Industrialization in Postbellum America

           The postbellum period of American history lasted from 1865 until 1900 and can be viewed as 

the story of three separate sections of post-Civil War America:  The Reconstruction of the South, the 

Closing of the West and the Gilded Age in the Northeast. 

_{In the South, Reconstruction began in 1865 when the former Confederate states entered into a period of 12 years of Federal Government control[1]. Twelve years later in 1877, Federal Troops were withdrawn, and the former slaves fell under a political system known as Jim Crow.  During this Jim Crow period, the Klu Klux Klan operated as the enforcer of Democratic Party policies that restricted the legal rights of Blacks. [2] Without the protection of Federal Troops, Blacks were relegated to a second-class status. Many former slaves were left with sharecropping as their only means of supporting their families. Sharecropping was an economic system whereby the tenant farmer rented the land, the seeds, the equipment and any other supplies he would need. This system resulted in a generation of former slaves being indebted to their former masters.[3] Up to 78% of the Blacks residents of southern states worked as sharecroppers and earned 40% less than Whites in the postbellum South.[4] earning just .095 cents per pound of cotton[5] or between $36.93 per year in 1880. By 1900, the number had only increased to $42.58 per year for Black sharecroppers in the South.[6] By comparison, salaries in northern factories averaged between 679.21 to 845.10 in cities like Baltimore Maryland and Chicago Illinois respectively.[7]}

_{In 1870, there were 4,206,178 registered Blacks living in the “South Atlantic” region of the United States and 6, 497 persons migrated North to the “New England” states. 65,515 migrated North to the “Mid Atlantic” states. By 1900, the population had increased to 7,028,299 and 14,206 Blacks migrated North to the New England states, while 152,680 Blacks migrated North to the Mid-Atlantic states.[8]}

_{The reason for the increase in northern migration by Blacks can be traced to another postbellum development; the industrialization of the “North” during the Gilded Age. The Gilded Age took its name from a Mark Twain novel of the same name which characterized the time period as one of extreme wealth in cities like New York[9]. After the Civil War, the United States embarked on the process of settling the West by laying down over 75,000 miles of railroad tracks and populated the unsettled territories.[10] Central to this process was the production of steel.  Andrew Carnegie adopted the British Bessemer Process to steel production in 1879. The result was to turn steel from a precious metal for jewelry to an inexpensive building material for railroads and skyscrapers.[11] The result of inexpensive steel production and the expansion of the Transcontinental Railroad was a plethora of jobs in Eastcoast states like New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.  Factories in such places as Lowell Massachusetts and Lower Manhattan New York created ”sweatshops” that employed these new industrial workers.  The difference between sharecropping in the rural South and the factories of Northern cities was the steam power that made industrialization exponentially more efficient.[12]}

_{While Blacks migrated North from the former Confederate states, over 7 million people immigrated to the United States between 1877 and 1900. Many of those immigrants were eastern European Jewish and Italian Catholics. A majority of those immigrants settled in Northeastern cities like New York City. [13] With 70% of new immigrants arriving in New York City Ellis Island was opened in 1892[14] to accommodate the massive influx of immigrants. Factories in East Coast cities like New York and Philadelphia provide unskilled jobs that immigrants could quickly learn[15].  One reason that these new immigrants stayed in New York City after arriving was the amount of money one could earn. Between 1877 and 1900, wages rose 59% for industrial workers in the Northeast.[16]}

_{Two groups saw their numbers increase in Northern cities like New York City between 1865 and 1900: Southern Blacks and Eastern European Immigrants. While the two groups varied in background and appearance, one factor they shared was the desire to procure higher paying jobs. A factory worker in New York City was averaging $548 dollars a year in 1890[17], compared to a Black sharecropper in the South, who was averaging less than $50 a year.[18] A peasant in 1890s Russian was earning between 41.5 to 69.2 Kopecks a day, where 100 Kopecks equaled two dollars or 156.5 dollars a year.[19]}

_{The industrialization of the North began before the American Civil War and was accelerated by war. In the postbellum period of American history, industrialization created the movement of persons in search of a higher-paying wage. The demand for unskilled workers who could fill these jobs attracted immigrants from Eastern Europe and Blacks from the Cotton Belt who migrated north between 1877 and 1900.}

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_{BIBLIOGRAPHY:}

_{______________________________________________________________________________}

 

_{Budd, Louis J. Mark Twain: The Contemporary Reviews. Cambridge UP, 2011.}

 

_{Burton, Anthony. Traction Engines Two Centuries of Steam Power. Silverdale: Silverdale Books, 2000.}

 

_{Census Bulletin, Issue 280, United States. 11th census, 1890. United States Census Office. 1892.}

 

_{Chandler, Alfred Jr. The Visible Hand. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993.}

 

_{Davis, Ronald L. F. "The U. S. Army and the Origins of Sharecropping in the Natchez District—A Case Study" The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 62, No.1 Chicago: University of Chicago Press, January, 1977.}

 

_{Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. New York: Harper & Row. 1988.}

 

_{Historical statistics of the United States, Colonial times to 1957. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1960.}

 

_{Hoover, Ethel D. 1851 to 1890 - Consumer Price Index. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.}

_{https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/inflation-calculator/consumer-price-index-1800-}

 

_{Mironov, Boris N.  Wages and Prices in Imperial Russia, 1703-1913 The Russian Review, Vol. 69, No. 1 Jan., 2010.}

 

_{Ng, Kenneth and Nancy Virts. “The Black-White Income Gap in 1880”. Agricultural History, Vol. 67, No. 1 Winter, 1993.}

 

_{Wages in the United States and Europe, 1870-1898, St. Louis Fed.Org.}

 

_{Rosenberg, Nathan. Inside the Black Box: Technology and Economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.}

 

_{Trefousse, Hans, L. “Andrew Johnson” The Presidents, History Channel, New York: A&E Networks, 2005.}

 

_{White, Richard. “The Rise of Industrial America, 1877-1900.” The Gilder Lehman Institute. New York, 2019.}

_{https://ap.gilderlehrman.org/essays/rise-industrial-america-1877-1900#:~:text=Between%201877%20and%201900%20immigrants,people%20into%20the%20United%20States.}

 

_{“Work in the Late 19th Century”. Library of Congress.}

_{https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/rise-of-industrial-america-1876-1900/work-in-late-19th-century/}

 

_{Yew, Elizabeth,  "Medical Inspection of Immigrants at Ellis Island, 1891-1924” Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, vol. 56, no. 5. 1980.}

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[1] Eric Foner. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. (New York: Harper & Row. 1988), XXV. 

[2] Hans, L. Trefousse, “Andrew Johnson”. The Presidents, (History Channel, New York: A&E Networks, 2005).

[3] Ronald L. F. Davis "The U. S. Army and the Origins of Sharecropping in the Natchez District—A Case .Study" The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 62, No.1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, January, 1977), 60.

[4] Kenneth Ng and Nancy Virts. “The Black-White Income Gap in 1880”. Agricultural History, Vol. 67, No. 1 (Winter, 1993), 2-3.

[5] Ibid., 6.

[6] Ibid., 8.

[7] Wages in the United States and Europe, 1870-1898, St. Louis Fed.Org, 676.

[8] Historical statistics of the United States, colonial times to 1957. (U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1960), 42.

[9] Louis J. Budd. Mark Twain: The Contemporary Reviews. Cambridge UP, 2011 p.130

[10] Alfred Jr. Chandler. The Visible Hand. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993.), 115.

[11] Nathan. Rosenberg. Inside the Black Box: Technology and Economics. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.) 90.

[12] Anthony Burton. Traction Engines Two Centuries of Steam Power. (Silverdale: Silverdale Books, 2000.), 38.

[13] Richard White. “The Rise of Industrial America, 1877-1900.” The Gilder Lehman Institute. New York, 2019.

https://ap.gilderlehrman.org/essays/rise-industrial-america-1877-1900#:~:text=Between%201877%20and%201900%20immigrants,people%20into%20the%20United%20States.

[14] Elizabeth Yew,  "Medical Inspection of Immigrants at Ellis Island, 1891-1924” Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, vol. 56, no. 5 (1980): 488

[15] “Work in the Late 19^th Century”. Library of Congress.

https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/rise-of-industrial-america-1876-1900/work-in-late-19th-century/

[16] Census Bulletin, Issue 280, United States. 11th census, 1890. (United States Census Office. 1892.) 2.

[17] Ethel D. Hoover, 1851 to 1890 - Consumer Price Index. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/inflation-calculator/consumer-price-index-1800-

[18] Kenneth Ng and Nancy Virts. “The Black-White Income Gap in 1880”. Agricultural History, Vol. 67, No. 1 (Winter, 1993), 2-3.

[19] Boris N. Mironov Wages and Prices in Imperial Russia, 1703-1913 The Russian Review, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Jan., 2010),  68

https://www.jstor.org/stable/20621167