33.8 America: a.d. 1801 to 1900  (Page 12/31)

The factory system for cotton spinning and weaving became well established in New England, so that by 1840 there were 1,200 cotton factories, operating 2,250,000 spindles in the United States, 2/3 of these in New England. By 1850 there were over 1,500 woolen mills. These and other mills were operated largely by water power. In 1860 manufacturing produced $1,000,000,000. The iron industry developed very slowly. It has been written that the Atlantic towns heated their houses with coal brought 3,000 miles from England rather than by wood from their own forests 30 miles away, because sea transportation was that much cheaper than overland. Steam-ships were not in use at the time of those comments. (Ref. 213 , 260 ) Still there were hard times between 1837 and 1841 and westward migration accelerated. Canal and railroad construction created a demand for cheap labor and made it easier for people to reach the west. The-states built their own canals, roads and railroads. Ohio linked the Great Lakes with the Mississippi valley; the Erie canal connected Buffalo to New York City.

By 1820 New York State's population of 1,372,812 was in first place and the increase in inhabitants of New York City was phenomenal. By 1850 there were 515,547 people in the city proper plus 96,838 in Brooklyn. Fortunes were accumulated there, but culture was deficient. Columbia University, the only college present until 1831, graduated only about 24 a year. New York University and Fordham added a very few more after 1841. Upstate New York, however, was well provided with denominational colleges. The most original contribution to higher education was Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, founded at Troy in 1824, the precursor of all the subsequent engineering and technical universities. An interesting aside is the final disposition of the great Dutch estates along the Hudson. Their lands had been rented out in an old feudal type system that involved peculiar considerations. With the death of Stephen Van Rensselaer, "the last patroon" in 1839, a rebellion broke out among his renters, when his sons tried to collect thousands of dollars of back rent. This forced New York legislation modifying the rent and lease laws and systems. Intellectuals of New York State were plentiful, including Clement C. Moore, Professor of Hebrew and Greek, who wrote "The Night Before Christmas"; William Cullen Bryant, America's greatest poet; Edgar Allen Poe; Henry W. Longfellow and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The artist Colonel John Trumbull of Connecticut painted the "Declaration of Independence" and "Battle of Bunker Hill". John Lloyd Stephens founded American archeology after trips to the old Maya scenes in Central America and Yucatan.

In other fields, Abbe Sicard established the first American school for the deaf at Hartford and Samuel Howe and Michael Anagnos founded the Perkins Institute for the blind. Women's suffrage movements were initiated as early as 1848. Many "isms" appeared, not the least of which was Joseph Smith's Mormon faith. In 1836 Emerson published "Essay on Nature", opening the period of transcendentalism, a belief in the divinity of human nature. In the same generation there were Hawthorne, Thoreau and the Alcotts.