The working neighborhoods of New York City in the 1790s comprised watchmakers, printers, bookbinders, tailors, and hatters among other skilled craftsmen, who attracted a wealthy clientele. They lived and worked under the same roof in comradeship. The neighborhood around the streets of East Ward and the East River waterfront were characterized by story houses where artisans worked on the ground floor and the upper floors were family dwelling units. This however did not last long as rental prices rose and income dwindled. This led to many changes and conflicts which shaped the lives of the city’s laborers at the beginning of the 19th century. The discussion that follows analysis the conflicts that arose and how they changed the lives of the city’s laboring people.
Major points of conflict
Competition for land for housing was a major point of conflict in the city’s laboring neighborhood. This happened in the Chamber street community built on Trinity leased land by independent proprietors who built houses rented by the laborers. The land was bought by wealthy merchants and professionals who were moving up from downtown dingy neighborhoods. It was also witnessed in the Five Points neighborhood where sanitations had filled the pond to revitalize the area. Absentee landlords flocked the area buying houses that were once lived by artisans and building new houses transforming the area into boarding houses. This led to a mass movement of laborers to new areas where rent and building costs were affordable such as Greenwich, Bowery village, and Brooklyn village among other places.
Degradation of dwelling places for laborers and oppression by rich landlords as they increased rent was another point of conflict. Filling the pond in five points to revitalize the area by sanitations, it was bought by absentee landlords who purchased houses that housed the artisans. They subdivided the houses or rebuilt them using the new frame. These were then rented out to new tenants; this changed the area into the area of a boarding house for wage laborers. The issue of lack of adequate housing for the black laborers was there as they inhabited basements of boarding houses whose upper stories were resided by the whites and those who lived in all-black tenants’ houses lived four to five men in one room. This resulted to further movement of laborers to other states or annual movements to less expensive dwellings.
The capitalist penetration into the artisan trades by the turn of the century, which left artisans as mere wage workers, and low wages offered by the entrepreneurial masters was another point of conflict. This was caused by entrepreneurial masters who cared more for profit than the workmanship of the arts. This meant that fewer and fewer of them could be able to set up their businesses and produce high-quality crafts as they were outdone by the entrepreneurs whose main goal was profit. This eroded solidarity and mutual responsibilities that were core principles of craftsmanship. The artisans tried to deal with the loss of independence mutual relations by creating associations to pool resources to help those who encountered problems. Through these associations, they also fought the use of ill-trained workers who produced low-quality goods which brought competition to their goods.
Political ideologies, which emerged during this period, were a point of conflict between the artisan laborers and the wealthy merchant and professionals. The artisanal republicanism broke along the two groups with laborers leaning to the federalists and the other group to the Democratic-Republican. The two political parties incited the laborers against each other. They also influenced major government decisions such as the municipal council’s decision to build and operate workshops for immigrants, ex-convicts, widows, and the poor to learn skills and experience to reduce social ills. This decision was watered down by the Democratic-Republican Party. The result of all this was class animosity and increased protests and crime. This also read to a rise in the love for printed word and literacy levels among the laborers which further increased political awareness.
The working neighborhoods of New York City in the 1790s were comprised of the artisan laborers who lived and worked under the same roof in comradeship. This however did not last long as major conflicts arose that change their lives. The most important conflict of this period was the political conflict which divided the population of New York City into parties that had wide ideological differences which have been propagated to some extent into the modern-day political alignment in the US.