The year 1846 is made yet more memorable by the discovery that whoever inhaled sulphuric ether would become insensible to pain. The glory of this discovery has been claimed for two men: Dr. Morton and Dr. Jackson. Which one is entitled to it cannot be positively decided, though Dr. Morton seems to have the better right to be considered the discoverer. Before this, however, anaesthesia by nitrous oxide (laughing gas) had been discovered by Dr. Wells of Hartford, Conn., and by Dr. Long of Georgia.
%415. Communication with Europe; Steamships%.—Progress was not confined to affairs within our boundary. Communications with Europe were greatly advanced. The passage of the steamship Savannah across the Atlantic, partly by steam and partly by sail, in 1819, resulted in nothing practical. The wood used for fuel left little space for freight. But when better machinery reduced the time, and coal afforded a less bulky fuel, the passage across the Atlantic by steam became possible, and in 1838 two vessels, the Sirius and the Great Western, made the trip from Liverpool to New York by steam alone. No sails were used. This showed what could be done, and in 1839 Samuel Cunard began the great fleet of Atlantic greyhounds by founding the Cunard Line. Aided by the British government, he drove all competitors from the field, till Congress came to the aid of the Collins Line, whose steamers made the first trip from New York to Liverpool in 1850. The rivalry between these lines was intense, and each did its best to make short voyages. In 1851 the average time from Liverpool to New York was eleven days, eight hours, for the Collins Line, and eleven days, twenty-three hours, for the Cunard. This was considered astonishing; for Liverpool and New York were thus brought as near each other in point of time in 1851 as Boston and Philadelphia were in 1790.
%416. The Atlantic Cable%.—But something more astonishing yet was at hand. In 1854 Mr. Cyrus W. Field of New York was asked to aid in the construction of a submarine cable to join St. Johns with Cape Ray, Newfoundland. While considering the matter, he became convinced that if a cable could be laid across the Gulf of St. Lawrence, another could be laid across the Atlantic Ocean, and he formed the "New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company" for the purpose of doing so. The first attempt, made in 1857, and a second in 1858, ended in failure; but a third, in 1858, was successful, and a cable was laid from Valentia Bay in Ireland to Trinity Bay in Newfoundland, a distance of 1700 geographical miles. For three weeks all went well, and during this time 400 messages were sent; but on September 1, 1858, the cable ceased to work, and eight years passed before another attempt was made to join the Old World and the New.
%417. Condition of the Workingman%.—Every class of society was benefited by these improvements, but no man more so than those who depended on their daily wages for their daily bread. Though wages increased but little, they were more easily earned and brought richer returns. Improved means of transportation, cheaper methods of manufacture, enabled every laborer in 1860 to wear better clothes and eat better food than had been worn or consumed by his father in 1830. New industries, new trades and occupations, new needs in the business world, afforded to his son and daughter opportunities for a livelihood unknown in his youth, while the free school system enabled them to fit themselves to use such opportunities without cost to him. When our country became independent, and for fifty years afterwards, a working day was from sunrise to sunset, with an hour for breakfast and another for dinner. After manufactures arose, and mills and factories gave employment to thousands of wage earners, fourteen, fifteen, and even sixteen hours of labor were counted a day. Protests were early made against this, and demands raised that a working day should be ten hours. At last, late in the thirties, the ten hours system was adopted in Baltimore, and in 1840, by order of President Van Buren, was put in force at the navy yard in Washington and in "all public establishments" under the Federal government. Thus established, the system spread slowly, till to-day it exists almost everywhere. Indeed, in many states, and in all departments of the Federal government, eight hours of work constitute a day. Thus, by the aid of machinery, not only are articles, formerly expensive, made so cheaply that poor men can afford to use them, but the wage earners who operate the machinery can make these articles so quickly that they to-day earn higher wages for fewer hours of work than ever before in the history of the world. Not only did wages increase and the hours of labor grow shorter between 1840 and 1860, but the field of labor was enormously expanded. In 1810, when the first census of manufactures in the United States was taken, the value of goods manufactured was $173,000,000. In 1860 it was ten times as great, and gave employment to more than 1,000,000 men and women.
%418. Few Manufactures in the Slave States%.—From much of the benefit produced by this splendid series of inventions and discoveries, the people of the slave-owning states were shut out. They raised corn, tobacco, and cotton, and made some sugar; but in them there were very few mills or manufacturing establishments of any sort. While a great social and industrial revolution was going on in the free states, the people in the slave states remained in 1860 what they were in 1800. The stream of immigrants from Europe passed the slave states by, carrying their skill, their thrift, their energy, into the Northwest. The resources of the slave states were boundless, but no free man would go in to develop them. The soil was fertile, but no free laborer could live on it and compete with slave labor, on which all agriculture, all industry, all prosperity, in the South depended. The two sections of the country at the end of the period 1840-1860 were thus more unlike than ever.
SUMMARY
1. Between 1830 and 1850 the rush of population into the West continued, but, instead of moving across the continent, most of the people settled in the states already in existence.
2. This was due to the effect of such improved means of communication as steamboats, railroads, canals, etc.
3. As a consequence, but six new states were admitted to the Union in twenty-nine years, and one of them was annexed (Texas).
4. The period is also noticeable for the number of foreigners who came to our shores.