It was estimated in 1860,on the basis of the census figures,that mechanical production gave employment to 1,100,000men and 285,000women,******,if the average number of dependents upon them be reckoned,nearly six million people or about one-sixth of the population of the country sustained from manufactures."This,"runs the official record,"was exclusive of the number engaged in the production of many of the raw materials and of the food for manufacturers;in the distribution of their products,such as merchants,clerks,draymen,mariners,the employees of railroads,expresses,and steamboats;of capitalists,various artistic and professional classes,as well as carpenters,bricklayers,painters,and the members of other mechanical trades not classed as manufactures.It is safe to assume,then,that one-third of the whole population is supported,directly,or indirectly,by manufacturing industry."Taking,however,the number of persons directly supported by manufactures,namely about six millions,reveals the astounding fact that the white laboring population,divorced from the soil,already exceeded the number of slaves on Southern farms and plantations.
Immigration.The more carefully the rapid growth of the industrialpopulation is examined,the more surprising is the fact that such an immense body of free laborers could be found,particularly when it is recalled to what desperate straits the colonial leaders were put in securing immigrants,-slavery,indentured servitude,and kidnapping being the fruits of their necessities.The answer to the enigma is to be found partly in European conditions and partly in the cheapness of transportation after the opening of the era of steam navigation.Shrewd observers of the course of events had long foreseen that a flood of cheap labor was bound to come when the way was made easy.Some,among them Chief Justice Ellsworth,went so far as to prophesy that white labor would in time be so abundant that slavery would disappear as the more costly of the two labor systems.The processes of nature were aided by the policies of government in England and Germany.
The Coming of the Irish.The opposition of the Irish people to the English government,ever furious and irrepressible,was increased in the mid forties by an almost total failure of the potato crop,the main support of the peasants.Catholic in religion,they had been compelled to support a Protestant church.Tillers of the soil by necessity,they were forced to pay enormous tributes to absentee landlords in England whose claim to their estates rested upon the title of conquest and confiscation.Intensely loyal to their race,the Irish were subjected in all things to the Parliament at London,in which their small minority of representatives had little influence save in holding a balance of power between the two contending English parties.To the constant political irritation,the potato famine added physical distress beyond deion.In cottages and fields and along the highways the victims of starvation lay dead by the hundreds,the relief which charity afforded only bringing misery more sharply to the foreground.Those who were fortunate enough to secure passage money sought escape to America.In 1844the total immigration into the United States was less than eighty thousand;in 1850it had risen by leaps and bounds to more than three hundred thousand.Between 1820and 1860the immigrants from the United Kingdom numbered 2,750,000,of whom more than one-half were Irish.It has been said with a touch of exaggeration that the American canals and railways of those days were built by the labor of Irishmen.
The German Migration.To political discontent and economic distress,such as was responsible for the coming of the Irish,may likewise be traced the source of the Germanic migration.The potato blight that fell upon Ireland visited the Rhine Valley and Southern Germany at the same time with results as pitiful,if less extensive.The calamity inflicted by nature was followed shortly by another inflicted by the despotic conduct of German kings and princes.In 1848there had occurred throughout Europe a popular uprising in behalf of republics anddemocratic government.For a time it rode on a full tide of success.Kings were overthrown,or compelled to promise constitutional government,and tyrannical ministers fled from their palaces.Then came reaction.Those who had championed the popular cause were imprisoned,shot,or driven out of the land.Men of attainments and distinction,whose sole offense was opposition to the government of kings and princes,sought an asylum in America,carrying with them to the land of their adoption the spirit of liberty and democracy.In 1847over fifty thousand Germans came to America,the forerunners of a migration that increased,almost steadily,for many years.The record of 1860showed that in the previous twenty years nearly a million and a half had found homes in the United States.Far and wide they scattered,from the mills and shops of the seacoast towns to the uttermost frontiers of Wisconsin and Minnesota.
