WHAT WERE THE ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS OF THE ERIE CANAL?

13 Jun WHAT WERE THE ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS OF THE ERIE CANAL?

You are required to submit a one page reaction paper to the video shown in class. The reactions must be typed, double spaced (no extra spaces between paragraphs), 12 pt standard font (Times New Roman or Arial), 1” margins and submitted to Canvas no later than midnight of the following Sunday.

Late reaction papers will not be accepted, under any circumstances.

Content: Use one of the given prompts as your guide for what to write. You are expected to put thought in your answers and respond intelligibly. You are encouraged to support your answers with material from the video, class lecture, as well as the required readings.

You must clearly indicate your source, and if you directly quote any material, you must clearly indicate what has been QUOTED along with indicating the source of the quoted material. Format: Although these reactions are only one page, you are expected to submit well-written papers. These will be graded not only on the thoughts submitted, but also on grammar and cohesiveness. Put nothing but your name at the top.

Movie Promtps:

1) What were the economic implications of the Erie Canal? (i.e. What benefit did it give, to whom, etc.)

2) Discuss the implications of slavery in the U.S. (This can include support on one or both sides of the argument. This is a little more “vague” than usual, so you have more freedom to write, however it must be justified, and sources provided.)

VIDEO SUMMARY

America is exploding across the continent. The economy is booming, cotton in the South, industry in the North. But the new nation is divided. In a land where all men are created equal, 4 million black Americans live as slaves. And it’s tearing the nation apart. We are pioneers and trailblazers. We fight for freedom. We transform our dreams into the truth. Our struggles will become a nation.

All over the world, the modern era is being born. It’s the Industrial Revolution. America is racing to catch up. In Upstate New York, a man-made river is cutting through the wilderness. The Erie Canal is the biggest construction project in the Western world in the last 4,000 years. Over 300 miles long, dug entirely by hand, and America lacks a single qualified engineer. The United States of America isn’t about to let nature stand in its way.

I think of the spirit of America being imagination combined with tenacity. There’s a strong work ethic, the wonderful freedom of creation, combined with the mental, muscle, and physical labor. So to me, it represents the best of the human spirit.

But the land doesn’t always cooperate. A wall of solid limestone 60 feet high just 30 miles from the finish line, Lake Erie. The canal will change everything, linking the Atlantic Ocean to the whole middle of America. It changes where people live and why, and turns the North into a global economic powerhouse.

The man behind the canal is New York’s gung-ho governor, DeWitt Clinton. Born to wealth, he won’t take no for an answer. He wants to be President. Instead, he runs New York for 20 years.

America was blessed with many inspirational leaders, and I think DeWitt Clinton had a real sense of how important New York could be for America.

Clinton’s vision, to make New York rich. Politically, the canal is a huge gamble. It’s savaged in the press as dangerous and too expensive. They call it Clinton’s Big Ditch, but it’ll change New York forever.

It is a work more stupendous, more magnificent, and more beneficial than has hitherto achieved by the human race.

Entrepreneurship is about doing things where you don’t know what it’s going to look like, you don’t know what it’s going to be made of. You just have this instinct that you can do it, and it will work. Those guys had visions, and did it.

50,000 men, 11 million cubic yards of rock, enough to fill the Rose Bowl 26,000 times. Crews are filled with Irish immigrants. David Gilroy makes five time what he can earn back home, but it’s hazardous work. They’re literally moving mountains. There’s only one way through, gunpowder, a highly combustible mix of nitrate, charcoal, and sulfur. The wrong proportions can be lethal.

There’s only one job that’s more dangerous than lighting the fuse, going back to relight it. To cope, workers drink. Whiskey calms the nerves and clouds the brain. An English tourist can’t believe they’re mixing alcohol and explosives.

The Irish laborers grew so reckless of life, that at the signal for blasting, they would just hold their shovels over their heads.

I think when you’re brought up in America, you’re brought up on the history of hard work. There’s so many immigrants that have dies to build this country. That’s in our bloodstream, that’s in our DNA as Americans. We don’t want their lives to go in vain. Because of that, we usually work harder than anybody else.

Eight years of digging, nearly 1,000 lives lost, $7 million, more than $100 million today, the Erie Canal opens in 1825, a miracle of engineering, connecting East and Midwest. It’s an instant economic superhighway. $15 million of goods a year flow along the canal. Villages along the canal boom into dynamic cities, Buffalo, Syracuse, and Rochester. Goods crash in price, up to 95%. A frontier that had to be self-sufficient can now buy anything they want. Prosperity is on the move. New York City becomes a boom town.

Wall Street takes off as a global financial center. The city quadruples in size. It surpasses New Orleans as the nation’s number one port. There’s so much money around, the word millionaire is invented in 1840. The Erie Canal still shapes New York today. 80% of the upstate population still lives within 25 miles of it.

Hundreds of miles to the South, a small plant is creating another economic boom, cotton. But this one will eventually tear the nation apart. Cotton is native to tropical regions, making the Southern states of the US a perfect breeding ground. The valued part is the soft fiber which grows tightly around the shrub’s sticky seeds. There are 30 species worldwide. Growing it’s no problem, but processing the fiber before it can be spun into cloth is labor intensive, especially separating the seeds. For years, it could only be done by hand. One pound took an entire day.

A simple patent filed on March 4, 1794 changes all that. The cotton gin. It automates the process, and deeply divides the country.

The cotton gin transformed not only America, but the world. The concept of mass production using a machine just exploded everywhere.

One man can now process 50 times more cotton. Output skyrockets all over the South. In 1830, America’s producing half the world’s cotton. By 1850, it’s nearly 3/4. Called white gold, cotton supports a new lavish lifestyle in the South. By 1850, there are more millionaires per capita in Natchez, Mississippi than anywhere else on Earth. The richest man in town owns 40,000 acres, nearly three times the size of Manhattan Island.

The South is thriving on the backs of humans owning other humans. It’s called slavery. The North is implicated in the South’s success. The industrial North is profiting from Southern cotton. It turns a blind eye to slavery. Many of them slave owners themselves, the Founding Fathers assume slavery would soon disappear. Slavery has already been abolished for 20 years in Britain, and is outlawed across most of Europe. But with the cotton explosion, slavery becomes critical to the Southern economy.

Each slave is now 50 times more profitable. A slave who sold for $300 before the cotton gin goes for nearly $2,000 by 1860.

People don’t really realize this, but slavery was actually on the decline in the South prior to the invention of the cotton gin. But then once the cotton gin made it so practical to grow cotton, all of the sudden, every farm in the South wanted to plant as much cotton as possible.

But over-production is destroying the land. Cotton heads West in search of fertile soil, bringing slavery with it. But anti-slavery forces in the North want to keep the frontier free. The stage is set for the first battles in the war over slavery.

Cotton is changing the way Americans live. In time, it will blow the nation apart. For the South, cotton is a gold mine. Now the North wants a piece of the action. It’s a partnership that makes everyone rich, based on a new machine, the power loom. Raw cotton comes in, finished cloth goes out, all under one roof. The modern factory is born.

Lowell, Massachusetts is called the city of spindles, a textiles boom town. Population explodes from 200 in 1820 to nearly 20,000 in just 15 years. More than a third of the town works in the mills. 85% are single women between 15 and 25. Harriet Robinson is 10. When her father dies, she goes to work at the mill.

I can see myself now, racing down the alley between the spinning frames, and carrying in front of me a bobbin box bigger than I was.

Women earn money for the first time. Harriet’s wages help support her family. Industrialization is changing everyone’s lives.

All the mill girls make good use of their money. The mortgage is lifted from the homestead. The farmhouse is painted. Mill girls help maintain widowed mothers and drunken or invalid fathers. We were paid $2 a week. Oh, how proud I was when it cam to my turn to stand on the bobbin box.

When women really joined the workforce in the cotton mills and the thread factories, I think it gave women an opportunity to get out, be serious about being breadwinners, and it changed the whole fabric of America.

The mills also revolutionize how Americans dress. Mass production of cheap cotton fabrics spawns America’s clothing industry. Previously, most families made their own clothes. Now people buy ready to wear. Eastern fashions replace buckskin. By 1850, men’s clothing is the largest manufacturing industry in New York City.

For me, what makes me proudest to be an American is that American spirit of productivity, optimism. This idea that the world doesn’t have to be doom and gloom, that we can use technology to make our lives better.

Fashion isn’t the only innovation to come out of the mills. Technology developed here will lead straight to Silicon Valley. Looms pioneer punch cards to produce patterned fabric. Each hole in the card tells the loom to use a different colored thread, a yes no decision. It’s binary code, the basis of all modern computers. The birth of the computer and internet began in cotton mills with these looms.

In every major development I think in the history of America, technology has been at the center of it.

Despite 12 hour shifts, the factories offer a new world of opportunity for women. They’re reading more, talking more, educating themselves.

Reading books on factory time was against the rules. But we hid books in apron pockets and waste baskets. And sometimes we pasted poems on our looms to memorize.

And for the first time in America, their voices are heard. October, 1836. Women from the Lowell Mills gather after work and organize. Their protest against wage cuts is one of the first strikes in US history. And they will win, the mill bosses back down. A generation of young women go on to become teachers, writers, and even college graduates. Harriet Robinson will become a leading suffragette, and testify before Congress. They’re the first wave in a movement that results in women getting the vote. Their secret meetings at night are only possible with the light from lamps powered by an extraordinary creature.

Whale oil opened up the night. And like so many really transformative technological innovations, it expanded human freedom. It created a way for people to get more, do more, and achieve more.

Crude oil won’t be discovered for another 20 years. Until then, America runs on whale oil.

The whaling industry helped invent part of the kind of Industrial Revolution, and the classic American workaholic, work around the clock kind of environment, where if you have more light to keep you going during those dark winter days, you could get more done, you can make more money. And you could drive the economy forward.

Whales are among the largest creatures to ever live on Earth, up to 180 tons and more than 100 feet long. A single whale can produce up to 3,000 gallons of oil. Even today, whale oil is used by NASA. The Hubble Space Telescope runs on it. Whaling is one of the North’s biggest industries, bringing in $11 million a year. But the human cost is also high. Half of all ships will eventually be lost at see. Few men are willing to take the risk, but it’s an opportunity for African Americans. 20,000 free men and escaped slaves take to the seas. John Thompson is a runaway from Maryland.

I have a family in Philadelphia, but fearing to remain there any longer, I thought I’d go on a whaling voyage, where I stood the least chance of being arrested by slave hunters.

The equal opportunity offered in whaling is ahead of its time.

Here, a colored man is only known and looked upon as a man, and is promoted in rank according to his ability and skill to perform the same duties as a white man.

The whaling industry offered an ex-slave like John Thompson the possibility of social and economic fluidity, mobility, and acceptance in a way, even in the North, that was not possible for black people otherwise.

The man on the lookout cried out, there she blows. There were four whales in sight, not more than 3/4 of a mile in distance.