In the first place, capital, as contrasted with agriculture, increased enormously in amount and in political influence. Great pecuniary accumulations were thenceforward made largely in business enterprise--including the work of the entrepreneur, financier, speculator, and manipulator under that general term. Inevitably, the most energetic and the keenest minds were attracted by the dominant mode of money-making. Agricultural regions were drained of large numbers of strenuous and efficient men, who would otherwise have been their natural leaders in politics. To these were added the energetic immigrants from the Old World. That forceful, pushing, dominating section of society historically known as the "natural aristocracy" became the agents of capitalism. The scepter of power now passed definitively from the masters of slaves to the masters of "free laborers." The literary and professional dependents of the ruling groups naturally came to the defense of the new order.[8] The old contest between agrarianism and capitalism now took on a new vigor.[9]
On the side of the masses involved in the transition this economic revolution meant an increasing proportion of wage workers as contrasted with agriculturalists, owning and operating their farms, and with handicraftsmen. This increase is shown by the following table, giving the number of wage earners in _manufacturing_ alone:
1850 23,191,876 957,059 1860 31,443,321 1,311,246 1870 38,558,371 2,053,996 1880 50,155,783 2,732,595 1890 62,947,714 4,251,535 1900 75,994,575 5,306,143 1910 91,972,266 6,615,046
In terms of social life, this increase in wage workers meant, in the first place, a rapid growth of city populations. In 1860, the vast majority of the people were agriculturists; in 1890, 36.1 per cent of the population lived in towns of over 2500; in 1900, 40.5 per cent; in 1910, 46.3 per cent. In the forty years between the beginning of the Civil War and the close of the century, Chicago had grown from 109,260 to 1,698,575; Greater New York from 1,174,779 to 3,437,202; San Francisco from 56,802 to 342,782.
In the next place, the demand for labor stimulated immigration from Europe. It is true there was a decline during the Civil War, and the panic of 1873 checked the tide when it began to flow, but by 1880 it had nearly touched the half-a-million mark, and by 1883 it reached the astounding figure of 788,992. Almost all of this immigration was from Germany, Ireland, Great Britain, and Scandinavian countries, less than one in twenty of the total number coming from Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Poland in 1880. On the Pacific coast, railway building and industrial enterprise, in the great dearth of labor, resorted to the Orient for large supplies of Chinese coolies.