P4 |APUSH | Ms. Wiley | Project Clarifications & Add-Ons, D___Name:


Market Revolution, North and West

The market revolution refers to social and economic changes caused by:

  • the transportation revolution (1800-1840),
  • commercialization (replacement of house-hold sufficiency and barter with production of goods for a cash market)(1800-1840),
  • and industrialization (the use of power-driven machinery to produce goods once made by hand)(begins in 1800; but it is not until after the Civil War that the U.S. is truly “industrialized”).

To appreciate the impacts of the market revolution, we must begin with a look at preindustrial Northern society. . . As in colonial times, Northerners on the eve of industrialization depended on local networks of family and community. Most Americans lived on farms, where home and work were intermixed. Even in urban areas, family was key in the [male-dominated] urban apprenticeship system, where apprentices learned their craft over a three to seven-year period, living with the master craftsman overseeing their training. For urban women who needed or wanted work, available options were domestic servant, laundress, seamstress, cook, food vendor, boardinghouse owner/manager, or, the least respectable, prostitute.

In both rural and urban settings, patriarchy ruled family, work and society. Men had unquestioned authority to direct the lives and work of family members and apprentices. Legally, men had all the power: women had no property or legal rights. Even in the rare cases of divorce, the husband kept the children because they were considered his property.

The preindustrial North was organized in the following social order (from top to bottom): wealthy merchants and landowners; professionals (lawyers, ministers, schoolteachers, doctors, public officials); artisans; yeoman farmers; tenant farmers/farm laborers; paupers (the very poor; often required charity); the enslaved. By the 1790s many artisans who owned property were voters and vocal participants in urban politics, but few directly challenged the traditional, conservative authority of the rich and powerful to run civic affairs. Economic changes fostered by the market revolution would change this tradition.

Transportation Revolution: 1st Tenant of the Market Revolution

Between 1800 and 1840, the U.S. experienced truly revolutionary improvements in transportation, which encouraged Americans to look beyond their local communities to broader ones and fostered an enterprising commercial spirit. Even for those who chose not to venture out of their local communities, those local communities were forever changed by commercial goods made in distant centers.

In 1800, travel by road was difficult for much of the year. Though localities and states tried to improve roads, their efforts failed to resolve the problem. The federal government decided to step in by funding the National Road in 1808, under President Jefferson, which crossed the Appalachian Mountains at Cumberland Maryland, thereby opening up the West. The road would facilitate trade and bind the states together in what Jefferson called a “union of sentiment.” Congress had to think innovatively to get the road underway. To address the belief that the government did not have the constitutional authority to build a road on land owned by the states, Jefferson was required to secure consent from the states through which the road would pass. By 1850, the National Road tied the East and West together. The federal government’s decision to fund the road demonstrated its commitment to both expansion and national cohesion. These efforts helped to foster a national community, along with pride.

To ship bulky goods, waterborne transportation was preferred (since it was easier and cheaper than roads). But before the 1820s, most water routes were north-south or coastal; east-west links were urgently needed. Canals turned out to be the answer. The Erie Canal—the most famous canal of the era—provided easy passage to and from the interior, both for people and goods. It drew settlers from the East and from overseas, creating new communities around the canal. The canal was opened for business in 1825, having been constructed by Irish laborers, whom locals regarded as different and frightening. Much of the heavy construction work on later canals and railroads was performed by immigrant labor. The phenomenal success of the Erie Canal prompted other states to follow New York’s lead and invest in canal building. The great spurt of canal building ended the geographical isolation of much of the country. As commercial ties grew, farm families began purchasing what they needed, rather than producing it themselves.

Railroads were new in 1830; as a young innovation they would experience many problems. It wouldn’t be until the 1850s that consolidation of local railroads into larger system began in earnest.

Effects of the transportation revolution:

-Fueled economic growth; made distant markets accessible

-Successes of innovations such as canals and railroads attracted large capital investments (including foreigners)

-New investment fueled economic growth further

-Fostered an optimistic, risk-taking mentality in the U.S. that stimulated innovation

-Allowed people to move with ease

-Spread of disease; epidemics that were once localized spread as travel expanded

-Every east-west connection helped reorient Americans away from the Atlantic and toward the heartland, creating national pride and identity; transportation improvements linked Americans in larger communities of interest

Commercialization: 2nd Tenant of the Market Revolution

Crucial to the market revolution was the availability of capital (wealth) and cash, which put an end to bartering. Capital for new investments came from banks, merchants who had faith and confidence in the future of an expanding America, wealthy family networks—who increased their wealth by intermarriage—and from Southern cotton. Exports of Southern cotton enriched Northern merchants almost as much as Southern planters. Thus, the development of Northern industry was paid for by Southern cotton produced by African American labor. The new cash economy fostered westward expansion, where rich, inexpensive land was available. Farmers were enticed by these low prices, advancements in transportation (which made it easier to get products to markets), and improvements in agricultural machinery (like John Deere’s steel plow). Government policy strongly encouraged Western settlement, by keeping prices low and allowing settlers to rely on credit.

Industrialization: 3rd Tenant of the Market Revolution

Industrialization brought the greatest challenge to personal lives. Begun in Britain in the mid-eighteenth century, industrialization—which required workers to concentrate in factories—stood in stark contrast to the preindustrial system, where capitalists had dispersed work into many individual households. Britain was well aware of the value of their industrialization; as such, they enacted laws forbidding the export of machinery and emigration of skilled workers. With the help of industrial spies Samuel Slater and Francis Cabot Lowell, the science of British technology made its way to America. By 1820, mills dotted the rivers of New England, which was rich in flowing streams that could provide power to spinning machines and power looms.

Industrialization gave way to a growing political battle between the North and South over slavery. Southern defenders of slavery compared their alleged “cradle-to-grave responsibility” to their slaves (the “benevolent masters” argument) with Northern employers’ “heartless” treatment of their “wage slaves.” Southerners critiqued the fact that Northern employers felt no obligation to help or care for old or disabled workers; this, perhaps, was worthy of critique, but Northerners were right when they contended that industrialization was certainly freer than the slave system (though precisely how much freer is up for debate).

Note: It is important to remember that industrialization did not occur overnight. Large factories and national rail lines were not common until after the Civil War (1870s-80s).

Women and the Market Revolution

The partners of Francis Cabot Lowell, one of the British spies who immigrated to America, built Lowell mill (1823) in Lowell, Massachusetts, after Lowell’s death. Young farm women flocked from all over New England to Lowell to work twelve-hour days in one of the first cotton textile factories in America. The business men who financed Lowell wanted to keep Lowell free of the dirt, poverty, and social disorder that made English factory towns notorious. To attract respectable women, Lowell offered supervision both on the job and at home, with strict rules of conduct, compulsory religious services, and cultural opportunities such as concerts and lectures, and cash wages. Women came to Lowell to escape from rural isolation and parental supervision, to buy the latest fashions and learn “city ways,” to attend lectures/concerts, or to save for an education. Though Lowell was successful for the first decade, by the 1830s, owners were forced to impose wage cuts, which women protested. By 1850, the original Lowell workforce was replaced by poor Irish immigrants of both sexes, who earned much less than their predecessors.

Changes brought on by the market revolution may have been liberating for women of farm families. Almost half of the wage laborers in 1840 were women—women whose destiny would have been predetermined in the preindustrial North. Thus, as a result of the market revolution, opportunities for women opened up, with women now traveling for work and marrying urban men. Since some women now earned wages, their voices were strengthened in the home; thus, patriarchal control over family members was no longer absolute. In fact, industrialization posed a major threat to the status and independence of men. Mechanization meant that most tasks could now be performed by unskilled labor, which meant that women and children were preferred laborers over men. Not surprisingly, male workers quickly began to oppose female participation in the workforce. Many felt that “respectable” women did not do factory work. Nonetheless, women made up a large portion of the industrial work force and went on to lead some of the first strikes in American history, which owners considered unfeminine and ungrateful. Early American strikes, led by either women or men, were largely unsuccessful, as owners were always able to find new workers, like Irish immigrants, who would work at lower wages.

A New Social Order

The market revolution ended the stable, hierarchical social order, creating the dynamic and unstable one we recognize today: upper, middle, and working classes, whose members all share the hope of climbing as far up the social ladder as they can. This social mobility was new—since colonial times, the upper class was a small elite that often intermarried. The expanding opportunities of the market revolution enriched this already rich class and simultaneously created a new layer directly below the upper class: white-collar workers (managers, bank tellers, clerks, bookkeepers, insurance agents, etc., who had been independent artisans in the preindustrial North).

The market revolution also provoked changes in leisure time. Workers across the North found leisure at the local tavern, spectator sports (horse racing, boxing, baseball) and popular entertainments (plays, minstrel shows, operas, circuses). Over time, working-class amusements became more distinct and visible than they had been before.

Family roles were dramatically reshaped by the market revolution. Men increasingly focused their energies on their careers and occupations; they were expected to be industrious, responsible and attentive to their business, since they operated in a competitive, uncertain, and rapidly changing landscape. Most middle-class fathers spent their day away from their homes and families; thus, men were no longer the undisputed head of a family unit that combined work and personal life. Marriage became more about partnership rather than patriarchy. Women assumed new responsibilities for rearing the children and inculcating in them the new attitudes necessary for success in the business world. Women were expected to fulfill this new duty, as well as the more traditional female duties, all while providing a quiet, well-ordered, and relaxing refuge from the pressures of industrial life. Through literature, women’s magazines, and church groups, women shared ideas on child-raring, cooking, medical care, household design, and morals, all of which contributed to a new middle-class ethic.

Families began limiting their size during the market revolution, as raising a child in the new age required considerable demands on family resources: they required more care, training, and education than children who could be put to work at traditional tasks at an early age during preindustrial times. As a result, the birthrate fell dramatically. This was achieved by family planning, contraception, and abortions, which were widely advertised in the 1830s. The rising rate of abortions by married women prompted the first legal bans; by 1860, twenty states had outlawed the practice (these laws were enacted as a result of the dangers the surgery caused to the women themselves). Throughout the period, women were expected to help their husbands and sons restrain their sexuality by appealing to their higher, moral natures. This rapid change in attitudes towards family size that occurred in the early nineteenth century has been repeated around the world as other societies undergo the dramatic experience of industrialization, demonstrating the way economic changes affect our most private and personal decisions.It should be noted, though, that another reason for the decrease in family size included male migration west (leaving less men in the east to marry and procreate).

The individualistic competitiveness of the market revolution created in some members of the new middle class a sense of nostalgia for preindustrial life, which was most clearly articulated in the sentimental literature of the period (see transcendentalism, p 11).

Urban Society in the North

  • Market revolution  growth in cities:
  • Increasing gap between rich and poor was glaringly apparent in nation’s cities
  • No clean water supplies, sewers, garbage collection  disease-ridden cities
  • No unemployment insurance, regulation of wages, or welfare
  • By 1850s, middle class began to escape cities by moving to suburbs
  • Poor clustered in slums, where disease, crime, prostitution, and alcoholism were common
  • Surge in European migration to American cities, 1820s-1850s:
  • Most came from Ireland and Germany
  • Created ethnic enclaves (“Little Germanies”)
  • Industries welcomed immigrants, who would work cheaper than Americans
  • Irish immigration:
  • Caused by catastrophic Irish Potato Famine
  • Typically poor, illiterate and Catholic  nativism
  • Ethnic neighborhoods viewed with deep suspicion
  • Vandalization of Catholic churches
  • German immigration:
  • Had a long history of emigration to America
  • William Penn welcomed Germans to PA, one of the most diverse of the British North American Colonies
  • Peasants, small farmers/artisans, intellectuals; not as poor as Irish arrivals  moved out of seaports; like Irish, encountered hostility for their foreign ways, particularly their drinking habits
  • Nativism surged during this period
  • Free Northern Blacks:
  • In 1775, racial slavery was legal in all of the British colonies in North America; by the time independence was achieved in 1783, the New England region was mostly free of slavery; by 1800, all of the states north of Maryland had provided for the gradual abolition of slavery but that process dragged on until the 1830s
  • Percentage of free blacks among the African American population rose from 8% in 1790 to 13% in 1840; about half lived in the free states of the North
  • Looked down upon as social/biological inferiors
  • Blacks were often ridiculed in popular minstrel plays (though it should be noted that some blacks themselves participated in these plays) and faced persistent discrimination
  • Work:
  • Competed with whites and immigrants for jobs
  • Influx of Irish immigrants  black unemployment
  • Faced segregation and job discrimination
  • Discrimination:
  • Most states prohibited blacks from voting, attending public schools, testifying against whites, or sitting next to whites in churches
  • Federal government did not allow African Americans to work for the postal service or hold a U.S. passport
  • Many states passed laws that prohibited marriage or sexual relations betweenwhites and blacks
  • Black responses:
  • Formed associations to help poor members of their communities
  • Founded their own newspapers and congregations
  • Some divisions emerged in the black community between those that “acted white” and those that were impoverished
  • Labor:
  • Though workers after the American Revolution had espoused the idea of artisan republicanism (workers as small-scale producers equal to one another and free to work for themselves), the harsh realities of industrialism ensured that most received meager wages, little job security, and came to think of themselves (and their labor) as more of a commodity, to be bought and sold
  • Resentment grew in the male wageworker population; to assert their independent status, wageworkers rejected the traditional terms of master and servant and used the Dutch word boss to refer to their employer
  • As aggressive entrepreneurs and machine technology took command, the most skilled laborers came together to form unions
  • English and American law branded unions as “illegal combinations,” a “government unto themselves” which “unlawfully interfered with a master’s authority over his servant.”
  • States across the nation declared that unions/strikes were illegal, arguing that it was in the “best interests of society that the price of labor be left to regulate itself”
  • MA Supreme Court upheld the right of workers to form unions and call strikes in 1842 but it was not enforced and many judges continued to resist unions
  • Union leaders articulated the labor theory of value, which asserted that the price of goods should reflect the labor required to make them and that the income from their sale should go primarily to the producers, not to factory owners, middlemen, or storekeepers
  • Appealed to the spirit of the American Revolution, arguing that the aristocracy of all forms must be demolished

Religion & The Second Great Awakening, origins in the North but spread nation-wide