393
CHAPTER 13 North and South
A few African Americans rose in the business
world. Henry Boyd owned a furniture manufac-
turing company in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1827
Samuel Cornish and John B. Russwurm
founded Freedom’s Journal, the first African
American newspaper, in New York City. In 1845
Macon B. Allen became the first African Ameri-
can licensed to practice law in the United States.
The overwhelming majority of African Ameri-
cans, however, were extremely poor.
Women Workers
Women had played a major role in the devel-
oping mill and factory systems. However,
employers discriminated against women, pay-
ing them less than male workers. When men
began to form unions, they excluded women.
Male workers wanted women kept out of the
workplace so that more jobs would be available
for men.
Some female workers attempted to organize
in the 1830s and 1840s. In Massachusetts the
Lowell Female Labor Reform Organization,
founded by a weaver named Sarah G. Bagley,
petitioned the state legislature for a 10-hour
workday in 1845. Because most of the petition’s
signers were women, the legislature did not con-
sider the petition.
Most of the early efforts by women to achieve
equality and justice in the workplace failed. They
paved the way, however, for later movements to
correct the injustices against female workers.
Describing How did conditions for
workers change as the factory system developed?
The Rise of Cities
The growth of factories went hand in hand
with the growth of Northern cities. People look-
ing for work flocked to the cities, where most of
the factories were located. The population of New
York City, the nation’s largest city, passed 800,000,
and Philadelphia, more than 500,000 in 1860.
Between 1820 and 1840, communities that had
been small villages became major cities, including
St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Louisville.
All of them profited from their location on the
Mississippi River or one of the river’s branches.
These cities became centers of the growing trade
that connected the farmers of the Midwest with
the cities of the Northeast. After 1830 the Great
Lakes became a center for shipping, creating
major new urban centers. These centers included
Buffalo, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Chicago.
Immigration
Immigration—the movement of people into a
country—to the United States increased dramat-
ically between 1840 and 1860. American manu-
facturers welcomed the tide of immigrants,
many of whom were willing to work for long
hours and for low pay.
The largest group of immigrants to the United
States at this time traveled across the Atlantic
from Ireland. Between 1846 and 1860 more than
1.5 million Irish immigrants arrived in the coun-
try, settling mostly in the Northeast.
The Irish migration to the United States was
brought on by a terrible potato famine. A
famine is an extreme shortage of food. Potatoes
were the main part of the Irish diet. When a dev-
astating blight, or disease, destroyed Irish
potato crops in the 1840s, starvation struck the
country. More than one million people died.
Although most of the immigrants had been
farmers in Ireland, they were too poor to buy
land in the United States. For this reason many
Irish immigrants took low-paying factory jobs in
Cities grow along fall lines A “fall line” is the boundary
between an upland region and a lower region where
rivers and streams move down over rapids or waterfalls
to the lower region. Cities sprang up along fall lines for a
number of reasons. Boats could not travel beyond the
fall line, so travelers and merchants had to transfer their
goods to other forms of transportation there. Early man-
ufacturers also took advantage of the falls to power
their mills. Fall-line cities include Richmond, Virginia;
Trenton, New Jersey; and Augusta, Georgia.
Growth of Cities
