Market Revolution
I.
II.
III.
IV.
The Market Revolution
A.
American Economy, 1800
B.
First Industrial Revolution
C.
Transportation
The Transformation of Work
A.
Common labor
B.
Deskilling
C.
Manufacturing
Freedom and Frustration
A.
The Decline of Servitude
B.
From Craftsman to Laborer
C.
Community under Pressure
Worker Responses
A.
Ambition
B.
Association
C.
Labor Protest
D.
Mass Politics
American Economy, 1800
• Farming
• Hand Labor
• Craft work
• Local Family Firms
• Upward Mobility
– apprentice
– journeyman
– master
Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850
• Spinning jenny
• Steam engine
• Iron puddling furnace
• Cotton gin
• Telegraph
• Sewing machine
Transportation
• Canals create market towns and cities.
• Incentive for mass production
Common Labor
Deskilling & Manufacturing
• Division of
labor
• Machines
• Teamwork
• Discipline
Creating Class
An anxious blacksmith, circa 1850
The Decline of Servitude
• Courts begin replacing
paternalism with
employment at-will.
• Freedom of contract
– Employer and employee have
equal rights to make and
break contracts.
– Ignores difference in
bargaining power.
Massachusetts Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw (1781-1861)
Community under Pressure
Five Points, NYC, 1840s
Ambition
• System offers
opportunities for
economic
mobility.
Sewing machine inventor, Elias Howe
Association
• Religion
– 2nd Great Awakening
• 1820-40
– Church membership
• Grows 100K in 1831
– Revivals
• 10-25K people attend
• Mutual benefit
– Fire companies
– Insurance companies
– Fraternal Societies
Labor Protest
• Violence
– Unskilled labor
– Canal diggers
• Boycotts
– Skilled workers
• Cordwainers
• General Trades Union
• Strikes
– Machine Operatives
Workers in political cartoon, circa 1830s
• Women of Lowell
Mass Politics
• Workingman’s Party
• Jacksonian Democracy
• Free labor ideology
President Andrew Jackson