Parlor, Jailkeeper's Quarters, Williamsburg, VA
Image ID: 8340
Collection: Karen Halttunen
Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Antebellum Reform, 18th Century Furniture, 18th Century Interiors, Architecture, British Empire, Class Separation, Colonial America, Columbian Exposition, Early cities, Early Virginia, Eighteenth Century, Environmental History, Institutions and social disorder, Moral lessons, National Politics, Nineteenth Century Slavery, Politics & Government, Technology, Urban poverty, Victorian Culture, Williamsburg, Working Class Culture
Region(s): United States
CA Standard(s): 5.4 - Political, religious, social, and economic institutions that evolved in the colonial era. , 5.5 - The causes of the American Revolution, 5.7 - People and events associated with the development of the U.S. Constitution and it's significance as the foundation of the American republic, 8.4 - The aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation
National Standard(s): Colonization and Settlement (1585-1763), Revolution and the New Nation (1754-1820s) , Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)
Card Text: Parlor of the Public Gaol Keeper's Quarters, Williamsburg Jail, Williamsburg, VA. Opened as an exhibition building in 1936, the Public Gaol is one of the surviving eighty-eight original buildings restored to their 18th-century appearance. Criminals from debtors to pirates were confined in the cells to await their trials. Punishments for more minor offenses included time spent in the pillory or stocks outside, where bystanders could heckle the offenders and throw garbage at them. This room served as a place for the gaoler on duty to rest, eat a meal, or work on paperwork. "In its present form, the Public Gaol has three rooms on the first floor -- a hall and chamber for the gaoler and his family and a cell at the rear for debtors -- and 'chambers' in the attic for the gaoler's use and the confinement of prisoners." Antique furnishings were selected by the curators in the 1930s as similar to those the gaolers actually used.
Citation: Karen Halttunen photo. Colonial Williamsburg, Williamsburg, VA. Text: Michael Olmert and Suzanne Coffman, Official Guide to Colonial Williamsburg (Williamsburg, VA: The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 2007), 74. https://rocklib.omeka.net/items/show/289. F.S. Lincoln, “Public Gaol, Keeper's Quarters.” https://rocklib.omeka.net/items/show/289. Special Collections, John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library. Copyright Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 401 W Duke of Gloucester St, Williamsburg, VA 23185. All rights reserved. Feb 2, 2023.
Dummerston (VT) Covered Bridge, Sturbridge, MA, c. 1870
Image ID: 8237
Collection: Karen Halttunen
Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Transportation, Agriculture, Architecture, Conservation, Individualism, Technology, Labor, Mills Factories Post Civil War, Nature and Civilization, Pre-Industrial Work - Misc., Sturbridge, Symbols, Victorian Culture
Region(s): United States
CA Standard(s): 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast. , 8.12 - The transformation of the American economy and the changing social and political conditions…in response to the Industrial Revolution
National Standard(s): Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877) , The Development of the Industrial United States (1870-1900)
Card Text: Dummerston Covered Bridge, Sturbridge, MA, c. 1870. Facing destruction from new highway construction in Vermont, this bridge was moved to Old Sturbridge Village in 1951. It was first located 100 yards north of its present location on the mill pond after Hurricane Diane knocked it off its abutments in 1955. More than 1,000 covered bridges were built in New England in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and today fewer than 200 survive. This bridge is one of only 12 left in Massachusetts. It is distinctive for its lattice truss design.
In 1820, Connecticut architect Ithiel Town was granted a patent for a wooden truss bridge known as Town’s Lattice Truss. His innovative lattice design evolved from the need to be able to build bridges quickly, out of readily available materials with local, relatively unskilled workers. Town’s innovation included a support system based on an uninterrupted series of crisscrossed diagonals that connected the horizontal top and bottom chords to form a series of overlapping triangles. This approach distributed the load equally with no vertical timbers. By fastening each triangle at its points of intersection, the design prevented any one structure from moving independently when stressed, distributing the load borne by one triangle across all of the others. Town’s method of load distribution was more efficient than the old arch truss bridge, allowing for lighter-weight planks of pine or spruce connected with wooden pins. The resulting structure was much lighter and considerably less expensive to build. The light, almost insubstantial, appearance of Town’s bridges prompted comparisons to the common trellis found in every flower garden. The ease of construction, strength, and ability to build a lattice truss bridge on piers spanning long distances quickly made the design the common choice for covered bridges and early railroad bridges until after the Civil War. Town’s bridge design accommodated early trains simply by doubling the quantity of planks and pins. The lattice truss bridge became so widely used across the eastern states in the 19th century that Town, who received royalties of $1 to $2 dollars per foot for use of his patented design, became a wealthy man.
Citation: First text: Copyright Old Sturbridge Village, 1 Old Sturbridge Village Rd, Sturbridge, MA 01566. https://www.osv.org/building/vermont-covered-bridge/. All rights reserved. Second text: Adapted from Kim Sheridan, "Town Patents the Lattice Truss Bridge – Today in History: January 28." https://connecticut history.org/town-patents-the-lattice-truss-bridge-today-in-history/. Connecticut History.org, CT Humanities, 100 Riverview Center, Ste 290, Middletown, CT 06457. Oct. 20, 2022.
Delia Page, Lowell Worker, c. 1860
Image ID: 8325
Collection: Karen Halttunen
Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Lowell, Antebellum Reform, Business 19th century, Child labor, Class Structure, Corporate Image, Early mills and factories, Early National Period, Environmental History, Factory as symbol, Family to 1920, Industrial Revolution, Invention, Labor, Market Economy, National Events, Nineteenth Century Children, Parents, Children, Families, Pro feminist and suffrage, Pullman and Model Towns, Strikes and Violence, Sweatshops, Technology, Urbanization, Women in labor movement, Women's organizations, Women's work
Region(s): United States
CA Standard(s): 5.8 - The colonization, immigration, and settlement patterns of the American people from 1789 to the mid-1800s..., 8.3 - The foundation of the American political system and the ways in which citizens participate in it, 8.4 - The aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation, 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast.
National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861), An Age of Revolutions, 1750-1914
Card Text: Delia Page, a Lowell worker about 19 years old, c. 1860, photo. A factory "operative" from New Hampshire, Delia was not a published writer but she did save the letters she received in Lowell, in which her family tried to dissuade her from associating with a young man who proved to be a ruffian.
Another Lowell mill girl describes the workers' experience:
"The early mill girls were of different ages. Some were not over ten years old; a few were in middle life, but the majority were between the ages of 16 and 25. The very young girls were called 'doffers.' They 'doffed,' or took off, the full bobbins from the spinning frames, and replaced them with empty ones. These mites worked about 15 minutes every hour and the rest of the time was their own. When the overseer was kind they were allowed to read, knit, or go outside the mill yard to play. They were paid two dollars a week. The working hours of all the girls extended from five o'clock in the morning until seven in the evening, with one half-hour each, for breakfast and dinner. Even the doffers were forced to be on duty nearly 14 hours a day. This was the greatest hardship in the lives of these children. Several years later a ten-hour law was passed, but not until long after some of these little doffers were old enough to appear before the legislative committee on the subject, and plead, by their presence, for a reduction of the hours of labor. Those...mill girls who had homes generally worked from 8 to 10 months in the year; the rest of the time was spent with parents or friends. A few taught school during the summer months. Their life in the factory was made pleasant to them. In those days there was no need of advocating the doctrine of the proper relation between employer and employed. The most prevailing incentive to labor was to secure the means of education for some male member of the family. To make a gentleman of a brother or a son, to give him a college education, was the dominant thought in the minds of a great many of the better class of mill girls. I have known more than one to give every cent of her wages, month after month, to her brother, that he might get the education necessary to enter some profession. I have known a mother to work years in this way for her boy. I have known women to educate young men by their earnings, who were not sons or relatives. There are many men now living who were helped to an education by the wages of the early mill girls.
"One of the first strikes that ever took place in this country was in Lowell in 1836. When it was announced that the wages were to be cut down, great indignation was felt, and it was decided to strike or 'turn out' en masse. This was done. The mills were shut down, and the girls went from their several corporations in procession to the grove on Chapel Hill, and listened to incendiary speeches from some early labor reformers. One of the girls stood on a pump and gave vent to the feelings of her companions in a neat speech, declaring that it was their duty to resist all attempts at cutting down the wages. This was the first time a woman had spoken in public in Lowell, and the event caused surprise and consternation among her audience.
"It is hardly necessary to say that, so far as practical results are concerned, this strike did no good. The corporation would not come to terms. The girls were soon tired of holding out, and they went back to their work at the reduced rate of wages. The ill-success of this early attempt at resistance on the part of the wage element seems to have made a precedent for the issue of many succeeding strikes."
Citation: Copyright holder unknown. Mildred Tunis. Text: Harriet Hanson Robinson, "Loom and Spindle, or Life Among the Early Mill Girls," 1898. Robinson (1825-1911) was a women's rights advocate and abolitionist who worked in the Lowell mill from 1832 (age 7) until her marriage in 1848. She published an autobiography of her experiences at the mill in 1898, contributed works to the "Lowell Offering," and published a book on women’s voting entitled "Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement" from 1774 to 1881.
Lowell Offering, by Factory Girls, 1845
Image ID: 8335
Collection: Karen Halttunen
Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Lowell
Region(s):
CA Standard(s): 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast.
National Standard(s):
Card Text: "Lowell Offering," by "Factory Girls," 1845. The Transcendentalist reformer Orestes Brownson first published "The Laboring Classes" in his journal, the Boston Quarterly Review, in July 1840. It is an attack on the entire wage system but particularly focuses on how factory jobs harm the mill girls. In response, "A Factory Girl" published a defense of the mill girls in the December 1840 issue of the "Lowell Offering," a journal of articles, fiction, and poetry written by and for the Lowell factory operatives. The author was probably Harriet Jane Farley, a mill girl who eventually became editor of the Lowell Offering.
Mr. Brownson, "The Laboring Classes," Boston Quarterly Review, July 1840:
"The operatives are well dressed, and we are told, well paid. They are said to be healthy, contented, and happy. This is the fair side of the picture . . . There is a dark side, moral as well as physical. Of the common operatives, few, if any, by their wages, acquire a competence . . . the great mass wear out their health, spirits, and morals, without becoming one whit better off than when they commenced labor. The bills of mortality in these factory villages are not striking, we admit, for the poor girls when they can toil no longer go home to die. The average life, working life we mean, of the girls that come to Lowell, for instance, from Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, we have been assured, is only about three years. What becomes of them then? Few of them ever marry; fewer still ever return to their native places with reputations unimpaired. 'She has worked in a Factory,' is almost enough to damn to infamy the most worthy and virtuous girl."
A Factory Girl, "Factory Girls," Lowell Offering, December 1840:
"Whom has Mr. Brownson slandered? . . . girls who generally come from quiet country homes, where their minds and manners have been formed under the eyes of the worthy sons of the Pilgrims, and their virtuous partners, and who return again to become the wives of the free intelligent yeomanry of New England and the mothers of quite a proportion of our future republicans. Think, for a moment, how many of the next generation are to spring from mothers doomed to infamy! . . . It has been asserted that to put ourselves under the influence and restraints of corporate bodies, is contrary to the spirit of our institutions, and to that love of independence which we ought to cherish. . . . We are under restraints, but they are voluntarily assumed; and we are at liberty to withdraw from them, whenever they become galling or irksome. Neither have I ever discovered that any restraints were imposed upon us but those which were necessary for the peace and comfort of the whole, and for the promotion of the design for which we are collected, namely, to get money, as much of it and as fast as we can; and it is because our toil is so unremitting, that the wages of factory girls are higher than those of females engaged in most other occupations. It is these wages which, in spite of toil, restraint, discomfort, and prejudice, have drawn so many worthy, virtuous, intelligent, and well-educated girls to Lowell, and other factories; and it is the wages which are in great degree to decide the characters of the factory girls as a class. . . . Mr. Brownson may rail as much as he pleases against the real injustice of capitalists against operatives, and we will bid him God speed, if he will but keep truth and common sense upon his side. Still, the avails [benefits] of factory labor are now greater than those of many domestics, seamstresses, and school-teachers; and strange would it be, if in money-loving New England, one of the most lucrative female employments should be rejected because it is toilsome, or because some people are prejudiced against it. Yankee girls have too much independence for that. . . . And now, if Mr. Brownson is a man, he will endeavor to retrieve the injury he has done; . . . though he will find error, ignorance, and folly among us, (and where would he find them not?) yet he would not see worthy and virtuous girls consigned to infamy, because they work in a factory.
Citation: American Textile History Museum, 491 Dutton St, Lowell, MA 01854. Text: Orestes Brownson, "The Laboring Classes: An Article from the Boston Quarterly Review," Boston: Benjamin H. Greene, 1840.
Delia Page, a Lowell Worker, c. 1860
Image ID: 8326
Collection: Karen Halttunen
Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Lowell, Antebellum Reform, Business 19th century, Child labor, Class Structure, Corporate Image, Early mills and factories, Early National Period, Environmental History, Factory as symbol, Family to 1920, Industrial Revolution, Labor, Market Economy, National Events, Nineteenth Century Children, Parents, Children, Families, Pro feminist and suffrage, Pullman and Model Towns, Strikes and Violence, Sweatshops, Technology, Urbanization, Women in labor movement, Women's organizations, Women's work
Region(s): United States
CA Standard(s): 5.8 - The colonization, immigration, and settlement patterns of the American people from 1789 to the mid-1800s..., 8.3 - The foundation of the American political system and the ways in which citizens participate in it, 8.4 - The aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation, 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast.
National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861), An Age of Revolutions, 1750-1914
Card Text: Delia Page, a Lowell worker, c. 1860, photo. A visitor to Lowell in 1836 wrote this description of its mills:
"We have lately visited the cities of Lowell [Massachusetts] and Manchester [New Hampshire] 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 went through many of the mills, talked particularly to a large number of the operatives [workers], and ate at their boardinghouses, on purpose to ascertain by personal inspection the facts of the case…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 [sic] 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. At 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 exacted 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 expense 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 inured 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 attend upon an average three looms; many attend 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 naïvely, 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 and influential of our land have built for them."
Citation: Copyright holder unknown. Mildred Tunis. Text: "An Account of a Visitor to Lowell," The Harbinger, Nov. 14, 1836.
Newbury, VT, c. 1850
Image ID: 8311
Collection: Karen Halttunen
Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Business 19th century, Civil War, Class Structure, Early mills and factories, Early National Period, Emerging industrial city, Gender-Bending, Industrial Revolution, Labor, Market Economy, Mills Factories Post Civil War, National Events, Parents, Children, Families, Success 19th century, Technology, Trade, Urbanization, Whites, non planters ante bellum, Women in labor movement, Women's work
Region(s): United States
CA Standard(s): 8.12 - The transformation of the American economy and the changing social and political conditions…in response to the Industrial Revolution, 5.8 - The colonization, immigration, and settlement patterns of the American people from 1789 to the mid-1800s..., 8.4 - The aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation, 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast.
National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861), Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)
Card Text: Newbury, VT, c. 1850. Newbury was once a thriving, affluent 19th-century mill village on the major Connecticut River corridor with a commanding view of the White Mountains to the east.
Between 1820 and 1860, tens of thousands of single women left rural New England to work in the factory towns of the region. After a few years, many returned to the farm, moved west, or settled in the growing towns and cities. They were the first generation of American women employed for wages outside their homes. Women's work in factories and towns often supplemented the family income and surprisingly often earned a dowry for the worker. Women working outside the home in the 19th-c. New England clothing factories had few choices available to them. Many did manage to form communities at work despite the difficult work demanded of them. They were expected to do hard labor even as the Civil War started, when cotton became scarce and factories began to shut down. Those that continued to operate were able to cut women's wages because so many women needed the work.
Citation: Copyright Shelburne Museum, PO Box 10, Shelburne, VT 05482. All rights reserved. Text: Thomas Dublin, ed., "Farm to Factory: Women’s Letters, 1830–1860" (1993) p. 76. https://doi.org/10.7312/dubl91106. Copyright Columbia University Press, 61 W 62 St, New York, NY 10023. All rights reserved. May 30, 2023.
Cotton Mill Interior, England, 1851
Image ID: 8313
Collection: Karen Halttunen
Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Industrialization, Architecture, British Empire, Business 19th century, Child labor, Cities, Class Structure, Early mills and factories, Emerging industrial city, Environmental History, Gender-Bending, Labor, Market Economy, National Events, Parents, Children, Families, Success 19th century, Sweatshops, Technology, Trade, Urbanization, Women in labor movement, Women's work
Region(s): Europe, United States
CA Standard(s): 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast. , 10.3 - The effects of the Industrial Revolution in England, France, Germany, Japan, and the United States. , 10.4 - Global change in the era of New Imperialism in Africa, Southeast Asia, China, India, Latin America, and the Philippines, 11.2 - The the relationship among the rise of industrialization, large-scale rural-to-urban migration, and massive immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe
National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861), Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877) , An Age of Revolutions, 1750-1914
Card Text: Mill interior, Dean Mills, The Doubling Room, 1851, detail. Women cotton workers at Dean Mills, a patterned textile factory in Barrow, England, owned by Robert Gardner, who turned it into a model industrial estate with housing and other amenities for workers. As the Industrial Revolution gathered pace, thousands of factories sprang up all over the country. There were no laws relating to the running of factories as there had been no need for them earlier, and then aggressive capitalists fought them to maximize their profits. As a result, dangerous machinery could and frequently did seriously injure and kill workers. To add to these dangers, people were required to work extremely long hours, often through the night. One of the worst features of this new industrial age was the use of child labor. Very young children worked exceedingly long hours and were severely punished for any mistakes. Arriving late for work could lead to a large fine and possibly a beating. Dozing at a machine could result in the accidental loss of a limb.
With time people recognized the danger of these conditions and started to campaign for improvements. Great resistance came from factory owners, who felt reforms would slow their factory production and and make their products more expensive. Many people also disliked government interference in their lives. Many poor parents, too, needed their children to go to work at a young age, as their wages were needed to help feed the family.
Not all factory owners kept their workers in dangerous conditions. Robert Owen, who owned a cotton mill in Lanark, Scotland, built the village of New Lanark for his workers. Here they had access to schools, doctors, and a house for each family who worked in his mills.
In 1833, the British government passed the first of many reform laws regulating working conditions and hours. At first, the government had only limited power to enforce them, but as the century progressed the rules were enforced more strictly. Nonetheless, the hours and working conditions were still inhuman by today’s standards, and no rules were in place to protect adult male workers.
Legislation was passed by the British Parliament to improve working conditions in factories:
1833: Textiles: No child workers under nine years of age; Reduced hours for children 9-13 years; Two hours schooling each day for children; Four
factory inspectors appointed.
1844: Textiles: Children 8-13 years could work only six and one-half hours a day; Reduced hours for women (12); and no night work.
1847: Textiles: Women and children under 18 years of age could not work more than ten hours a day.
1867: All Industries: The previous rules apply to workhouses (poorhouses) if more than five workers are employed.
1901: All Industries: Minimum working age raised to 12 years.
Citation: Image and text: "The 1833 Factory Act," The Illustrated London News, Oct 25, 1851. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/1833-factory-act/. The National Archives, Kew, Richmond TW9 4DU, UNITED KINGDOM. All content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0, except where otherwise stated. Nov 26, 2022.
Thompson, The Belated Party on Mansfield Mountain, 1858
Image ID: 8275
Collection: Karen Halttunen
Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Industrial Revolution, 19th century Genre painting, Class Structure, Eden Imagery, Landscape, Middle-Class Culture, Nationhood, Nature and Civilization, Popular recreation to 1865, Sports and Recreation, Symbols, US Destiny, Victorian Culture, Women and Sports
Region(s): United States
CA Standard(s): 8.10 - The multiple causes, key events, and complex consequences of the Civil War, 8.12 - The transformation of the American economy and the changing social and political conditions…in response to the Industrial Revolution, 8.4 - The aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation, 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast.
National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861), Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)
Card Text: Jerome B. Thompson (1814-86), "The Belated Party on Mansfield Mountain," 1858. Thompson combined the breadth of Hudson River School landscape painting with the anecdotal appeal of contemporary genre painting. This work is one of several in which he used Mount Mansfield, Vermont’s highest peak, as a foil for domestic recreation. As half the party of day trippers admire the summit and the vista toward Lake Champlain, one young man holds his watch aloft, warning of the lateness of the hour and the need to descend. However, the three youths watching the sunset ignore him, enraptured by the beauty of nature. As passion vies with reason in this large genre painting, the three in the foreground notice the passage of time and the implicit dangers of descending in the dark.
The son of an itinerant portrait painter, Thompson took up genre subjects as early as 1848. He became acquainted with Hudson River School painters Asher Durand and Jasper Cropsey during the 1850s and specialized in picnicking and harvest scenes. In 1857, an art critic wrote that "No living artist…[better] catches the lights and shades of American life and humor; and consequently, none is more truly popular....He adds that intangible faculty of seizing the most picturesque view of things, and succeeds in producing pictures which literally talk with reminiscences and life. Born and bred on a New-England farm, he has pierced to the very spirit of country realities."
The ridgeline of Vermont’s highest peak is said to resemble the elongated face of a man looking up at the sky. From the east, from left to right, his forehead, nose, lips, chin, and even Adam’s apple are obvious. The Abenaki, a tribe native to Vermont, thought the ridgeline resembled that of a moose head and referred to it as Mose-o-de-be-Wadso, or "mountain with the head of a moose." Regardless of man or moose, Mount Mansfield has one of the most recognizable and popular summits and ridgelines in all of Vermont. Its stunning views, hiking, skiing, and snowboarding are a draw throughout the year. Once a barren mountain too rocky for farming, this 4,393-footer has found its own road to success as a premier spot for winter sports in the Northeast. The mountain was home to the first American ski patrol, founded in 1934. Oil on canvas. 38 x 63-1/8" (96.5 x 160.3 cm).
Citation: Image and first text: Copyright Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Ave, New York, NY 10028-0198. Purchase, Rogers Fund, 1969 (69.182). https:// www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/12800. All rights reserved. Second text: Suzanne Loring, "Mount Mansfield: The Man, The Moose, The Legend," Burlington, VT, May 17, 2016. https://rootsrated.com/stories/mount-mansfield-man-moose-legend-ap. © 2022 RootsRated, Inc. All rights reserved. Nov 4, 2022.
Private Railroad Car, c. 1890
Image ID: 8242
Collection: Karen Halttunen
Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Transportation, Arts and Architecture, Business 19th century, Class Separation, Coal, Cooption of styles, Domesticity, Exhibition, Gilded Age, Industrial Revolution, Invention, Luxury, Nature and Civilization, Nineteenth Century Interiors, Popular recreation 1870-1920, Popular recreation since 1920, Pullman and Model Towns, Railroad and steamboat, Recreation - upper class, Symbols, Technology, The West, Twentieth Century Misc., Victorian Culture
Region(s): United States
CA Standard(s): 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast. , 8.11 - The character and lasting consequences of Reconstruction, 8.12 - The transformation of the American economy and the changing social and political conditions…in response to the Industrial Revolution, 8.4 - The aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation, 8.8 - The divergent paths of the American people in the West from 1800 to the mid-1800s , 11.2 - The the relationship among the rise of industrialization, large-scale rural-to-urban migration, and massive immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe, 11.4 - The rise of the United States to its role as a world power in the twentieth century, 11.5 - Major political, social, economic, technological, and cultural developments of the 1920s.
National Standard(s): Revolution and the New Nation (1754-1820s) , Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877) , The Development of the Industrial United States (1870-1900) , The Emergence of Modern America (1890-1930), The Great Depression and World War II (1929-1945)
Card Text: Private railroad car with mahogany paneling, built by Wagner Palace Car Co., c. 1890. Early rail travel was uncomfortable. From the 1830s through the '50s, long-distance train travel allowed passengers little sleep if the train didn't stop at a village or city for an overnight accommodation. Webster Wagner (1817-82) was a New York Central Railroad freight agent in Palatine Bridge, NY, who saw the need for better comfort. He came up with the idea of building sleeping cars. With the assistance of other enterprising men, Wagner constructed four such cars at a cost of $3,200 each. Berths were provided for the sleepers, along with a pair of cheap blankets and pillows. Wagner invented and put into operation his first drawing-room or palace car, "the first ever seen in America," in 1867. This car and its comforts of home became so popular with tourists that it made Wagner a fortune. The company became the second largest builder of sleeping cars in the United States.
The Wagner Company began as the New York Central Sleeping Car Company, founded in 1858 in New York City by Wagner in cooperation with Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, whose New York Central used the four original coaches. About 1870 Wagner negotiated a deal with Pullman to use its berths in the Wagner cars, with the understanding that Wagner would limit its operations to the New York Central. But in 1875, Pullman sued, and settled out-of-court. Wagner died in 1882 aboard one of his own sleeping cars in a rear-end collision. The company nevertheless continued doing business, and in 1888 was in court again against Pullman, this time for having allegedly infringed upon Pullman’s vestibule patents. This time Pullman won. The battles between the Pullman and Wagner companies continued until Vanderbilt’s death, when the Wagner directors sold the company to Pullman on January 1, 1900.
The Wagner Palace Car Company was one of the largest employers in Buffalo, NY, in 1890, and its works occupied 35.7 acres. In addition to brass finishers, the company employed blacksmiths, car builders, carpenters, carvers, marble finishers, steamfitters and even a storekeeper. Most of these workers lived on the east side of Buffalo, and likely walked, rode a bicycle or took a horse-drawn streetcar to work. The former Wagner Palace Car complex is one of the last Reconstruction-era industrial sites in Buffalo, the construction site of some of the luxurious railcars of the “Golden Age” of American railroading.
Citation: Image: Copyright Shelburne Museum, PO Box 10, Shelburne, VT 05482. All rights reserved. First text: "Wagner Palace Car Company," April 2006. https:// www.midcontinent.org/rollingstock/builders/wagner.htm. Copyright Mid-Continent Railway Museum, PO Box 358, E8948 Museum Rd, North Freedom, WI 53951. All rights reserved. Second text: "Wagner Palace Car Complex (Pullman) - East Buffalo." www.forgottenbuffalo.com/forgottenbflofeatures/pullman wagnercomplex.html. © 2020 by Forgotten Buffalo. All rights reserved. Oct 24, 2022.
Ad, Merrimack Co. Power Loom Jeans, Lowell, MA, c. 1830
Image ID: 8328
Collection: Karen Halttunen
Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Lowell, Antebellum Reform, Architecture, Business 19th century, Child labor, Class Structure, Corporate Image, Early mills and factories, Early National Period, Environmental History, Factory as symbol, Family to 1920, Gender-Bending, Industrial Revolution, Invention, Labor, Labor Organizations and Leaders, Market Economy, National Events, Nineteenth Century Children, Parents, Children, Families, Strikes and Violence, Sweatshops, Technology, Urbanization, Women in labor movement, Women's organizations, Women's work
Region(s): United States
CA Standard(s): 8.10 - The multiple causes, key events, and complex consequences of the Civil War, 8.3 - The foundation of the American political system and the ways in which citizens participate in it, 8.4 - The aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation, 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast.
National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)
Card Text: Ad, Merrimack Manufacturing Co. "Power Loom Jeans," Lowell, MA, c. 1830. Gentlemen in top hats and women carrying parasols stroll in front of a mill. The Merrimack Manufacturing Company (also known as Merrimack Mills) was the first major textile factory to open in Lowell, Massachusetts, beginning operations in 1823. After the death of Francis Cabot Lowell of the Boston Manufacturing Co., his "Boston Associates" began planning a larger operation in East Chelmsford, MA, on the Merrimack River. The Merrimack Manufacturing Co. was modeled after the second Boston Manufacturing Co. mill and built concurrently with the necessary canals, machine shop, dyehouse, and boardinghouses for the workers. The company employed the "Lowell System." Initially capitalized with $600,000, its typical product was calico cloth. Located at the foot of the Merrimack Canal, the original mills received the power of the full 32-foot drop of the river. The Merrimack Co. was the parent company of the later Lowell firms, although they were technically competitors. The Merrimack Co. became very powerful politically in Lowell. However, as US textile production shifted away from New England, the company's fortunes reversed. It survived the Great Depression of the 1930s due to military contracts and awards that revived the surrounding economy, and it was among the last of Lowell's textile giants to close. Shortly after it ceased operations in the late 1950s, nearly the entire complex was demolished for urban renewal in 1960. A few years later, many of the boardinghouses were destroyed as well. Today, the site is occupied by new arterial roads, parking lots, low-rise office buildings, a high-rise housing tower, and the newer buildings of Lowell High School.
"The Voice of industry" appeared during a period of unprecedented, explosive growth in the textile industry. It was the longest-running labor newspaper published during the US Industrial Revolution, and one of the most widely read of the many worker-run journals of the period. It started publication in 1845 in Fitchburg, Mass., under the auspices of the New England Workingmen’s Association. Written and published by the workers themselves, the "Voice" was concerned with the dramatic social changes taking place as corporations began to control economic life. New, large-scale machinery had come to dominate the production of cloth by 1840, and it was being rapidly developed in lockstep with equally new ways of organizing workers for mass production. Together, these mutually reinforcing technological and social changes produced staggering increases: From 1840 to 1860, the number of spindles in use rose from two million to over five million; bales of cotton from 300,000 to nearly a million; and the number of workers from 72,000 to nearly 122,000. This growth translated directly into large profits for the textile corporations. Between 1846 and 1850 the dividends of the “Boston Capitalists,” the group of textile companies that founded Lowell, averaged 14% per year. Most corporations recorded similarly high profits during this period, but workers saw none of these gains. In fact, most workers saw their positions decline sharply during this period as the corporations employed fewer workers and made them tend more machines at faster speeds for reduced wages. Not surprisingly, this trend created considerable discontent. Writing anonymously in the "Voice" as “one of the vast army of sufferers,” an operative protested that while workers now tended “three or four looms, where they used to tend but two” and produced twice as much cloth, “the pay is not increased to them, while the increase to the owners is very great. Is this just?” Nor was the increased danger to workers considered.
In most cases, workers' total earnings stayed the same during this period, and wage cuts took the form of reductions in “piece rates," the amount paid for each piece a worker produced. At this lower rate, their total earnings were maintained by producing more output; which, for the most part, was accomplished by pushing operatives to work harder. Workers were made to tend more machines (a practice referred to as the “stretch-out") at faster speeds (referred to as the “speedup"); they were, in other words, being made to perform more work for less money.
Another worker, writing in 1845, observed that while the profits of 11 Lowell mills had doubled from the year before, the workers were being paid 12.5% less. “This is the natural result of the state of things in New England," she concluded, “the more wealth becomes concentrated in a few hands, and the poorer the great mass becomes.” In the previous decade, the power of the corporations had been limited, as disillusioned workers could leave the factories and return to their nearby rural homes. By the early 1840s, however, many New England farms had been crushed by a severe economic depression, leaving workers with no alternative to harsh factory life. For the first time, a permanent “factory population” arose in Lowell. Measures aimed at increasing worker "discipline" became suddenly more effective. Corporations colluded to increase the workweek and the number of hours in the workday. They maintained "blacklists" that prevented discharged workers - fired, in many cases, for trivial reasons - from finding employment at other mills. A “premium system” was adopted in which supervisors were paid bonuses for pushing operatives to produce more. As a result, by the mid-1840s, workers were spending 12- to 14-hour days each day in factories that were often overheated and poorly ventilated, doing dreary, exhausting work. While they often wrote about being treated by mill owners as “living machines,” the reality was much worse - unlike their inanimate counterparts, workers could be forced to produce more, by way of pressure and intimidation. While workers bitterly condemned this abuse of power, they were even more alarmed by another, overarching feature of the new economic order: The disconnect between the liberating potential of "labor-saving" machinery, and the way these inventions were used instead to increase output. “With such gigantically increased means of production,” asked one reformer, “would it not be supposed that the Laboring Classes would be rendered more comfortable?…Certainly, but directly the reverse is the case.” Machinery, workers argued, should be developed and applied with the aim of freeing people from undesirable work, allowing them more time to cultivate and develop their talents. Instead, they watched with dismay as their work increased, and was fragmented into narrow, routine tasks, which left them physically and mentally debased. “Compared with their employers,” wrote a worker in the Voice, “[workers] are as a class sinking day by day into a still deeper degradation.” Another observed that there was now “machinery enough in New England to do the work of five times its present population performed in the old way,” but that, “the consequence is we are nearer starvation.” These workers were also criticizing the way costs and benefits were understood and tallied in the new, profit-driven, economic system. For the factory owner, the definition of “cost" was restricted to monetary expenses, and “benefit" was defined narrowly to mean physical output. Any other costs associated with production - such as the mental deterioration suffered by workers from performing repetitious, mindless tasks - were considered irrelevant in this calculus of “profitable” work.
While the rise of a permanent factory population increased the power of the corporations, it also allowed for a more lasting, permanent response to that power. In 1845, 12 factory operatives organized the first union of female factory workers in the US, the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association. Six months later, its membership had grown to 500. Under the guidance of the young labor leader Sarah Bagley, and with the "Voice of Industry" as its herald, the Association tirelessly campaigned to convince the public of the need for reform in the mills. It published a series of articles called “Factory Tracts,” which documented the deteriorating conditions in the mills, and provided “a true exposition of the Factory system and its effects upon the health and happiness of the operatives." The association would go on to become a leading organizing force in the Ten-Hour Movement in Lowell.
From 1900 until 1946, the Merrimack Manufacturing Company ran a plant in Huntsville, Alabama, with non-union labor.
Citation: Image and First text: Copyright American Textile History Museum, 491 Dutton St, Lowell, MA 01854. All rights reserved. Second text: Public domain. "The Voice of Industry." https://www.industrialrevolution.org/industrial-revolution--featured-content. Aug. 30, 2023.
Pendleton, View of Lowell, Mass., 1834
Image ID: 8312
Collection: Karen Halttunen
Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Lowell, Arts and Architecture, Business 19th century, Class Separation, Early National Period, Emerging industrial city, Environmental History, Expansion, Immigrants, Industrial Revolution, Irish, Labor, National Events, Success 19th century, Sweatshops, Technology, Trade, Transportation, Urbanization, Whites, non planters ante bellum, Women in labor movement, Women's work, Work and Workers
Region(s): United States
CA Standard(s): 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast. , 5.8 - The colonization, immigration, and settlement patterns of the American people from 1789 to the mid-1800s..., 11.2 - The the relationship among the rise of industrialization, large-scale rural-to-urban migration, and massive immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe
National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861), Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877) , The Development of the Industrial United States (1870-1900)
Card Text: William S. Pendleton, "View of Lowell, Mass.," 1834. Lowell as seen from across the Merrimack, from the house of Elisha Fuller, Esq. in Dracutt, with the junction of the Concord and Merrimack Rivers at left and a bridge over each river. The foreground shows cows and sheep in rural pastureland.
The decision to allow the rise of industry was one of the most important issues that faced the new nation. The subject of passionate arguments from the 1790s through the early 19th century, industrialization frightened and worried many Americans who resisted its development. Many saw British factory life as miserable, immoral, and oppressive. By 1800 most Americans wanted the United States to remain an agrarian society, believing that agriculture was the only true and legitimate source of wealth, and that the maintenance of their hard-won liberty and their virtue depended upon the stability of a rural freeholding farming society whose relation to the land was simple, harmonious, and responsible. Yet American industrialization had already begun.
Lowell was the first planned company mill town, the cradle of America’s Industrial Revolution. In 1813, Boston financiers founded the town when they constructed a textile factory on a canal bypassing the Merrimack River’s Pawtucket Falls. By mid-century, Lowell was the largest industrial complex in the United States. The textile economy relied on cotton grown by enslaved workers in the South. The factory jobs initially attracted young women from rural New England and, later, immigrants from French Canada, Germany, and Ireland. This view shows the mills that dominated the city’s landscape as seen from the north side of the Merrimack River.
The textile manufacturing industry was established in Lowell with the first mill. In 1826 the city had 2,500 inhabitants; by 1836 there were 17,633, and by 1845 nearly 30,000. In response to this population growth, the first regular stagecoach route was established in 1822 and the Boston-Lowell railroad line was completed in 1835. By 1843 there were 33 mills in Lowell, employing 6295 women, 2345 men, and producing over 1.4 million yards of cotton cloth per week. Lithograph.
Citation: After Eliza Ann Farrar. Courtesy of The Worcester Art Museum, 55 Salisbury St, Worcester, MA 01609. The Charles E. Goodspeed Collection. Museum purchase (1910.48.3567). All rights reserved. Our thanks to The Worcester Art Museum. First text: E.A. Farrar, "View of Lowell, Mass." Map. (Boston, Mass: Jacob Farrar, 1834.) Norman B. Leventhal Map Center Collection, Boston Public Library, 700 Boylston St, Copley Square, Boston MA 02116. https://collections.leventhalmap.org/ search/commonwealth:x059c994q. All rights reserved. Second text: Jadviga M. da Costa Nunes, "The Industrial Landscape in America, 1800-1840: Ideology into Art," IA. The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology, Vol. 12, No. 2, IA IN ART (1986), p. 19. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40968108. Third text: "View of Lowell, Mass." http://fitzhenrylaneonline.org/catalog/entry.php?id=444. Fitz Henry Lane Online. Copyright Cape Ann Museum, 27 Pleasant St, Gloucester, MA 01930. All rights reserved. May 29, 2023.
Le Sueur, Interior of a Flatboat, 1826
Image ID: 8218
Collection: Karen Halttunen
Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Transportation, Arts and Architecture, Business 19th century, Developing Nations, Domesticity, Early National Period, Emigration and Passage, Environmental History, Expansion, Frontier, Immigration, Indian-White Relations Since Revolution, Industrial Revolution, Jacksonian Era, Luxury, Nationhood, Nature and Civilization, Nineteenth Century Interiors, Parents, Children, Families, Pre-Industrial Work - Misc., Railroad and steamboat, Technology, The West, Trade, Work and Housing
Region(s): United States
CA Standard(s): 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast. , 8.4 - The aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation, 8.8 - The divergent paths of the American people in the West from 1800 to the mid-1800s
National Standard(s): Revolution and the New Nation (1754-1820s) , Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)
Card Text: Charles-Alexandre Le Sueur, "Interior of a Flatboat," 1826. A large cauldron bubbles in a fireplace at the end of a flatboat cabin, below an open window and a hatchway to the upper deck. A barrel at left serves as a stepstool for entering and leaving the cabin. A kneeling crew member prepares a meal as the legs of another man disappear - or appear - through the hatch. Additional barrels of supplies stand at right.
Livestock and cargo were carried in the open area of the boat; the family slept and ate in the cabin. Flatboats built primarily as cargo vessels, particularly those of the mid- to late-19th century, were often completely roofed over with no open deck space. Roof hatches allowed the crew to enter the cabin and cargo areas of the boat. Cabins on such flatboats could be elaborate, with bunks, fireplaces, tables, chairs, and other furnishings provided for the comfort of the travelers and crew. French artist and naturalist Le Sueur sketched the interior of this cabin during his journey down the Ohio River in the 1820s. This sketch shows its large brick fireplace, and a roof hatch that provided access to and egress from the cabin, but no furniture. The tops of barrels and crates were used as makeshift tables. Shelves and hooks along the cabin walls were used to store cups, buckets, bottles, and a coffee grinder. The fireplace contained a large pot or kettle on top of a roaring fire, and the irregular, solid-colored area in front of it may represent a layer of sand laid down to protect the wooden floor. The brick lining of the fireplace failed to protect the wooden walls of the cabin from charring. To correct this problem, Le Sueur and his companions reinforced the back of the fireplace with limestone slabs that they obtained by dismantling, without permission, a prehistoric Native American stone-lined grave they discovered at Cave in Rock, Illinois. Watercolor.
Citation: Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, "Interior of Captain Paul Anderson’s Flatboat," 1826. CL 42 003-2, MHNH. Vail #361, Leland #206. Copyright American Antiquarian Society, 185 Salisbury St, Worcester, MA 01609-1634. All rights reserved. Text: Mark J. Wagner, "The Wreck of the 'America' in Southern Illinois: A Flatboat on the Ohio River," 2015, pp. 11-13. Copyright Board of Trustees, Southern Illinois University, 1263 Lincoln Dr, Carbondale, IL 62901. All rights reserved. Aug 10, 2022.
Building, Mill and Mill Race, with Foundation, 1810
Image ID: 8272
Collection: Karen Halttunen
Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Industrial Revolution, Arts and Architecture, British Empire, Business 19th century, Early mills and factories, Early National Period, Emerging industrial city, Environmental History, Greece Ancient, Invention, Labor, Lowell, Mills Factories Post Civil War, National Events, Sturbridge, Technology, Trade, Urbanization, Work and Workers
Region(s): United States
CA Standard(s): 8.12 - The transformation of the American economy and the changing social and political conditions…in response to the Industrial Revolution, 5.8 - The colonization, immigration, and settlement patterns of the American people from 1789 to the mid-1800s..., 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast. , 11.2 - The the relationship among the rise of industrialization, large-scale rural-to-urban migration, and massive immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe
National Standard(s): Revolution and the New Nation (1754-1820s) , Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)
Card Text: Building, mill and millrace, with mill foundation, 1810. Water flowing from rivers and streams is a valuable energy resource. People learned to use the power of running water to operate the small mills that were important to their families. Gristmills ground the grain the farmers grew, sawmills cut their lumber, and carding mills combed the wool sheared from their sheep. Their water-powered machines cut nails and shingles, turned wood for furniture parts, and performed other useful tasks.
The three main principles of water power are: Flow, Head, and Efficiency. Flow is the volume (amount) of water; the greater the flow, the more power obtained. Head is the height of the fall of the water; the greater the height, the more power obtained. Efficiency is the measure of how well a waterwheel captures the weight (from the flow) and force (from the head) of the water; the greater the efficiency, the more power obtained.
Water can do its work only when there is both head and flow. The earliest mill sites in New England had a natural fall of water that created head and flow. If there was no natural fall, head was created by building a dam, and the kind of dam was determined by the type of stream bed and the resources available. There were many options, and dam builders could mix and match features. Dams often created ponds behind them that stored water and
effectively increased flow as well. Drawing.
Citation: Copyright Houghton Mifflin Co, 222 Berkeley St, Boston, MA 02116. All rights reserved. In David Macaulay, "Mill," 1989, p. 34. Text: "The Power of Water," p. 3. https://www.osv.org/the-power-of-water. Copyright Old Sturbridge Village, 1 Old Sturbridge Village Rd, Sturbridge, MA 01566. All rights reserved. Jan 22, 2022.
Privy in Jail Cell, Williamsburg, VA, 1704
Image ID: 8339
Collection: Karen Halttunen
Topic(s): Antebellum Reform, 18th Century Interiors, Architecture, British Empire, Class Separation, Colonial America, Early cities, Early Virginia, Eighteenth Century, Environmental History, Institutions and social disorder, Moral lessons, National Politics, Nineteenth Century, Politics & Government, Pre-Industrial Work - Misc., Prejudice and Discrimination, Slavery, Working, and Living Conditions, Social disorder and order to 1865, Southern Society, Temp to 1870's, Urban poverty, Victorian Death, Williamsburg, Women's misc., Working Class Culture
Region(s): United States
CA Standard(s): 5.4 - Political, religious, social, and economic institutions that evolved in the colonial era. , 5.5 - The causes of the American Revolution, 5.8 - The colonization, immigration, and settlement patterns of the American people from 1789 to the mid-1800s...
National Standard(s): Colonization and Settlement (1585-1763), Revolution and the New Nation (1754-1820s) , Expansion and Reform (1801-1861), Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)
Card Text: Privy in jail cell, Williamsburg, VA. Thieves, runaway enslaved workers, murderers, cutthroats, pirates, debtors, political prisoners, and the criminally insane once paced the smelly, filthy cells of the 1704 Public Gaol as they waited to be tried - and perhaps hanged. In this two-story brick prison, the incarcerated didn’t just wake up to austere and depressing cells. With fellow occupants, including bloodthirsty pirates and traitors, they were also often greeted by belligerent bunkmates itching for conflict. The prisoners had only piles of straw for beds. Rodents, cockroaches, and lice infested the cells, the food was horrible, and typhus was common. The windows had no glass so the prisoners, chained in heavy leg irons and handcuffs, were at risk from the weather. The poor living conditions and overcrowding caused more inmates to die of starvation and disease than hanging.
When Williamsburg became the capital of the Colony of Virginia in 1699, city officials realized that with economic growth came crime, and with heightened political activity, corruption. They therefore hired the best building contractor in the state, Henry Cary, to construct “a strong sweet prison” in 1701. Initial specifications for the gaol kept it small and simple because it was not intended to house murderers, thieves, and other dangerous miscreants. At first the Public Gaol had only three rooms: two for inmates and one for the gaoler. But officials soon realized that the city’s population of wrongdoers was larger than they’d estimated; a 30- x 20-foot building simply could not house all the enslaved runaways, thieves, Tories, and spies sentenced to prison. An exercise yard was therefore added in 1703, a “Debtor’s Prison” in 1711, and a separate brick dwelling for the gaoler in 1722.
Unfortunately, despite all these additions, the Public Gaol failed to live up to its “strong and sweet” expectations. It was an inhumane environment. The food was beyond terrible (soggy peas and overly salted beef, for instance); the cells were freezing (many inmates shivered to death); and the cleaning staff left much to be desired (“Gaol fever,” or typhus, plagued prisoners and jailers alike).
Incarceration in such an inhumane place is arguably a fitting punishment for evil pirates, especially if they served under the infamous Blackbeard. They were the gaol's most notorious inmates, captured with him in 1718. Before Edward Teach earned that name and a reputation for terrorizing the seas, he was just a humble sailor. Once he joined Benjamin Hornigold’s Flying Gang of pirates, however, he quickly learned their ways and became one of the most feared pirates to roam colonial coastlines. When Blackbeard sailed the "Queen Anne’s Revenge" to the Carolinas, Virginia Governor Alexander Spotswood ordered Lt Robert Maynard to engage and capture Blackbeard and his crew, but the pirate captain was killed during the bloody hand-to-hand conflict that followed. Some say that the governor had a pike fixed with Blackbeard’s skull displayed prominently on the banks of the Hampton River to scare off other freebooters and prevent them from landing. As for Blackbeard’s 15 henchmen who survived the struggle:
“Taken to Williamsburg to stand trial, they were held in the public 'gaol' on Nicholson Street just north of the Capitol. At least some faced an admiralty court...one was acquitted, one pardoned and the rest sentenced to hang.” In 1719, the remaining pirates left the Public Gaol and walked down the streets of Williamsburg. They rode on top of their own coffins, a custom of the time, along Gallows Road to be hanged. Their bodies were allowed to rot for months in cages at the city entrance to deter would-be pirates.
Another of the gaol’s most famous occupants was Governor Henry Hamilton. Hamilton’s ability to forge friendships with Indian chiefs had earned him two nicknames, which he detested: the “Scalp-taker” and the “Hair-Buyer General.” Rumors had spread of Hamilton's purchasing the scalps of dead settlers from Native American raiding parties, and he was captured by Colonel George Rogers Clark in 1779 to face these allegations. As he awaited trial, the poor governor discovered that even political prominence did not exempt him from brutal treatment at the Public Gaol: He was refused pen and paper, shackled in a tiny cell with six other criminals, and forced to eat disgusting food.
Many prisoners, of course, belonged in a hospital, not a jail, but only in 1773 did Williamsburg open its first public hospital. Before the colonists understood the huge difference between lawbreakers and “lunaticks,” the mentally ill were forced to bunk with convicts - to everyone's disadvantage.
In Virginia, at least four people were incarcerated in the Public Gaol in the 1760s, and it had a substantial female population. The ghosts of two women are still rumored to lurk in the gaoler’s upstairs quarters. The women’s animated conversations and the thumping of their heavy shoes are yet heard coming from the deserted room. It is as if the evil thoughts of criminals, and the pain of the innocent, have all seeped into the prison’s walls, where they remain to this day. One tourist recalls: “I went in there and I felt really, really, like there was something wrong, like something’s in there. I walked in further and further until I got to the very end where I could barely see light coming out from the door I walked in. Then, I noticed the chains moving and the ball, because it’s the ball and chain that hang on a wall, and I noticed it was moving and I was like, that’s kinda cool."
Citation: Karen Halttunen photo. Text: "Public Gaol Cell Yard," Colonial Williamsburg, Williamsburg, VA. https://www.colonialwilliamsburg.org/locations/public-gaol-cell-yard/. "The Public Gaol." https://colonialghosts.com/public-gaol-and-wythe-house/. ©2022 The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 101 Visitor Center Dr, Williamsburg, VA 23185. All rights reserved. Dec 5, 2022.
Power Loom, 1830s
Image ID: 8327
Collection: Karen Halttunen
Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Lowell, Agrarian Reform, Agriculture, Business 19th century, Class Separation, Early mills and factories, Early National Period, Environmental History, Individualism, Technology, Industrial Revolution, Institutions and social disorder, Invention, National Events, National Politics, Nineteenth Century Slavery, Slavery, Working, and Living Conditions, Southern Society, Success 19th century, Trade, Upper class ante bellum, Urbanization
Region(s): United States
CA Standard(s): 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast. , 5.8 - The colonization, immigration, and settlement patterns of the American people from 1789 to the mid-1800s..., 8.10 - The multiple causes, key events, and complex consequences of the Civil War, 8.4 - The aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation, 8.7 - The divergent paths of the American people in the South from 1800 to the mid-1800s , 8.9 - The early and steady attempts to abolish slavery and to realize the ideals of the Declaration of Independence.
National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)
Card Text: Power loom, 1830s. The US textile industry entered a new era in 1814 when Francis Cabot Lowell (1775 – 1817) created the first successful American power loom in Waltham, Massachusetts. Lowell copied successful designs of English power looms and improved them for use in the United States. These inventions revolutionized cloth-making technology. For the first time mass production of finished textile products was possible.
Lowell and his brother-in-law Patrick Jackson incorporated their business in 1814 with one brick structure of six floors. They added a second mill in 1818 and a third in 1820. First using water to power his machines, Lowell located his factory on the Charles River at Waltham. It was the first successful power-driven textile mill in the world. The entire process of transforming raw cotton into cloth was gathered within the same building for the first time. Lowell combined the new power loom, effective mill organization, mass production, and cheap labor to make textile manufacturing a flourishing operation in the US. Soon textile mills sprang up along the rivers of New England and transformed the landscape, the economy, and society in general. Initially, daughters of local farmers performed the textile work. In later years, recently arrived immigrants became the main source of mill employees. Prior to the US Civil War (1861-65), textile manufacturing was the most important American industry. After Lowell's death in 1817, the great cotton-manufacturing city of Lowell, Massachusetts, was named in his honor.
People are known to have weaved as far back as the 8th millennium BCE, during the Neolithic Period of the Stone Age. In ancient Egypt, over 6,000 years ago, cloth-making was a regular activity in providing clothing and other materials. During the Middle Ages, from about CE 400 to 1400, people wove cloth in homes on hand looms, which were hand-powered machines that interwove yarns and other fibers into fabrics.
During the early 18th century, factory looms spurred an industrial revolution in England, where people began to work in factories rather than in their homes. Eventually, factories replaced the domestic or "cottage" system and became the standard locale of cloth production in industrial countries. Due to the size of the looms, the factory bosses preferred child workers as young as nine years old to adults in performing some of the operations. Their exploitation and endangerment of children in hazardous working conditions for extremely long hours was common in the early 19th century. In response, in 1835 Parliament passed the British Factory Act to limit working hours and improve factory conditions.
The factory system began to advance in the late 18th century following a series of inventions that transformed the British textile industry and launched the Industrial Revolution. The "flying shuttle" was patented in 1733 by British inventor John Kay (1704-80); a lever mechanism drove the shuttle across the loom along a track, greatly increasing the speed of weaving and permitting "picking" (an operation that opens the fleece) to be done by one person. In 1745 Jacques de Vaucanson (1709–82) produced a French loom, further developed by his countryman Joseph-Marie Jacquard (1752 – 1834) to achieve intricate patterns in cloth. In 1764 Englishman James Hargreaves (1720-78) invented the "spinning jenny," producing thread from animal and plant fibers; it made available large supplies of yarn and forced the development of faster weaving techniques to keep up with increased demand. In 1769 Richard Arkwright (1732 – 92) invented the "water frame" for spinning, and in 1779 Samuel Crompton (1753 – 1827) invented the "spinning mule," a multiple-spindle spinning machine. These inventions mechanized the hand processes, producing textiles much more quickly and cheaply. As these new machines became larger and more costly, it became necessary to operate them in factories. Even greater technological advances were possible when power was applied to the loom, mechanizing the weaving of cloth. In a power loom, precise movements once done by human hands were duplicated by intricate interactions of cams, gears, levers, and springs. Because these movements required precision and intense coordination, weaving was the final step to be mechanized in the textile mills.
One of the major technological breakthroughs early in the Industrial Revolution was the 1712 invention of the first practical steam engine by English inventor Thomas Newcomen (1664 - 1729). While making improvements to the Newcomen engine, the Scottish engineer and inventor James Watt (1736 - 1819) developed a series of inventions, the first patented in 1769, that made possible the modern steam engine. When textile factories became mechanized, only water power was available to operate the machinery. The factory owner was forced to locate the manufacturing facility near a water supply, sometimes in an inconvenient or isolated region far from the workers. In 1785, however, a steam engine was first installed in a cotton factory and steam began to replace water as the power supply for the new machinery. Manufacturers could then build factories closer to labor and to markets for the textiles produced.
English clergyman Edmund Cartwright (1743–1823) invented the first successful power loom in 1785. His was the first that could weave wide cloth like calico in a mass manufacturing process. It allowed operations to be faster and more efficient, and a semi-skilled worker with little experience could produce the same amount of cloth as a professional hand weaver. Using water power to operate various functions, Cartwright's loom could weave automatically much more quickly than a skilled worker operating a standard loom. In 1787 Cartwright opened a textile mill and two years later began using steam engines manufactured by James Watt and Matthew Boulton to drive his looms. Cartwright's steam-powered machines made the textile manufacturing process much more efficient and popular—and therefore profitable—to factory owners. The earlier method powered by the water wheel nearly disappeared as the steam engine became the preferred power supply. The power loom became both quicker and more precise. All operations that had been performed previously by the weaver's hands and feet could now be operated mechanically.
In 1802 English cotton manufacturer William Horrocks of Stockport patented an improved power loom. It featured a better way to wind the woven cloth onto a rear beam of the loom. During the next 20 years further improvements appeared. Early in the 19th century, many English factory owners began to use Cartwright's power loom with Horrocks' improvements. By 1818 in the Manchester area, 14 factories were running with a total of 2,000 power looms. Three years later the number of northern English factories had increased to 32 mills with 5,732 power looms in use. By 1850 over 250,000 cotton power looms were in use in Britain, and nearly 177,000 were in Lancashire County surrounding Manchester.
Former British textile apprentice Samuel Slater (1768 – 1835) introduced the Arkwright method of spinning into the United States in 1790 when he started a factory in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Cotton manufacture did not grow rapidly in the American South until after 1793 when Massachusetts teacher Eli Whitney(1765 – 1825), then living in Georgia, invented a machine that he called the "cotton gin." It is likely that Revolutionary General Nathanael Greene's widow Catherine (1755 – 1814) gave him the basic idea. This new machine could clean at least 300 pounds of cotton a day, a remarkable improvement on the former rate of about one pound per day by hand. Whitney's cotton gin solved the problem of mass production and cotton manufacture; ten years after the machine had gone into operation, the US was exporting over 100,000 bags of cotton, or more than 40,000,000 pounds, with enormous increases every year. Up to that time and much later, the cotton yarn spun in US mills was mostly woven into cloth by hand in family homes. The invention of the cotton gin and the power loom led to the rise of the cotton industry as mechanized textile mills sprang up mostly in the Northeast and then in the South. Whitney had believed the cotton gin would reduce the demand for enslaved workers and hasten the end of Southern slavery. On the contrary, the invention of the cotton gin made slavery more profitable and thus strengthened it as an institution. Because of the cotton gin, enslaved people labored on ever-larger plantations where work was more regimented and relentless. As large plantations spread into the Southwest, the price of enslaved labor and land inhibited the growth of cities and industries, retarding the modernization of the region. Drawing.
Citation: Image: Copyright Houghton Mifflin Co., 222 Berkeley St, Boston, MA 02116. All rights reserved. In David Macaulay, "Mill," 1989, p. 83. Text: "Power Loom Invented: United States 1814." https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/power-loom-invented. © 2019 Encyclopedia.com. All rights reserved. Nov 27, 2022.
Sewing Bee, Oneida Community, NY, c. 1850?
Image ID: 8337
Collection: Karen Halttunen
Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Antebellum Reform, Agrarian Reform, Arts and Architecture, Business 19th century, Class Structure, Domesticity, Early mills and factories, Early National Period, Environmental History, Family to 1920, Future Progress, Gender-Bending, Individualism, Technology, Invention, Labor, Masculinity, Middle-Class Culture, Moral lessons, Nature and Civilization, Nineteenth Century Children, Nineteenth Century Misc, Parents, Children, Families, Pro feminist and suffrage, Pullman and Model Towns, Religion, Social disorder and order to 1865, Socialism, Strikes and Violence, Success 19th century, Utopias, Utopias pre 1860, Whites, non planters ante bellum, Women's liberation, Women's work, Work and Housing
Region(s): United States
CA Standard(s): 8.12 - The transformation of the American economy and the changing social and political conditions…in response to the Industrial Revolution, 8.4 - The aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation, 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast. , 8.9 - The early and steady attempts to abolish slavery and to realize the ideals of the Declaration of Independence., 11.3 - The role of religion in the founding of America and its lasting moral, social, and political impacts, and issues regarding religious liberty.
National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861), Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)
Card Text: Bee for making travelling bags, Oneida Community, NY. The Oneida Community was a religious commune that expanded into Wallingford, CT, in 1851 when a local farmer invited founder John Humphrey Noyes to establish a new community on 228 acres of his property.
The Oneida Community (1848-80) was one of the most radical social experiments ever seen in the United States. A religious utopian group numbering about 250 New Englanders transplanted to upstate New York, the Community advocated common ownership of property and the sharing of all work and love. They practiced a “free love” system of marriage in which all adult men and women were regarded as heterosexual spouses to one another. This “complex marriage” is today called open marriage. They believed sex to be a divine gift, “the instrument for unselfish love and communion with God.” The Community claimed to have emancipated women from involuntary pregnancy by eliminating male climax from the sex act, and aimed to free Community women from the bondage of marriage and the tedium of household drudgery. The commune instituted a program of human breeding in order, they asserted, to elevate the condition of humankind.
Noyes believed in the idea of Christian perfectionism, which did not recognize private ownership of property. The community initially began farming fruit, expanded into printing and eventually built a silver company, Oneida Silverware. When the Oneida Community in Wallingford dissolved in 1881, its remaining members returned to New York, where they founded and later sold the Oneida silverware company. It still operates today.
A number of factors contributed to the decline of the Oneida Community: competition from Wallace Silversmiths, the rise of Victorian-era morals, and the death or defection of members. The deadly tornado of 1878 was another blow. It began over Community Lake, the waterspout sweeping up Daniel O’Reilly, the town’s first police chief, who was fishing on the lake. O’Reilly survived being thrown hundreds of feet onto the shore.
Citation: Syracuse University Library, Department of Special Collections, Oneida Community Collection. Copyright Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244. All rights reserved. In Robert Allerton Parker, "A Yankee Saint: John Humphrey Noyes and the Oneida Community," 1935, cover. Text: Adapted from Anthony Wonderley, "Oneida Community Gender Relations—in Context and over Time." https://digitalcommons.hamilton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1225& context=acsq. American Communal Societies Quarterly, Vol 7, No. 1, p. 33. For educational and research purposes under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Hamilton College, 198 College Hill Rd, Clinton, NY 13323. Jan. 2013,
Woodbridge, The Cross Keys Tavern, Middlesex County, NJ, 1794
Image ID: 8217
Collection: Karen Halttunen
Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Transportation, 18th Century Exteriors, American Revolution, Architecture, Early National Period, Landscape, anti-urban, National Events, Nationhood, Politics & Government, Presidents, Slavery Misc., Washington
Region(s): United States
CA Standard(s): 5.6 - The course and consequences of the American Revolution, 5.7 - People and events associated with the development of the U.S. Constitution and it's significance as the foundation of the American republic, 5.8 - The colonization, immigration, and settlement patterns of the American people from 1789 to the mid-1800s..., 8.1 - Major events preceding the founding of the nation and the development of American constitutional democracy, 8.3 - The foundation of the American political system and the ways in which citizens participate in it, 8.4 - The aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation
National Standard(s): Revolution and the New Nation (1754-1820s) , An Age of Revolutions, 1750-1914
Card Text: Archibald Robertson, "The Cross Keys Tavern, Woodbridge," Middlesex County, NJ, 1794. Near here, Cornwallis' British column turned left toward the Short Hills; the artist's father was among them. On April 22, 1789, General Washington stayed the night at this tavern on his way from Mount Vernon, Virginia, to New York City for his inauguration as the first President of the United States. On April 16, he and his entourage had departed Mount Vernon, traveling the 225 miles to the Cross Keys Tavern in Woodbridge. New Jersey had become a second home to Washington. He fought more battles on its soil and spent more time there than anywhere else in more than 4-1/2 years of the 8-year American Revolutionary War. The Cross Keys Tavern had been a cradle of revolt. It was the Sons of Liberty's headquarters for revolution in Woodbridge, where colonists had criticized their king, merchants had protested harsh British trade restrictions, petitions had been drawn up and signed, and tea boycotts and militia units had been organized. It was a popular stopover on the Old Dutch or Upper Road for travelers between New York and Philadelphia. Here on April 22nd Washington received a tumultuous reception from a large military company and civilian contingent, including the first Governor of New Jersey William Livingston, Brigadier General Nathaniel Heard, commander of the militia who had arrested Royal Governor William Franklin, and many other distinguished officers and soldiers. On April 23, Washington left Woodbridge for Elizabethtown Point and boarded an “elegantly adorned” crimson-canopied, 47-foot barge to cross Newark and Lower New York Bay. He landed to a stupendous ovation in lower Manhattan, where he was inaugurated on April 30. “All ranks and professions,” ran one newspaper account, “expressed their feelings in loud acclamations, and with rapture hailed the arrival of the Father of His Country.” Watercolor.
Citation: New Jersey Historical Society, 52 Park Place, Newark, NJ 07102. Coll. 1962: 358. Text: Adapted from Donald Johnstone Peck, "Cross Keys Tavern, Woodbridge, New Jersey. George Washington’s Visit and Inauguration as First President of the United States." https://www.twp.woodbridge.nj.us/ DocumentCenter/View/ 930/Cross-Keys-Tavern-Information-PDF?bidId=. All rights reserved. Aug 9, 2022.
Jackson Mfg. Co., Nashua, NH, 1846
Image ID: 8321
Collection: Karen Halttunen
Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Lowell, Architecture, Business 19th century, Child labor, Class Structure, Corporate Image, Early mills and factories, Early National Period, Emerging industrial city, Environmental History, Factory as symbol, Industrial Revolution, Invention, Labor, National Events, Propaganda, Strikes and Violence, Success 19th century, Sweatshops, Symbols of mass society, Technology, Urbanization, Women in labor movement, Women's work, Work and Workers
Region(s): United States
CA Standard(s): 8.10 - The multiple causes, key events, and complex consequences of the Civil War, 5.8 - The colonization, immigration, and settlement patterns of the American people from 1789 to the mid-1800s..., 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast.
National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861), Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)
Card Text: Jackson Mfg. Co., Nashua, NH, with genteel folk strolling below its bell tower, 1846. The Jackson Manufacturing Company, next to the Jackson Falls dam, was incorporated in 1824. Nashua is an industrial town located at the juncture of the Nashua and Merrimack Rivers in southern New Hampshire. Two large textile mills on the Nashua River, the Nashua Manufacturing Co. and the Jackson Manufacturing Co., were cotton textile manufacturers and the largest employers in the city. Nashua was one of several cities that blossomed along the Merrimack River to take advantage of its water power in the early days of the Industrial Revolution. This gentle representation of a "good-neighbor" factory of human scale belies its dirt, noise, dangerous working conditions, long working hours, and exploitation of child labor.
Citation: Courtesy of Columbia University Press, 61 W 62nd St, New York, NY 10023. In Thomas Dublin, ed., "Farm to Factory: Women's Letters 1830-1860" (1981) p. 91. Our thanks to Columbia University Press. Text: "Nashua, N.H.: 1875." https://collections.leventhalmap.org/search/commonwealth:x633fc84m.
Copyright Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center, Boston Public Library, 700 Boylston St, Copley Square, Boston, MA 02116. All rights reserved. Sept 12, 2023.
The Peculiar Domestic Institutions of Our Southern Brethren, Boston, 1840
Image ID: 8382
Collection: Karen Halttunen
Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Antebellum Reform, Abolition, Apartheid, Arts and Architecture, Business 19th century, Child labor, Civil War, Class Separation, Early National Period, Environmental History, Games 19th century, Jacksonian Era, Liquor, Market Economy, Masculinity, Moral lessons, National Politics, Nativism, Nineteenth Century Slavery, Parks and Cemeteries, Plantation Exterior, Politics & Government, Popular recreation to 1865, Prejudice and Discrimination, Propaganda, Satire and Comedy, Slavery and Abolition, Slavery, Working, and Living Conditions, Social disorder and order to 1865, Southern Society, Sports and Recreation, Symbols, Temp to 1870's, Working Class Culture
Region(s): United States
CA Standard(s): 8.7 - The divergent paths of the American people in the South from 1800 to the mid-1800s , 5.8 - The colonization, immigration, and settlement patterns of the American people from 1789 to the mid-1800s..., 8.1 - Major events preceding the founding of the nation and the development of American constitutional democracy, 8.10 - The multiple causes, key events, and complex consequences of the Civil War, 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast.
National Standard(s): Revolution and the New Nation (1754-1820s) , Expansion and Reform (1801-1861), Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)
Card Text: "The Peculiar Domestic Institutions of Our Southern Brethren," Boston, MA, 1840. Gambling, cock-fighting, drinking, horse-racing, dueling, lynching. Detail. The Northern abolitionist publishers of the American "Anti-Slavery Almanac" depict the South as a vicious, violent and cruel society influenced by the evils of southern slavery. This abolitionist cartoon made political capital with the brutal white response to the 1835 Mississippi slave rebellion.
In the left foreground are two fighting cocks in battle. Behind them is a slave master torturing an enslaved man by raking his naked back with a cat while two shirtless men engage in a knife fight. Directly behind the brawlers, horses race under the whips of their riders. Horse racing was a popular source of southern entertainment that often left its betting patrons poverty stricken. At front center, a group of white men sit at a table playing cards, wagering their earnings on chance. One has fatally shot another in the head; a third pats an enslaved child on the head, implying that he is using the youngster as betting stakes. Behind the poker players is a tree hung with four black and white victims of a local lynch mob. At right, two men, likely drunk, brawl on the ground. To their right and out of view a white man savagely whips an enslaved child, while behind them two men duel to preserve their idea of southern male honor. At upper right a group of men gather to wager on a cockfight.
Through images like this, abolitionists tried to show that slavery produced paranoia and lawlessness in its practitioners. Abolitionists wanted to demonstrate that the institution created a callousness that extended to even its most innocent victims.
University of Alabama Prof. Joshua Rothman in his book "Flush Times & Fever Dreams: A Story of Capitalism and Slavery in the Age of Jackson" (2014), sums up the image: "...The collage of images delivered a powerful message. Debased by greed and accustomed to the violence on which slavery rested, white southern men had become little better than animals, as indifferent to suffering and conditioned to mutilate and murder one another as the fighting cocks they cheered." Propagandist images like this one brought new converts into the ranks of the abolitionists, while making Southerners feel unfairly depicted and wrongly judged. Woodcut engraving.
Citation: "Anti-Slavery Almanac," 1840. Old Sturbridge Inc., Old Sturbridge Village, MA. Henry Peach photo. Text: Tim Talbott, "Random Thoughts on History:
'Our Peculiar Domestic Institutions.'" http://randomthoughtsonhistory.blogspot.com/2013/09/our-peculiar-domestic-institutions.html. Sept 20, 2013. Copyright Tim Talbott. All rights reserved. Feb 25, 2023.
Harper Brothers, Largest American Printing Co.,1850s
Image ID: 8262
Collection: Karen Halttunen
Topic(s): Nineteenth Century, Industrial Revolution, Architecture, Arts and Architecture, Business 19th century, Class Structure, Coal, Corporate Image, Early mills and factories, Early National Period, Emerging industrial city, Environmental History, Factory as symbol, Invention, Labor, Market Economy, National Events, Nineteenth Century Interiors, Success 19th century, Symbols of mass society, Technology, Trade, Urbanization, Whites, non planters ante bellum, Women's work, Work and Workers
Region(s): United States
CA Standard(s): 8.6 - The divergent paths of the American people from 1800 to the mid-1800s...with emphasis on the Northeast. , 8.3 - The foundation of the American political system and the ways in which citizens participate in it, 8.4 - The aspirations and ideals of the people of the new nation, 11.2 - The the relationship among the rise of industrialization, large-scale rural-to-urban migration, and massive immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe
National Standard(s): Expansion and Reform (1801-1861), The Development of the Industrial United States (1870-1900)
Card Text: Harper Brothers was the largest US printing company in the 1850s, employing 500 workers and 30 power presses. At top left are the hydraulic presses. At top right is the front of the building on Franklin Square, with its iron façade.
The Harper buildings were located on half an acre in New York City, and consisted of two blocks of buildings with a court between them. The blocks were united by a series of iron bridges. The factory was five stories in height, with a cellar and sub-cellar, making seven floors in all. The seven floors are illustrated in the sectional view below.
The Basement contained the engine and machinery that supplied the moving power for all the operations; this power was conveyed to the floors above by a system of axles, pulleys, and bands extending from story to story. The main work of this engine was to drive the presses on the floor above. The First floor held the great press-room; the weight of these presses was about five tons each. The Second story was the drying and pressing-room; here the printed sheets, as fast as they were taken from the presses below, were brought to hydraulic presses where the sheets were dried and pressed after being printed. In the Third story folding-room, young women folded the sheets of pressed paper and prepared them to be stitched or sewn. The Fourth story housed heavy hydraulic presses for pressing the folded sheets into compact forms ready for sewing the backs and binding. The Fifth floor finishing room forwarded the books, prepared and fitted the covers, pasted down the fly-leaves, and trimmed the edges; the row of standing-presses pressed the books after being sewn and assembled; this was the fourth pressing in the process. At least 25 presses were required for all these operations. There were 33 printing presses, all massive machines of great power, driven by steam, in the principal press-room and on the floor below. Marbling the covers and gilding the page ends finished the process. The Top floor, the upper story, held the great composing-room, the room for type-setting and electrotyping.
Citation: Image: Jacob Abbott (1803-79), "The Harper Establishment; or How the Story Books Are Made," 1855. Image and text: In Kenneth Day, ed., "Book Typography 1815-1965 in Europe and America" (1966), Plate 9, after p. 352. Copyright University of Chicago Press, 1427 E 60th St, Chicago, IL 60637. All rights reserved. Oct 29, 2022.