Page 339 - American Stories, A History of the United States

13.1 Read the Document Samuel Morse, Danger of foreign Immigration (1835)

13.2

GReAteR foRtUneS this 1854 cartoon, titled “the Old World and the New,” shows a shabbily dressed
man in ireland examining posters for trips to New York (left). At right, he is shown later, in America, wearing
finer clothes and looking at posters advertising trips for emigrants returning to Dublin. As was the case for
many immigrants seeking economic opportunities in the “New World,” his situation has apparently changed
for the better.

workers’ organizations petitioned state legislatures for laws limiting the workday to
ten hours. Some such laws were actually passed, but they were ineffective because
employers could still require a prospective worker to sign a contract agreeing to
longer hours.
The increasing employment of immigrants between the mid-1840s and the late
1850s made it more difficult to organize industrial workers. Impoverished fugitives
from the Irish potato famine tended to have lower economic expectations and more
conservative social attitudes than did native-born workers. Consequently, the Irish
immigrants were initially willing to work for less and were less prone to protest work-
ing conditions.
However, the new working class of former rural folk did not make the transition to
Quick Check industrial wage labor easily or without subtle and indirect protests. Tardiness, absen-
how did the constitution and teeism, drunkenness, loafing, and other resistance to factory discipline reflected hostil-
behavior of the working class change ity to the unaccustomed and seemingly unnatural routines of industrial production.
in this period?
The adjustment to new styles and rhythms of work was painful and slow.

conclusion: the costs of expansion

By 1860, industrial expansion and immigration had created a working class of men
and women who seemed destined for a life of low-paid wage labor. This reality stood
in contrast to America’s self-image as a land of opportunity and upward mobility.
This ideal still had some validity in rapidly developing regions of the western states,
but it was mostly myth for the increasingly foreign-born industrial workers of the
Northeast.
Internal and external expansion had come at a heavy cost. Tensions associated
with class and ethnic rivalries were only part of the price of rapid economic devel-
opment. The acquisition of new territories was politically divisive and soon led to a
catastrophic sectional controversy. In the late 1840s and early 1850s, Democratic
Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois (called the Little Giant because of his small
stature and large presence) sought political power for himself and his party by combin-
ing an expansionist foreign policy with the economic development of the territories
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