12: Industry and the
North, 1790s—1840s
Henry David Thoreau’s Cabin at Walden pond
“Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last
improvement possible in a government? Is it
not possible to take a step further towards
recognizing and organizing the rights of
man? There will never be a free and
enlightened State until the State comes to
recognize the individual as a higher and
independent power, from which all its own
power and authority are derived, and treats
him accordingly.”
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
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If Christ should appear on earth he would on all
hands be denounced as a mistaken, misguided man,
insane and crazed.
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I believe the mind can be permanently profaned by the
habit of attending to trivial things.
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Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the
true place for a just man is also a prison.
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Not only must we be good, but we must also be good
for something.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803 - 1888
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the
other end fastens itself around your own.
We are always getting ready to live but never living.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
adored by little statesmen and philosophers and
divines. With consistency a great soul has simply
nothing to do. . . . To be great is to be misunderstood.
The power of Love, as the basis of a State, has never
been tried. . .
There will always be a government of force where
men are selfish.
As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love,
but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.
Chapter Focus Questions
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What changes in preindustrial life and work were
caused by the market revolution?
This chapter argues that when people begin doing new
kinds of work, their beliefs and attitudes change. Give
three examples of such changes described in the chapter.
Can you think of other examples?
Discuss the opinion offered by historian David Potter that
mass production has been an important democratizing
force in American politics. Do you agree? Why or why not?
Consider the portrait of the nineteenth-century middleclass family offered in this chapter and imagine yourself as
a member of such a family. What new aspects of family
relations would you welcome? Which would be difficult?
Why?
Chronology
1790
1793
1798
1807
1810
1812
1813
1815
1816
Samuel Slater’s first mill opens in RI
Cotton gin invented
Eli Whitney contracts with federal gov't for
10, 000 rifles [interchangeable parts]
Embargo Act excludes British manufactures
Francis Cabot Lowell tours British textile
factories
Micajah Pratt begins his own shoe business in
Lynn, MA
Francis Cabot Lowell raises $300, 000 to build
his first cotton textile factory at Waltham, MA
War of 1812 ends
British competition in manufactures resumes
First protective tariff
1820s
1823
1824
1825
1830
1834
1836
1841
1845
1847
Large-scale outwork networks develop in
New England
Lowell mills open
John Hall successfully achieves interchangeable
parts at Harpers Ferry armory
Erie Canal opens
Charles G. Finney’s Rochester in revivals
First strike at Lowell mills [led by women]
Ralph Waldo Emerson lecture "Nature" published
Catharine Beecher’s Treatise on Domestic
Economy published
New England Female Labor Reform Association
formed
New Hampshire passes first ten-hour-day law
RECOMMENDED

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Paul Boller, American Transcendentalism,
1830-1860 (1974)
Paul Johnson, A Shopkeeper's
Millennium: Society and Revivals in
Rochester, New York, 1815-1837 (1978)
Edward Pessen, Riches, Class, and power
before the Civil War (1973)
R. D. Richardson Jr., Henry Thoreau: A
Life of the Mind (1986)
A: Women Factory Workers
Form a Community
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Young women from New England farms worked in
the Lowell textile mills.
Initially, the women found the work a welcome
change from farm routine, but later conflict arose
with their employers.
By the 1830s, mill owners cut wages and
ended their paternalistic practices.
The result was strikes and the replacement of the
young women with more manageable Irish
immigrants.
B: Preindustrial
Ways of Working
The Springer Family and
Rural Life
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The family of Thomas and Elizabeth Springer of
Mill Creek, Delaware illustrates the yeomen
existence of farm families in the Mid-Atlantic
states.
The Springer family:
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sold dairy products, wool, and livestock in nearby
Wilmington
raised crops for family use and commercial sale
participated in a local network of barter and mutual
obligation
The Family Labor System
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The traditional labor system put the entire
family to work.
The scarcity of cash led to a barter system
for goods and services.
In New England, many farm families
engaged in outside work, often developing a
skill such as shoemaking.
Urban Artisans and Workers
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Urban craftsmen learned their trades through the
European apprenticeship system.
Young men worked as artisans until they had
perfected their skills, becoming journeymen
and possibly master craftsmen.
Though women did skilled work, too, no
apprenticeship system existed for them. Work for
the urban craftsman:
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was a family affair
was organized along patriarchal lines
specialized in one area
Patriarchy in Family,
Work, and Society
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The father was head of the family and
boss of the enterprise.
Legally, the father owned all family
property and was its representative in the
larger society.
Women were managers of the household
and as informal assistants.
The Social Order
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Preindustrial society fixed the place of
people in the social order.
Most artisans did not challenge the
traditional authority of the wealthy.
In the early 19th century, the market
revolution undermined the traditional
social order.
C: The Market
Revolution
The Accumulation of Capital
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The market revolution was caused by rapid
improvements in transportation,
commercialization, and industrialization caused the
market revolution.
Merchants comprised the business community of the
northern seaboard accumulating great wealth.
Conflicts between 1807-1815 that disrupted United
States trade with Europe led merchants to invest in
local enterprises supplemented by banks and the
government.
Southern cotton produced by slaves bankrolled
industrialization.
The Putting-Out System
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In the early 19th century merchants “put
out” raw goods in homes.
In the case of shoe-making artisans:
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journeymen cut the leather
wives and daughters bound the upper parts
together
the men stitched the shoe together
Pegging boots by hand
Central Workshops
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As demand grew, merchants like Micajah
Pratt built central workshops and brought
workers into Lynn, Massachusetts.
Pratt modified the putting-out system
providing greater control over the
workforce and the flexibility to respond to
changing economic conditions.
The putting out system and the central
workshops caused the decline of the
artisan shop.
The Spread of Commercial
Markets
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As more workers became part of the
putting out system:
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wages for piecework replaced bartering
families bought mass-produced goods
rather than making them at home.
Commercialization did not happen
immediately or in the same way across the
nation.
British Technology and
American Industrialization
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The industrial revolution began in the
British textile industry and created
deplorable conditions.
Samuel Slater slipped out of England
bringing plans for a cotton-spinning factory.
He built a mill that followed British custom by
hiring women and children.
New England was soon dotted with
factories along its rivers.
Early iron foundry near Baltimore, MD in 1828
Pittsburgh steel foundry, 1840s
The Lowell Mills
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Francis C. Lowell studied British spinning
machine.
Lowell helped invent a power loom & built
the 1st integrated cotton mill near Boston in
1814.
The mill drove smaller competitors out of
business.
Lowell’s successors soon built an entire
town to house the new enterprise.
Lowell, MA mills about 1840
The Growth of Cotton
Textile Manufacturing
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New England was the center of textile
manufacturing
Farmer’s daughters working in a power loom mill
Family Mills
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Factories developed elaborate divisions of labor
that set up a hierarchy of value and pay.
Mills were run with strict schedules and with fines
and penalties for workers who did not meet them.
The shift to a precise timetable was a major
change.
Most mills were “family mills," where entire
families would work and pool their wages.
Communities developed antagonistic
relationships with the mills, resenting the
influx of transient workers and frequently
looking down upon them.
“The American System of
Manufactures”
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The American system of manufacturing was based on
interchangeable parts in the manufacturing of rifles
developed by Eli Whitney, Simeon North, and John Hall.
Standardization spread into other areas like sewing
machines.
The availability of these goods affected American thinking
about democracy and equality.
Americans could have mass-produced copies,
indistinguishable from the originals.
Boring rifle barrels at the Springfield, MA Armory
A replica a Samuel F. B. Morse’s 1st telegraph instrument, 1835
Samuel F. B. Morse in Victorian NY City home, about 1870
D: From Artisan to
Worker
The Decline of the Artisans
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As artisans were turned into workers their lives were
transformed.
The putting out system destroyed the apprenticeship
tradition in artisan production, replacing them with child
labor.
The older system of personal relationships between master
and workers was replaced with an impersonal wage
system.
By subdividing tasks, masters could hire low-skill, lowwage women and children, denying opportunities to
male artisans. As textile mills grew, they replaced
women’s most reliable home occupation.
Mechanization and Women’s
Work
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The rise of the garment industry led many
women to work sewing ready-made clothing
for piece rates.
So poorly paid were these tasks that
women might work 15 to 18 hours a day.
Women’s Work
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Women's work in 1837 was centered in
the manufacture of hats, bonnets, boots
and shoes.
Time, Work, and Leisure
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Workers did not readily adjust to the demands of the
factory.
Though used to long hours, they were not acclimated to
the strict regimen. Absenteeism was common among
workers whose interests differed from their employers.
A much more rigid separation between work and leisure
developed.
Leisure spots like taverns emerged, as did leisure
activities like spectator sports.
Changing Employer-Worker
Relations
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The introduction of the cash economy led to the decline of
the barter system.
Worker contact with employers came through the pay
envelope.
Workers took advantage of the lack of ties to move about
in search of better jobs.
Laborers saw themselves as “free” - able to move
about to new jobs and possessing the individualistic
characteristics needed for success.
MA Sp. Ct. Justice Lemuel Shaw – 1842 landmark case saying unions had legal right to
exist and were not “conspiracies.”
Early Strikes
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Owners cited worker individualism when
they opposed government mandated
protections and denounced unions.
Most early strikes were unsuccessful.
Women played significant roles in these
early labor protests.
1860 Lynn, MA strike by 800 women shoemakers
Castle Clinton at NY City – port of entry for immigrants 1840 - 1860
Philadelphia Bible Riots, June 1844 – anti-Catholic during 1844 presidential campaign
E: A New Social
Order
Wealth and Class
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The market revolution ended the natural fixed social order
that previously existed. The market revolution created a
social order with class mobility.
The upper class stayed about the same, while the
“middling sorts” grew rapidly.
Religion helped shape the new attitudes.
The middle class also changed their attitudes by:
 emphasizing sobriety and steadiness
 removing themselves from the boisterous
sociability of the working class.
Religion and Personal Life
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The Second Great Awakening moved from the frontier to
the new market towns stressing salvation through
personal faith.
Preachers such as Charles G. Finney urged
businessmen to convert and accept the self-discipline
and individualism that religion brought.
Evangelism became the religion of the new middle class.
Charles Grandison Finney, 1792 – 1875 – President of Oberlin College 1851 - 1865
The New Middle-Class Family
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Middle-class women managed their homes and
provided a safe haven for their husbands.
Attitudes about appropriate male and female roles and
qualities hardened.
Men were seen as steady, industrious, and
responsible; women as nurturing, gentle, and moral.
The popularity of housekeeping guides underscored
the radical changes occurring in middle-class families.
1846, by Nathaniel Currier
Family Limitation
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Middle-class couples limited their
family size through birth control,
abstinence, and abortion.
Physicians urged that sexual impulses be
controlled, particularly among women
whom they presumed to possess superior
morality.
Middle-Class Children
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New views of motherhood emerged as women
were seen as primarily responsible for training
their children in self-discipline.
Women formed networks and read advice
magazines to help them in these tasks.
Mothers made contacts that would contribute to
their children’s latter development. Children also
prolonged their education and professional
training.
A man’s success was very much the result of his
family’s efforts.
Sentimentalism
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The competitive spirit led many Americans
to turn to sentimentalism and nostalgia.
Publishers found a lucrative market for
novels of this genre, especially those written
by women.
Sentimentalism became more concerned
with maintaining social codes.
“The Lackawanna Valley” – an 1855 painting by George Inness
Transcendentalism and SelfReliance
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The intellectual reassurance for middleclass morality came from writers such
as Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Transcendentalist writers Henry David
Thoreau and Margaret Fuller
emphasized individualism and
communion with nature.
A page from McGuffey’s Reader published in 1836
Horace Mann, 1796 - 1859
Noah Webster, 1758 – 1843 – Webster’s Blue-Backed Speller
Dorothea Lynde Dix, 1802 - 1887
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807 – 1882 – The Song of Hiawatha, Evangeline
Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804 – 1864 – The Scarlet Letter 1850
Frederick Douglass, 1817 - 1895
Special Web Sites
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www.state.vt.us/vhs/educate/change/page
s/reform/lowell.html [Letters from a farm
girl working at Lowell mill]
www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/lowell.html [primary
documents maintained by Illinois Labor
History Society]