Summary: Bound Labor

In McPherson’s “Antebellum Southern Exceptionalism” essay, it is noted that the argument is focused on the fact that although the South was seen as different and exceptional, it was actually the North who had been changing. The South was only keeping the same values and traditions it had been following for years (McPherson 41). One instance where the North’s change is noted is when McPherson demonstrates the percentage of agricultural work in the North and South; "In 1800, 82 percent of the Southern labor force worked in agriculture compared with 68 percent in the free states. By 1860 the Northern share had dropped to 40 percent while the Southern proportion had actually increased slightly, to 84

During “the 19th century, when the Industrial Revolution triggered a series of radical changes national cultural fabric of state societies, the pressures of modernization were also transforming the way of life in traditional communities of peasant and other rural folk” (Haviland et al. 349). One of these transformations brought about by the Industrial Revolution is the invention of the factory. The factory, like capitalism, originated in England, but eventually made its way to America, specifically the region of New England. The factory caused artisans to lose autonomy, now forced to work

     After the devastation left from the Civil War, many field owners looked for new ways to replace their former slaves with field hands for farming and production use. From this need for new field hands came sharecroppers, a “response to the destitution and disorganized” agricultural results of the Civil War (Wilson 29). Sharecropping is the working of a piece of land by a tenant in exchange for a portion of the crops that they bring in for their landowners. These farmhands provided their labor, while the landowners provided living accommodations for the worker and his family, along with tools, seeds, fertilizers, and a portion of the crops that they had harvested that season. A sharecropper had “no entitlement

Industrialization after the Civil War was a period where Industrial city were being built, there were jobs for people and the political aspect was having corruption. In this paper the main points in this paper discussed the major aspects of the Industrialization Revolution, such as groups that were affected by the Industrial society, and the affects the life of the average working American. While the Industrial Revolution was a great turning point in the history of mankind, it led humanity to great technological advancements, middle and lower class, African American rights,

The “New South” mentality attempted to modernize North Carolina’s previously agrarian economy through industrialization. Businessmen, such as Richard J. Reynolds, strategically erected factories in North Carolina for access to its prestigious railroads to swiftly transport their products. Factory owners had no trouble finding employees, as many North Carolinians were eager to avoid the hardships of farm labor. Towns began to rise around the factories after the influx of laborers came about. Such a plethora of potential workers allowed factory owners to pay their employees drastically low wages as they reaped the benefits of cheap labor. Low wages combined with pitiful working conditions resulted in these factory towns resembling life on slave plantations before the war.

While other authors focus their attention in regards to Reconstruction in the Southern states after the American Civil War on political matters and the meaning of Reconstruction itself, John Rodrigue ventures into the world of Sugar and the relationships between planters and freedmen to illustrate the creation of a labor system within the world of sugar cane plantations in Louisiana. By concentrating on this specific business and region, the author is able to illustrate the factors that shaped labor during and after the Civil War, while showing how Reconstruction altered life in terms of labor for both whites and African Americans. Rodrigue argues that by focusing on this specific region reveals how blacks were able to gain negotiating power with planters in an effort to support free labor. By utilizing primary and secondary sources, the author frames the narrative and provide the reader with a personal perspective into the free labor system.

Following the Civil War, a second industrial revolution in America brought many changes to the nation’s agriculture sector. The new technologies that were created transformed how farmers worked and the way in which the sector functioned. Agriculture expanded and became more industrial. Meanwhile government policies, or lack of them for a while, and hard economic conditions put difficult strains on farmers and their occupation. These changes in technology, economic conditions, and government policy from 1865 to 1900 transformed and improved agriculture while leaving farmers in hardship.

In Maury Klein's. “The Lords and the Mill Girls,” industrialization is attempting to rid itself of the horrible standards adhered to at most European and other New England factories through the endeavor of the Lowell Mills. The Associates, who open the Lowell mills, attempt to create an atmosphere which is the best of both worlds. They want to create profit, but don't want to abandon their virtues and principles by creating an industrial district which, “degraded workers and blighted the landscape”(Klein). The key to their success is their working population. They seek civilized workers, who save money, attend church, and adhere to the pious principles of religion and culture(Klein). They find their laborers in women of the New England farmers,

Focus on just a handful of powerful individuals fails to capture the character of the economy for the vast majority of America's 75 million people. These approaches fail to reveal the impact of this particular form of economic growth on those at the bottom of the economic ladder (Doc C). The context of the economy of that time gave Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan the opportunity to amass the largest fortunes in history which required unskilled industrial laborers to work an average of 60 hours per week for 10 cents an hour . The South after the Civil War remained economically devastated; its economy became increasingly tied to cotton and tobacco production, which suffered from low prices (Doc A). Context of said document is when a second industrial revolution and mechanization of farms swept the nation and price of crops, and thusly food, fell drastically.

With the economic system, the south had a very hard time producing their main source “cotton and tobacco”. “Cotton became commercially significant in the 1790’s after the invention of a new cotton gin by Eli Whitney. (PG 314)” Let

The development of sharecropping was associated with the endless debt cycles that afflicted the entire South well into the twentieth century. The freedmen endured an economic status likened to peonage, (Bowles, 2011) in addition to having their hopes for political and social equality dashed. The entire South suffered, it was the freedmen who paid the highest price. Ignorant and impoverished, they were easy targets for exploitation by landlords (Bowles, 2011) and merchants alike; moreover, their options were limited by the overt racism in the South, legal restrictions and partiality. Sharecropping resulted from the intense explicit or implicit desire of white Southerners to keep blacks subservient to them. African Americans possessed few skills, and those they did possess related almost exclusively to agricultural production; they owned no property but the clothes on their backs; (Bowles, 2011) Many dreamed of "forty acres and a mule" with which to begin life anew as an integrated part of American society and the proprietor of one's own land. Inside of a year, however, a different reality became obvious to most. By 1868, land confiscation and redistribution was not in the realm of American political possibility. Desperation, familiarity with people and surroundings at the old places coupled with reunion of many lost loved ones, as well as the urgings of

At the same time, as we learned in class, America’s population grew because of labor mobility. People began to migrate from rural to urban areas, and from Europe to North America, in search of better economic opportunities, and to improve their lives. The job market became more and more competitive Hubert Gutman’s “Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America 1815-1919” sheds light on the struggle of farmers and tradesmen who were forced into unskilled labor positions during the industrial revolution and the many new immigrants that were finding their way to America Gutman states, “A factory worker in New

Industrialization in the North caused social upheaval with the assistance of transportation innovation and the commercialization of agriculture. Paul E. Johnson uses Rochester, New York in the Antebellum period as a microcosm of the changes occurring in the North. He explains, “The loss of social control began, paradoxically, with the imposition of new and tighter controls over the process of labor.” This control over the process of labor sparked from the need to manufacture more goods

Businesses, laborers, and farmers faced major challenges between 1877 and 1920. This was a time period that included both the Gilded Age and World War 1, and the challenges that these three parts of society faced were very different between each group and throughout each period. Businesses had to deal with things called “trusts” with other businesses. Many businesses desired to hold the monopoly of an entire industry, and competition was intense and cutthroat. Laborers, of course, faced the challenges of not having the previously mentioned working conditions, as well as pay cuts and unemployment during the depressions in the 1870s and the 1890s. Farmers had to deal with major drops in the prices for their crops due to the second Industrial Revolution and the development of new technology, as well as the already-difficult farming of the West. Many southern farmers were sharecroppers, as well, and as the prices for their goods fell, so did their standard of living.

It caused pain and suffering, loss of lives, and made a way for them to continue to live in poverty. The mill owners were able to control the workers through the mill. The owner could tell them they had to go to church, could not drink alcohol, or play their music to loud, and had to be in the bed with the lights off by a certain time. Some mill workers argued that the cotton mills allowed the people of the mill villages to become a big family because in a way they became closer as they all fought similar battles. Another effect the mills had on the lives of the workers is that it contributed to the illiteracy. Instead of getting a proper education, many felt that getting an education would be pointless if they were just going to work in the mill for the majority of their lives. The mill became their life, their way to