consuming and it was expensive. You don't want that. You want to just to go in someplace. Find what the model is, buy a gear, and slap it in there. Interchangeable parts means parts can be interchanged, swapped around among similar models. The man who made this popular was Eli Whitney the same one who developed the cotton gin. He had a gun factory, and instead of making each gun by hand he began making barrels, triggers, other pieces and simply assembling them on a line with interchangeable parts. The Colt Revolver Company did that. This is a Colt revolver disassembled. Any of these pieces will fit in any other Colt revolver of a similar model. Or on an assembly line you can put these pieces together, and you have a pistol. And you also have mass production.

Wherever you had water power available, you were apt to find factories. Along Brandywine Creek near Wilmington, Delaware, for example, you had textile mills, flour mills, paper mills, but most importantly you had the Dupont Gun Powder Works. They manufactured black powder here from about 1804 to 1921. They could divert the Brandywine Creek into a mill race, run it along and use it to power their water wheels. Now, gunpowder was a rather dangerous thing to manufacture. They would build their rolling mills along the river with thick walls. And behind those thick walls was a flash wall so if it exploded, hopefully, this explosion would go out to an open area toward the river. And the retaining wall, the flash walls, would keep that from going back to where the workers were and where their houses were. Thanks to the efforts of The Hagley Museum this area's been preserved. You can see what a total manufacturing area looked like. They had all their operations here:

blazing mills, composition houses, rolling mills. All of that was done here. And that's typical of the factory system. All the steps located in one place. When you think of industrialization, you probably think of steel mills and iron works on a large scale. Actually those don't happen until after the Civil War. In the early 19th century you tended to have several small iron furnaces located in what were sometimes called iron plantations. Hopewell was one of those. They called it a plantation because it was organized somewhat like a southern plantation. You have the big house where the owner or his overseer or the manager lived. You would have workers' houses. They were owned by the company. You also have a situation where the company owns the store. "Money rarely changed hands here. Everything was taken care of 'on the book' as they said.

A worker would be credited with a certain amount of money for his labors, but he was not paid in cash. Instead, when he or his family needed something from the store, they would come up here, get what they needed, and this money would be deducted from his account. And this is the way it worked." (Moderator resumes) This is Hopewell village today. But to imagine what it was like in the 19th century, you would have to add the rumblings of the waterwheel, the roar of the furnace, the charcoal dust in the air, and a red glow lighting up the sky at night. In a small area like Hopewell, the life of the worker probably wasn't too bad. (music in background) It was in the larger cities where you got the crowded living conditions and the ?satanic? mills.

There was, for a brief period of time, an exception to that, and it was here in downtown Lowell, Massachusetts. The buildings still stand. Here, they had what was called the Lowell system, a system in which they employed young girls off of the farms. Girls who were willing to come in, work for a year or two, save up some money, and go back to the farm to live. The whole operation was run pretty much like a boarding school. The girls lived in dormitories. They had curfews. They were required to go to Sunday school. They had a literary society. Published their own newspaper, The Lowell Offering. It wasn't really ideal working conditions. Everything's relative. The owners wanted you to think it was. They circulated pictures of carefree maidens happily going off to a day of toil. (machinery noise in background) The toil was probably 12 to 13 hours long, and the toil took place in a

room where the windows weren't open because they wanted to keep hot moist air trapped inside for the textiles. The girls went on strike a couple of times as a matter of fact. Eventually the system was abandoned, and the girls of Lowell were replaced for the most part by immigrant labor. While factory owners were more than glad to have these immigrants as workers, American labor unions weren't. For one thing they felt that the immigrant was too apt to work long hours for low pay. Of course Labor was concerned with working shorter hours for higher pay and having better working conditions. Well, what were their conditions? Well, they varied a great deal, depending a lot on where you worked and who you worked for. Probably the textile mills were the worst. In the summer, you'd work from dawn to dusk. That could be 13 hours. Of course your lunch hour would be added on to that. But it wasn't unheard of for somebody

to work 15 hours a day. 72 hour weeks were about common, 12 hours a day, six days a week. For that a man might be paid $5 a week. A woman less, maybe $3. Children $1 or $2. But there was one factory that paid children under the age of 12, for 15 hours work, they paid them $.11 a day. Now when I say children, not only under the age of 12, but sometimes five and six years old. "It's not hard to get a six year old up at 4:30 in the morning to go to work. You simply take him out of bed and plunge him into ice water." (moderator resumes) Massachusetts did pass a law to protect children. It said that children under the age of 12 were not to work over 10 hours a day. There's an estimate that in 1832 one third of the workforce was under the age of 10. Now, how about working conditions? How safe were they? (manufacture noise in background)

Well, by modern standards, not very. Exposed gears, moving parts, well those were common. Today you would never get by with what they accepted as just being normal procedure. If you lost a hand, well that's too bad. But don't expect me to pay you. You can't work anymore. You see what we know as workman's compensation simply didn't exist. When you were healthy enough to work, you were paid. If not, you weren't paid. If you got too old, the same thing. There were no pensions. When you got old, you moved in with your children. That's the way it was done. "I treat my workers as I do my machines. I use them until they're worn out and discard them." (Moderator resumes) How would you like to work for somebody who had that attitude? And that leads to the psychological effects of the Industrial Revolution. Assume you were a skilled craftsman. Let's say you made guns. You had

your own shop. People admired your product and that gave you a great deal of personal satisfaction. After industrialization you had worked in a large gun factory. Customers would connect the product with the company not with you. As a result, many craftsmen suffered a loss of pride in their work. The key thing to remember about the Industrial Revolution, is that by mid century maybe 80 percent of Northerners were still farmers. Twenty percent of them were living in cities and working in factories. That was not true of the West. And it was not true of the South. It was only true of the North. It's one of the great changes in American history. When America was on its way to becoming one gigantic workshop with business its very soul. In the South life went on at a different pace. It was the South of 'Gone With the Wind'

of the big house and mint juleps, of fancy balls and blooded horses. The antebellum South where cotton was king and the king's throne propped up by slave labor. The existence of the plantation system and the institution of slavery was what made the South different from the North. The North was an area of growing cities and industries. The South was agricultural and had its plantations and it had its slaves. Now when you say that, people can be misled. They think that everybody who lived in the South and was white owned a slave and that everybody who lived in the South and was black was a slave. That actually wasn't the case. But the existence of slavery is what made the South unique. The existence of what they called their peculiar institution. Now, if you're a plantation owner, you were referred to as a planter and you are then a member of the predominant group. You of course support slavery because your livelihood

depends upon cotton. And cotton you felt depended upon slave labor. But you're not a member of the largest group. The planters comprise no more than 25 percent of the population. But they were the most influential. They're the group that others wanted to emulate. They are the people of the big house. If you wanted to search out the typical Southerner in the South before the Civil War you didn't go to the big house the find him. You went to something far more modest. You went to the house of the small farmer. That was the largest group in the South - the small farmer. Many of them didn't own any slaves at all. Most of them probably didn't. Some of them may have owned one or two. Worked in the fields alongside them. Why were they so concerned then about the institution of slavery? Well,

they want to own more. They want to join the large planter class. The group that owns slaves. The group that controls things. That's the dream of the small farmer. So he will support the institution of slavery. Let's say you're a worker in a town, maybe skilled like a blacksmith, a carpenter, maybe unskilled. Why would you care? "If this slave was kept down here, he was not going anywhere to get anyone's job anywhere else. Likewise it would of course be a good thing for me personally to have slavery. It would leave the blacksmithing business out in the free world, so to speak, opened up for me. The people up north felt the same way. As long as these people were tied up down here on the plantation, they were not going to go up there and take the land and the businesses away from those people up there." (Moderator resumes) Businessmen in the towns. Well, bankers had loaned money to planters. They want to be paid back. They'll be paid back if the cotton crop is successful, and they feel it won't be successful unless there's cheap labor -

slave labor. Merchants are going to buy, ship, sell cotton so they support the planter class. And along with it the institution of slavery. There were even people who never owned slaves, never dreamed of owning slaves, that support it. The poor whites. These people own nothing. They didn't own the shirt on their back. They're not going to own any slaves. They were what was called poor white trash. Now why would they care? Because if it weren't for slaves, they would be considered at the bottom of the social ladder and nobody likes that. Nobody wants to sit back and say, 'hey I am as low as you get. I am at the bottom of the heap.' All these people could say was 'at least I'm not a slave.' There were 250,000 free blacks in the South. That group did not support slavery. At least not on the whole. Ironically enough, there were a few freed blacks that owned slaves, but most of these people were opposed to slavery. They led a very precarious existence, always in fear that they would be mistaken for a runaway slave, returned to slavery. They

carried papers, they had to have some indication that they were indeed legally free. Southerners saw cotton as being essential for their survival. Cotton was king. Visit a cotton office in Greenwood, Mississippi today. You'll see that cotton is still king. It isn't just a business. It's a way of life. Now, cotton was king in the South. That hadn't always been the case. At one time tobacco had been the chief crop. Why the change to cotton? Because of the Industrial Revolution. In the North and in England you have the growth of factories. Factories that want to produce cotton cloth. They are willing to buy all the cotton the South can produce. But there was a problem. The South couldn't produce enough. Why? Because it took too long to take the seeds out of the cotton. One person could clean one pound of

cotton a day. That was too slow. We need a machine that will do that. And they get that machine in 1793. Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin that would comb the seeds out of cotton. Now one person could clean 50 pounds a day. By the Civil War gins were run by steam and they were cleaning 500 pounds a day. [music - singers saying "Jump down, turn around, pick a bale a day, jump down, turn around pick a bale a day, oh lordy, pick a bale a cotton, oh lordy, pick a bale a day, oh lordy, pick a bale a cotton, oh lordy, pick a bale a day. Me and my wife can pick a bale a cotton, me and my wife can pick a bale a day me and my wife can pick a bale of cotton, me and my wife can pick a bale a day, me and my papa can pick a bale a cotton, me and my papa can pick a bale a day me and my papa can pick a bale a cotton, me and my papa can pick a bale a day - music and singing ends] During the early 1800s the cotton gin came into common use. And planters

became more dependent upon slave labor. Why? The increasing cotton production required cheap labor and planters believed that slave labor was the cheapest they could get. Economically that might or might not be true. (background singing) That isn't the point. The point is, they believed it was true. Earlier up into the early 1800's, slavery had existed, of course. But most Southerners did not go to great lengths to defend it. Many viewed it, at best, as a necessary evil. (woman's voice) "God forgive us. But ours is a monstrous system of wrong and an inequity." (moderator resumes) By 1850 as cotton became more and more profitable, slavery was no longer viewed as something that was a necessary evil. (man's voice) "We, the South, cannot surrender our institution. To maintain the existing relations between races is

indispensable to the peace and happiness of both." (Moderator resumes) Now the South believed that cotton was not only necessary to them but to the whole world. If you attack slavery, you're going to attack the cotton industry. And if you attack it, you're hurting yourself. Why? Because without Southern cotton, Northern factories would close down. Factories in England would close down. Workers would be unemployed. It would be a worldwide disaster. So you dare not attack slavery. You dare not attack cotton. Cotton is king. If it's true that the life of a planter and the life of a slave are what made the South different, it's also true that a great deal more is known about the life of the planter than about the life of the slave. Historians are very puzzled about how the slave lived. What can you believe? Planters wrote about the slave, but they tended to picture slavery in a fairly favorable light. They were rather contented, happy-go-lucky, grown-up banjo strumming children that weren't really all that discontented with their lot.

(man's voice) "The slaves of the South are the happiest people in the world. The children, the aged, the infirm work not at all and yet have all the comforts and necessities of life provided for them." (moderator resumes) Northerners often gave a different view. They would come visit the South and they would write an account. Former slaves wrote accounts. Frederick Douglass had this to say, (singing in background) "We lodged in huts and on the bare ground in a single room were huddled like cattle, 10 or a dozen persons. Our beds were collections of straw and old rags. Here were the children born and the sick neglected." "They're often made to wear iron collars with prongs. Their front teeth are often torn out that they may be detected when they run away. They're often flogged with terrible severity and pepper rubbed into the lacerated flesh. [music] (moderator resumes) The Southerners always resented that view. They claim that Northerners took a few examples of

mistreatment and exaggerated them. Well how was the slave treated? Well, it depended on several things. One was who you worked for. Some people were just more kind hearted than others. They treated their slaves better so that was one factor. Another was what job did you have. This is the home of a domestic servant. Now being a domestic servant was considered a pretty good job. This doesn't look palatial by any means, but compared to field hands this was considered a good place to live. Realize, of course, that you might have as many as 10 or 12 people living here. There was one aspect of slavery that no one tried to defend at all. That was a slave trade. Even the people who dealt with the slave trader pretended, at least, not to like it. This is where you get the terrible breaking up of families. "Over and over again she told him how she loved the boy, how she would labor to the last moment of her life, if you would only buy all of them together." Now some Southerners maintain that the North exaggerated the plight of the slave having his family

split up. That most slaves didn't really have strong family feelings. Never-the-less when a Northerner asked John Randolph, a Southerner, who was the most eloquent orator he had ever heard, The old Virginian snapped back, "A slave, sir. She was a mother and her rostrum was the auction block." Southerners loved to compare the slaves to the factory worker in the North, what they called the wage slave. "They had sweat shops in the North. Slave children usually were not worked until they got to be 10 or 11 years of age. The planter wanted to be sure that they grew up healthily, that they got a good start in life before he put them out in the fields to work." (Moderator resumes) Then see is the question really how well were you treated or is the real question what does it mean to you to be free? No matter how well you were treated you knew that you were owned by somebody else and you were considered inferior. Now how important would that have been to you?

(singing in background) The South had developed the plantation system. It also was in a situation in which virtually every class supported the institution of slavery. They supported it because they felt in one way or another their livelihood depended upon labor. For 50 years the South had produced more college graduates and more national leaders than any other section of the country. Yet it found itself tied to an institution that most people considered to be a sin, an institution that would not ?end? until the bloodiest war.