ADVANCED PLACEMENT UNITED STATES HISTORY
Homework Assignment
The Dynamics of Growth

Directions:  Answer the following questions in complete sentences.  Your responses must be either typewritten or hand-written in black or blue ink.

PART ONE:

What explains the success of the textile industry once it became established in the United States?

1.       What assurances were required of textile industry promoters by parents whose daughters were recruited as laborers? What was gained by the female laborers?

2.       What were the underlying goals of unions and labor organizations during the Industrial Revolution?

3.       How did the Industrial Revolution change the structure of society in the United States?

4.       In what ways was the anti-Catholic unrest of the era a result of social and economic changes?

5.       Why did Charles Grandison Finney's revivals appeal much more strongly to members of the business elite and middle class than to other social groups?

PART TWO: Read the indicated sections in your text and answer the following:

A. Read: Lucy Larcom: Early Days at Lowell and answer the questions indicated.

In order for the New England mills to compete with their British rivals, mill owners chose to hire farm girls and women from the surrounding countryside because they could pay them far lower wages than men for the same labor. Yet, the salaries that these women earned as textile operatives were higher than those earned had they been hired out as domestic laborers, allowing many of them to both send money home to their economically strapped parents and keep a paltry sum for themselves as spending money—a privilege that fostered a growing sense of independence in these female factory workers. Although strictly and piously maintained, life in company-run boardinghouses also encouraged independent living, placing female textile workers outside their family's immediate sphere of influence.

1. How does Lucy Larcom describe her female coworkers at the Lowell textile mill? How do they affect her?

2. How does the "prison" of the textile mill actually bring freedom to Larcom?

3. Besides a prison, what other metaphor does Larcom use to describe the mill? How might this comment on American industrialism?

B.  Read: John Gough: The Vice of Intemperance in Chapter 10 of the text.

In response to the disruptions and stresses of the Industrial Revolution, many people increased their consumption of alcohol. What had once been simply a social lubricant was increasingly becoming a way to avoid the pain and displacement faced by the poor and the working class, who worked dangerous, insecure jobs and lived in cramped and dirty quarters. Today, we recognize that alcoholism is a disease that requires treatment. In the nineteenth century, however, temperance reformers viewed drinking as a moral issue and believed that with regard to drink, as with vice in general, every person was corruptible and could fall into intemperance or, alternatively, choose to stop drinking.
John Gough was a noted and effective temperance lecturer who received large fees for his appearances. This document is part propaganda, part sermon, part personal testament. It is intended to convince its listeners to join a cause as well as to change themselves personally. It is also trying to use a personal experience to explain a social phenomena—the brutalizing effects of alcoholism. Finally, this document was originally delivered as a speech. Read the passage aloud and consider how tone, volume, and rhythm might have shaped the audience's reception.

1.  Gough is telling a story with a distinct narrative structure. How would you describe the narrative progression of the speech? What is Gough's purpose in telling this kind of story?

2.  Based on this speech, why do you think Gough was so successful as a temperance lecturer?