TECHNOLOGY, CULTURE, & EVERYDAY LIFE 1840-1860

1. TECHNOLOGY, CULTURE, & EVERYDAY LIFE 1840-1860 TECHNOLOGY & ECONOMIC GROWTH THE QUALITY OF LIFE DEMOCRATIC PASTIMES THE QUEST FOR NATIONALITY IN LITURATURE & ART chapter 11

2. How did technology transform the daily lives of ordinary Americans fr. 1840-1860? • Technological change contributed to new kinds of national unity and also to new forms of social division. What were the main unifying features of technology? The principal dividing or segmenting features? • How did the ways in which Americans passed their spare time change between 1840 and 1860? • What did American writers and artists see as the distinguishing features of their nation? How did their views of American distinctiveness find expression in literature, painting, and landscape architecture? chapter 11

3. (Chapter 11) Model of McCormick’s Reaper 1850s Cyrus McCormick invented a mechanical wheat reaper in his native Virginia in 1831, patented it in 1834, and kept improving it until his death fifty years later. Like many antebellum inventions, the reaper saved labor and hence wages, which were comparatively high in America. The amount of time required to harvest an acre of wheat dropped from twenty hours in 1830 to one hour by 1895. McCormick was just one of many clever inventors trying to make a mechanical reaper. A rival, Obed Hussey, had patented a similar machine a year before McCormick, and in the 1840s the courts upheld Hussey's patent, not McCormick's. But McCormick is the name we remember. Unable to stop Hussey from producing reapers, McCormick had become a millionaire by 1857. His formula for success was simple. First, in order to gain control of production of all reapers with his name on it he stopped hiring individual contractors to produce reapers. Instead, he moved to Chicago, started his own factory, standardized production to control quality, and aggressively marketed his reapers by offering money-back guarantees and deferred payments. • How did the new techniques of mass production in the 1840s and 1850s affect the business side of industry, notably the marketing of products?

4. (Chapter 11)Model of McCormick’s Reaper

5. Technology & Economic Growth: Agricultural Advancement • John Deere: steel-tipped plow to clear land • Cyrus McCormick (Va): mechanical reaper to harvest wheat grains 7 times faster…$$ • Helped North win Civil War • Eli Whitney: cotton gin stimulated cotton economy • Fertilizer to improve production gap between rich soil in West and scarce one in East chapter 11

6. Technology & Economic Growth: industrial growth • Industrial advances by effective machine tools that cut metal • US (Vermont) perfected manufacturing of interchangeable parts (Eli Whitney) • Europeans called process “American system” although machine tools started in Britain • Smith & Wesson mass produced revolving pistol (by Samuel Colt) • Samuel F.B. Morse: 1st telegraph Baltimore to Washington • Alert fire in neighborhood chapter 11

7. Map 11.1: Railroad Growth, 1850–1860

8. Technology & Economic Growth: Railroad • More than telegraph, railroad dramatized technology’s democratic promise • Extended tracks 3Th to 30Th miles; telegraph facilitated scheduling/communication • 1860, US had more tracks than the world’s • Tracks fueled city growth & links & small towns • Railroad: 1st US big business; made Wall Street chapter 11

9. Technology & Economic Growth: Rising Prosperity • Luxury goods cheaper: $50 clock to 50 cents • Worker’s real income rose 25% • Growth of cities/towns provide more jobs year round • Offer wages to children/women, much needed income for household • Farm workers (not owners) fared worse than city wage earners • Urban families experienced increased comfort & convenniences chapter 11

10. Quality of Life: Dwellings • 18th century: unattached frame houses; 19th C. brick row houses • Working class: subdivided row houses called tenements (Irish & free blacks) • Wealthy: houses around park; • Tech. advances in making furniture: level taste between upper and middle class chapter 11

11. Quality of Life: Conveniences & Inconveniences • Wood scarce: coal burning stove • Stove: cooking several dishes at once & contributed to variety of diet (railroad brings fresh produce) • Improved water systems: aqueduct, but 1 in 5 took one bath a year • Elegance and squalor at the same time: pollution • Poor still ate salted pork, mostly • Rich: running water & flushed toilettes; poor used outdoor privies and hogs (yummy dinner sometimes) chapter 11

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13. Quality of Life: diseases and health • Shipping routes bring cholera epidemic of 1832 (1/5 of N. Orleans) • Est. municipal health board: distrust of physicians led to health as low priority • Miasma theory: toxic gases (by rotting veg. & dead animals) cause diseases • William T.G. Morton used anesthetics (sulfuric ether, laughing gas) during operation in 1846 • Improved image of physicians • Got anesthetics but failed to clean hands before surgery chapter 11

14. Quality of Life: Health improvement • Distrust physicians led to hydropathic sanatoriums (water cure, afforded by middle class women) • Advice from Sylvester Graham: abstinence from meat, spices, coffee, & tea, + SEX • Meat stimulated lust and agression • Use revival language: disease as hell, health as heaven chapter 11

15. (Chapter 11) Phrenological Head Originating in Europe in the 1790s, the "science" of phrenology maintained that each personality trait, good or evil, is controlled by its own distinct organ in the brain and that the size of that organ determined how powerful an influence it would exert in a person's life. Thus, an examination of the contours of an individual's skull would reveal both overdeveloped and underdeveloped traits. Phrenology appealed to the desire of antebellum Americans for self-betterment. Many intellectuals and social reformers, including Horace Mann, Sarah Grimké, and Horace Greeley, embraced phrenology. In this illustration, Lorenzo Fowler, the editor of the Phrenological Almanac and his brother Orson, a leading popularizer of the movement, attached a picture to each faculty so that a reader could not fail to make the right associations. For example, box 14, showing a man pulling a mule, locates the organ of stubbornness; number 18, a boy bowing before an elder, that of respect; the two boys scrapping (behind the ear), that of combativeness. Even as phrenology was becoming a fad, church membership was on the rise, and most American Christians avowed belief in Original Sin and the existence of the soul. In principle, a person's soul was unitary, a single spiritual entity that was either possessed or not possessed of divine grace. By locating multiple traits in the physical composition of the brain, phrenology seemed to conflict with Christianity. Interestingly, most phrenologists were religious. • The popularity of phrenology among both reformers and the broader public raises questions. Were there benefits that an individual might expect to gain from phrenology beyond the self-satisfaction of improving oneself? • How might the popularity of phrenology have reflected the transportation revolution and the changing nature of business? • What does the popularity of phrenology say about American Christianity in the mid-nineteenth century?

16. (Chapter 11)Phrenological Head

17. Quality of Life: Phrenology • Orson Fowler: human mind comprised 37 distinct faculties that shaped skull, which can be used to analyze one’s character • His books advice against evils of coffee, tea, meat, spices & SEX (familiar?? Graham) chapter 11

18. DEMOCRATIC PASTIMES: NEWSPAPER • Newspaper, not popular but profitable, multiplied • Limited appeal: lacked exciting news & eye catching illustrations • Tech.: steam-driven cylindrical presses • Now one penny instead of 6 • Penny paper invented “news” with human stories of rape, murder, orphans • Used telegraph to speed news into print • James Gordon Bennett: NY Herald chapter 11

19. DEMOCRATIC PASTIMES: Theater • Served mass audience: 2-4 Thousand; “that dark, horrible, guilty place” = top gallery for prostitutes • Riot of 1849 (22 dead) over 2 US and Br actors reflected class friction: working men vs. aristocrat • Adjusted Shakespeare to audience: Julia at 18, not 14 chapter 11

20. DEMOCRATIC PASTIMES: Minstrel Shows 1840-50s • Forged stereotypes, buttressed white Americans’ sense of superiority diminishing black people • Arose in the North & spread all the way to San Francisco: Even in Whitehouse • Borrowed African American culture & songs had origins of white culture • Stephen Foster’s songs: “Camptown Races” and “Massa’s in the Cold Ground” • Notion of how blacks sang • Catered to prejudice of working class whites: blacks as clumsy, stupid, obsessively musical chapter 11

21. DEMOCRATIC PASTIMES: P.T. Barnum • “a hustler raised in the land of the Puritans, a cynic and an idealist rolled into one” • Open the American Museum in NYC for entertainment, not education • Show collections of curiosities & faked exhibits: winged men on the moon • Achieved publicity by his (various names) letters to newspaper hinting about science of astonishing nature • Lecture on evils of alcohol making museum a safe place chapter 11

22. Nationality in Literature and Art • American Renaissance derived from economic & philosophical (romanticism) factors: Democratize literature • Transportation bred national market for books • Sir Walter Scott (Br): Waverly (fiction) • James Fenimore Cooper • Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom’s Cabin • Romanticism as reaction to classicism: lit. work to be emotionally charged & reflects author’s inner feelings chapter 11

23. Literature & Art: literary figures • J. F. Cooper: The Pioneers, The Last of the Mohicans. Pathfinder, Deerslayer • The Pioneers reflect theme of nature against civilization • Ralph Waldo Emerson 1830s: led transcendentalist movement, US offshoot of romanticism: our ideas of God & freedom are inborn, Americans ought to trust themselves. Essayist • Henry D. Thoreou: an Emersonian but adventurous; went to jail instead of paying poll tax, which suported war w/ Mexico, a way for Southerners to extend slavery; retreated to Walden & wrote about his experience chapter 11

24. Literature & Art: M. Fuller, W. Whitman • Margaret Fuller: An Emersonian: Charged a fee for presiding over “Conversations” • Participants both elite men and women of Boston • Woman in the Nineteenth Century: classic feminism 1845 • Called for women to overcome fear of being masculine to achieve personal fulfillment • Walt Whitman: an Emerson, wrote Leaves of Grass (book of poems in free verse) 1855 “The scent of these armpits finer than prayers” or “winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me” • Vulgar poems but enthralled Emerson chapter 11

25. Literature & Art: Hawthorne, Melville, & Poe, contrast w/ Emerson’s call for every experience as truth • The 3 used unusual settings, interested in psychology & the intricacies of the human mind, not social relationships • Saw humans as bundles of conflicting forces • Characters obsessed by pride, guilt, revenge, perfection…reflect their pessimistic view • Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter • Psychological/moral consequences of adultery • Moral dilemmas of central charaters • Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick: obsession of revenge of the white whale led to death • Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher”: symbol of crumbling house w/ mental agony of a crumbling family chapter 11

26. Literature & Art: in the Market Place1 • 18th C. notion: lit. & art are above commercial • Emily Dickinson refused to published her poems • But authors were often tempted & compelled to write for profit • Poe, drinker, pressed for cash, wrote short stories for popular magazines • Thoreau wanted publicity for his poems but failed • Emerson became a lyceum lecturer, his essays originated as lectures; fees were his income • Susan Warner’s The Wide, Wide World: wrote fiction for $ & pleasure • Tech. advances brought down book prices, increased demand & increase literacy chapter 11

27. Roots of the American Renaissance • The economy and the philosophy were leading developments contributed to the development of the American Renaissance • The revolution created a national market for books • American Renaissance reflected the rise of philosophical movement known as romanticism • Use of literature came from their knowledge of ancient Greek and Roman civilization • Many of the best selling novels were written by women writers • Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin • Authors created character, situation, and outcomes • Essays and novels eventually followed

28. James Fenimore Cooper • The first important figure in literary upsurge • Most significant innovation was to introduce a distinctively American fictional character • Wrote numerous sea- stories

29. Ralph Waldo Emerson • Wrote no novels • Most influential spokesman for American literary nationalism • Emerson broke with the traditional view that ideas arise from the toil of human reason • Stated that knowledge resembles sight • Addressed “The American Scholar” • Leader of the philosophical movement of transcendentalism

30. Emerson continued… • He had a magnetic attraction for intellectually inclined young men and women who did not fit neatly into American society • He was not adventurous in action

31. Henry David Thoreau • Was a representative of the younger Emersonians • Thoreau was known as a doer • Moved from Concord to the woods near Walden Pond • Most of his painting came from visuals in the woods • Wrote a book during his stay in the woods • Walden • The book was filled with descriptions of hawks and wild pigeons, his invention raisin bread, and his trapping of woodchucks

32. Margaret Fuller • Margaret Fuller’s status as an intellectual woman distanced her from conventional society • Her father attended Harvard and he was a prominent Massachusetts politician • She was exposed to Emerson’s ideas toward transcendentalism, a group of new ideas, religion, or culture • Transcendentalism influenced her classic of American feminism, Woman in the Nineteenth Century

33. Walt Whitman • Self-taught • Was in love with everything that associated with America, except slavery • Left school at eleven and became a printer’s apprentice and later a journalist • Journalism and politics gave Whitman an intimate knowledge of ordinary Americans • Major work, Leaves of Grass • Wrote in free verse, his poems had neither rhyme nor meter

34. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe • Expressed themselves in writings • Primarily wrote fiction • Paid little heed to Emerson’s call for literature that would comprehend the everyday experiences of ordinary Americans • Their pessimism led them o create characters obsessed by pride, guilt, and desire • Hawthorne focused on the moral dilemmas that he conveyed in social life • Melville created frightening characters • Poe also channeled his pessimism into creative achievements Nathaniel Hawthorne Herman Melville Edgar Allan Poe

35. Literature & Art: Landscape Painting • The Hudson River School flourished 1820s-1870s • Thomas Cole’s The Course of the Empire • Theme: luxury doomed Republican virtue • Frederick Church, Cole’s student, painted the Andes Mountains • Asher Durand • The three painted Hudson River landscapes, interests sparked by Erie Canal • Emerson and Thoreau popularized view of nature; painters also reacted against envir. Degradation • George Catlin’s: preserved faces, customs, habitats of Indian tribes chapter 11