They were conditioned by the supply of free land, or land that was practically free.

The wages paid were necessarily high enough to attract laborers from the soil which they might easily own if they chose.

There was no fixed laboring class.
The boy or girl in a textile mill often worked only a few years to save money, buy a farm, or to enter some business or profession.
The steamboat now, wherever there was navigable water, and the railroad, for a large part of the way, offered transportation to the boundless West.

Steamboats traversed all the larger rivers and the lakes.

The railroad was growing rapidly.