THE RELATION OF THE PUBLIC LANDS TO THE 
 LABOR PROBLEM DURING THE PERIOD 
 FROM 1830 TO 1860 
 
 By 
 
 WILLIAM ALBERT McCONAGHA 
 
 B. S. Muskingum College 1917 
 
 THESIS 
 
 SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS 
 FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN ECONOMICS 
 IN THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF ILLINOIS, 1922 
 
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 URBANA, ILLINOIS 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 THE GRADUATE SCHOOL 
 
 
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 I HEREBY RECOMMEND THAT THE THESIS PREPARED UNDER MY 
 SUPERVISION BY l/Jsl ^ f 
 
 
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 BE ACCEPTED AS FULFILLING THIS PART OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR 
 
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 Recommendation concurred in* * 
 
 Committee 
 
 on 
 
 Final Examination* 
 
 Required for doctor’s degree but not for master's 
 
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CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 I. Introduction 1 
 
 II. The Economic Condition of the Working People . 3 
 
 III. Physical Conditions Deterring Westward 
 
 Expansion 10 
 
 IV. Movement toward Free Land for Actual Settlers 15 
 
 V. The Awakening of the Working People 27 
 
 VI. Comparisons and Conclusions 36 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 
 
 https://archive.org/details/relationofpublicOOmcco 
 
THE RELATION OF THE PUBLIC LANDS TO THE LABOR PROBLEM 
 DURING THE PERIOD FROM I83O to i 860 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Albert Gallatin, speaking before the Fourth Congress on the relation 
 of land to labor in the United States, observed that if the cause of the happi- 
 ness of this country were enquired into, it would be found to rise as much from 
 the great plenty of land in proportion to the inhabitants which the citizens 
 enjoyed as from the wisdom of their political institutions. "It is in fact 
 because the poor man has always been able to attain his portion of land." Mors 
 than three quarters of a century later ( 1 ), Henry George -writing on the same 
 subject says; "Wherever you find land relatively low, will you not find wages 
 relatively high? And where yo u find land high, will you not find wages low? 
 
 As land increases in value poverty deepens and pauperism appears. In new set- 
 tlements where land is cheap you will find no beggars and the inequality of con- 
 dition is very slight." ( 2 ) 
 
 Thus far the effect of v/estern lands on politics and the character 
 of the people has received the principal attention of historians. This, however, 
 does not seem to be due to a lack of appreciation on the part of either contem- 
 porary or later writers of its economic importance. From Chevalier, writing 
 on American society, manners and politics in 1836, comes the observation that 
 "In America, as in Europe, competition among the head workmen tends to decrease 
 their wages, but the tendency is not increased in America as in Europe by com- 
 petition among the laborers; that is, by an excess of hands wanting employ, for 
 the West stands open as a refuge for all unemployed."* In Europe a coalition of 
 workers can only signify one of two things: "Raise our wages or we shall die 
 
 of hunger," or "Raise our wages or we shall take up anas." In America, on the 
 
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 other hand, such a coalition means, "Raise our wages or we go to the West. "(3) 
 Secretary Walker in his treasury report for 1845 declared that 
 "The reduction of the price of public lands in favor of the settlers and cul- 
 tivators would enhance the wages of labor. If those who lived by the v/ages of 
 labor could purchase 320 acres for $80, 160 for $40, 80 for $20, or 40 for $10, 
 the power of manufacturing capitalists to reduce the wages of labor would be 
 greatly diminished, because when the lands are thus reduced in price those who 
 live by the v/ages of labor could purchase farms at those low rates and cultivate 
 the soil for themselves and families, instead of working for others at twelve 
 hours per day in the manufactories . (4) John R. Commons in his History of Labor 
 in the United States writes that "The condition that seems to distinguish most 
 clearly the history of labor in America from its history in other countries is 
 the wide expanse of free land. As long as the poor and industrious can escape 
 from the conditions which render them subject to other classes, so long do they 
 refrain from that aggression on the property rights and political power of 
 others, which is the symptom of a labor movement." (5) 
 
 Hart suns up perhaps the general attitude of writers on the subject 
 and casual thinkers also when he says, "The wilderness ever opened a gate to 
 the poor, the disconsolate and the oppressed." (6) 
 
 That the extent to which land is accessible in any country does 
 have a vital bearing on its social and economic problems seems to be a logical 
 assumption, and it is the purpose of this study to inquire into the significance 
 of the fact that during the period from I 83 O to i860 v/e were in constant contact 
 with a great unbroken frontier which moved steadily westward with the flew of 
 population. ’.I/hat seems to be the popular conception of this relationship has 
 been suggested. Observe now the extent to which the history of the period vin- 
 dicates or vitiates that idea. 
 

 
 
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 Chapter I 
 
 In I83O the total area of the United States was 1,793,4-00 square 
 miles, which was occupied by 12,617,000 people, including free blacks and slaves. 
 Three- fourths (approximately) of this population still lived along the seaboard, 
 leaving little more than one- fourth to occupy the vast trans-Appalachian coun- 
 try extending west to the Rocky Mountains. Only 628,000 square miles were in- 
 cluded in the then settled area bounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mex- 
 ico, and a tortuous frontier line some 5,300 miles in length, which ran across 
 the central part of Maine, along the international boundary from New Hampshire 
 to Detroit, across northern Indiana and Illinois, and down the west bank of the 
 Mississippi to the Gulf, thus leaving still, large unsettled tracts in northern 
 Maine, New York and northv/estern Pennsylvania. Much of the middle v/est had 
 scarcely passed the frontier stage, and the great mass of the Louisiana Territory 
 was comparatively untouched. 
 
 For the purpose of this study it might now be profitable to turn 
 from this brief survey of the extent of the unoccupied land areas to a consider- 
 ation of the social and economic conditions that prevailed in the already settled 
 portions of the country adjoining them. One of the best general descriptions of 
 this condition is given by McMaster. Speaking of the conditions that prevailed 
 among the poor and laboring class during the period from 1825 to I83O, he says, 
 ( 7 ) "The influx 'of paupers to partake of the benefits of many charitable socie- 
 ties, the overcrowded labor market, the steady increasing numbers of unemployed, 
 the congestion of population in limited areas and all its attendant vice and 
 crime and the destitution produced by low wages and lack of constant employment , 
 have already become a matter for serious consideration. An unskilled laborer 
 was fortunate if he received 75^ for twelve hours' work and found employment 
 for three hundred days a year. Hundreds were glad to work for 37£ and even 25$ 
 

 
 
 
 
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 a day in winter, who in spring and summer could earn 62 -g 0 or perhaps 87 - 2 ' by 
 toiling fourteen hours on the turnpikes and canals. Fifteen dollars a month in 
 summer and board was considered good pay. In winter it was not uncommon for 
 men to work for their board. If the earnings of men were low, those of women 
 were lower yet. Many trades and professions now open to them had no existence 
 or were confined to men. They might bind shoes, sew rags, fold and stitch books, 
 become spoolers or make coarse shirts and duck pantaloons at 8 or 100 apiece. 
 
 "To the desperate poverty produced by such wages many evils were 
 attributed. Intemperance was encouraged, children were sent into the streets 
 to beg and pilfer, and young girls were driven to lives of shame to an extent 
 that seems almost incredible in more modern times." 
 
 The editor of the New York Commercial advertiser in an appeal in 
 behalf of the impoverished population of the city in January, 1829, said, ( 8 ) 
 
 "It makes my heart bleed to look at the hundreds and thousands of shivering, 
 hungry applicants for charity v/ho have thronged the old almshouse in the park 
 this afternoon." A correspondent to the New York Times speaks of thousands of 
 industrious mechanics v/ho, unable to provide food and clothing for their fami- 
 lies, were applying for assistance. The significant fact, however, is that 
 pointed out by Hr. Commons, namely, that not only was there at times a great 
 deal of unemployment but that the unskilled at least suffered constantly from 
 low wages and long hours. 
 
 In 1829 the Eoston Prison Discipline Society reported that about 
 75,000 people in the United States were annually imprisoned for debt. In I 83 O 
 the same society estimated on the basis of returns from nearly one hundred 
 prisons in different parts of the United States that the number annually im- 
 prisoned for debt in Massachusetts was 3,000; in New York, 10,000; in Pennsyl- 
 vania, 7,000; in Maryland, 3,000, and in the other northern and eastern states 
 
nearly as above in proportion to the population. They reported furthermore that 
 the number imprisoned for debts of less than one dollar was very great, the 
 number imprisoned for debts between five and twenty dollars was greatest, while 
 the number imprisoned for more than twenty and less than one hundred dollars 
 is not one-third as great as the number imprisoned for less than twenty dollars. 
 
 "A report by the citizens of Rochester, New York, shortly before 
 this time showed that in Monroe County during a single year about one person in 
 every ten families had been imprisoned for debt. One of these cases w as for 
 25 cents.” The number of persons imprisoned for debt as compared to the number 
 imprisoned for other crimes was everywhere very high, in some instances at a 
 ratio of eight to one. 
 
 The jails in which debtors were confined were often overcrowded and 
 terribly unsanitary. Fuel and bedding and food too, with the exception of a 
 daily ration of soup, were sometimes lacking. In some instances debtors re- 
 ceived much worse treatment than common criminals. 
 
 A consideration of these conditions, together with the insignifi- 
 cance of the debts that compelled people to submit to them, seems again to indi- 
 cate the existence of a wide-spread condition of wretchedness and poverty among 
 the lower and laboring classes at this time. 
 
 Not only does it appear that wages were low and employment uncertain 
 during this period, but under employment hours were exceedingly long and irksome. 
 Significant in this connection is the following extract from the Pennsylvanian. 
 ( 9 ) "The excessive labor which the mechanic is forced to undergo saps his con- 
 stitution and either cuts him off at a period of existence which should be the 
 prime of life, or leaves him linger out a few years more, a miserable wreck of 
 humanity. Humanity requires us not to abuse the brute creation by over labor, 
 and surely our fellow man is entitled to as much consideration. (Exhaustion of 
 

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 the frame requires for its removal excitement fully proportional to the depres- 
 sion, and it is too often sought in alcohol. It has been ascertained and truly 
 that excessive labor has been the cause of more intemperance than all other 
 causes combined.) Although this may seem to smack somewhat of journalistic 
 propoganda, it certainly has a basis of fact. 
 
 M The system of labor from sun to sun had been taken over from agri- 
 culture where conditions were entirely different, and even out-door mechanics 
 worked from sunrise to sunset all seasons. In winter this meant comparatively 
 short hours, but as wages were paid by the de.y regardless of the season, every 
 inducement existed to concentrate all possible work in the late spring and sum- 
 mer and early fall when the days were long and men could be required to work 
 twelve to fifteen hours. As a result not only was there great physical strain 
 during the summer months, but during the short winter days hundreds of building 
 trades mechanics were unemployed." (10) 
 
 In discussing the hours of labor in the cotton mills at Lowell, 
 the cotton manufacturing center of the United States, during the decade of the 
 thirties, James Montgomery says: (11) "From the first of September to the 
 
 first of May, work is commenced in the morning as soon as the hands can see to 
 advantage, and stopped regularly during those eight months at seven-thirty in 
 the evening. During the four summer months, or from the first of May to the 
 first of September, work is commenced at five o’clock in the morning and stopped 
 at seven in the evening. Forty- five minutes is allowed for dinner during the 
 summer months and thirty during the other eight. About 73§- hours per week may 
 be regarded as the average hours of labor in the cotton mills at Lowell and 
 generally throughout the whole eastern district of the United States. In many, 
 perhaps the majority, of the cotton factories in the middle and southern dis- 
 tricts, the hours of labor in summer are from sunrise to sunset or from half 
 

 
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 past four in the morning till half past seven in the evening, being about thir- 
 teen and throe-fourths hours per day, equal to eighty-two and one-half hours 
 per week.'* 
 
 In contrast to these conditions it might be noted that at this 
 time "in Great Britain the hours of labor per week were limited by Act of Parlia- 
 ment to 69 or 11 -g- hours per day, but the general regulation in all factories is 
 nine hours on Saturday and twelve hours on each of the other five days." 
 
 One American workman, lately arrived from England and quoted in the 
 Mechanics Free Press for August, I 83 O, avers that in America after paying for 
 board and washing he had $4.63 per week left, while in England he would have the 
 same amount left, whose buying capacity would be one-third more, which would be 
 earned with fifteen hours per v/eel; less labor. 
 
 Thus far our attention has been directed to a consideration of the 
 conditions that prevailed among the working classes near IS 30 or about the time 
 of the beginning of the period of this study. That these conditions should 
 have remained during all the subsequent years of this period equally unfavorable 
 would be, as we shall try to show', illogical to expect, and we believe as a mat- 
 ter of historical fact, quite easy to deny; and yet a few random observations 
 tend to impress one v/ith the fact that the condition of labor in the United 
 States throughout the entire period remained somewhat inconsistent with the idea 
 that an abundance of cheap public land precludes the idea of a labor problem in 
 so far as that problem is a question of freeing the laboring classes from op- 
 pressive working conditions or capitalistic exploitation. 
 
 For example, (12) in 1845 we find the women of New York City work- 
 ing for from ten to eighteen cents per day, some of the most proficient receiv- 
 ing twenty-five, an amount on which it was impossible to live decently and 
 honestly. "The wages of unskilled laborers in New York, generally Irishmen just 
 
- 8 - 
 
 from the old world, was sixty-five cents a day. Unable to live and procure 
 lodging on three dollars and ninety cents a week, a number of them employed in 
 Brooklyn were allowed to build shanties on land near where they were employed. 
 The Massachusetts legislature when it met in 1844 received a petition from 
 twenty-one hundred and thirty-nine operators who complained of long hours and 
 unhealthy rooms. The hours complained of were from five in the morning until 
 seven in the evening with an hour and a quarter off for meals. 
 
 In 1850 we hear a representative of the German immigration saying, 
 "We came here because v/e v/ere oppressed, and what have we gained? Nothing but 
 misery, hunger and oppression." ( 13 ) 
 
 The New York Herald for February 7, 1852, declared that laborers on 
 public works v/ere often discharged and could not collect wages, sometimes months 
 over due, that they were forced to work from sunrise to sunset for from fifty 
 to seventy- five cents, and that they v/ere compelled to take part 0 ? this in 
 trade at small liquor and victualing stores erected along the line of public 
 works. (14) 
 
 The last item of evidence dealing with laboring conditions during 
 this period is from the writings of Trollope. Speaking of conditions in the 
 middle west just before the Civil War, he said, (15) "The laboring Irish in 
 these towns eat meat seven days a week, but I have met many a laboring Irishman 
 among them who has v/ished himself back in his old cabin. There is, I think, no 
 task master over free labor so exacting as an American. He knows nothing of 
 hours and seems to have that idea of a man which a lady alv/ays has of a horse. 
 
 He thinks he will go forever. I wish those masons in London who strike for 
 nine hours’ work with ten hours' pay could be driven to the labor market of 
 western America for a spell. American workmen are driven forward at this work 
 in a manner that to an English workman v/ould be intolerable." 
 

 
 
 
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 One might continue almost indefinitely in this fashion. If, how- 
 ever, the testimony offered is worthy of consideration, this should be suffic- 
 ient to help to some conclusion. If worthless, continuation would be equally 
 useless. 
 
 It must be admitted that much of the evidence presented in this 
 chapter has centered around the very beginning of the period, and yet there is 
 nothing to indicate that those were abnormal times, certainly not abnormally 
 depressed, for the country was just entering on that period of abnormal activity 
 that precipitated the crisis of 1837. 
 
 It is admitted also that part of this material has been somewhat 
 controversial and tinged with prejudice doubtless and should be taken according- 
 ly "cum grano salis," and yet enough remains, we believe, to amply justify the 
 conclusion that during the first part especially of the thirty years' period 
 from 1830 to i860, distress existed among the laborers of America to an extent 
 that is quite amazing, especially to the uninformed, and seems somewhat at var- 
 iance with the original assumption that an abundance of land offered an alterna- 
 tive always to the conditions existing within the industrial sections of a 
 country and thus precluded the possibility of widespread poverty or exploitation. 
 
 That ordinarily or ultimately the welfare of the laboring class is 
 conditioned largely by the possibility of their escape to the soil, seems too 
 evident to need discussion or demonstration. That the abundances of public land 
 that existed during this period failed to give effective relief during the 
 whole of the period, seems from the foregoing data equally obvious. The next 
 endeavor then will be to discover why this was true. 
 
- 10 - 
 
 Chapter II 
 
 Many conditions might be mentioned that acted as a check to the 
 natural tendency to migrate from the older industrial sections of the East to 
 the unoccupied territory of the West during the earlier part of the nineteenth 
 century, thus tending to vitiate also the idea that these lands formed an easy 
 method of escape from any conditions that became unsatisfactory in the original 
 settlements. 
 
 First, it might be v/orth v/hile to consider to what conditions one 
 escaped who left the mills of Mew England or the Middle States to take up life 
 in the frontier districts during the early part of the century. Roosevelt in 
 hi spinning of the West” states it concisely when he says,(l6) "To push the 
 frontier westward in the teeth of the forces of the v/ilderness was fighting work 
 such as suited well enough many a stout soldier who had worn the blue and buff 
 of the continental line, or who with his fellow rough-riders had followed in 
 the train of some grim partisan leader." 
 
 Stirring as this picture may be to a man, what appeal, one might ask, 
 could such conditions have to women and girls, ever, tho they were being worn 
 out in the cotton mills at Lowell. The frontier home with its "hole in the 
 roof to let out the smoke and its hole in the door to let in the pigs" could 
 scarcely have been said to be very appealing to them, "A fine place for men 
 and dogs," testified the wife of one pioneer, "but a poor place for women," 
 many of whom doubtless "accompanied their husbands from a sense of duty or 
 necessity while secretly pining for the quie^ , orderly , friendly society to which 
 they originally bade reluctant farewell." ( 17 ) 
 
 Harriet Martineau, writing her impression of frontier life (1834 -6) 
 says, (18) "None of the graces of fixed habitation had grown up. The success 
 of his (the settler's) after life can hardly atone to him for such a destitution 
 
- 11 - 
 
 of comfort as I saw him in the midst of." 
 
 Not only did the pioneers suffer the discomforts of privation, but 
 often from sickness brought on by their manner of life and the unhealthful con- 
 dition of much of the new country. "Too often," observes Trollope ( 19 ) "the 
 pioneer bore on his lantern jaws the signs of ague and sickness." Indeed, it 
 is well known that "throughout large portions of the western country fevers and 
 agues and stomach troubles beset the settlers. As to remedies, the pioneers 
 had vigorous constitutions, otherwise they could hardly have survived the com- 
 bination of disease and cure. (20) 
 
 Another repressive influence which prevented a ready movement of 
 population from centers of redundancy or conditions otherwise unfavorable was 
 that utter lack during most of the first quarter of the century of transporta- 
 tion facilities, which not only made the unsettled west difficult of access but 
 made of those who entered it virtual exiles from the older portion of the coun- 
 try and left them without adequate market for their products. 
 
 The remoteness of the Mississippi Valley from the Atlantic seaboard 
 before the influence of the campaign for internal improvements, that was so 
 active for a decade following the completion of the Erie Canal, had made itself 
 felt, presents a serious obstacle to the poor, especially from New England. (21) 
 To relieve, partially at least, this situation a "rage" for turn- 
 pikes struck the country following the westward expansion after the Revolution- 
 ary War. New York alone in 1811 chartered one hundred and thirty-seven compan- 
 ies to build 4,500 miles of road. This general movement by no means solved the 
 difficulty. Roads on the wholo were unspeakably poor.- sloughs of mire during 
 the thawing days of winter and spring and thick with dust in the summer. As 
 late as 1835 Miss Martineau defies "pen, pencil or malice to do justice to the 
 wreccnedness oj their condition. Transportation costs, as a consequence, re— 
 
- 12 - 
 
 mained enormous. To haul a ton from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh on an all land 
 route cost $ 125 . To move a bushel of salt three hundred miles over any road 
 cost $2.50. For wagoning one hundredweight of sugar three hundred miles the 
 tariff was $5.00* Taking the country through, it may be said that to transport 
 goods cost $10 per ton per hundred miles. The cost of long carriage so far as 
 many products were concerned v/as simply prohibitory. (22) 
 
 Those who lived near the sea-coast found it much easier and more 
 economical to ship by New Orleans such articles as were not needed on the road, 
 especially if they intended to settle on any of the navigable waters of the 
 Mississippi system, than to carry such freight overland with them. (23) In 
 traveling at this time passengers were reckoned as so much freight, so that 
 travel was not only difficult but very expensive. This barrier was particularly 
 effective in the case of the v/ould-be emigrant from New England. (24) 
 
 As the civilization of the East with its products was effectively 
 cut off from the Y/est, with equal completeness v/as the West cut off from the 
 potential market of the seaboard states. "Peltries, ginseng, and whiskey were 
 almost the only products that could pay their cost of transportation overland 
 to Philadelphia, and the proceeds derived from the sale of these were suffici- 
 ent only to purchase things of first necessity, as salt and gunpowder and in- 
 dispensable articles of iron. (25) The early western farmers were thus per- 
 force self-sustaining. "The women made the clothes from the wool, the flax, or 
 the skin, the men of the family helping in the heavier work, as of boat making." 
 (26) Prices of produce were very low. At Edwardsville in Illinois, corn sold 
 for from twelve and a half to twenty cents a bushel. Farther inland, the con- 
 ditions were much worse. In 1824, corn might be bought in any quantity in Cin- 
 cinnati for eight cents a bushel. Wheat yielded twenty-five cents, while flour 
 sold for a dollar and a quarter a barrel. (27) A cow and a calf might be 
 

-13- 
 
 obtained in exchange for a bushel of salt. Clearly, the settlement of the West 
 was largely conditioned by the possibility of finding ways and means of trans- 
 portation. (28) 
 
 Coincident almost with the realization of this need comes an era of 
 improvement in this line, such as has never been equalled. In l8ll Fulton's 
 new invention was introduced on Western waters, and in 1817 the first steamboat 
 voyage was made from New Orleans to Louisville. The ability of this new instru- 
 ment of commerce to breast the current of the Mississippi being once established, 
 traffic grew with wonderful rapidity. In 1834 the number of steamboats on the 
 Mississippi and Ohio Rivers and their tributaries was ascertained to be 230, 
 with an aggregate carrying capacity of 39,000 tons. In 1842 the number of boats 
 had increased to about 450, with a carrying capacity of something more than 
 100,000 tons. 
 
 In the meantime steam navigation of the Great Lakes had begun. In 
 I8l8 the first steamboat was built on Lake Erie. By 1833 eleven small steamers 
 were plying on the upper lakes. This number had grown to sixty in 1845, sup- 
 plemented by 320 sailing vessels of from 1,000 to 1,200 tons each. 
 
 (29) Following in chronological order, the next important step in 
 the train of events that was to open up the West was the completion in 1818 of 
 the Cumberland Road from Cumberland, Maryland, to Wheeling, West Virginia. Well 
 graded and constructed of stone and gravel, Gallatin's prophecy that over it 
 "ten thousand tons would be carried westward annually and 100,000 barrels of 
 flour brought back" (30) seems quite justified. Immediately after its opening 
 it did become one of the chief avenues of the West, and Wheeling was made for 
 a time the entrepot of the Ohio Valley. Its importance, however, as an artery 
 of trade was soon eclipsed by the most epoch making event of the series - the 
 opening of the Erie Canal. 
 
-14- 
 
 "Thanks to the ability and persistent endeavor of DeWitt Clinton, 
 the problem of transportation between the East and the West was at last solved." 
 (31) No other single work in the United States has ever exerted a greater in- 
 fluence on the prosperity of internal trade. Freight rates between Buffalo and 
 Albany were reduced 90 percent, almost immediately. An idea of the volume of 
 trade may be gathered from the fact that tolls of half a million dollars were 
 collected immediately upon its completion, and before a decade has passed it had 
 paid the cost of its construction. ( 32 ) 
 
 The indirect effects of the Canal were no less remarkable, Pennsyl- 
 vania, awakened by the danger of the total loss of western trade, began in 1826 
 an extensive system of canals to connect Philadelphia with the Ohio River and 
 Great Lakes. Not to be outdone, Maryland and Virginia agreed in 1828 upon the 
 construction of a canal from tide-water on the Potomac to the Ohio, while at 
 the same time, dubious of the success of a canal over such a route, some Balti- 
 more financiers, "putting their confidence in a new and almost untried transpor- 
 tation device", inaugurated the plan of building a railroad across the mountains 
 to win for Baltimore a share of the commerce of the West . (33) 
 
 By I 83 O it was evident that easy communication between the East and 
 the West was assured. There v/ere 1,348 miles of canal completed; 1,828 miles 
 were under construction; 44 miles of railroad had been completed; 697 had been 
 projected, and 422 were in the process of building. So great was the transfor- 
 mation wrought by these improvements that Dunbar speaks of those who lived dur- 
 ing the early decades of this century as "the last pioneer generation." (34) 
 
-15- 
 
 Chapter III 
 
 It must not be assumed that with the passing of the problem of 
 transportation and communication, all barriers to free emigration to the West 
 had been overcome, for such was not the case. By the action of the various 
 states the land to be occupied had become a public domain under the control of 
 the National Government , and without its approval, not one foot of this land 
 might be occupied. 
 
 The history of the attitude of our Government toward the dispotition 
 of its public lands is a varied one. "The primary use of fo eland, according to 
 Bedes' celebrated spistle to Egbert, was to reward soldiers." True to this 
 traditional policy, it appears that the earliest use made by Congress of the pub- 
 lic lands was for military bounties. As early as August, 177 6 , it promised land 
 bounties to deserters from the British Army, and a month later passed an act 
 promising land to officers and soliers of the Continental army and endeavored by 
 this means to induce men to enlist. With the end of the war and the cession by 
 the states of the whole of the conquered domain west of the Alleghenies to the 
 National Government, the land policy of Congress seemed naturally to resolve 
 itself into two alternatives. Namely: Shall the public lands be administered 
 
 from the standpoint of settlement or from the standpoint of finance? A know- 
 ledge of the condition of the country at that time makes the answer obvious. 
 
 The Revolutionary War had wrecked the finances of the states. Commerce had 
 s. faint life. Manufactures had not come into being. State contributions were 
 often attended with technical difficulties. Loans accumulated while credit was 
 small. Continental paper was of little or no value. Under such conditions as 
 these it seems natural, if not almost inevitable, that Congress should view the 
 public domain primarily as a source of revenue. That this is true may be 
 judged by the very tone of the resolution urging cession by the states from 
 
- 16 - 
 
 which the following is quoted. "They (the states) be urged that the war now 
 being brought to a happy termination by the personal services of our soldiers, 
 the supplies of property by our citizens and loans of money from them, as well 
 as from foreigners, these several creditors have a right to expect that funds 
 shall be provided on which they may rely for indemnification; that Congress 
 shall consider vacant territory as an important resource." (35) 
 
 This, Hinsdale observes, was almost distinctly a new idea. "In 
 colonial days waste land had not proved a source of income to either the col- 
 onies or the crown." (36) A small quit rent was reserved but scarcely ever 
 paid. "Virginia imposed an annual rental of two cents per acre upon her waste 
 lands and then threw them open to indiscriminate locations. Whole states, as 
 West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee, were disposed of without affording any 
 public revenue whatever. It is therefore somewhat difficult to understand how 
 the idea that the overmountain land would be a source of large income became 
 current. But so it was." Without precedent, evidently, but under the necessity 
 of relieving somehow the pressing financial burden incident to the Revolution, 
 relief was sought from the public lands. 
 
 That this entire domain be sold or mortgaged to foreign states, re- 
 ceived but scant consideration. That would be, saidpeletiah Webster, "like 
 killing the goose that laid the golden egg every day, in order to tear out at 
 once all that was in her belly," (37) It was decided rather that first of all 
 the ceded territory should be carefully marked off from the unceded and intrus- 
 ion on it should be rigidly prohibited. It was in pursuance of this policy that 
 Congress twice in 1737 instructed the military to move against the unauthorized 
 settlers. Under these instructions, a detachment of troops moved up and down 
 the right bank of the Ohio River, driving out the settlers and burning their 
 log cabins. ( 38 ) 
 
-17- 
 
 Since the public lands then were looked upon by all the financiers 
 of this period as an asset to be cashed at once for payment of the current ex- 
 penses of government and for the extinguishment of the national debt, land 
 legislation began to shape itself accordingly. (39 ) 
 
 The Ordinance of 1785 provided for the sale of land in large lots 
 only, to first purchasers, to be resold by them to the settlers in lots more 
 suitable to their convenience. Certainly a discouraging condition of sale and 
 tenure when viewed from the standpoint of the settlors, who, if they availed 
 themselves of the opportunity offered, v/ere compelled to expose themselves to 
 possible disaster through the ignorance or trickery of the capitalistic pur- 
 chasers. (40) 
 
 About one-half of the state of Ohio was made up of large blocks 
 of land, ranging from 1,000,000 to 4,209,800 acres in size. The desire being 
 for immediate revenue, no credit was allowed for land purchases. "Payments 
 could be made either in specie or in loan-office certificates reduced to specie 
 value on their scale of depreciation, or by certificates of the liquidated debts 
 of the United States, including interest. In case immediate payment was not 
 forthcoming, the land was to be again offered for sale." (41) Attractive as 
 
 this may have been to the speculator for whom the West had long been a favorite 
 field of endeavor, (The Ohio Co. was formed in 1742) it ignored entirely the 
 wishes of the men who were moving toward that region and had the greatest inter- 
 est in the lands. What they desired was cheap lands in small tracts without 
 delay, whereas the system in favor called for expensive surveys, taking much 
 tine for execution. No land offices existed in the West itself except the one 
 at Pittsburg; the smallest tract obtainable was 640 acres at one dollar per 
 acre, plu3 the cost of survey, and only half the townships were offered in this 
 way. Furthermore, since rivers were the only highv/ays of the interior, easy 
 
- 18 - 
 
 access to then was of greatest importance. The surveys left this fact entirely 
 out of consideration. The Seven Ranges extended forty-two miles inland at one 
 point. It is scarcely to be wondered at, that the sale of land to actual set- 
 tlers under the Ordinance of 1785 was insignificant. (42) 
 
 The next important change in the land system after 1785 was the 
 law passed in 179&, the first land ordinance of the National Congress. (43) 
 There is little in this law that is original, nor is there much evident weaken- 
 ing from the old financial policy, in fact, the price of land is increased to 
 two dollars per acre, without the repeal of any of the restrictive measures of 
 the original act in compensation. Even yet, as pointed out by Treat, section 
 lines were not run, which made it difficult for the purchasers of a section to 
 locate it, as well as for the government to compute the size of the fractional 
 township and sections. In fact, they were but roughly computed and sold at the 
 buyer’s risk. That under such conditions the typical pioneer would or could 
 pay f 1,280 for a section (the minimum amount at the minimum price) is too much 
 to expect. The act of 179& was "of importance mainly as a statement of prin- 
 ciples, for little land was sold under it,” 
 
 It was evident that if Congress insisted on selling land in large 
 tracts it must either reduce the price or extend the credit, and if it wished 
 to sell to the settlers it must reduce the price or the size of the minimum 
 tract. So poor had been the sale in the period passed that the new act passed 
 in 1800 showed some important developments in this direction. (44) They were 
 principally the establishment of land offices, the extension of credit and the 
 reduction of the size of the tracts. The land offices, located at Cincinnati, 
 Chillicothe, Marietta and Steubenville, brought the place of sale within the 
 reach of the would-be purchaser. (45) The credit system extending over a 
 period of four years, (later extended to five) coupled with a reduction of the 
 

 
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- 19 * 
 
 minimum tracts offered to 320 acres, made it possible for settlers to have the 
 use of that amount for five years for $ 160 , even tho they might not be able to 
 hold it ultimately by paying the balance. This credit feature seemed quite 
 alluring, and the land system under this act became a real factor in the west- 
 ward movement. It regulated the sale of public land for twenty years, being 
 modified only as to the computation of interest charges, by the introduction of 
 quarter-section tracts in 1804, and a limited number of eighty-acre tracts in 
 1817 . 
 
 Throughout the whole of its existence thus far, the public domain 
 had been administered as a source of revenue primarily, the wishes of the settl- 
 ers being of secondary importance. That this attitude, so strong at first, 
 should have persisted, is not unnatural. National legislation was being domina- 
 ted by eastern influence. Land values in the East were being endangered by the 
 competition of the opening West. It was also feared that cheapened lands with 
 the resultant flow of population from the seaboard states would cause a scarcity 
 of labor and a rising wage scale in the industrial sections. 
 
 The credit policy of the Act of 1800, while passed doubtless for 
 the special benefit of the settlers, was of doubtful value. Too often it in- 
 duced them to expend their last cent in making the first payment, under the im- 
 pression that by means of the produce of the lands they would be able to meet 
 the balances as they came due. In this they were disappointed. This new land 
 was not immediately highly productive. Many of the settlers consequently 
 found themselves unable to meet their later installments. On September 30, I 8 I 9 , 
 more than $21,000,000 was to be collected for these lands. More than $500,000 
 had already been forfeited to the Government. Speculators, too, were taking 
 advantage of the credit provisions to gain an option on the better land. A 
 change was becoming necessary. ( 46 ) 
 

 
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- 20 - 
 
 A new act ’was drawn up and signed on April 24 , 1820 , "The most 
 important piece of land legislation since the Congress of the Confederation 
 laid down the principle of the American land system in 1785 ." ( 4 7 ) This act 
 provided for the abolition of credit and the establishment of ca3h sales arter 
 July 1 , 1820 , for the sale of eighty-acre tracts, and for the reduction of the 
 minimum price to $1.25 per acre. By this act the speculators found their dreams 
 of fattening on the unearned increment of a growing country curtailed, while 
 the settler for $100 could now purchase a farm outright, which under the old 
 system would have furnished little more than the first payment on a quarter- 
 section tract. 
 
 While the old revenue attitude toward the public domain continued 
 in the older sections, that its force was steadily weakening is evidenced by 
 this law of 1820, the beginning really of a new era in the history of our land 
 policy. The question of the welfare of the settlers had risen much in relative 
 importance, end from this time on may be safely said to have had equal, if not 
 first, consideration. 
 
 This change of attitude is revealed again by a series of relief acts, 
 beginning March 2 , 1821 . As has been already suggested, many pioneers, under- 
 estimating the difficulty of realizing a quick return from the products of their 
 western farms, were finding themselves unable to pay the final installments of 
 their purchase. If arrears were not paid, the lav/ had to take its course, and 
 the land reverted to the government. "To eject unfortunate settlers from their 
 lands and log cabins must have seemed to the pioneers an inhuman thing." ( 48 ) 
 
 The lav/, however, had to be executed until relief came. Beginning with March 2, 
 1821, eleven different acts were passed in as many years to ease the terms of 
 credit to the bankrupt western farmers. A discrimination in come respects 
 against the faithful purchasers, and a concession to the speculators, these acts 
 
- 21 - 
 
 nevertheless prevented almost half the land perhaps settled under the act of 
 1800 from reverting back to the government, rendering its occupants landless and 
 homeless . 
 
 There is finally a changing attitude on the question of pre-emption 
 to take care of the long and insistent demand of the squatters. The squatting 
 evil, for such it was in the eyes of those who held a revenue policy at least, 
 represents one of the oldest things in American life, going back to the very 
 first years of colonial history. Squatting on waste land was a right and the 
 squatter's point of view was that laws interfering with this right were unjust 
 and of no effect. It is a v/ell known fact that the tide of immigration always 
 preceded the surveys and land sales authorized by the Government, and the cry 
 for pre-emption was the cry of those hardy pioneers to have more of the benefits 
 of their enterprise secured to them. The attitude of 3tern repression at first 
 adopted toward them has been already mentioned. Here again the public mind was 
 undergoing evolution. (49) 
 
 Pre-emption, quoting from the "Public Domain", "is a premium in 
 favor of and condition for making a permanent settlement and a home. It is a 
 preference for actual tilling and residing upon a piece of land." It was not a 
 free grant of land but the giving to a settler of the privilege of purchasing 
 land as against competition. "It amounts simply to the exclusion of competition 
 and the purchase of land at a minimum or double minimum, as the case may require. 
 The first general pre-emption act was passed May 29, 1830. By this act every 
 settler or occupant of the public lands after giving due proof of settlement or 
 improvement was allowed to enter in the register of the land office any number 
 of acres up to a quarter section at the established minimum price of $1.25 per 
 acre. This act, however, was but a temporary measure. The first general and 
 permanent pre-emption act was not passed until 1841. This act marked the last 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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- 22 - 
 
 great step in the evolution of legislation from the purely revenue attitude to 
 the idea of free grants of land to actual settlers, which was realized with the 
 Homestead Law of 1362. (50) 
 
 The change witnessed thus far had been very gradual, the result of 
 experience as well as of changed conditions. The suffering of land purchasers 
 under the credit system, the failure to realize any considerable revenue from 
 the cash sale, the increasing prosperity of the country from commerce and manu- 
 facture, all these causes combined to mould public opinion and shape the ultimate 
 policy of homesteads for the actual settlers. The extent to v/hich the flow of 
 population toward the West was checked by this unfavorable early legislation 
 cannot, of course, be accurately determined. (51) That it had a deterrent in- 
 fluence certainly could not be denied. A comparison of the 1820 population of 
 nine 'western states settled under the acts that have been mentioned with the 
 population of two which escaped those restrictions should prove enlightening. 
 
 Under national regulation: 
 
 Ohio 
 
 .... 581,295 
 
 Indiana 
 
 
 Illinois 
 
 .... 55,162 
 
 Michigan 
 
 .... 8,764 
 
 Mississippi .. 
 
 .... 75,448 
 
 Alabama 
 
 .. .. 127,901 
 
 Louisiana . . . . 
 
 .... 152,923 
 
 Missouri 
 
 
 Arkansas 
 
 .... 14,255 
 
 Total 
 
 . 1,229,484 
 
 States independent of national regulation: 
 
 Kentucky 422,771 
 
 Tennessee 564. 135 
 
 Total 986,906 
 
 Relative to this situation, Treat says that altho settlers were mov- 
 ing into the public domain north and south of the Ohio River and west of the 
 
-23- 
 
 Mississippi, that it must be remembered, that only a portion of these people 
 were holding lands purchased at the land offices, and that of the settlers 
 west of the Appalachians in 1820 fully one-half had taken up lands in regions 
 that had never come under the land system - notably Kentucky and Tennessee. 
 
 And of the settlors in the public land states and territories, the greater part 
 were located on land which had not been surveyed and sold under the general 
 land system. (52) 
 
 Another set of figures from which it is possible to make some de- 
 ductions is the record of receipts from land sales during a large part of this 
 period. (53) 
 
 Year 
 
 Amount 
 
 Year 
 
 Amount 
 
 1801 
 
 $168,125 
 
 1822 
 
 $1,803,581 
 
 1802 
 
 188 , 628 
 
 1823 
 
 916,523 
 
 1803 
 
 165,675 
 
 1824 
 
 984,418 
 
 1804 
 
 487,526 
 
 1825 
 
 1,216,090 
 
 1805 
 
 540,192 
 
 1826 
 
 1,393,785 
 
 1806 
 
 765,245 
 
 1827 
 
 1,497,053 
 
 1807 
 
 466, 163 
 
 1828 
 
 1,018,308 
 
 1808 
 
 647,939 
 
 1829 
 
 1,517,175 
 
 1809 
 
 442,252 
 
 1830 
 
 2,329,356 
 
 1810 
 
 696 , 548 
 
 1831 
 
 3,210,815 
 
 1811 
 
 1,040,237 
 
 1832 
 
 2,623,331 
 
 1812 
 
 710,427 
 
 1833 
 
 3,967,631 
 
 1813 
 
 835,655 
 
 1834 
 
 4,857,600 
 
 1814 
 
 1,135,971 
 
 1835 
 
 14,757,600 
 
 1815 
 
 1,287,959 
 
 1836 
 
 24,641,979 
 
 1816 
 
 1,717,985 
 
 1837 
 
 6,770,036 
 
 1817 
 
 1,991,226 
 
 1838 
 
 3,081,939 
 
 1818 
 
 2 , 606,564 
 
 1839 
 
 7,076,447 
 
 1819 
 
 3,274,442 
 
 1840 
 
 3,292,220 
 
 1820 
 
 1,635,871 
 
 1841 
 
 1,363,090 
 
 1821 
 
 1,212,966 
 
 
 
 Signal as xne victory of 1841 may have seemed, it soon became evi- 
 dent that it was not by any means complete. The evil of speculation, so preva- 
 lent under former systems, while somewhat mitigated, was not by any means de- 
 stroyed. Through his superior financial resources and ability to employ shrewd 
 men to locate the choicest lands, the speculator sill had an advantage over the 
 

-24- 
 
 settler that could scarcely be overcone. (54) "Hi3 agents were instructed to 
 select those tracts most likely to advance most rapidly in value, due to advan- 
 tageous situation, excellence of soils, minerals, water power, or with reference 
 to settlements already made; and as a result when the land sales opened, he knew 
 exactly what tracts were unoccupied and of greatest value." 
 
 The St. Anthony (Minn.) Express said in 1852: We have a set of 
 
 speculators, land sharks, Shylocks, in this Territory who have bought all the 
 land in close proximity to the villages and refuse to sell it except at a consid- 
 erable advance on government price. As a result of the general acquisition 
 throughout the West of large tracts of land by non-residents, settlers who wanted 
 cheap land had to go farther still into the wilderness, away from society and 
 market where their lot, normally a hard one, became increasingly burdensome. 
 
 One of the contributing causes to this speculation was the general 
 practice on the part of the Federal Government of issuing land grants as bounties 
 to soldiers. Since many of these could not or would not locate in the West, 
 these warrants were sold, ordinarily to land speculators, and became an article 
 of commerce, bought and sold on the market just as railway stocks are today, and 
 in anticipation of the opening of a new land office were "salted down" in large 
 quantities by this same class of men. (55) The scope of their activities may be 
 judged from the following extract from the St. Anthony Express: 
 
 "Nearly 200,000 land warrants yet remain to be located. If assign- 
 able, not more than one-third of one- fourth of these will be located by the 
 original holders. Land sharks will swallow all the rest and disgorge them, pol- 
 luted by their blighting touch, upon the fairest portions of our Territory. 
 
 Instead of boats swarming with an energetic, hardy and industrious crowd of far- 
 mers and mechanics, they will be encumbered by the agents of eastern millionaires, 
 their pockets stuffed with warrants, who like the flies that come upon the borders 
 

-25- 
 
 of Egypt will cause the land to stink.” 
 
 Greeley, writing from Wisconsin Territory in 1849, emphasizes the 
 same condition. Wherever, he says, upon a natural harbor, a bay, a head of navi- 
 gation, or a waterfall, a village began or promised to spring up, the speculator 
 or his agent pounced upon all the unoccupied lands within a circuit of a mile or 
 two. "This he would hold for a price, treble or sixty-fold what he had paid 
 for it.” (56) 
 
 There is no reason to suppose that the conditions described were 
 peculiar to Wisconsin or Minnesota. Against the aggressions of eastern capital, 
 the home makers were fighiing a discouraging, often a losing, battle, for often 
 the necessary amount had been expended by them in building cabins and in stock- 
 ing farms, most of them were penniless. And if the claim happened to be located 
 in a section that had been proclaimed for sale, it was likely to be purchased 
 after a year by anyone who chose to buy it, unless protected by public opinion 
 or a claim association. Such conditions as these, it is obvious, would not be 
 tolerated willingly and so an insistent demand began to arise for a law that 
 would reserve the public domain for actual settlers. (57) 
 
 On January 3, 1845, a petition was presented to Congress, asking 
 that it pass "with all convenient haste, a law by which every citizen who may be 
 desirous of cultivating the earth for a living shall be enabled to enter upon the 
 public lands and occupy a reasonable sized farm thereon, free of cost.” During 
 the first session of the Twenty-ninth Congress three men introduced independent 
 homestead bills, authorizing every poor man in the United States who is at the 
 head of a family to enter 160 acres of public domain without money and without 
 price. 
 
 The history of the appearance and reappearance of homestead bills 
 in Congre33, of how the land question became merged into the greater problem 
 
-26- 
 
 of slave soil or free, and how it wa3 finally passed largely as a sectional anti- 
 slavery issue - all this would be perhaps somewhat irrelevant to our discussion. 
 Suffice it to say that the pre-emption law of 1841 with its attendant evils, 
 already briefly described, governed the method of land disposal in the West for 
 more than two decades and that in this time no relief was given from the activities 
 of land sharks and speculators. On the other hand, when it became known that in 
 every congress from 1847 until the close of the Civil War general bounty bills 
 were presented and that four of them became laws, it appears that through part of 
 this period at least, the field for this evil machination was being extended. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 
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 , 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
- 27 - 
 
 Chapter IV 
 
 Reflected by and from the legislative activities that have been 
 considered, and playing always, if somewhat intangible, yet, an important part 
 in this whole problem was the degree to which the rank and file became alive to 
 the possibilities offered by the West as a solution for their social and indus- 
 trial ills. To us from the vantage ground of a later period, this connection 
 seems so evident that one would be led to assume that its significance had al- 
 ways been a matter of general recognition. This is not strictly correct, how- 
 ever, for altho it was doubtless patent to some, yet it is evident that if 
 realized at all by the great mass of people, throughout a very considerable part 
 of our early history, it was in a very vague and passive fashion. Until this 
 idea became an active motivating one, it is evident also that the evolution of 
 transportation or legislation or the removal of any other barrier to the west- 
 ward flow of population must have remained quite useless. The awakening of this 
 active interest and its spread in scope and intensity presents itself as a part 
 of the general field for investigation in our general problem. 
 
 Two forces are at once observed at work here, each almost equally 
 active. The one, the social reformer of the East who upholds and propogates 
 the idea of cheap lands made available to actual settlers, for its effect on 
 social conditions among the working classes. The other, western men who would 
 induce a flow of industrial population from the East to hasten the growth of 
 that section of the country. 
 
 There is evidence that already in the late twenties social reformers 
 were beginning to contend for free access to the public lands in order to amel- 
 iorate the condition of the working man. The sale of lands, they began to see, 
 was injurious to the laboring classes because few of them possessed sufficient 
 capital to buy it. If, in place of selling the land, it were to be given free 
 
- 28 - 
 
 to actual settlers, it would, they contended, bring a freehold and independence 
 within reach of all. As early as 1828, the Mechanics Free Press contained a 
 memorial to Congree proposing that Public land should no longer be sold but sug- 
 gested to Congress "the propriety of placing all public lands without the delay 
 of sales within the reach of the people at large by title of company only . . . 
 and therefore pray your honorable body to enact a law authorizing a grant to any 
 individual who shall apply for it, of a free use of so much of the public land 
 as you in your wisdom shall deem sufficient." 
 
 Two years before this tine, Thos. H. Benton expressed the attitude 
 of the West toward the repressive revenue attitude of the East (in Congress) 
 when he said, "I speak to statesmen and not to conpting clerks; to senators and 
 not to quaestors of provinces; to an assembly of legislators and not to a keeper 
 of the King’s forests. I speak to senators who know this to be a Republic, not 
 a Monarchy; who know that the public lands belong to the people and not to the 
 Federal Government.” (58) 
 
 John R. Commons, in his discussion of this question, suggests that 
 it was during the time of hardship to labor as a result of the rapidly rising 
 prices just prior to the panic of 1837 that the importance of the public lands 
 dawned upon the workingmen, and it began to be evident to them that one reason 
 why their wages did not rise and their strikes were ineffective was because they 
 were cut off from escape to the land by existing conditions. Speaking of the 
 importance of this growing sentiment, he further says, (59) "In their conventions 
 and papers, therefore, they (the workingmen) demanded that the lands should no 
 more be treated as a source of public revenue to relieve taxpayers, but should be 
 treated as an instrument of social reform to raise the wages of labor." And when 
 we in later years refer to our wide domain and our great natural resources as 
 reasons for higher wages in this country, it is well to remember that access to 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
-29- 
 
 these resources was secured only by agitation and act of legislature. Not merely 
 as a gift of nature, but mainly as a demand of democracy have the nation's re- 
 sources contributed to the elevation of labor. And it was in the events of 1827 
 to 1837 with their futile immediate results that the lesson was learned which 
 in a later day led the nation's industrial democracy even to civil war in order 
 to establish the freedom of the public lands. 
 
 Responsible doubtless in a large measure for the beginning of this 
 heightened interest in the public lands among the working people and helping to 
 mark therefore the beginning of the general agitation, was the appearance of the 
 Workingman's Advocate in 1825, published by George and Henry Evans. This maga- 
 zine, published in New York City during the five year period from 1825 - 1330, 
 may perhaps be said to be the first appearance of a representative of the labor 
 press in the United States. It was succeeded by "The Daily Sentinel" and finally 
 by "Young America." The demands of the representatives of labor printed in 
 Young America, altho extremely radical, were endorsed by some six hundred papers 
 and have since in some instances been granted. An enumeration of some of them 
 will show how thoroughly its readers were being impressed with the relation that 
 exists between land and conditions of labor. (60) 
 
 First of all was: The right of man to the soil, "Vote yourself a 
 
 farm." Another was, "Freedom of public lands." Another, "Homesteads made inalien- 
 able." Still another was, "Land limitation to 160 acres." Four out of twelve 
 demands dealt with the land situation. 
 
 To deal in a comprehensive fashion with the spread of this agitation 
 until its climax is reached and its goal attained in the Homestead Act of 1862 
 is beyond the scope of this endeavor. Vfhat follows is rather random bits of in- 
 formation that tend to mark here and there its progress. 
 
 At the convention of the "National Trades Union," held in 1834, 
 
-30- 
 
 wit h delegates from Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York, the 
 following resolutions were offered: (ol) ’’Resolved, that this convention depre- 
 cate the system now practiced in the disposal of the public lands because of 
 its violation of the inherent rights of the citizen, seeing that the v/hole of 
 the unseated lands belong unto the people, and should not be disposed of to the 
 prejudice of any class of society. Each and every citizen having a just claim 
 to an equitable portion thereof, a location upon which being the only just title 
 thereunto 
 
 "Resolved, that this convention would the more especially reprobate 
 the sale of the public lands because of its injurious tendency, as it affects 
 the interests and independence of the laboring classes, inasmuch as it debars 
 then from occupation of any portion of the same unless provided with an amount 
 of capital which the greater portion of them who would avail themselves of this 
 aid to arrive at personal independence cannot hope to attain, owing to the many 
 incroachments made upon than through the reduction in wages of labor consequent 
 upon its surplus quantity in the market, which surplus would be drained off and 
 a demand for the produce of mechanical labor increased if these public lands 
 were left to actual settlers." 
 
 It has been suggested that throughout this whole period one of the 
 principal agencies for fostering and disseminating the idea that free access to 
 the public lands furnished a remedy for the ills of which labor was complaining, 
 was the various publications of the Evans Brothers. The following, quoted from 
 the Workingman* s Advocate for July 6, 1844, will show the tenor of their 
 writing: 
 
 "Let an outlet be formed that will carry off our super- abundant 
 labor to the salubrious West . In these regions thousands and tens of thousands 
 who are now languishing in hopeless poverty will find a certain and speedy inde- 
 
-31- 
 
 pendence. The labor market will thus be freed of its present distressing com- 
 petition; and those who remain, as well as those who leave, will have the op- 
 portunity of realizing a comfortable living." 
 
 It was in the latter part of 1845 that Horace Greeley, Editor of 
 the Hew York Tribune, began to notice the homestead movement, and in a discus- 
 sion of the National Reformers gives qualified approval to their scheme of a 
 homestead lav;. Five months later, he comes forth with a whole-hearted vindica- 
 tion of the movement in the following editorial. 
 
 (62) "The freedom of the Public Lands to actual settlers and the 
 limitation of future acquisition of land to some reasonable amount are measures 
 v/hich seen to us vitally necessary to the ultimate emancipation of labor from 
 thralldom and misery. What is mainly v/anted is that each nan shall have a 
 chance to earn, and than an assurance of the just fruits of his labors. We must 
 achieve these results yet; we can do it. Every new labor-saving invention is a 
 new argument, an added necessity for it. And so long as the laboring class must 
 live by working for others, v/hile others are striving to live luxuriously and 
 amass wealth out of the fruits of such labor, so long the abuses and sufferings 
 now complained of must continue to exist or frequently reappear. We must go to 
 the root of the evil." 
 
 The influence of Greeley in promoting the cause of free land can 
 hardly be estimated. Many readers of the Weekly Tribune looked upon it as a kind 
 of political bible . "In the homes of the wage-earners of the East and the set- 
 tlers' cabins of the West it was prized and cherished." ( 63 ) A western editor, 
 writing in 1853, said, "The influence of The Tribune upon public opinion is 
 greater than its conductors claim for it. Its Isms with scarcely an exception, 
 though the people may reject thorn at first, yet ripen into strength insensibly. 
 
 A few years since, the Tribune commenced the advocacy of the principle of Free 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
-32- 
 
 Lc.nd for the Landless. The first bill presented upon that subject by Mr. Greeley 
 was hooted out of that body. But who doubts what the result would be if the 
 people of the whole nation had the right to vote upon the question today?" 
 
 Effective in the manner of its appeal was "Vote yourself a farm," 
 an article that appeared in The Workingman for January 24, 1846, and as a circu- 
 lar or handbill was distributed in hundreds of thousands. To quote some of its 
 striking passages: "Are you an American citizen? Then you are joint owner of 
 
 the public lands. Why not take enough of your property to provide yourself a 
 hone? Why not vote yourself a farm?" ( 64 ) 
 
 "Remember Poor Richard's saying: 'Now I have a sheep and a cow, 
 everyone bids me good morrow.' .... The bare rights to a farm, tho you should 
 never go near it, v/ill save you from insult. Therefore, vote yourself a farm." 
 
 "Are you a party follower? Then you have long enough employed 
 your vote to the benefit of scheming office seekers; use it for once to benefit 
 yourself. Vote yourself a farm." 
 
 "Are you tired of slavery - of drudging for others - of poverty 
 and its attendant miseries? Then, vote yourself a farm." 
 
 "Are you endowed with reason? Then you must know that your right 
 to live hereby includes the right to a place to live in - the right to a home. 
 Assert this right so long denied mankind by feudal robbers and their attorneys. 
 Vote yourself a farm." 
 
 "Are you a believer in the scriptures? Then assert that the land 
 is the Lord's because he made it. Resist then the blasphemers who exact money 
 for his work Vote yourself a farm." 
 
 "Are you a man? Then assert the sacred rights of man - especially 
 your right to stand upon God's earth and till it for your own profit. Vote 
 yourself a farm." 
 

-33- 
 
 "Would you free your country and the sons of toil everywhere from 
 the heartless, irresponsible mastery of the aristocracy of avarice? .... 
 
 Vote yourself a farm." 
 
 The first clause of a proposed bill for Congress appeared in Young 
 America in September, 1348, and reads as follows: An act to establish the equal 
 
 rights to the use of the land and its natural products; to afford a refuge to 
 the landless population of the United States; to secure homesteads to individual 
 families and associations; to provide for the increase in population; to make 
 labor the master instead of the slave of capital, and to perpetuate the republic. 
 
 (6 5) The Industrial Congress, held in Boston in 1846, marks the 
 beginning of a series of such meetings; New York in 1847; Philadelphia in 1848; 
 Cincinnati in 1849; Chicago in 1850; Albany in 1851; Washington in 1852; Wil- 
 mington in 1853; Trenton in 1854; Cleveland in 1855, and New York in 1856. At 
 each of these the land question proved to be the leading subject for discussion. 
 
 (66) Another factor in the turning of attention toward the public 
 land situation and that helped to influence public sentiment was the infusion, 
 during the latter part of this period, of a great number of German and Scandi- 
 navian immigrants into our population. Anti- capitalistic by instinct almost 
 and with a deep interest in the land, they began to combat existing methods of 
 land disposal. The Volks Tribune and the Social Republic played no small part 
 in this general movement. 
 
 With all this agitation by social reformers in the East supple- 
 menting the efforts of the land reformers in the West, it is small wonder that 
 the question of the possible significance of the western land in our social and 
 economic life was raised from obscurity to universal recognition and concern. 
 
 "The Providence 'American' called it the most important subject to be acted on 
 by Congress. The Richmond 'Enquirer' declared that 'these public lands are 
 
- 34 - 
 
 beginning to present some of the most serious questions which have ever agitated 
 our public councils.' The Philadelphia Gazette affirmed that the disposition of 
 the public lands was the most dangerous subject of legislation before Congress. 
 
 In the New York 'Evening Post* the situation was described as follows: 'But the 
 
 public lands - the public lands - this is the exciting theme which brings every 
 man to his seat, and every other question - tariff, roads, revenue, education, - 
 all insensibly slid into this."' (67) 
 
 After reviewing in this way a history of the evolution of those 
 factors that v/ould make for the promotion of retardation of the settlement of the 
 public lends, and after noting also the coincidence that existed in the time of 
 establishing a favorable condition of communication, of legislation, and of pub- 
 lic interest, those things which most vitally affected the movement, it might be 
 profitable to observe what change, if any, in distribution of population actually 
 occurred. The following figures are compiled from the census reports for the 
 years indicated and show the population of fourteen states of the eastern group 
 as it varies during the period and also fourteen states falling within the public 
 domain. Of particular interest and significance is the change to be observed in 
 the rates of growth of population that occurs between East and Y/est in the de- 
 cade of the thirties. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 -35- 
 
 
 
 
 
 i8oo 
 
 1810 
 
 1820 
 
 1830 
 
 1840 
 
 1850 
 
 i 860 
 
 The We 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Ohio 45 
 
 230 
 
 581 
 
 937 
 
 1519 
 
 1950 
 
 2339 
 
 Indiana 5 
 
 24 
 
 147 
 
 343 
 
 685 
 
 988 
 
 1350 
 
 Illinois 
 
 12 
 
 55 
 
 157 
 
 476 
 
 851 
 
 1711 
 
 Missouri 
 
 20 
 
 66 
 
 140 
 
 383 
 
 682 
 
 1182 
 
 Kentucky 220 
 
 406 
 
 564 
 
 687 
 
 779 
 
 982 
 
 1 x 55 
 
 Tennessee 105 
 
 261 
 
 422 
 
 681 
 
 829 
 
 1002 
 
 1109 
 
 Alabama 
 
 
 127 
 
 309 
 
 590 
 
 771 
 
 964 
 
 Mississippi .... 8 
 
 40 
 
 75 
 
 136 
 
 375 
 
 606 
 
 791 
 
 Wisconsin 
 
 
 
 
 30 
 
 305 
 
 775 
 
 Michigan ....... 
 
 4 
 
 8 
 
 31 
 
 212 
 
 397 
 
 749 
 
 Louisiana 
 
 96 
 
 153 
 
 215 
 
 352 
 
 517 
 
 708 
 
 Texas 
 
 
 
 
 
 212 
 
 604 
 
 Arkansas 
 
 
 
 30 
 
 97 
 
 209 
 
 435 
 
 Minnesota 
 
 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 172 
 
 1800 
 
 1810 
 
 1820 
 
 1830 
 
 1840 
 
 0 
 
 00 
 
 •H 
 
 i860 
 
 The East 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 New York 589 
 
 959 
 
 1372 
 
 1918 
 
 2428 
 
 3097 
 
 3880 
 
 Pennsylvania . . . 602 
 
 810 
 
 1049 
 
 1348 
 
 1724 
 
 2311 
 
 2906 
 
 Virginia 880 
 
 974 
 
 1065 
 
 1211 
 
 1239 
 
 1421 
 
 1598 
 
 Massachusetts .. 422 
 
 472 
 
 523 
 
 610 
 
 737 
 
 994 
 
 1231 
 
 Georgia 162 
 
 252 
 
 340 
 
 516 
 
 691 
 
 906 
 
 1057 
 
 North Carolina . 476 
 
 555 
 
 638 
 
 737 
 
 753 
 
 869 
 
 992 
 
 South Carolina . 245 
 
 415 
 
 502 
 
 581 
 
 594 
 
 668 
 
 703 
 
 Maryland 341 
 
 380 
 
 407 
 
 447 
 
 470 
 
 583 
 
 687 
 
 New Jersey 211 
 
 245 
 
 277 
 
 320 
 
 373 
 
 489 
 
 672 
 
 Connecticut .... 251 
 
 261 
 
 275 
 
 297 
 
 309 
 
 370 
 
 460 
 
 New Hampshire . . 182 
 
 214 
 
 244 
 
 269 
 
 284 
 
 317 
 
 326 
 
 Vermont 154 
 
 235 
 
 235 
 
 280 
 
 291 
 
 314 
 
 315 
 
 Rhode Island ... 69 
 
 76 
 
 83 
 
 97 
 
 108 
 
 147 
 
 174 
 
 Delaware 64 
 
 72 
 
 72 
 
 76 
 
 78 
 
 21 
 
 112 
 
 Population by states 
 
 for 
 
 the years indicated. (000 omitted) 
 
 
 Table shov/ing the comparative 
 
 growth 
 
 in population of 
 
 the 
 
 East and West 
 
 from l800 to i860. 
 
 
 
 
 1800 
 
 1810 
 
 1820 
 
 1830 
 
 1840 
 
 1850 
 
 i860 
 
 East .... 4650 
 
 5910 
 
 7082 
 
 8707 
 
 10079 
 
 12577 
 
 15111 
 
 West .... 393 
 
 1093 
 
 2190 
 
 3666 
 
 6347 
 
 9578. . . 
 
 14044 
 
 
 
 (000 omitted) 
 
 
 
 
 ] Table showing the c 
 
 omparative 
 
 gains 
 
 in population of 
 
 the 
 
 East and West 
 
 from 
 
 1800 to i860 
 
 
 
 
 1800-10 
 
 10-2C 
 
 20-30 
 
 30-40 
 
 40-90 
 
 50-60 
 
 
 East .... X260 
 
 1172 
 
 1625 
 
 1372 
 
 2498 
 
 253* 
 
 
 West .... 867 
 
 1079 
 
 1476 
 
 2681 
 
 3.231 
 
 4466 
 
 
 
 
 (000 omitted) 
 
 
 
 
-36- 
 
 Chapter V 
 
 What then has been the relation between the public lands and the 
 labor problem in the thirty year period from I83O to i860? Were conditions such 
 as to vindicate the popular idea that where abundant public land exists oppres- 
 sive laboring conditions and wide-spread poverty are obviated? A study of the 
 economic and social conditions that characterized the industrial sections of the 
 country in 1830, as pointed out before, revealed a condition of general distress 
 that was scarcely surpassed during the depression of I9O7-8, when public land 
 had practically ceased to be available. 
 
 In an attempt to vindicate the popular conception of this relation- 
 ship, it is scarcely sufficient to show that the normal effect of the land v/as 
 counteracted by those conditions of transportation, legislation and general 
 apathy that rendered than unaccessible to the masses. Since it has been shown 
 that these conditions did not always obtain, one should be able to show con- 
 ditions bettering in proportion to the extent to which these hindrances were re- 
 moved. This, we believe, can in a measure be done. 
 
 It is significant, first of all, that there was a turning from 
 those practical demands which v/ere charact eristic of the decade and a half fol- 
 lowing 1825 and which had to do mostly with decent relief from the general suf- 
 fering, to indulge in the "hot air'* of the forties, that period of "unbounded 
 loquacity," which found expression in transcendentalism, abolition, and such 
 idealistic ventures as the Brook Farm experiment. (68) 
 
 In addition to this type of thinking which does not reflect the 
 grim poverty of the earlier period, there seems also a lack of that dissatis- 
 faction and unrest that characterized the labor history of the early part of the 
 century. At no time, certainly during the latter part of this period, even dur- 
 ing tne depression of 1857 , would that well-known observation of 1835 that 
 
-37- 
 
 " strikes were all the fashion" apply. 
 
 More convincing still perhaps would be a study of the movement of 
 wages and prices throughout the period. The progress in money wages is indi- 
 cated by the following table. (69) 
 
 Compari 
 
 son 
 
 of wages by 
 
 periods: 1830 and 
 
 i 860 
 
 
 Av. 
 
 daily wage 
 
 Av. daily wage 
 
 Percentage 
 
 
 for 
 
 period 
 
 i"or period 
 
 of increase 
 
 
 end 
 
 ,ing I 83 O 
 
 ending i 860 
 
 or decrease 
 
 Agricultural laborers ... 
 
 
 $0.83 
 
 11.01 
 
 25.8 % 
 
 Elacksmiths 
 
 
 1.12 
 
 I .69 
 
 50.9 
 
 Carpenters 
 
 
 1.07 
 
 2.03 
 
 87.7 
 
 Clock makers 
 
 
 1.29 
 
 1.96 
 
 51.5 
 
 Clothing makers 
 
 
 1.27 
 
 1.43 
 
 12.6 
 
 Cotton mill operatives .. 
 
 
 .886 
 
 1.03 
 
 16.3 
 
 Glass makers 
 
 
 1.13 
 
 2.96 
 
 161.9 
 
 Harness makers 
 
 
 1.13 
 
 1.65 
 
 46 
 
 Laborers 
 
 
 .756 
 
 .975 
 
 22 
 
 Masons 
 
 
 1.22 
 
 1.53 
 
 25.4 
 
 Metal workers 
 
 
 1.23 
 
 1.35 
 
 9.8 
 
 Millwright 
 
 
 1.21 
 
 1.66 
 
 37.2 
 
 Painters 
 
 
 1.25 
 
 1.85 
 
 48 
 
 Paper mill operatives ... 
 
 
 .666 
 
 1.17 
 
 75.7 
 
 Printers 
 
 
 1.25 
 
 1.75 
 
 40 
 
 Ship & boat builders .... 
 
 
 1.40 
 
 3.65 
 
 160 
 
 Shoemakers 
 
 
 1.06 
 
 1.70 
 
 60 
 
 Tanners and curriers .... 
 
 
 1.13 
 
 1.67 
 
 47.8 
 
 Wooden goods workers .... 
 
 
 1.25 
 
 1.72 
 
 37.6 
 
 Woolen mill operatives .. 
 
 
 .946 
 
 .873 
 
 - 7.7 
 
 It is not, however, the rate of money wages that most nearly con- 
 cerns the workman, but rather the real wage. If this increase in money wages 
 
 has been more than counterbalanced by an increase in prices, the workman' s real 
 wage has, of course, declined. In an effort to show the variation of the real 
 wage, a table of prices paid for the leading articles of household consumption 
 during the same period is shown also. 
 

 
-38- 
 
 Compariaon of prices by periods: 1830 and i860 
 
 ( 69 ) 
 
 Article 
 
 Basis 
 
 Av. price 
 for period 
 ending 1830 
 
 Av. price 
 for period 
 ending i 860 
 
 Percentage 
 of increase 
 or decrease 
 
 Apples 
 
 bu. 
 
 $ .439 
 
 § .995 
 
 126.7 % 
 
 Beans 
 
 qt . 
 
 .085 
 
 .088 
 
 3.5 
 
 Corn 
 
 bu. 
 
 .817 
 
 .992 
 
 21.4 
 
 Potatoes 
 
 bu. 
 
 .369 
 
 .86 
 
 133.1 
 
 Boots 
 
 pr. 
 
 4.75 
 
 2.21 
 
 - 53.5 
 
 Shoos 
 
 pr. 
 
 1.26 
 
 I .09 
 
 -13.5 
 
 Slippers 
 
 pr. 
 
 .935 
 
 .945 
 
 1.1 
 
 Butter 
 
 lb. 
 
 .186 
 
 .262 
 
 40.9 
 
 Cheese 
 
 lb. 
 
 .089 
 
 .117 
 
 31.5 
 
 Eggs 
 
 doz . 
 
 .15 
 
 .22 
 
 46.7 
 
 Milk 
 
 qt . 
 
 .044 
 
 .052 
 
 18.2 
 
 Cotton cloth 
 
 yd. 
 
 .21 
 
 .118 
 
 -43.8 
 
 Flannel 
 
 yd. 
 
 .57 
 
 .405 
 
 -28.9 
 
 Linen 
 
 yd. 
 
 .453 
 
 .531 
 
 17.2 
 
 Flour 
 
 bbl. 
 
 7.08 
 
 8.92 
 
 26 
 
 Indian meal 
 
 lb. 
 
 .016 
 
 .021 
 
 31.3 
 
 Coffee 
 
 lb. 
 
 .206 
 
 .163 
 
 - 20.9 
 
 Salt 
 
 qt . 
 
 .063 
 
 .029 
 
 -54 
 
 Sugar 
 
 lb. 
 
 .16 
 
 .12 
 
 -25 
 
 Tea 
 
 lb. 
 
 .825 
 
 .529 
 
 - 35.9 
 
 Beef 
 
 lb. 
 
 .076 
 
 .126 
 
 65.8 
 
 Cork 
 
 lb. 
 
 .088 
 
 .114 
 
 29.5 
 
 From the foregoing comparison it appears that prices have increased 
 to a certain extent, but not uniformly. Certain staple articles, chiefly those 
 produced under the factory system. of labor, as boots and shoes and cotton and 
 woolen cloth, dry goods and dress goods, show a constant decline. A fev; of 
 the staple groceries also have declined, while flour, fish and meal have risen. 
 
 Consolidating and averaging the wages shown in the former table, 
 it appears that for those occupations compared the general average increase 
 in wages for the decade ending i860, as compared with that ending in I 83 O, 
 is 52.3 percent. Comparing the price changes of the same period by a consoli- 
 dation of the percentages which shov; either an advance or a decline in price 
 for the articles represented in the comparison, the general average percentage 
 of increase is found to be 9.6 percent. If averages are considered rather than 
 

 
 
 
-39- 
 
 percentages, the average increase is found to be 15.7. The mean of these two, 
 12.7 percent, represents perhaps as nearly as possible the increase in prices 
 for the decade ending in i860 with that ending in 1830. Without budgets show- 
 ing the expenses of workingpen, the percentage of increase in the cost of living 
 cannot, of course, be accurately determined. However, a comparison of the 
 two advances, that of wages and that of prices, indicates material gain on the 
 part of the former and express more clearly than words the change that took 
 place in the period from I83O-6O in the pecuniary status of the workingp&n. 
 
 It should be remembered too that this was not the progress simply 
 of a static population. The population of the United States had increased from 
 12,866,020 in I83O to 31, 4-4-3, 321 in i860, a greater percentage of growth than 
 during any other thirty year period in our national history. To have maintained 
 our standard of living in the face of such a rapid increase, a large percentage 
 of which represents an immigrant population, would have been an achievement, had 
 the public lands not furnished a field for expansion. To have raised that 
 standard without this help seems almost impossible. They played a double part. 
 Not only did they furnish field for expansion, lessening thus the possibility 
 of redundancy of labor and low wages, their large production by keeping down the 
 cost of living helped to boost the real wage. 
 
 If it were possible in this investigation to go a step farther and 
 compare conditions in America as they existed during this period with those of a 
 country similar in all respects with the exception of the existence of public 
 lands, the relationship might be judged more accurately. Altho such ideal con- 
 ditions for study do not exist, yet some comparisons with other nations less 
 advantageously situated in this respect may not be without merit. The following 
 table presenting a comparison of wages in the United States, England and France 
 in 1825, shows that even then with immigration into the public lands scarcely 
 
-40- 
 
 begun, that the condition of the American laborers was more favorable than that 
 
 of their European brethren. 
 
 Comparative Wages in England. France and U. S., 1828 
 
 Employments 
 
 Basis 
 
 England 
 
 France 
 
 U. S. 
 
 
 Common laborer 
 
 day 
 
 $0.74 
 
 $0.37 -.40 
 
 $1.00 
 
 
 Carpenter 
 
 day 
 
 • 97 
 
 .55 -.75 
 
 1.45 
 
 
 Mason 
 
 day 
 
 1.10 
 
 .60- ,80 
 
 1.62 
 
 
 Farm laborer (with board) ..... 
 
 mo . 
 
 6.50 
 
 4.00-6.00 
 
 8.00 - 
 
 10. CO 
 
 Domestic (female with board) .. 
 
 v/k . 
 
 • 67 
 
 
 1.00 - 
 
 1.50 
 
 Machinists & forgers (best) ... 
 
 day 
 
 1.54 
 
 
 1.50 - 
 
 1.75 
 
 Machinists & forgers (ordinary) 
 
 day 
 
 1.10 
 
 .92 
 
 1.25 - 
 
 1.42 
 
 Mule spinners (cotton) 
 
 day 
 
 1.02 
 
 .80 -.50 
 
 1.08 - 
 
 1.40 
 
 Spinners (woolen) 
 
 dday 
 
 • 94 
 
 .40 -.50 
 
 1.08 
 
 
 Weavers (on hand looms) 
 
 day 
 
 • 74 
 
 .37 -.50 
 
 .90 
 
 
 Boys (age 10 - 12) 
 
 wk. 
 
 1.30 
 
 •85-1.00 
 
 1.50 
 
 
 Females ( in cotton mills) .... 
 
 wk. 
 
 1.96 
 
 1.48-2.00 
 
 2.00 - 
 
 3.00 
 
 Females ( in woolen mills) .... 
 
 wk. 
 
 1.56 
 
 1.50 
 
 2.50 
 
 
 Complete statistical data 
 
 for this 
 
 period seems to 
 
 be lacking and 
 
 so some dependence must be placed in other forms of evidence. The following is 
 a contemporary description of conditions in England as they prevailed before 
 the Factory Act of 1832. 
 
 "The facts we collected seemed to me to be terrible, almost beyond 
 belief, Not in exceptional cases, but as a rule, children of ten years old 
 worked regularly fourteen hours a day with but a half-hour interval for the mid- 
 day meal, which was eaten in the factory. In the fine-yarn cotton mills they 
 were subjected to this labor in a temperature usually exceeding 75 degrees. 
 
 . . . . In some cases we found that greed of gain had impelled the mill owners 
 to still greater extremes of inhumanity, utterly disgraceful indeed to a civil- 
 ized nation. Their mills were run fifteen, and in exceptional cases sixteen, 
 hours a day with a single set of hands, and they did not scruple to employ 
 
 children of both sexes from the age of eight Most of the overseers 
 
 openly carried stout leather thongs, and we frequently saw even the youngest 
 children severely beaten In some of the factories from one-fourth 
 
-41- 
 
 to one- fifth of the children were cripples or otherwise deformed or permanently 
 injured by excessive toil, sometimes by brutal abuse." ( 71 ) 
 
 The Niles Register for April 21, 1832, commenting on the condition 
 of the working class, says: "We have several times alluded to the amount of 
 
 wages paid in England and severely rebuked a disposition maintained by some to 
 reduce the working people of the United States to the same horrible conditions." 
 (72) Extracts from the Manchester advertiser afforded some idea of the price of 
 labor in the neighborhood of Manchester. A man with his wife and two children 
 in that district was earning 9 s, lOg- d per week; another man with a family of 
 nine workers was cited who collectively earned 20 s per week. While it is 
 pointed out that wages may not have been quite so low in the woolen manufactur- 
 ing districts, the supposition, it affirms, is that there was little difference 
 in the laborers’ circumstances. (73) Webb says that in 1831 the boys in the 
 Northumberland nines who were paid by the day were kept at work from fourteen 
 to seventeen hours a day. The hewers, however, paid by the ton had restricted 
 theirs to ten or twelve hours each. By 1837 "the ten hour day was becoming 
 generally established. Over time, however, was common, and half holidays on 
 Saturday was unknown. 
 
 So far as the money wage is concerned, conditions on the Continent 
 seem to have been even worse. "In Saxony a man employed at his own loom work- 
 ing diligently from Monday morning until Saturday night, from five o'clock in 
 the morning until dusk and even at times with a lamp, his wife assisting him 
 in finishing and taking the work, could not possibly earn more than about sixty 
 cents per week, nor could one who had three children aged twelve and upwards, 
 all working at the loom as well as himself, and his wife employed in doing up 
 the work, earn more than $1.00 weekly. (74) 
 
 A wider view of the general wage level of foreign countries in 
 
42- 
 
 1843 may be gotten from the following statistics on the wages of common laborers. 
 
 France 
 
 
 Germany 
 
 . . . 4& - 8 
 
 II 
 
 II 
 
 North Italy . » , 
 
 ...3-4 
 
 VI 
 
 If 
 
 Italy 
 
 
 It 
 
 II 
 
 England 
 
 ...9-15 
 
 II 
 
 If 
 
 Scotland 
 
 ... 8 
 
 •1 
 
 It 
 
 Ireland ....... 
 
 ...4-6 
 
 II 
 
 II 
 
 Russia ....... 
 
 ...3-5 
 
 H 
 
 tl 
 
 Spain , . . 
 
 ... 3-6 
 
 II 
 
 II 
 
 Portugal . . . . . 
 
 
 tl 
 
 It 
 
 Norway 
 
 ...3-5 
 
 If 
 
 If 
 
 Sweden ........ 
 
 ...2-5 
 
 19 
 
 II 
 
 Engel in his description of the working class in England in 1844 
 depicts a depth of misery that is widespread and certainly beyond anything that 
 America ever experienced. Bowley in a more scientific treatment of wages in 
 the United Kingdom says, "The study of the period from 1830 to i860 has been 
 much neglected. In its wages, the cotton industry increased about two shillings 
 on ten, although there was a falling off until 1845-8. Building and town arti- 
 sans did not improve their earnings by so large a percentage. The wages of sea- 
 men increased over ten percent between 1840 and i860, but the percent of in- 
 crease between I 83 O and 1840 cannot be accurately measured except for one part, 
 when it appears to have been stationary. Compositors' wages in small towns in- 
 creased rapidly but in large towns were stationary, and the average increase 
 was ten percent; those of agricultural laborers increased from 10 s to 11 s 7 d, 
 and miners' diminished." ( 78 ) 
 
 Fragmentary as are the data available, it seems safe to conclude 
 that neither in money nor in real wages did England or any continental country 
 keep pace with the upward movement of the wage level that characterized the 
 whole of the period in America, and never at any time during the period was the 
 condition of the laboring classes in America so miserable as at various times 
 and places in Europe. The claim that the public lands are responsible for the 
 

 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 < 
 
 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 f 
 
 
 
-43- 
 
 v/hole of the variation in favor of the country where they existed, could not 
 perhaps be easily substantiated. That they played some part, however, certainly 
 no one will attempt to deny. 
 
 In conclusion then it seems that one might safely say that the 
 assertions as to the relation which exists between abundant land and the wel- 
 fare of laboring classes, quoted in the beginning of the thesis, are on the 
 whole true. In the period from I83O to i860 the public lands certainly exerted 
 an uplifting influence on laboring conditions in America, functioning not how- 
 ever as a safety valve in that the moment depression was felt or industrial 
 conditions became oppressive, escape was made to the "wilderness , " the impres- 
 sion which writers, as has been observed, often tend to convey. The coordina- 
 tion of those physical, political and psychic conditions which would be neces- 
 sary for such deft manipulation of population, seems scarcely probable under 
 any circumstance. That it did not exist in the United States was evidenced in 
 the fact that poverty and unemployment became serious problems at intervals 
 during the period from I83O to i860, and by the further fact that population 
 movement failed to synchronize in any definite fashion with these periods of 
 depression. It was not the immediate or periodic effect but rather the long 
 time effect of the public lands that deserve most recognition. Absorbing, as 
 they did in a more or less regular and gradual manner, the redundant population 
 of the industrial sections, they created a general condition of supply of labor 
 that gave the wage level an upward tendency and without doubt was in a large 
 measure responsible for the fact that the scale of wages which then prevailed 
 was the highest in the world. 
 
-44- 
 
 REFERENCES 
 
 1. Annals of the Fourth Congress, First Session, page 12. 
 
 2. Progress and Poverty, page 260. 
 
 3. Callender, Economic History of the U. S. 
 
 4. Annals of Congress, reprinted in Bogart and Thompson Readings in 
 
 Economic History, page 455. 
 
 5. J. R. Commons, History of Labor in the U. S. Vol. 1, page 4. 
 
 6. Hart, History of the U. S. Vol. 14, page 68. 
 
 7. McMaster, History of the U. S. Vol. 5, page 121. 
 
 8. Documentary History of the American Industrial Society. Vol. 1, page 170. 
 
 9. Commons, History of Labor in the United States. Vol. 1, page 384. 
 
 10. Documentary History of the American Industrial Society. Vol. 5, page 33. 
 
 11. Montgomery, Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain and America. 
 
 12. McMaster, 
 
 History 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 U. 
 
 s . , 
 
 Vol. 8, 
 
 p ages 
 
 98-99 
 
 13. McMaster, 
 
 History 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 u. 
 
 s., 
 
 Vol. 8, 
 
 page 
 
 104. 
 
 14. McMaster, 
 
 His to ry 
 
 of 
 
 the 
 
 u. 
 
 s . , 
 
 Vol. 8, 
 
 page 
 
 107. 
 
 15. Callender, Economic History of the U. S., page 716. 
 
 16. Roosevelt, Winning of the West. Vol. 3, page 4. 
 
 17. Callender, Economic History of the U. S., ; page 605. 
 
 18. Callender, Economic History of the U. S., page 655. 
 
 19. Callender, Economic History of the U. S., page 637. 
 
 20. Channing, History of the U. S. Vol. 5, page 106. 
 
 21. Turner, Rise of the New West. 
 
 22. McMaster, history of the U. S. Vol. 3, page 463 . 
 
 23. Bogart and Thompson, Readings in Economic History, page 399. 
 
 24. Turner, Ri3e of the New West, page 82. 
 
-45- 
 
 25. Johnson, History of Domestic and Foreign Commerce. Vol. 1, page 206. 
 
 26. Channing, History of the U. S. Vol. b, page 106. 
 
 27. Johnson, History of Domestic and Foreign Commerce. Vol. 1, page 218. 
 
 28. Roosevelt, Winning of the West. Vol. 1, page 121. 
 
 29. McGill, History of Transportation in the U. S., page 16. 
 
 30. Gallatin, Adams Edition, pages 334-5. 
 
 31. Johnson, History of Domestic and Foreign Commerce. Vol. 1, page 220. 
 
 32. Turner, Rise of the New West, pages 34-97. 
 
 33. Johnson, History of Domestic and Foreign Commerce. Vol. 1, pages 221-2. 
 
 34. Dunbar, History of Travel in America. Vol. 2, page 656 . 
 
 35. Sato, Land' Question in the U. S., page 138. 
 
 36. Hinsdale, The Old North-West, page 255. 
 
 37. Treat, The National Land System, page 16. 
 
 38. Cutler, Vol. 1, page 133. 
 
 39. State Papers, Public Domain, page 888. 
 
 40. Hinsdale, The Old North-West, page 301. 
 
 41. Sato, The Land Question in the U. S., page 138. 
 
 42. Treat, The National Land System, page 375. 
 
 43. Laws of the U. S., Vol. 2, page 533 . 
 
 44. The Land Question in the U. S., page 143. 
 
 4b. Treat, The National Land System, page 379* 
 
 46. State Papers, Public Lands, Vol. 2. 
 
 47. U. S. Statutes. Vol. 3, page 866. 
 
 48. The Land Question in the U. S., page 199. 
 
 49. Stephenson, Political History of the Public Lands. 
 bO. Sato, The Land Question in the U. S., page 159. 
 
 51. Sato, The Land Question in the U. S., page 120. 
 

 
 
 
 
 t 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
-46- 
 
 52. Treat, The National Land System, page 372. 
 
 53. Hunt's Merchants' Magazine. Vol. 2, page 119. 
 
 54. Chicago Tribune, Feb. 3, 1859. 
 
 55. Stephenson, Political History of the Public Lands, page 101. 
 
 56. New York Tribune, July 17, 1847. 
 
 57. Stephenson, Political History of the Public Lands, page 99. 
 
 58. Wellington, Political History of the Public Lands, page 6. 
 
 59. Documentary History of American Industrial Society. Vol. 6, page 35. 
 
 60. Ely, Labor Movement in America, page 41. 
 
 61. Documentary History of American Industrial Society. Vol. 6, page 207, 
 
 62. Documentary History of American Industrial Society. Vol. 7, page 33. 
 
 63. Stephenson, Political History of the Public Lands, page 113. 
 
 64. Documentary History of American Industrial Society. Vol. 7, page 305, 
 
 65. Documentary History of American Industrial Society. Vol. 8, page 21. 
 
 66. Stephenson, Political History of the Public Lands, page 113. 
 
 67. Wellington, Political Influence of the Public Lands, page 10. 
 
 68. Carleton, History and Problems of Organized Labor, Chapter III. 
 
 69. Wright, History of Wages and Prices, page 308. 
 
 70. Wright, History of Wages and Prices, page 29. 
 
 71. Young, Labor in Europe and America. 
 
 72. Niles Register, April 21, 1832. 
 
 73. Webb, Labor in the Longest Reign. 
 
 74. Niles Register, Jan. 25, 1842. 
 
 75. Niles Register, Nov. 11, 1843. 
 
 76. Eowley, Wages in the United Kingdom, page 125. 
 
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