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Moving - Garrison, Maryland

Are you planning a move in or out of Garrison, MD, in the near future? Are you looking for the best local moving company? Movers USA is a company which can handle all the aspects of your move at a reasonable price. You will get expert services from our moving consultants and our movers. Your belongings are in caring hands. Give Movers USA a call or click here to get your free estimate.

In the meantime, we hope you enjoy our brief history of Garrison, MD.

A Brief History of Garrison, Maryland

The geography of Maryland stimulated investments to build industries that would free the state from reliance on the agricultural economy. Between 1826 and 1840, the state borrowed millions of dollars to construct the C&O Canal and the B&O Railroad. These ship, canal, and rail enterprises encouraged the growth of more manufacturing and the expansion of mining. This expansion would not have been possible without the efforts of foreign-born workers from Europe, particularly England, Scotland, Wales, and increasingly, Germany.

Irish and German immigrants formed the majority of the workforce on the C &O Canal construction, which was to last from 1834-1839. This building was marked by violent conflicts between labor and management and among the workers themselves, largely along ethnic lines.

Even before canal and railroad construction brought in commercial investors to the area, Maryland coal companies had imported experienced Scots and Welsh workers to the George's Creek Valley . The number of Maryland miners grew from 928 in 1860 to 3,500 in 1886. Tensions between miners and owners were high, and strikes were common.

By 1850, Baltimore numbered 36,000 foreign born residents among a total population of 170,000 (Brugger 270). Such abundance of labor, along with the use of new technologies, led to the institutionalization of the mature factory system--and the decline of many of the skilled crafts. The composition of the labor force changed as well. Between 1870 and 1890, the number of women earning wages nearly quadrupled (Brugger 348) . Children accompanied their mothers to the canning plants, factories, and even the labor camps on the Eastern Shore.

The Age of Reform

The period from 1830-1850 saw a flourishing of reform movements. The 1844 Report of the National Reform Union called for sweeping social changes. Advocates spoke out for women's rights, pacifism, temperance, prison reform, and universal education. Reform movements of significance for the labor movement were the Abolition Movement and the call for the Ten-Hour Day.

The Abolition movement helped create the emotional and political climate necessary for ending the transatlantic slave trade and chattel slavery. Benjamin Lundy, a Quaker born in New Jersey, published a newspaper in Baltimore called The Genius of Universal Emancipation , which vigorously opposed slavery and the slave trade. He persuaded a well-known New Englander, William Lloyd Garrison, to serve as the paper's co-editor. In 1829, Garrison was sued for libel after describing merchants engaged in trading Maryland slaves to New Orleans as "highway robbers and murderers." Garrison was to leave Maryland soon after serving his jail term. Released from prison in June 1830, Garrison returned to Boston and, a year later, established The Liberator, which became known as the most uncompromising of American anti-slavery journals. In his 1865 speech, The Governing Passion of My Soul Garrison spoke eloquently of his dedication to the cause.

The campaign for a shorter workday had wide support among workers, but was resisted by industry. In 1840, President Van Buren proclaimed a 10-hour day without reduction in pay for federal employees in public works, but for many the workday was 12 or more hours long. The length of the workday was to be a major issue for labor for many decades.

The Know-Nothing Party was an outgrowth of the strong anti-immigrant and especially anti-Roman Catholic sentiment that started to manifest itself during the 1840s. A rising tide of immigrants, primarily Germans in the Midwest and Irish in the East, seemed to pose a threat to the economic and political security of native-born Americans. In 1849 the secret Order of the Star-Spangled Banner formed in New York City, and soon after lodges formed in nearly every other major American city. Members, when asked about their nativist organizations, were supposed to reply that they knew nothing, hence the name. As its membership and importance grew in the 1850s, the group slowly shed its clandestine character and took the official name American Party. As a national political entity, it called for restrictions on immigration, the exclusion of the foreign-born from voting or holding public office in the United States, and for a 21-year residency requirement for citizenship. Know-Nothings in Maryland were disturbed by electoral and labor violence, but most of all by "foreign ungrateful refugees." In Baltimore , much of their animus was directed at the city's Jewish community, which numbered nearly 7,000 by the late 1850s (Brugger 260) . Of German descent, the Jewish population achieved considerable social distinction, as well as some economic success, primarily in the textile industry.

The Contract Labor Law

The Contract Labor Law of 1864 upheld the legality of importing workers in return for a lien on their wages. The resulting influx of workers represented a blow to already achieved working standards. It was particularly threatening when immigrants were brought in to work as strikebreakers. The American Emigrant Company, backed by such prominent leaders as Henry Ward Beecher and Secretary of the Navy Sumner Welles, advertised its ability to offer, on sort notice and one reasonable terms, miners, mechanics, and machinists, blacksmiths, and other workers.

The Emancipation Proclamation

In 1863, President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in southern areas occupied by union forces, and in 1865, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution banned slavery throughout the nation.

ICC MC 414146
DOT 981371