When George Washington Hills debuted his penny newspaper that undercut his competition, everybody had the right to vote. Everybody, meaning every adult man 21 years old or older. Voter turnout was always high, ranging from 80- to 90 percent of those eligible to cast ballots.

Connecticut's requirement, like the rest of the state's that electors be property-owning men, was dropped at the turn of the 19th century.

Elections tended to have razor-thin margins. So every vote counted. Whether it be a national or a state race, just a few votes could tilt an election.

But as Connecticut and especially leading industrial cities like Bridgeport became meccas for European immigrants, especially Irish, the notion of expanding the franchise to these foreign-born citizens was anathema. The solution was simple. Disenfranchise these white Irishmen.

Connecticut succeeded by passing the first literacy test on voters in the nation. "Every person shall be able to read in the English language any part of the Constitution," it stated, "or any section of the statutes of the state before being admitted as an elector." Massachusetts and the rest of the states quickly followed.

When the 19th century dawned, voters could go to the their local polling place and swear on a stack of Bibles to an election official that they were who they claimed to be and had not already cast a ballot. And just like that, their word was accepted. Try doing that at your local polling site on Election Day

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The paper ballot that electors filled out got replaced in the 1880s with the first voting machines, the kinds some of us are nostalgia about, big gray boxy things with levers and a privacy curtain. They were intended to prevent voter fraud. Reconstruction after the Civil War signaled new opportunities for industry in Connecticut, and especially in cities with ports like Bridgeport. Industry arrived with the likes of the Warner Brothers and their corset-manufacturing business, Warnaco, maker of the seamless corset, a more comfortable and healthy alternative to the old whale-bone ones.

"The Warners, who were doctors with a concern about women and their health, had a manufacturing operation in upstate New York," says Bridgeport historian Charles Brilvitch. "P.T. Barnum approached them about coming to Bridgeport, touting all of the city's amenities for their business."

Demand for their seamless corsets far outpaced supply. "They couldn't hire enough seamstresses where they were in New York to keep up," Brilvitch says. "Something like every available seamstress in a 20-mile radius of their factory was sewing for them."

Even a cursory glance through Bridgeport's old city directories from the period, which list occupations of its many of its 27,000 residents, identifies "seamstress" as one of the most popular jobs for women, followed by "domestic."

One in four working women in Bridgeport was employed by Warner in the 1880s.

Emancipated slaves and immigrants readily found work in the factories. In the post Civil War era, with production high and manufacturers mass producing their products on assembly lines like the ones pioneered by Samuel Colt at his firearms plant in Hartford, supply of goods now began to outpace demand. And prices started to tumble.

Waves of unemployment followed as manufacturers struggled to cut costs to compensate for their lost profits. But there was a limit to how far they could go before it hurt production. They had to have enough labor to produce their goods. So the push was on to entice Europeans to come here for the jobs. Manufacturers in Bridgeport and other large cities sent emissaries to Europe.

They painted rosy pictures of life in America, nearly promising the streets were paved with gold, and food (in short supply in Europe) ample. The steamship companies that advertised in Hills' newspaper offered rock-bottom steerage rates that allowed Connecticut manufacturers to prepay for these laborers' passage with the caveat that they agree to work for them for a set term of years at wages that appeared exorbitant by European standards, but were quite low by American ones.

The low wages the factories paid laborers resulted in an upsurge in strikes across Connecticut from 25 in 1881 to 144 by 1886.

The well-to-do in Bridgeport lived only a short distance from the tenements of the poor. But they were worlds apart. Bridgeport had indoor plumbing and heating well before its suburban neighbors. Yet the poor lived in squalid, cramped tenements, where disease was easily transmitted.

The death certificates on file with the city of Bridgeport's Department of Vital Statistics in 1883 paint a picture of the most common communicable diseases: typhoid, scarlet fever, small pox and cholera. If one member of a household contracted one of these diseases, unless they were quarantined fast other relatives were stricken, too.

In the 1880s, the average life expectancy, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was 47 years for people born in the post-Civil War era. To reach true old age took a certain amount of luck as well as good genes. A fundamental shift was taking place as Connecticut moved further from an agrarian society to a mass consumer society. Department stores made their debut in cities, pitching their wares to a broad range of shoppers. Clothing was no longer utilitarian, the same year to year. It had a season, a period when what you wore was in style, then out of style.

Bridgeport and New Haven feared a social ill known as "tramp evil," shiftless youth and future thugs roving their streets, ripping off shops and shoppers, hanging out on street corners, drinking and harassing people.

Connecticut's legislature passed laws to curtail child labor and establish compulsory public education.

New theories were expounded on the nature of childhood. No longer were children seen as miniature adults. In fact, the notion of summer camp got its start in the 1880s in New England, New Hampshire and later Connecticut. Initially, these sleep-away camps were designed for upper class boys exclusively, says Abigail Van Slyck, author of "A Manufactured Wilderness."

Camping for girls evolved a few years later with domestic activities that concentrated on reinforcing domestic skills, craft activities and maintaining the hearth and storytelling.

In the 1880s, young women married on average in their early 20s, although Connecticut marriage records for this period indicate that there were a number of marriages of girls as young as 13. At the same time, men tended to marry at an older age than women. On average, Connecticut men married in their late 20s or early 30s. Sociologists believe that this is because men living in cities might have had responsibilities to help support their parents and younger siblings.