Mike Walsh, Essay Example

This paper focusses on the following quotation from the 19^th century politician and publisher Mike Walsh:

Demagogues tell you that you are freeman. They lie – you are slaves, and none are better aware of the the fact than the heathenish dogs that call you freemen.  No man devoid of all other means of support but that which his labor affords him can be a freeman, under the present state of society.  He must be a humble slave of capital, created by the labor of the poor men who had toiled, suffered, and died before him (Higgins 53).

This quotation is one which is very much a product of its time and reflects the changes that had taken place in the United States from the end of the colonial period to the 1840’s.  This paper will discuss both Mike Walsh himself and the historical context in which this quotation took place.

Mike Walsh: A Man of His Times

This quotation by the Tammany Hall politician Mike Walsh was written in 1845 (Higgins 53) and appeared in his newspaper, The Subterranean (Bryk 1), whose motto was “Independent in Everything – Neutral in Nothing” and whose logo was an all-seeing eye with the inscription “Knaves and Tyrants Beware – This is Upon You” (Adams 150).   Walsh, as can be inferred from the nature of his newspaper, took no pains to hide his political ideologies and, indeed, had gained political power partly through “equating the situation of wage laborers to that of chattel slaves” (Higgins 62).  This quotation makes it clear that Walsh was very much of the belief that the industrialization which had been taking place in the United States for the previous several decades had turned what had been previously independent artisans and home-based craftsmen into slaves (Higgins 56).  Peter Adams, in his book The Bowery Boys: Street Corner Radicals and the Politics of Rebellion notes that Mike Walsh “articulated the views of the far left of the Jacksonian Democracy of the 1840’s and 1850’s” (Adams 151).   Walsh looked around at the disturbances in society caused by rapid industrialization and the movement of the population from a rural to an urban environment, and in this quotation he roundly condemns the resulting problems this has caused for the working class.

Mike Walsh in Historical Context

It is useful, when looking at the Walsh quotation, to understand the historical context from which it emerged and also have a knowledge of the sweeping changes that had taken place in the United States from colonial times until the 1840’s. From the time that American independence was officially recognized by the Treaty of Paris in 1783 (Roberts 22), the movement of the United States was inexorably westward, particularly after the Louisiana Purchase of 1804, and this movement was “driven largely by a quest for inexpensive land for yeoman farmers and slave owners”  (Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia 4).

Apart from the movement westward, the other major change to sweep across the United States was the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.  This revolution, which arguably began in 1790 when the first factory in the United States was built by Samuel Slater (U.S.History.org 6) brought about a radical change in manufacturing, from “hand and home production to machine and factory” (Martin 4).  As industries rose, another great shift took place: instead of movement from east to west, the movement was now from rural to urban settings (U.S.History.org 7).  Due to this, populations of many American cities rose dramatically in the very short period of time and resulted in urban problems that are familiar even in modern times: urban overcrowding, disease, crime, and poverty (U.S.History.org 6). It was in this urban chaos that Walsh wrote; Adams further notes that “the Industrial Revolution had fostered division by modifying the nature of the urban workplace….by 1820, economic power had come to be controlled by a group of commercial and merchant elites and Walsh inveighed against this growing inequality” (Adams 151).  Thus, Walsh’s quotation is very much a product of a time when people were, instead of seeing all the benefits of the industrialization, beginning to see its drawbacks as well.

Conclusion

This quotation from Mike Walsh is, therefore, very much a product of the time and place in which it was written. Walsh, reflecting the leftist views of many in the Jackson area, wrote in an environment of an industrialized New York City with its inherent problems of crime, overcrowding, and disease.  His career, both as a publisher and a politician, was based upon criticism of what he saw as the unjust economic forces which made the cities into the breeding grounds of crime and disease and trapped the industrial working class in a condition which, to him, was little better than their Southern enslaved counterparts.

Works Cited

Adams, Peter.  The Bowery Boys: Street Corner Radicals and the Politics of Rebellion. Reviewed by Curtis Richert.  Journal for the Study of Radicalism.  2 (2009) 149-151. Print

Bryk, William. The Subterranean Patriot.  Last Exit Magazine (2008).  Web. 10 March 2014

Higgins, Andrew C.  Wage Slavery and the Composition of Leaves of Grass; the “Tabot Wilson Notebook”.  The Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 2 (2002). 53-77. Print.

Roberts, Andrew.  United States History Timeline.  Middlesex University Press.  Middlesex, UK (2012).  Web. 10 March 2014.

U.S.History.org.  The Rise of American Industry.  United States History Online Textbook. (2013). Web.  10 March 2014.

Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia.  The History of the United States.  Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia.  Web. 10 March 2014.