USA > New York > A short history of New York State > Part 31
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The decade of the 1840's was a "hungry" time for the working classes of New York. Unemployment was widespread and the wave of immi- gration after 1845 swelled the ranks of the jobseekers. In the search for jobs various elements clashed: Negroes versus Irish; natives versus foreign born; skilled craftsmen versus unskilled. The artisan looked with dismay upon the growing use of machinery, whose "occult power" threatened not only their skills but in some cases their jobs as well. These years of turmoil undermined labor solidarity and destroyed union organizations.
Intellectuals on the fringes of the labor movement tried to interest the workingmen in various panaceas: land reform, associationism, and co-operatives. The utopian reformers differed violently among them- selves but they did agree that labor unions were largely a waste of time. They urged the abolition of capitalism and the inauguration of a new social order in which there would be universal freedom, peace, and prosperity.
Of the utopian proposals, the agitation for land reform probably had the most lasting influence upon the labor movement. Its champion was George Henry Evans, who declared that land monopoly was the main obstacle preventing mankind from achieving the republican equality envisioned by the Declaration of Independence. The degradation of the working class could be avoided only if a homestead law gave every citizen his rightful heritage-a portion of the public domain. The op- portunity to secure a farm would prevent a labor surplus in the eastern cities and thus check exploitation by employers. In fact, factories would wither away, since farmer-artisans would exchange commodities,
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Evans showed much ingenuity in spreading his ideas to the public. He formed the National Reform Association, which held public meet- ings; he published Young America; and Horace Greeley opened the columns of the Tribune to articles on land reform. In 1845 Evans wrote a famous circular entitled "Vote Yourself a Farm." The land reformers seized upon the antirent war in the Hudson Valley as an argument for their cause. They attempted to capture control of the antirent organiza- tions, but the farmers disliked the doctrinaire attitude of the land reformers and ousted them from their movement.
The crusade for land reform made many converts upstate. Strangely enough, Gerrit Smith, the greatest landholder in New York, swung over to National Reform. Not only did he urge the adoption of a home- stead bill in Congress, but he also gave away thousands of parcels of land in northern New York to Negroes and poor whites. Unfortunately most of the recipients were unable to make a living on the forested slopes of the Adirondacks.
The weight of evidence indicates that cheap land in the West did not operate directly as a "safety-valve" for discontented labor in New York and other eastern cities. Although hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers moved to western states, relatively few wage earners and artisans in New York's cities became farmers in the West. The odds were formidable. Few workingmen could save enough money to buy land, machinery, and stock or knew how to open up a new tract or to cultivate an old farm. Western towns and cities were probably a greater "safety-valve" for labor than were western farms. Almost 70 per cent of those listed in the Rochester directory of 1827 had moved on before the listing of 1834. Presumably most of this floating population moved to western cities.
Associationism was the theory of production developed by Charles Fourier of France. Albert Brisbane read Fourier's writings and became his leading American disciple. Horace Greeley also became a convert, and the Tribune carried many articles by Brisbane explaining and pro- moting the theories of Fourier. According to this theory, society should be organized in "groups" living together as both partners and stock- holders of a co-operative community. Several phalanxes were set up in New York State, but they failed in short order. Scarcity of capital and difficulties of apportioning control between stockholders and working members were the major causes of their collapse.
Producers' and consumers' co-operatives won considerable support among workingmen, particularly among those of German background. In New York City, the coopers, cabinetmakers, and tailors organized co-operative shops. The consumer co-operatives tried to reduce the cost of living by eliminating the middleman. Both types of co-operatives waned. They lacked capital, experienced leadership, and, particularly,
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a stable membership. In general, native workmen preferred direct action through strikes than slow gains through organizing co-operatives.
The discovery of gold in California created a boom marked by rising prices and the revival of unionisın. Carpenters, bakers, shoemakers, bricklayers, and plasterers in New York City organized and won higher wages. In Rochester the blacksmiths, tin-plate makers, machinists, iron- workers, carpenters, printers, and even seamstresses formed unions by 1853 and secured substantial wage increases.
The unions of the 1850's were craft unions, which excluded unskilled workers and sought to protect their position by apprenticeship rules and initiation fees. They also tried to apply the principle of collective bar- gaining to the whole trade. The tailors and printers of New York City drew up a fair wage schedule and invited employers to sign agreements maintaining the rate. The printers were the first to set up a strong na- tional union to regulate the scale of wages in different localities.
The depression of 1854-1855 and the Panic of 1857 again shattered most unions. Unemployment brought acute distress, and in the fall of 1857 thousands of workers met in Tompkins Square in New York City to demand work. Several unions reorganized in 1859 but received an- other jolt at the outbreak of the Civil War.
The working class, on the whole, remained remarkably conservative throughout this period. During the 1850's Marxian socialism made a bridgehead in the German settlements. John Weydemeyer in 1853 founded the Amerikanischer Arbeiterbund in New York City. To attract trade union support the Arbeiterbund called for the ten-hour day, the abolition of child labor, free higher education for all, and no temperance legislation. But enthusiasm waned, since German workmen, like native Americans, preferred simple unionism to ideological crusades.
Comparisons between the level of living of the "typical" workingman of New York a century ago and today are perhaps fruitless since such revolutionary changes have taken place in the entire social structure as well as in the amount and quality of goods consumed. Moreover, data on annual incomes for this period are fragmentary. Lack of accurate information on unemployment makes any estimate of total earnings pure guesswork. One estimated budget for a New York City worker's family of four in 1853 (Table 5) assumed an income of twelve dollars a week. Yet common laborers in that city seldom made more than six dollars, and only a few artisans reached twelve dollars. At the bottom of the scale the woman needleworkers often received under one dollar a week.
Food accounted for almost half of the expenditures of a workingman. Another fourth went for shelter and most of the rest for clothing. The workingmen and their families found whatever recreation they had in
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their homes or in the streets. In general, the workingmen had better food and clothing but poorer housing in 1860 than in 1825. Their chil- dren also had somewhat better educational opportunities. Low though the standards were, the American workingmen at this time had more food, better housing, and better clothing than their European counter- parts.
The laboring class felt progressively less secure despite the slight in- crease in their real earnings. This was especially true among the skilled craftsmen, who had lost bargaining power and status over the decades because of heavy immigration and the introduction of machinery. The repeated financial crises and depressions brought more distress to the completely urbanized workingmen than to semirural artisans of an earlier day, who often grew a portion of their own food.
Businessmen and journalists took pride in the booming cities of the Empire State. They pointed to the doubling of population every two decades, the elegant mansions of the merchants, the new factories, and the large number of houses and stores being built. What they ignored were the noisome slums, dirty streets, and the failure of city administra- tions to provide adequate water, police, and fire protection.
Table 5. Standard workingman's budget, New York City, 1853.
Groceries
$273.00
Rent
100.00
Clothing, bedding, etc.
132.00
Furnishings
20.00
Fuel
18.00
Lights
10.00
Taxes, water, commutation
5.00
Physicians' and druggists' charges
10.00
Traveling
12.00
Newspapers, postage, library fees
10.00
590.00
Church, charity, etc.
10.00
Total annual expenditures
$600.00
Source: New York Times, Nov. 8, 1853. The expenditures are for a family of four, "living moderately" (cited by Edgar W. Martin, The Standard of Living in 1860 [Chicago, 1942], p. 395).
The city dwellers faced hazards fully as formidable as those met by pioneers in the Genesee Valley. Their main enemies were poor housing, disease, crime, dangerous work, or no work at all.
New York City had greater difficulty than upstate cities in providing
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shelter, since business enterprises and population on Manhattan could expand in only one direction. At the beginning of this period the mer- chants lived in comfortable residences close to the business district at the lower tip of Manhattan. Gradually as the business district pushed up Broadway the well-to-do built new mansions farther north. Brick and stone were preferred to wood because fire was a constant threat.
Many of the new houses built in the decade before the Civil War were "colony houses," with a frontage of only twenty feet. A hall and an office occupied the first floor, three connecting rooms with sliding doors the second floor. An attic story was sometimes hidden behind the French "mansard" roof. Upstate, some Georgian features, such as dormer win- dows and red-brick construction, lingered on, but the white porticoes fronting or surrounding the house were by far the most popular and distinctive features.
The houses of the wealthy in New York frequently touched one an- other because land was expensive. They were nearly uniform in appear- ance, with iron railings, marble facing, plate-glass windows, and silver plates at the door. The interior arrangements were also much alike: the drawing room, library, and dining room on the principal floor, the bed- rooms and nursery upstairs. They were heated with coal and lighted with gas or oil lamps. Few had hot and cold running water, water closets, or baths. New York City in 1855 had only 1,361 baths and 10,384 water closets, and Albany had only 19 baths.
More numerous but less conspicuous than the mansions of the rich were the homes of the small businessmen, professional people, and well- to-do farmers. Usually these were wooden houses with a parlor or sitting room, a kitchen, and bedrooms enough so that there was a spare room for guests. Wood stoves were used for heating and oil lamps were gradu- ally replacing candles. The family usually gathered in the sitting room, which also served as dining room. A rag carpet covered the soft pine floor, and mottoes, steel and wood engravings decorated the walls.
The housing problem, particularly for the working class, grew con- stantly more acute because population growth exceeded the rate of con- struction. Density of population per acre and average block density in New York City rose steadily from 1825 to 1850. Clerks and laborers erected shanties on the outskirts of town. Speculators built cheap tene- ments and packed as many people as possible in each building. The tenement houses were usually double buildings with two suites on each floor of the front part. An alley led to the rear house with a similar ar- rangement. Hallways, stairs, and bedrooms were dark. One tenement housed 146 families with an average of six persons to a single ten-by- twelve room. Agents also cut old mansions that had been abandoned by the merchants into dozens of small apartments, filling them from
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cellar to garret. In 1850 some twenty-nine thousand persons were living in cellars without light, ventilation, or heat.
Rents were high, although the tenants got little more than a roof over their heads. The usual rate for a living room and dark bedroom was six dollars a month. Tenants had to carry water from outside wells and seldom had indoor toilet facilities. Certain neighborhoods became noto- rious for their crime. The Five Points off Broadway near Worth Street was internationally famous. Charles Dickens visited the region and de- scribed the buildings known as the "Den of Thieves," the "Old Brew- ery," and "Murderer's Alley." Upstate cities also had their rookeries in the center of town and two-room shanties on the outskirts.
Streets, sidewalks, and sewers were neglected. Only a few thorough- fares were paved, usually with macadam, gravel, or wooden blocks. Streets were the dumping place for trash and garbage as well as the manure of horses and cattle on their way to the slaughterhouses. Ordi- nances called upon each property owner to clean his section of the street, but the hordes of pigs proved more conscientious. Sewers were luxuries afforded by the cities in only a few places, and heavy rains frequently flooded cellars. New York City had a few gas lamps for street lighting by 1830, and Rochester had sixty gas lamps in 1843. Gas lamps, however, were the exception. Late travelers had to rely upon the fitful light from the few oil lamps.
The average resident of the cities walked to work. The rich owned their own carriages, but families with moderate incomes rented carriages from the livery stables for special occasions. Horsecars became common in the larger cities during the 1850's. By 1858 the five main lines on Manhattan were carrying nearly 35,000,000 passengers annually, and promoters wheedled and bribed the Common Council to grant more franchises. Omnibuses with a capacity of a dozen or so passengers served other streets. Hackney drivers charged such exorbitant rates that few could afford to patronize them. In 1860 the streets of New York were already famous for their congestion.
The outbreaks of fires were the most urgent concern of city dwellers. The damage caused each year was heavy, not counting the thousands of dollars paid for premiums on fire insurance. Practically every city ex- perienced one or more disastrous conflagrations which left thousands homeless. For example, in 1835 thirteen acres of buildings around Han- over Square in New York City were gutted. Despite their losses, busi- nessmen reconstructed the devastated areas within a short time.
The city governments provided a certain amount of loose supervision over the volunteer fire companies. The New York Fire Department had a Board of Fire Wardens and a chief engineer. But its 3,700 firemen were volunteers, and the department's funds came from donations, festi-
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vals, concerts, fines, and other sources. The firefighters, sporting red flannel shirts and broad leather belts, were unable to do much more than prevent the spread of the flames to neighboring buildings. All too often members of rival companies fought each other for possession of wells and hydrants, pocketed valuables in burning buildings, and drank up large amounts of whisky.
Most property owners preferred to risk fire rather than to pay taxes for a public water system. The increase in population, however, required additional supplies of fresh water. Finally in 1835 New Yorkers voted to bring the water of the Croton River to Manhattan, and seven years later torchlight parades and banquets celebrated the completion of the Croton dam and aqueduct. The taxpayers of Rochester, however, persuaded the Common Council to put off construction of a municipal waterworks until after the Civil War.
The lives and property of city dwellers did not receive adequate police protection. There was little discipline, and no uniformed force existed before 1845. New York City had two elected policemen in each ward plus a group of marshals appointed by the mayor, and at night a "watch" of citizens patrolled the streets. In 1844 the state legislature authorized the organization of a regularly paid police force on a twenty- four-hour basis. The mayor appointed the chief of police and subordi- nate officers with the advice of the aldermen, until the revised city charter of 1853 created a Board of Commissioners to appoint officers. The same year the commissioners finally compelled the policemen to wear official uniforms consisting of a blue cap, a blue coat with swallow- tail and brass buttons, and gray pantaloons. These uniforms gave the policemen more authority and also made it more difficult for them to slink away in the event of trouble.
Politics and corruption were to mar the administration of the police force from the outset. Charges that the police were the tools of Tam- many Hall and the Democratic politicians caused the Republican ma- jority in the state legislature to create its own police force for the city. Mayor Fernando Wood resisted this invasion of home rule, and his forces gave the officers under the state board a good pummeling in 1857. For a time, the two police forces spent more time challenging each other than in tracking down criminals. State authority, however, was vindicated by the Court of Appeals.
Drunkenness was the most common cause of arrest, followed by petty thievery and prostitution. The young unmarried immigrants who fre- quented the barrooms got carried away with argument and sometimes engaged in fights and riots. Police found it safer and more profitable to pick up drunkards than to interfere with gambling dens and houses of prostitution which enjoyed their "protection."
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Native Americans pointed with scorn to the apparently high rate of crime, vice, and pauperism among the foreign born. The difference be- tween native and foreign born was not so great when similar age groups are compared. No doubt the slum environment and the inadequate police force accounted in part for the high incidence of crime. Further- more, many children grew up without family or religious guidance be- cause of the death, illness, or absence of parents.
Illness and premature death struck hard at city dwellers and farm families alike. Children in particular suffered severely. In 1857 two- thirds of the registered deaths in New York City were for children under the age of five. Epidemics of typhoid, typhus, and cholera created panic among the slum dwellers, but they accepted more resignedly the ravages of tuberculosis, the most deadly killer of urban and rural population.
The number of doctors in New York City-roughly one for each 576 persons in 1855-was adequate, but their training and knowledge was deficient. A minority had attended medical college for a year or two and absorbed some information from lectures. The rest observed the tech- niques of older physicians before hanging out their shingles at the age of nineteen or twenty. These doctors were grossly ignorant of the causes and remedies of disease. The important exceptions among the major diseases were smallpox and malaria, controllable by vaccination and quinine, respectively. In general, the average physician relied upon bloodletting, cathartics, and emetics.
Most sick people did not consult doctors, relying instead upon nature and family remedies. When these measures failed to restore health, they turned to the patent medicines advertised in every paper. There were pills with impressive titles, glowing testimonials, and miraculous powers. A typical product was Tarrant's Cordial Elixir of Turkey Rhubarb, which, so it was claimed, cured indigestion. Frequently these panaceas contained enough alcohol to induce a temporary feeling of well-being.
The ailing public welcomed new therapeutic systems such as the present generation hails the "wonder-drugs." During the 1830's the ex- ponents of the Botanic System evolved by Samuel Thomson prescribed herbs in place of the standard remedies of bloodletting and calomel. During the 1840's the science of homeopathy swept New York State, making thousands of converts. This system claimed that patients should be given drugs which produced effects on a healthy person similar to the symptoms of the disease treated. With the discovery of anaesthetics, surgery took a major step forward in comparison with other branches of medicine. Surgeons were enabled to make hitherto impossible abdomi- nal operations, but, since infection usually set in, few patients lived to boast of their operations.
Parks were seldom considered a municipal function before 1850, and
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urban congestion was not a serious matter except in New York City. Typically, the street plan for Manhattan of 1811 did not include any open spaces. As congestion increased, the demand for parks grew. In 1851 Mayor Ambrose Kingsland recommended to the Common Council the purchase of a tract on the East River, but business groups objected because of the cost and the blocking of river frontage. In 1853, the legis- lature authorized the Common Council to open a park between Fifth and Eighth Avenues and running from 59th to 106th Street. Six years later the park was extended to 110th Street. Politicians got hold of the project, which offered considerable opportunities for contracts and patronage, but the legislature took control from the city commission in 1857 and provided for an eleven-man board appointed by state officials. On the new board of commissioners was Andrew Green who was to become the greatest public servant in New York City during the last half of the nineteenth century.
In many respects the cities of New York before 1860 were hardly more than overgrown towns. In fact, most adult residents had come from farms and villages in New York and in Europe. Silently but rapidly the cities created urban manners and institutions as society became more complex and more impersonal. Men found it necessary to live long distances from their work. People took less interest in the affairs of their next-door neighbors.
Cities made some progress toward accepting social responsibility, but acted only under extreme pressure. Fire and police protection improved, more children attended schools each year, and some advances took place in street lighting, water systems, and sewers. These strictures of urban life might leave the impression that residents were entirely insensitive to distress. Such was not the case, as the rise of various humanitarian and philanthropic organizations bears ample proof (see Chapter 24 as well). Perhaps the comments of Anthony Trollope, a visitor from the most urbanized country of the era, suggest that New Yorkers were becoming alive to their social responsibilities:
Perhaps .. . in no city has more been achieved for humanity by the munifi- cence of its richest citizens than in New York. Its hospitals, asylums, and institutions for the relief of all ailments to which flesh is heir, are very nu- merous, and beyond praise in the excellence of their arrangements.
Chapter 24
Religion and Reform
I have got beyond Temperance to the Cold Water Society- no Tea, Coffee or any other slops-only pure Water to drink and coarse fare to eat .- JOSIAH BISSELL, 1830
THE religious history of New York between 1825 and 1860 is one of the most fascinating chapters in the history of Christian expansion. Seldom have so many religious talents been at work in such a short period of time. The roll call contains impressive names such as Charles Finney and eccentric figures such as John Humphrey Noyes. An out- standing development was the growth of Roman Catholicism to the point where its communicants were more numerous than those of any single Protestant denomination. Although Protestantism splintered into a be- wildering number of sects, it remained the dominant religious force. New York, in fact, was the nerve center of the movement called by. Dr. Dixon Ryan Fox the "Protestant Counter-Reformation" (1800-1850), which not only sponsored extensive missionary campaigns on the fron- tier but also re-established the hold of orthodoxy upon the major de- nominations.
The people of New York were definitely more religious minded in 1860 than in 1825, whether regarded from the standpoint of numbers or intensity of belief. Evangelical Christianity routed deism and "free- thinking"-so common before 1800-enrolled an increasing percentage of people within the state, and also provided hundreds of missionaries for the Pacific Northwest and Asia.
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