Slavery, Ulrich Bonnell Phillips (1918) declared, was a benign institution."Severity was clearly the exception, and kindliness the rule,"he declared. Kenneth Stampp (1956), writing as the civil rights movement of the 1950s was gaining momentum, repudiated Phillips's thesis. Stampp insisted that slavery ripped apart families, reduced human beings to chattel, and eroded the slave's sense of self. Stanley Elkins (1959) took this argument further still, comparing southern slavery to the subjugation of inmates in Nazi concentration camps. Slavery was so absolute that it crushed the psyche of African Americans for generations. Two major works in the 1970s challenged this rendering but in different ways. Eugene D. Genovese (1974) argued that masters and slaves were locked in a system of mutual dependence. Slaves were bound to their owners "in an organic relationship so complex and ambivalent that neither could express the simplest human feelings without reference to each other."Their emotional ties, however complicated, were real. Herbert Gutman (1976) disagreed. Slave parents, children, and other relatives formed enduring bonds. In the past decade, scholars have shifted away from this simple pro-con argument. Scholars now focus on the regional and generational differences in slavery and in the way it influenced gender roles. Because it is hard to know what people really felt, the issue resists historical analysis:
How did the slave girl feel about the child in her arms?
Source: Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, American Negro Slavery (1918); Kenneth Stampp, The Peculiar Institution (1956); Stanley Elkins, Slavery (1959); Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll (1974); Herbert Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom (1976).
Than $200 million worth of goods annually. In 1859 the northeastern states alone produced $1.27 billion of the national total of almost $2 billion.
Manufacturing expanded in so many directions that it is difficult to portray or to summarize its evolution. The factory system made great strides. The development of rich anthracite coal fields in Pennsylvania was particularly important in this connection. The coal could be floated cheaply on canals to convenient sites and used to produce both heat for smelting and metalworking and steam power to drive machinery. Steam permitted greater flexibility in locating factories and in organizing work within them, and since waterpower was already being used to capacity, steam was essential for the expansion of output.
American industry displayed a remarkable receptivity to technological change. The list of inventions and processes developed between 1825 and 1850, included—besides such obviously important items as the sewing machine, the vulcanization of rubber, and the cylinder press—the screw-making machine, the friction match, the lead pencil, and an apparatus for making soda water.
In the 1820s a foreign visitor noted, “Everything new is quickly introduced here, and all the latest inventions. . . . The moment an American hears the word ‘invention’ he pricks up his ears.” Twenty years later a Frenchman wrote, “If they continue to work with the same ardor, they will soon have nothing more to desire or to do. All the mountains will be flattened, the valleys filled, all matter rendered productive.” By 1850 the United States led the world in the manufacture of goods that required the use of precision instruments, and in certain industries the country was well on the way toward modern mass
Many other forces acted to stimulate the growth of manufacturing. Immigration increased rapidly in the 1830s and 1840s. By 1860 Irish immigrants alone made up more than 50 percent of the labor force of the New England mills. An avalanche of strong backs, willing hands, and keen minds descended on the country from Europe. European investors poured large sums into the booming American economy, and the savings of millions of Americans and the great hoard of new California gold added to the supply of capital. Improvements in transportation, population growth, the absence of internal tariff barriers, and the relatively high per capita wealth all meant an ever expanding market for manufactured goods.
The American Waltham Watch factory, completed in 1851, manufactured interchangeable parts that could be assembled by factory workers. Previously, most watches were hand-tooled by watchmakers.
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Production methods. American clocks, pistols, rifles, and locks were outstanding.
The American exhibits at the London Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851 so impressed the British that they sent two special commissions to the United States to study manufacturing practices. After visiting the Springfield Arsenal, where a worker took apart ten muskets, each made in a different year, mixed up the parts, and then reassembled the guns, each in perfect working order, the British investigators placed a large order for gunmaking machinery. They also hired a number of American technicians to help organize what became the Enfield rifle factory. They were amazed by the lock and clock factories of New England and by the plants where screws, files, and similar metal objects were turned out in volume by automatic machinery. Instead of resisting new laborsaving machines, the investigators noted, “the workingmen hail with satisfaction all mechanical improvements.”
Industrial growth led to a great increase in the demand for labor. The effects, however, were mixed. Skilled artisans, technicians, and toolmakers earned good wages and found it relatively easy to set themselves up first as independent craftsmen, later as small manufacturers. The expanding frontier drained off much agricultural labor that might otherwise have been attracted to industry, and the thriving new towns of the West absorbed large numbers of eastern artisans of every kind. At the same time, the pay of an unskilled worker was never enough to support a family decently, and the new machines weakened the bargaining power of artisans by making skill less important.
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