The Market Revolution North 1815-1860 Study Guide: Identifications • • • • • • • • • Transportation, Market & Industrial Revolutions Putting Out system Immigration and Scapegoat Status of artisan Rhode Island and Waltham System Cult of Domesticity Purity Crusade Universal White Male suffrage 2nd Great Awakening Study Guide: Questions • What marked the increasing industrialization in the US economy between 1815 – 1860? • How and why did inequalities increase among the rich, the middle class and the working class? • How did the socio-economic changes of the Industrial Revolution impact women? Changes that allowed for the Industrial Revolution • Transportation Revolution – Improvements in transportation made that transformation possible • Federal, state and corporate investments in transportation improvements • Roads, Canals, Railroads • Market Revolution – Transition from domestic markets to for distant markets • Industrial Revolution – Domestic hand labor to machine and factory output • Immigration – Cheap and exploitable labor Immigration • Political turmoil and Famine brought Massive immigration – Irish Potato Famine 1845-1846 • 2.5 Million (30% of Ireland’s population) – German immigration 1840-60 • 4.2 Million • Provided Cheap/Exploitable Labor • Used to scapegoat political, economic & social issues “The Bog Trotters” The Poor House from Galway “The Irish fill our prisons, our poor houses, scratch a convict or a pauper, and the chances are that you tickle the skin of an Irish Catholic. Putting them on a boat and sending them home would end crime in this country” The Great Fear of the Period That Uncle Sam is Swallowed by Foreigners The Problem Solved Thomas Nast Cartoon, 1870 Expresses the worry that the Irish Catholics threatened American Freedom Early Industry • The northeast led Americans industrial revolution – Household and small workshop production – Putting-out system • Local merchants furnished or put out raw materials to rural households and paid at a piece rate for the labor that converted those raw materials into manufacture products. The supplying merchant then marketed and sold these goods. Shoe Makers, Massachusetts Status of Artisan: • Owned tools of production • Owned shops • Managed time and produce • skilled workers • Independence • prestige Industrial Espionage • Slater’s Rhode Island System – Water powered spinning machine • Richard Arkwright -1769 had invented a water power machine that spun yarn and thread • Samuel Slater - Memorized machine & 1790 Imported the plans from England to Patuxet, Rhode Island – The Rhode Island System • The countryside factory towns • Labor of Farmer’s daughters • Mill Villages Waltham System • Lowell’s Waltham System • Machines that turned raw cotton into finished cloth • Francis Cabot Lowell Toured factories in England in 1811 – Boston Associates Co. 1813 • Fully mechanized • By the 1830s - Unskilled, female labor Daguerreotype of a young mill girl, c. 1850, Massachusetts Middlesex Company Woolen Mills, 1848 Bi-products of the Industrial Revolution • Widening gap between the rich and the poor. – Lowered Standard of living for producers in society • Creation of the Urban working class – “The Hands” • Increase wealth & concentration of wealth – Growing middle class • Commercial Class or Managerial class • Redefinition of women’s role & character Growing Inequality & Middle Class Ideal Consumer goods Symbols of their middle class status Notions of gentility distinction between manual and non manual work Cult of Domesticity • The separation of work and home – New sense of classconsciousness. • Middle class fathers left for their jobs while mothers governed households. • Reduction in size of families • 1820s ministers and female writers elevated the family role of middle class women into a cult of domesticity Cult of Domesticity – Biological difference determined separate social roles for men and women. – Men: • strong, aggressive and ambitious, intelligent • Place in business and politics. – Women: • Kind, pure, emotional, moral • Place to preserve religion and morality in the home and family Evangelical Crusades • Early 19th C ministers bolstered doctrine of separate spheres – Clerical endorsement of female moral superiority in exchange for women’s activism • Decline of clerical authority in society • Opposed forces that seemed to act against women’s interests – Materialism – Intemperance – Licentiousness Purity Crusade • Traditionally: both men and women wee sexual beings, women weaker willed, lustful and licentious and insatiable • Purity Crusade: women lacked sexual feeling, lust and carnality became a part of men’s sphere – Etiquette manuals counseled to deter male advances Professional Medicine & Women’s Sexuality • Women were Asexual beings – Defined by their sex & sexual roles, yet did not desire it – Dr Alcott, “Women, as is well known, in a natural state…seldom if ever makes any of those advances, which clearly indicates sexual desire and for this very plain reason, she does not feel them.” – Only “low” women suffered from the indignity of sexual desire • Long periods of abstinence proper • Masturbation damaged future offspring, and caused “mania” and “idiocy” on the guilty party Lowered Standard of Living Twin Revolutions • Universal White Male Suffrage Movement – Suffrage extended to white males (18071860’s) • By the 1800s race and gender began to replace wealth and status as the basis for defining the limits of political participation • Second Great Awakening (1800-1840) – Democratization of religion & Salvation • Impact socially and politically New York 1837 “Foreigners and aliens to our government and laws, strangers to our institutions are permitted to flock to this land and in a few years are endowed with all the privileges of citizens, but we native born Americans…are most of us shut out.”