PROFF

■ :)1 1, D17(;

Now if rights are founded on the nature of moral being, then the

mere circumstance of sex does not give to man higher rights and

responsibilities, than to woman. To suppose that it does, would

be to deny the self-evident truth, that the physical constitution is

the mere instrument of the moral nature.

—Angelina Emily Grimke, October 2, 1837

LOWELL HISTORICAL SOCIETY

WHAT WERE the effects of the transportation revolution?

WHAT IMPACT did advances in transportation have in the Old Northwest?

WHAT WAS the market revolution?

1 INDUSTRY AND THE NORTH

1790s-184os

H OW D I D industrialization affect workers in early factories?

HOW DID the market revolution change the lives of ordinary people?

WHAT VALUES were promoted by the new middle class?

296 IIIII CHAPTER 12 INDUSTRY AND THE NORTH, 179os-184os

II

AMERICAN COMMUNITIES Women Factory Workers Form a Community

in Lowell, Massachusetts

IN THE 1820s AND 1830s, YOUNG FARM WOMEN FROM ALL OVER NEW England flocked to Lowell to work a twelve-hour day in one of the first cotton textile factories in America. Living six to eight to a room in nearby boardinghouses, the women of Lowell earned an average of $3 a week. Some also attended inexpensive night- time lectures or classes. Lowell, considered a model factory town, drew worldwide attention. As one admirer of its educated workers said, Lowell was less a factory than a "philanthropic manufacturing college."

The choice of young women as factory workers seemed shockingly unconventional. In the 1820s and 1830s, young unmarried women simply did not live alone; they lived and worked with their parents until they married. In these years of growth and westward expansion, however, America was chroni- cally short of labor, and the Lowell manufacturers were shrewd enough to realize that young farm women were an untapped labor force. To attract respectable young women, Lowell offered supervision both on the job and at home, with strict rules of conduct, compulsory religious services, cultural opportunities such as concerts and lectures, and cash wages.

When they first arrived in Lowell, the young women were often bewildered by the large num- bers of townspeople and embarrassed by their own rural clothing and country ways. It was company policy for senior women to train the newcomers, and often sisters or neighbors who had preceded them to the mill helped them adjust to their new surroundings.

Textile mills ran on a rigid work schedule with fines or penalties imposed on latecomers and slackers. Power-driven machinery operated at a sustained, uni- form pace throughout every mill; human workers had to learn to do the same. This precise work schedule represented the single largest change from preindustrial work habits, and it was the hardest adjustment for the workers. Moreover, each mill positioned one or two male overseers on every floor to make sure the pace was maintained.

Why did young farm women come to Lowell? Some worked out of need, but most regarded Lowell as an opportu- nity: an escape from rural isolation and from parental supervi- sion, a chance to buy the latest fashions and learn "city ways," to attend lectures and concerts, to save for a dowry, or to pay for an education. As writer Lucy Larcom, one of the most famous workers, said, the women who came to Lowell sought "an opening into freer life." Working side by side and living with six to twelve other women, some of whom might be rela- tives or friends from home, the Lowell women built a close, supportive community for themselves.

The owners of Lowell made large profits and also drew praise for their carefully managed community, with its intelli- gent and independent workforce. But their success was short- lived. In the 1830s, facing competition and poor economic conditions, the owners imposed wage cuts and work speedups that their model workforce did not take lightly. Despite the sys- tem of paternalistic control at the mills, the close bonds the women forged gave them the courage and solidarity to "turn out" in spontaneous protests, which were, however, unsuccessful

in reversing the wage cuts. By 1850, the "philanthropic manufacturing college" was no more. The original

Lowell workforce of New England farm girls had been largely replaced by poor Irish immigrants of both sexes, who earned much less than their predecessors. Now Lowell was simply another mill town.

The history of Lowell epitomizes the process by which the North (New England

and the Middle Atlantic states) industrialized. A society composed largely of self-sufficient farm fami-

lies (Jefferson's "yeoman farmers") changed to one of urban wage earners. Industrialization did not occur overnight. Once under way, the market revolution changed how people worked, how they thought, and how they lived: the very basis of community. In the early years of the nineteenth century, northern communities led this transformation, fostering atti- tudes far different from those prevalent in the agrarian South.

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

* New Orleans

Gulf of Mexico

Travel time from New York

1 day

3 days

1 week

I I f 1

1857

..Boston

-New York

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

• New Orleans

Gulf of Mexico

INDUSTRY AND THE NORTH, 179os-184os CHAPTER 12 lir 2 97 THE TRANSPORTATION REVOLUTION

etween 1800 and 1840, the United States experienced truly revolution- ary improvements in transportation. More than any other development, these improvements encouraged Americans to look beyond their local

communities to broader ones and to foster the enterprising commercial spirit for which they became so widely known (see Map 12.1).

ROADS

In 1800, travel by road was difficult for much of the year. Mud in the spring, dust in the summer, and snow in the winter all made travel by horseback or carriage uncom- fortable, slow, and sometimes dangerous. Localities and states tried to improve local roads or contracted with private turnpike companies to build, maintain, and collect tolls on important stretches of road. In general, however, local roads remained poor. The federal government demonstrated its commitment to the improvement of interregional transportation by funding the National Road in 1808, at the time the greatest single federal transportation expense. Stretching from Cumberland, Maryland, to Vandalia, Illinois, the National Road tied the East and the West together, strong evidence of the nation's commitment to both expansion and cohesion, and helped to foster a national community.

WHAT WERE the effects of the

transportation revolution?

myhistcOylab Review Summary

1800

MAP 12.1 Travel Times, 1800 and 1857 The transportation revolution dramatically reduced travel times and vastly expanded everyone's horizons. Improved roads, canals, and the introduction of steamboats and railroads made it easier for Americans to move and made even those who did not move less

isolated. Better transportation linked the developing West to the eastern seaboard and fostered a sense of national identity and pride.

HOW DID the federal government's funding of the National Road affect life in the United States?

IMAGE KEY

for pages 294-295

mmoom.ivimPoeMMIPPOMP MENRWIIP.M."0.11MMPION.—

a. A magazine from the Lowell,

Massachusetts mills.

b. The Merrimack textile mills with

boarding houses Middlesex Company Woolen Mills, Lowell, Massachusetts.

c. Well-dressed nineteenth-century adults enjoy a formal picnic outdoors.

d. A metal lunch pail of a

nineteenth-century factory worker.

e. 1849 Currier and Ives print,

The Express Train. f. A one dollar banknote from the

Manufacturers Bank of Lowell,

Massachusetts.

g. Cyrus McCormick demonstrating his

reaper to farmers.

h. A nineteenth-century family portrait.

QUICK REVIEW

The Erie Canal

♦ Link between New York City and the Great Lakes.

♦ Built first by local farmers and then by Irish and imigrant labor.

• Completed in 10 years.

298 tilt CHAPTER 12 INDUSTRY AND THE NORTH, 179os-184os

9-3 Jesse Hawley, The Case for the Erie Canal (1807)

CANALS AND STEAMBOATS

However much they helped the movement of people, the National Road and other roads were unsatisfactory in a commercial sense. Shipments of bulky goods like grain were too slow and expensive by road. Waterborne transportation was much cheaper and still the major commercial link among the Atlantic seaboard states and in the Mississippi-Ohio River system. But before the 1820s, most water routes were north-south or coastal (Boston to Charleston, for example); east-west links were urgently needed. Canals turned out to be the answer.

The Erie Canal—the most famous canal of the era—was the brainchild of New York governor DeWitt Clinton, who envisioned a link between New York City and the Great Lakes through the Hudson River, and a 364-mile-long canal stretching from Albany to Buffalo.

DeWitt Clinton had promised, to general disbelief, that the Erie Canal would be completed in less than ten years, and he made good on his promise. The canal was the wonder of the age. The Erie Canal provided easy passage to and from the interior, both for people and for goods. It drew settlers like a magnet from the East and, increasingly, from overseas: by 1830, some 50,000 people a year were moving west on the canal to the rich farmland of Indiana, Illinois, and territory farther west. Earlier settlers now had a national, indeed an international, market for their produce. Moreover, farm families along the canal began purchasing household goods and cloth, formerly made at home. Indeed, one of the most dramatic illus- trations of the canal's impact was a rapid decline in the production of homespun cloth in the towns and counties along its route.

Towns along the canal—Utica, Rochester, Buffalo—became instant cities, each an important commercial center in its own right. Perhaps the greatest ben- eficiary was New York City, which quickly established a commercial and financial supremacy no other American city could match. The Erie Canal decisively turned New York's merchants away from Europe and toward America's own heartland, building both interstate commerce and a feeling of community. The phenomenal success of the Erie Canal prompted other states to construct similar waterways to tap the rich interior market. Between 1820 and 1840, $200 million was invested in canal building.

An even more important improvement in water transportation, especially in the American interior, was the steamboat. Robert Fulton first demonstrated the commercial feasibility of steamboats in 1807, and they were soon operating in the East. Redesigned with more efficient engines and shallower, broader hulls, steamboats transformed commerce on the country's great inland river system: the Ohio, the Mississippi, the Missouri, and their tributaries. Steamboats were extremely dangerous, however; boiler explosions, fires, and sinkings were common, leading to one of the first public demands for regulation of private enterprise in 1838.

Dangerous as they were, steamboats greatly stimulated trade in the nation's interior. The increased river- and canal-borne trade, like the New England ship- ping boom of a generation earlier, stimulated urban growth and all kinds of com- merce. Cities such as Cincinnati, already notable for its rapid growth, experienced a new economic surge. A frontier outpost in 1790, Cincinnati was by the 1830s a center of steamboat manufacture and machine tool production as well as a cen- tral shipping point for food for the southern market.

INDUSTRY AND THE NORTH, 17gos-184os CHAPTER 12 299

This Currier and Ives print of 1849, The Express Train, captures the popular awe at the speed and wonder of the new technology. This "express" probably traveled no more than 30 miles per hour.

RAILROADS

Remarkable as all these transportation changes were, the most remarkable was still to come. Railroads, new in 1830 (when the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad opened with 13 miles of track), grew to an astounding 31,000 miles by 1860. By that date, New England and the Old Northwest had laid a dense network of rails, and several lines had reached west beyond the Mississippi. The South, the least industrialized

section of the nation, had fewer railroads. Early railroads, like the steamboat, had to overcome many technological and

supply problems. For example, locomotives, to generate adequate power, had to be heavy. Heavy locomotives, in turn, required iron rather than wooden rails. The resulting demand forced America's iron industry to modernize. Heavy engines also required a solid gravel roadbed and strong wooden ties. Arranging steady supplies of both and the labor to lay them was a construction challenge on a new scale. Finally, there were problems of standardization: because so many early railroads were short and local, builders used any gauge (track width) that served their purposes. It was not until the 1850s that consolidation of local railroads into larger systems began in

earnest_ But already it was clear that this newest transportation innovation would have

far-reaching social consequences.

QUICK REVIEW

Railroads

• 1830: 13 miles of track in the United States.

♦ 1860: 31,000 miles of track in the United States.

• Early railroads had to overcome technological and supply problems.

THE EFFECTS OF THE TRANSPORTATION REVOLUTION

The new ease of transportation fueled economic growth by making distant markets accessible. The startling successes of innovations such as canals and railroads attracted large capital investments, including significant amounts from foreign investors ($500 million between 1790 and 1861), which fueled further growth.

Every east—west road, canal, and railroad helped to reorient Americans away from the Atlantic and toward the heartland. This new focus was decisive in the cre- ation of national pride and identity. The transportation revolution fostered an optimistic, risk-taking mentality in the United States that stimulated invention

QUICK REVIEW

Apprenticeship System

• Trades were controlled through a system of apprenticeship.

• Apprentices learned their craft over a three-to-seven-year period.

• Apprentices usually lived with the master craftsman overseeing their training.

300

CHAPTER 12 INDUSTRY AND THE NORTH, 179os-184os

Market revolution The outcome of three interrelated developments: rapid improvements in transportation, commercialization, and industrialization.

and innovation. More than anything, the transportation revolution allowed peo- ple to move with unaccustomed ease. Transportation improvements such as the Erie Canal and the National Road linked Americans in larger communities of interest, beyond the local communities in which they lived. And improved trans- portation made possible the larger market on which commercialization and indus- trialization depended (see Map 12.2).

THE MARKET REVOLUTION

rin

he market revolution, the most fundamental change American commu- nities had ever experienced, was the outcome of three interrelated devel- opments: the rapid improvements in transportation just described,

commercialization, and industrialization.

THE ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL

In the northern states, the business community was composed largely of mer- chants in the seaboard cities: Boston, Providence, New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Many had made substantial profits in the international shipping boom period from 1790 to 1807 (as discussed in Chapter 9).

When the early years of the nineteenth century posed difficulties for interna- tional trade, some of the nation's wealthiest men turned to local investments. In Providence, Rhode Island, Moses Brown and his son-in-law William Almy began to invest some of the profits the Brown family had reaped from a worldwide trade in iron, candles, rum, and African slaves in the new manufacture of cotton textiles. Cincin- nati merchants banded together to finance the building of the first steamboats to oper-

ate on the Ohio River. Much of the capital for the new investments came from banks, both those in

seaport cities that had been established for the international trade and those, like the Lynn, Massachusetts, Mechanics Bank, founded in 1814 by a group of Lynn's Quaker merchants, that served local clients. An astonishing amount of capital, however, was raised through family connections. In the late eighteenth century, members of the business communities in the seaboard cities had begun to consol- idate their position and property by intermarriage.

Southern cotton provided the capital for continuing development. Because

Northerners built the nation's ships, controlled the shipping trade, and provided the nation's banking, insurance, and financial services, the astounding growth in southern cotton exports enriched northern merchants almost as much as south- ern planters. Southerners complained that their combined financial and shipping costs diverted forty cents of every dollar paid for their cotton to Northerners. Although imperfectly understood at the time, the truth is that the development of northern industry was paid for by southern cotton produced by enslaved African American labor. The surprising wealth that cotton brought to southern planters fos- tered the market revolution.

Finally, the willingness of American merchants to "think big" and risk their money in the development of a large domestic market was caused in part by Amer- ican nationalism. Their confidence in a future that did not yet exist was not simply a sober economic calculation but an assertion of pride in the potential of this new and expanding nation.

WHAT WAS the market revolution?

myhistaylab Review Summary

Syracuse owell Boston

Cumberland Winchester

Baltimore

Washington, D.C.

Chesapeake & Ohio Canal

Richmond

Portsmouth

Hannibal

Frankfort

Terre Haute

Louisville

Boonesboro

James R. Lynchburg

• Roanoke

Natche — Roads, 1830

— Canals, 1830

auso Navigable waterways, 1830

r1—• Railroads, 1850 St. Augustine

,..%New Orleans

Portland

Buffalo

New Haven

Chicago

La Salle

-6 o Road Detroit

Toledo CI

rr

and tf Main Line Canal

Akron

eelin. Pitts urg

Fort Wayne

New York

a sburg Philadelphia ancaster

Vandalia

Evans

ATLANTIC

OCEAN Augusta Hamburg

Charleston

avannah

Erie Canal

Cincinnati

Raleigh

Nashville

Memphis

rcester rovidence

MAP EXPLORATION To explore an interactive version of this map, go to http://www.prenhall.com/faraghertIc/map12.2

Gulf of Mexico

MAP 12.2 Commercial Links: Rivers, Canals, Roads, 1830, and Rail Lines, 1850 By 1830, the United States was tied together by a network of roads, canals, and rivers. This transportation revolution fostered a great burst of commercial activity and economic growth. Transportation improve-

ments accelerated the commercialization of agriculture by getting farmers' products to wider, nonlocal markets. Access to wider markets like-

wise encouraged new textile and other manufacturers to increase their scale of production. By 1850, another revolutionary mode of

transportation, the railroad, had emerged as a vital link to the transportation infrastructure.

HOW DIED the transportation revolution of the mid-nineteenth century fuel the American economy?

30 1

302

CHAPTER 12 INDUSTRY AND THE NORTH, 179os- 184os

Putting-out system Production of goods in private homes under the supervision of a merchant who "put out" the raw materials, paid a certain sum per finished piece, and sold the completed item to a distant market.

THE PUTTING- OUT SYSTEM

Initially, the American business community invested not in machinery and facto- ries, but in the "putting-out system" of home manufacture, thereby expanding and transforming it. In this significant departure from preindustrial work, people still produced goods at home, but under the direction of a merchant, who "put out" the raw materials to them, paid them a certain sum per finished piece, and sold the com- pleted item to a distant market. A look at the shoe industry in Lynn, Massachu- setts, shows how the putting-out system transformed American manufacturing.

Long a major center of the shoe industry, Lynn, in 1800, produced 400,000 pairs of shoes—enough for every fifth person in the country. Skilled craftsmen in Lynn controlled production through the traditional system of apprenticeship. Apprentices lived with the master craftsman and were treated like members of the family. Commonly, apprentices became journeymen craftsmen, working for wages in the shops of master craftsmen until they had enough capital to set up shop for themselves. In Lynn, 200 master artisans and their families, including their journeymen and apprentices, worked together in hundreds of small home work- shops called "ten-footers" (from their size, about ten feet square) . The artisans and journeymen cut the leather, the artisans' wives and daughters did the bind- ing of the upper parts of the shoe, the men stitched the shoe together, and chil-

dren and apprentices helped where needed. In the early days, the artisan commonly bartered his shoes for needed products. Sometimes an artisan sold his shoes to a larger retailer in Boston or Salem. Although production of shoes in Lynn increased

yearly from 1780 to 1810 as markets widened, shoes contin- ued to be manufactured in traditional ways.

The investment of merchant capital in the shoe business changed everything. In Lynn, a small group of Quaker shop- keepers and merchants, connected by family, religious, and business ties, took the lead in reorganizing the trade. Financed by the bank they founded in 1814, Lynn capitalists like Mica- jah Pratt built large, two-story central workshops. Pratt

employed a few skilled craftsmen to cut leather for shoes, but he put out the rest of the shoemaking to less-skilled workers who were no longer connected by family ties. Putting-out work- ers were paid on a piecework basis and much less than a mas- ter craftsman or a journeyman. This arrangement allowed the capitalist to employ much more labor for the same investment than the traditional artisan workshop. Gradually the putting- out system and central workshops replaced artisans' shops.

The putting-out system moved the control of production from the individual artisan households to the merchant capi- talists, who could now control labor costs, production goals, and shoe styles to fit certain markets. For example, the Lynn trade quickly monopolized the market for cheap boots for southern slaves and western farmers, leaving workshops in other cities to produce shoes for wealthier customers. Addi- tionally, and most important from the capitalist's point of view, the owner of the business controlled the workers and could

This carved and painted figure, designed as a whirligig and trade sign, shows a woman at a spinning wheel. Until the transportation revolution made commercial cloth widely available, spinning was one of the most time-consuming tasks that women and young girls

did at home. .

cut back or expand the labor force as economic and market- place conditions warranted. The unaccustomed severity of eco- nomic slumps like the Panics of 1819 and 1837 made this flexibility especially desirable.

Industrialization and Rural Life

G eorge Inness was an American artist of the Hudson River School. Like the better-known Thomas Cole (see Chapter 11), Inness specialized in painting settled and cultivated eastern landscapes. This painting was commissioned by the president of the Delaware Lackawanna and Western Railroad to mark its opening. Inness rose to the challenge of

showing both the double tracks (foreground) and the roundhouse (background) in a rural

landscape, but the railroad committee was not satisfied, demanding that he show all four

company locomotives (three are in the background) and that the letters D.L. &Wbe painted

on the side of the locomotive. At first Inness refused on artistic grounds, but being in need

of money, he finally agreed. The painting is

WHAT DOES the Inness painting insist that thus one of the first American examples of a you notice about the impact of industrialization "fine art" advertisement. Even at this early on rural life? date, there was conflict between the demands

of art and those of the advertiser.

The presence of a locomotive, the symbol of the machine age, in this pastoral set-

ting must have been a real shock to the first viewers, who were familiar with pastoral land-

scapes but uncomfortable with new inventions like the steam locomotive. Contrast this

painting to the Currier and Ives print The Express Train on p. 299. ■

LeRoy Ireland, The Works of George Inness; An Illustrated Catalogue Raisonne (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1965), p. 28.

George Inness, The

Lackawanna Valley Painting, 1825. 0 1856. Oil on canvas, 86 x 127.5 cm (33 7/8 x 50 3/16 in.) Gift of Mrs. Huttleston Rogers. Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

303

304 CHAPTER 12 INDUSTRY AND THE NORTH, 179os-184os al

While the central workshop system prevailed in Lynn and in urban centers like New York City, the putting-out system also fostered a more dispersed form of home production. By 1810, there were an estimated 2,500 so-called outwork weavers in New England, operating handlooms in their own homes. Other crafts that rapidly became organized according to the putting-out system were flax and wool spinning, straw braiding, glove making, and the knitting of stockings.

THE SPREAD OF COMMERCIAL MARKETS

Although the putting-out system meant a loss of independence for artisans such as those in Lynn, Massachusetts, New England farm families liked it. From their point of view, the work could easily be combined with domestic work, and the pay was a new source of income that they could use to purchase mass-produced goods rather than spend the time required to make those things themselves. In this way farm families moved away from the local barter system and into a larger market economy.

Commercialization, or the replacement of barter by a cash economy, did not happen immediately or uniformly throughout the nation. Fixed prices for goods produced by the new principles of specialization and division of labor appeared first along established trade routes. Rural areas in established sections of the country that were remote from trade routes continued in traditional ways (see Seeing History). Strikingly, however, western farming frontiers were com- mercial from the very start. The existence of a cash market was an important spur to westward expansion.

THE YANKEE WEST

-N‘ very advance in transportation—better roads, canals, steamboats, railroads— made it easier for farmers to get their produce to market. Improvements

-4 in agricultural machinery increased the amount of acreage a farmer could cultivate. These two developments, added to the availability of rich, inexpensive land in the heartland, dramatically changed the Old Northwest. The sudden change from subsistence to commercial agriculture in the Old Northwest is a particularly vivid example of the impact of transportation changes and commercialization.

NEW ROUTES WEST

The impact of the transportation revolution on the Old Northwest was startling. Settlement of the region, ongoing since the 1790s, vastly accelerated. In the decade of the 1830s, three quarters of a million people migrated to the region, and by 1850 the population of the Old Northwest almost quadrupled.

Migrants of New England origin (Yankees) accounted for at least 40 per- cent of the population, and they brought with them a distinctive culture that stressed community building. New Englanders immediately established schools, churches, and town government in their new locations. Southern migrants, like their counterparts who migrated to the Old Southwest, were much more likely to rely on kinship ties rather than found community institutions, except for churches. Yankees were different from Southerners in another way: they welcomed com- mercial agriculture.

COMMERCIAL AGRICULTURE IN THE OLD NORTHWEST

The long period of subsistence farming that had characterized colonial New Eng- land and the early Ohio Valley frontier before 1830 was superseded by commercial agriculture stimulated by the transportation revolution.

QUICK REVIEW

The Putting-Out System

• Production of goods at home under the supervision of a merchant.

• Lynn, Massachusetts used putting- out system to become a center of the shoe industry.

• System gave control of production to merchant capitalists.

—.......m.wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww....

WHAT IMPACT did advances in

transportation have in the Old

Northwest?

myhistcylab Review Summary

INDUSTRY AND THE NORTH, 1790s- 184os CHAPTER 12

305

The very need for cash to purchase land involved western settlers in commer- cial agriculture from the beginning. Farmers, and the towns and cities that grew up to supply them, needed access to markets for their crops. Local residents clam- ored for the canals and railroads (often financed by state as well as private money) that tied the individual farm into national and international commercial networks. Commercial agriculture in turn encouraged regional specialization. Because in each new western area wheat yields were higher than in earlier ones, farmers in older regions were forced to shift away from wheat to other crops. The con- stant opening of new farmland encouraged mobility. Prepared to move on when the price was right, they regarded their farmland not as a permanent investment but as a speculation. This too marked a difference from colonial and southern atti- tudes in which permanent ownership of farms, with enough to land to endow one's sons, had always been the goal.

New tools made western farmers unusually productive. John Deere's steel plow (invented in 1837) and Cyrus McCormick's reaper (patented in 1834) greatly increased potential production. Western farmers rushed to buy the new machines, confident that increased production would rapidly pay for them. In most years, their confidence was justified. But in bad years, farmers found that their new levels of debt could mean failure and foreclosure.

Thus, within a few short years the Old Northwest became the nation's agri- cultural heartland. In 1859, the region produced 46 percent of the nation's wheat and 33 percent of its corn. Moreover, a steadily increasing amount was exported to foreign markets: from 12 percent in 1820 to 27 percent in 1840 to 70 percent in 1860. While Southerners boasted in 1858 that "Cotton is King," in fact the Old

Northwest, not the South, had become the export heart of the national economy.

Cyrus McCormick is shown demon-

strating his reaper to skeptical farm- ers. When they saw that the

machine cut four times as much

wheat a day as a hand held scythe,

farmers flocked to buy McCormick's

invention. Agricultural practices,

little changed for centuries, were revolutionized by machines such as this.

oledo

Ro,, Detroit • Fort Wayne

INDIANA

• LaCrosse

Milwaukee *

Chicago

La Salle leveland

Akron

ILLINOIS o

9,oz`

Vandalia St. Louis

Evansville

ts12' .C\CP

Terre Haute Cincinnati

306 CHAPTER 12 INDUSTRY AND THE NORTH, 17905-184os di

Population density per sq. mi.

More than 6

2 to 6

Fewer than 2

— Roads, 1830

— Canals, 1830

Nom Navigable waterways, 1830

i—r—r Railroads, 1850

MICHIGAN

TERRITORY CANADA

MAP 12.3 Commercial Links: The Old Northwest, 1850 After 1825, the Erie Canal brought streams of migrants to the upper parts of the Old Northwest, where they quickly built the roads, canals and railroads

that made their commercial agriculture possible.

WHAT EFFECT did the opening of various canals, including the Erie Canal, have on cities such as St. Louis,

Chicago, and New Orleans?

TRANSPORTATION CHANGES AFFECT THE CITIES

The changing fortunes of the region's major cities demon- strate the dramatic effects of improvements in transporta- tion. Before 1830, when the easiest way to move goods and people was by water, Ohioans shipped corn and hogs first by flatboat and later by steamboat down the Ohio and Missis- sippi Rivers to New Orleans. Cincinnati, the center of the Ohio trade, earned the nickname "Porkopolis" because of the importance of its slaughterhouses.

After 1830, with the opening of the Erie Canal and canals in Ohio and Illinois, St. Louis became the distribution point for the flood of goods New York merchants sent west- ward via the canal system. St. Louis became a magnet for migration: in 1849, the year of the California gold rush (see Chapter 14), 60,000 people passed through the city.

After 1840, with the impact of railroads, the region's dis- tribution system changed again, causing Chicago, barely a dot on the map early in the century, to grow at an incredible rate. By 1860, it had reached a population of 100,000 and, although still smaller than Cincinnati and St. Louis, was clearly destined to become the nation's east—west hub (see Map 12.3).

The loser in this economic redistribution was New Orleans. As early as 1853, only 30 percent of Old Northwest produce was shipped via New Orleans, while 60 percent was exported via the Erie Canal. Railroads increased the dispar- ity, while at the same time they provided easy transportation to New Englanders who wanted to move west. These new transportation links tied the Old Northwest to New York and New England economically and politically, creating, as one Southerner bitterly commented, a "universal Yankee nation" that was a huge factor in the sectional disputes and eventual civil war that were to come (see Chapter 15).

04 9-7 Henry Clay, Defense of the 111, American System (1832)

INDUSTRIALIZATION BEGINS A v - Ahe most dramatic single aspect of the market revolution was industrializa- tion. Even in its earliest stages, industrialization changed the nature of work itself.

BRITISH TECHNOLOGY AND AMERICAN INDUSTRIALIZATION

Begun in Britain in the eighteenth century, industrialization was the result of a series of technological changes in the textile trade. In marked contrast to the putting-out system, in which capitalists had dispersed work into many individual households, industrialization required workers to concentrate in factories and pace themselves to the rhythms of power-driven machinery.

The simplest and quickest way for America to industrialize was to copy the British, but the British, well aware of the value of their machinery, enacted laws forbidding its export and even the emigration of skilled workers. Over the years, however, Americans managed to lure a number of British artisans to

the United States.

HOW DID industrialization affect

workers in early factories?

myhisteiciylab Review Summary

Domestic service 11.6%

Boots and

shoes 14.4%

Palm hats and straw bonnets

48.6%

Teaching 3.6%

Garments 3%

Miscellaneous other 1.4%

Textiles 17.3%

INDUSTRY AND THE NORTH, 179os-184os CHAPTER 12 307

This photograph shows the much restored Slater Mill, the first cotton textile factory

in the United States, and the falls that powered its machinery. Built in 1793, the

mill—now a National Historic Landmark—, is an example of the way early entre-

preneurs used the power potential of New England's swiftly flowing streams.

In 1789, Samuel Slater, who had just finished an apprentice- ship in the most up-to-date cotton spinning factory in England, dis- guised himself as a farm laborer and slipped out of England without even telling his mother good-bye. In Providence, Rhode Island, he met

Moses Brown and William Almy, who had been trying without success to duplicate British industrial technology. Having carefully commit- ted the designs to memory before leaving England, Slater promptly built copies of the latest British machinery for Brown and Almy.

Many other merchants and mechanics followed Slater's lead, and the rivers of New England were soon dotted with mills wherever waterpower could be tapped.

THE LOWELL MILLS

Another way to deal with British competition was to beat the British at their own game. With the intention of designing better machin- ery, a young Bostonian, Francis Cabot Lowell, made an apparently casual tour of British textile mills in 1810.

When he returned to the United States, he went to work with a Boston mechanic, Paul Moody, to improve on the British models. Low- ell and Moody not only made the machinery for spinning cotton more efficient, but they also invented a power loom. This was a great advance, for now all aspects of textile manufacture, from the initial cleaning and carding (combing) to the production of finished lengths of cloth, could be gathered together in the same factory. Such a mill required a much larger capital investment than a small spinning mill such as Slater's, but Lowell's family network gave him access to the needed funds. In 1814, he opened the world's first integrated cotton mill in Waltham, near Boston. It was a great success: in 1815, the Boston Asso- ciates (Lowell's partners) made profits of 25 percent, and their effi- ciency allowed them to survive the intense British competition following the War of 1812. Many smaller New England mills did not survive.

The Boston Associates took the lesson to heart, and when they moved their enterprise to a new location in 1823, they thought big. They built an entire town at the junction of the Concord and Mer- rimack Rivers where the village of East Chelmsford stood, renam- ing it Lowell in memory of Francis, who had died, still a young man,

in 1817 (see Map 12.4).

FAMILY MILLS

Lowell was unique. Much more common in the early days of industri- alization were small rural spinning mills, on the model of Slater's first mill, built on swiftly running streams near existing farm communi-

ties. Because the owners of smaller mills often hired entire families, their operations came to be called family mills. Children aged eight to twelve, whose customary job was "doffing" (changing) bobbins on the spinning machines, made up 50 percent of the workforce. Women and men each made up about 25 percent of the workforce, but men had the most skilled and best-paid jobs. (See Figure 12.1.)

Total women employed 105,977

Figure 12.1 Occupations of Women Wage Earners in Massachusetts, 1837 This chart shows how important piecework was for women

workers. Textile work in factories occupied less than 20 per-

cent of women, while piecework making palm-leaf hats, straw bonnets, and boots and shoes accounted for over half of the total workforce. Teaching was a new occupation for women in 1837; the small percentage of 3.6 would grow in the future.

Based on Thomas Dublin, Transforming Women's Work (Ithaca, NY: Cornell

University Press, 1991), Table 1.1, p. 20.

Building Types

■ Factories I

I ❑ Boarding Houses

• Other company housing

❑ Hotels E Churches

■ Municipal buildings D Other buildings (mostly residences) 0 1/4 Kilometer

Massack Falls

CHAPTER 12 INDUSTRY AND THE NORTH, 17gos-184os

MAP EXPLORATION To explore an interactive version of this map, go to http://www.prenhall.com/faraghertIc/map12.4

MAP 12.4

Lowell, Massachusetts, 1832 This town plan of Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1832, illustrates the comprehensive relationship the owners envis- aged between the factories and the workforce. The mills are located on the Merrimack River, while nearby are the boardinghouses for the sin- gle young female workers, row houses for the male mechanics and their families, and houses for the overseers. Somewhat farther away is the mansion of the company agent.

HOW DID the plan of the town of Lowell affect the people who lived there?

Relations between these small rural mill communities and the surround- ing farming communities were often difficult, as the history of the towns of Dud- ley and Oxford, Massachusetts, shows. Samuel Slater, now a millionaire, built three small mill communities near these towns in the early years of the nine- teenth century and Slater's mills provided a substantial amount of work for local people. But in spite of this economic link, relations between Slater and his work- ers on one side and the farmers and shopkeepers of the Dudley and Oxford com- munities on the other were stormy. They disagreed over the building of mill

308

tI

INDUSTRY AND THE NORTH, 179os- 184os CHAPTER 12 di 309

dams, over taxes, over the upkeep of local roads, and over schools. The residents

of Dudley and Oxford became increasingly hostile to Slater's authoritarian con- trol, which they regarded as undemocratic. Their dislike carried over to the work- ers as well. Disdaining the mill workers for their poverty and transiency, people in the rural communities began referring to them as "operatives," making them somehow different in their work roles from themselves. Industrial work thus led to new social distinctions.

"THE AMERICAN SYSTEM OF MANUFACTURES"

Not all American industrial technology was copied from British inventions, for there were many homegrown inventors. Perhaps the most important invention was the development of standardized parts.

The concept of interchangeable parts, realized first in gun manufacturing, was so unusual that the British soon dubbed it the "American system." In this sys- tem, a gun was broken down into its component parts and an exact mold was made for each. All pieces made from the same mold (after being hand filed by inex- pensive unskilled laborers) matched a uniform standard. As a result, repairing a gun required only installing a replacement for the defective part rather than labo-

riously making a new part or perhaps an entirely new gun, as had been the cus- tomary practice.

America's early lead in interchangeable parts was a substantial source of national pride. Standardized production quickly revolutionized the manufacture of items as simple as nails and as complicated as clocks.

American businesses mass-produced high-quality goods for ordinary people earlier than manufacturers in Britain or any other European country were able to do. The availability of these goods was a practical demonstration of American beliefs in democracy and equality.

FROM ARTISAN TO WORKER

rip he changes wrought by the market revolution had major and lasting effects on ordinary Americans. The proportion of wage laborers in the nation's labor force rose from 12 percent in 1800 to 40 percent by 1860. Most of these workers were employed in the North, and almost half were women.

American system A technique of production pioneered in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century that relied on precision manufacturing with the use of interchangeable parts.

=1111111111111111111111111110=

HOW DID the market revolution

change the lives of ordinary people?

myhistiiylab Review Summary

In 1816, Connecticut gunsmith Simeon North did what Eli Whitney had only hoped to do. North produced the first gun with interchange- able parts. North's invention, taken up and improved by the national armories at Springfield and Harpers Ferry, formed the basis of the

American system of manufactures.

310

CHAPTER 12 INDUSTRY AND THE NORTH, 179os-184os

PREINDUSTRIAL WAYS OF WORKING

When Lowell began operation, 97 percent of all Americans still lived on farms, and most work was done in or near the home. As had been true in colonial times, the lives of most people were family and community based and depended on local networks of barter and mutual obligation. Work was slow, unscheduled, and task oriented. People did their jobs as they needed to be done, along with the daily

household routine. "Home" and "work" were not separate locations or activities but were intermixed. Likewise, in urban areas, skilled craftsmen organized the apprenticeship system in the family-learning model used in farms, training appren- tices who became journeymen and skilled workers in turn.

In both rural and urban settings, working families were organized along strictly patriarchal lines. The man had unquestioned authority to direct the lives and work of family members and apprentices and to decide on occupations for his sons and marriages for his daughters. His wife had many crucial responsibilities—feeding, clothing, child rearing, taking care of apprentices, and all the other domestic affairs of the household—but in all these duties she was subject to the direction of her husband. Men were heads of families and bosses of artisanal shops; although entire families were engaged in the enterprise, the husband and father was the trained craftsman, and assistance by the family was informal and generally unrecognized.

MECHANIZATION AND GENDER

The apprenticeship system was destroyed by the immense increase in productiv- ity Made possible by the principles of division of labor and specialization applied in shoe production in Lynn and in other trades elsewhere.

9-9

The Harbinger, Female Workers

of Lowell (1836)

11-6 A Lowell Mill Girl Tells Her

Story (1836)

In the 1840s, Edward Hicks painted his childhood home, rendering an idealized image of rural

harmony that owes more to faith in republican agrarianism than to the artist's accurate memory. The prosperous preindustrial farm had a mixed yield—sheep, cattle, dairy products, and field crops—and had an African American farm worker (perhaps a slave), shown plowing.

"Residence of David Twining," 1787. Oil on canvas. Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation,

Williamsburg, VA.

INDUSTRY AND THE NORTH, 179os-184os CHAPTER 12 di 3 11

This illustration of seamstresses at work, from Sartain's Union Magazine, January 1851, shows an early abuse created by the market revolution. Women workers were crowded into just a few occu- pations, thereby allowing owners to offer very low wages for very long hours of work. The women in this illustration appear to be gathered together in a central workshop, where they had each other for company. Many other women sewed alone at home, often for even lower wages.

Industrialization posed a further threat to the status and independence of skilled male workers. In trade after trade, mechanization meant that most tasks could be performed by unskilled labor. In fact, the work in the textile mills was so simple that children came to form a large part of the workforce. By 1850, in New

York City, many formerly skilled trades were filled with unskilled, low-paid work- ers who did one specialized operation or tended machinery. Many former artisans were reduced to performing wage labor for others. Because women were so fre- quently hired in the putting-out system, male workers began to oppose female participation in the workforce, fearing that it would lower their own wages.

These fears appeared to be confirmed by the experience of women in the

new garment industry, which emerged in the 1820s. In New York City, employers began hiring women to sew ready-made clothing, at first rough, unfitted clothing for sailors and southern slaves, but later, overalls and shirts for Westerners, and finer items, such as men's shirts. Most women performed this work at low piecework rates

in their homes. Soon the low pay and seasonal nature of the industry became notorious.

Overcrowding of the market—all women could sew—led to low wages. To make matters worse, most people believed that "respectable" women did not do factory work, and this disparagement fostered low pay and poor working conditions.

Manufacturers in the garment trade made their profits not from efficient

production but by obtaining intensive labor for very low wages. The lower the piece rate, the more each woman, sewing at home, had to produce to earn enough to live.

myhistsziiylab Exploring America: Machinery

QUICK REVIEW

Women in the Workforce

♦ Industrialization threatened skilled male workers.

Mechanization created opportuni- ties for women to work outside the home.

♦ The growing garment industry of the 1820s depended on cheap female labor.

TIME TABLE OF THE LOWELL MILLS, To take effect on and after Oct. 21st, 1851,

The oriel time heist thil of ht mill of Lie. n thou by lit 'Wen fat d JOSH 11TAU. 43 lead Flint II if awn let to Ithlt 111.01UniVe. Foes 11th to duut malatam. I P.05, 51.0 to lama day of mouth.

Stlad3a111 2‘113.153dBellillamk1111 atBelltdd 8.3,34 BenilleklillIst.B.812dBell. 3dBelliIvalelL Sanuary, 5.00 6.00 6.50 •7.80 5.00 000 6.50 • .so 5.00 6.00 6.50 • 7.30 'eltruary,

dumb,

4.80 6.40

5.30 6.00

6.40 *7.80 • 7.80

4.80 5.20

5.80 5.40

0.25 • .30 • .30

4.80 5.80

5.05 5.25 0.15 • .30

6.35 Sprit, 4.45 5.05 6.45 4.30 4.50 6.65 4.80 4.50 7.00 Huy,

.oly,

480

I

4.50

I

lotto ,

7.00

"

4.30

"

4.50

"

7.00 4.80

"

4.50

"

700

" 1ugud, .. " .. 0 0 0 0 0 ..

September 4.40 5.00 6.45 450 5.10 6.30 5.00 5.20 • 7.30 ),oboe, 5.10 5.30 • 7.80 5.20 5.40 • 730 5.85 5.55 •7.30 ■ovotabor, 4.80 5.30 6.10 • .30 4.30 5.30 8.20 • 7.30 5.00 6.00 6.35 • 7.80 (roomier, 5 006.00 6.45 9.80 5.00 6.00 6.50 1 "7.80 5.00 6.00 1 6.50 •7.80

• 00 VANWITIO fro.. *mama to Xs. ash Isalvalve, wite5 It IA nog m O mum arms mama

YARD GATES, Will be opened at ringing of last morning bell, of meal bells, and of evening belle; and

kept open Ten minutes.

MILL GATES. Commence hoisting Mill Gates, Two minutes before commencing work.

WORK COMMENCES,

At Ten minutes after last morning bell, and at Ten minutes after bolt which "rings in " from Meals.

BREAKFAST BELLS. During March 0 Ring oat"........ at 7.30 a, m.........“Ring in" at 8:05 a. m. Aprti 1st to Sept. 20th inclusive at.... 700 0 ........ 0 0 at 7.35 Sept. 21st to Oct. 31st inclusive at 7.30 0 " ........ " u at 8.05 " "

Remainder of year work commences after Breakfast.

DINNER BELLS.

Ring out" . 12.30 p. m........."Ring in" .... 1.05 p. rn.

In all cases, the first stroke of the bell is considered as marking the time.

This timetable from the Lowell Mills illustrates the elaborate time schedules that the cotton textile mills expected their employees to meet. For workers, it was difficult to adjust to the regimentation

imposed by clock time, in contrast to the approximate times com-

mon to preindustrial work.

3 12

CHAPTER 12 INDUSTRY AND THE NORTH, 179os- 184os

The invention of the sewing machine only made matters worse. Manufacturers dropped their piecework rates still lower, and some women found themselves working fifteen to eighteen hours a day, producing more than they ever had but earning the same pay.

TIME, WORK, AND LEISURE

Preindustrial work had a flexibility that factory work did not, and it took factory workers a while to get accustomed to the constant pace of work. Factory workers gradually adjusted to having their lives regulated by the sound of the factory bell, but they did not necessarily become the docile "hands" the own- ers wanted. Absenteeism was common and there was much pilfering. Workers were beginning to think of themselves as a separate community whose interests differed from those of owners, and the tyranny of time over their work was certainly one reason for this.

Another adjustment required by the constant pace was that time now had to be divided into two separate activities- work and leisure. In preindustrial times, the place of work- often the home-and the pace made it possible to stop and have a chat or a friendly drink with a visitor. Now, however, the separation of home and workplace and the pace of produc- tion not only squeezed the fun out of the long workday but also left a smaller proportion of time for leisure activities.

For many workingmen, the favored spot for after-hours and Sunday leisure became the local tavern. Community-wide celebrations and casual sociability, still common in rural areas, began to be replaced in cities by spectator sports and by pop- ular entertainments, such as plays, operas, minstrel shows,

concerts, and circuses. Some of these diversions, such as plays and horse racing, appealed to all social classes, but others, like parades, rowdy dance halls, and tav- ern games were favored working-class amusements. The effect of these changes was to make working-class amusements more distinct, and visible, than they had been before.

FREE LABOR

Another effect of the market revolution was the transformation of a largely barter system into cash payments. For workers, this change was both unsettling and lib- erating. On the minus side, workers were no longer part of a settled, orderly, and familiar community. On the plus side, they were now free to labor wherever they could, at whatever wages their skills or their bargaining power could command. That workers took their freedom seriously is evidenced by the very high rate of turnover-50 percent a year-in the New England textile mills.

But if moving on was a sign of increased freedom of opportunity for some workers, for others it was an unwanted consequence of the market revolution. In New England, for example, many quite prosperous artisans and farmers faced dis- ruptive competition from factory goods and western commercial agriculture. They could remain where they were only if they were willing to become factory work- ers or, in the case of farmers, to move west and try to become successful commer- cial farmers themselves.

INDUSTRY AND THE NORTH, 179os-184os CHAPTER 12 313

At the heart of this industrializing economy was the notion of free labor. Originally, "free" referred to individual economic choice—that is, to the right of workers to move to another job rather than be held to a position by customary obligation or the formal contract of apprenticeship or journeyman labor. But "free labor" soon came to encompass as well the range of attitudes—hard work, self-discipline, and a striving for economic independence—that were necessary for success in a competitive, industrializing economy.

The spread of the factory system and of the ideology of free labor soon became an issue in the growing political battle between the North and the South over slav- ery. Southern defenders of slavery compared their cradle-to-grave responsibility to their slaves with northern employers' "heartless" treatment of their "wage slaves."

Southerners were right: this was a heartless system. But Northerners were also right: industrialization was certainly freer than the slave system, freer even than the hier- archical craft system, although it sometimes offered only the freedom to starve.

EARLY STRIKES

Rural women workers led some of the first strikes in American labor history. Among the most famous were the strikes led by the women at the model mill at Lowell. The first serious trouble came in 1834, when 800 women participated in a spontaneous turnout to protest a wage cut of 25 percent. The owners were shocked and outraged by the strike, considering it both unfeminine and ungrate- ful. The workers, however, were bound together by a sense of sisterhood and were protesting not just the attack on their economic independence but also the blow

to their position as "daughters of freemen still." Nevertheless, the wage cuts were enforced, as were more cuts in 1836, again in the face of a turnout. Many women simply packed their clothes in disgust and returned home to the family farm. Oth- ers who remained formed the New England Female Labor Reform Association in

1845. In 1847, legislators in New Hampshire, responding to a petition from women workers in Nashua, made theirs the first state to enact a ten-hour-day law. For the

first time, thanks to women's pioneering role in factory protests, a group of work- ers had obtained state legislation improving their working conditions.

THE NEW MIDDLE CLASS

T he market revolution reached into every aspect of life, down to the most

personal family decisions. As just described, it changed working life. The

market revolution also fundamentally changed the social order, creating

a new middle class with distinctive habits and beliefs.

WEALTH AND RANK

There had always been social divisions in America. Since the early colonial period, planters in the South and merchants in the North had comprised a wealthy elite.

Somewhere below the elite but above the mass of people were the "middling sort":

a small professional group that included lawyers, ministers, schoolteachers, doc-

tors, public officials, some prosperous farmers, prosperous urban shopkeepers and innkeepers, and a few wealthy artisans. "Mechanics and farmers"—artisans and yeoman farmers—made up another large group, and the laboring poor, con- sisting of ordinary laborers, servants, and marginal farmers, were below them. At the very bottom were the paupers—those dependent on public charity—and the enslaved. This was the "natural" social order that fixed most people in the social rank to which they were born.

WHAT VALUES were promoted by

the new middle class?

myhistely1 b Review Summary

3 1 4 dt CHAPTER 12 INDUSTRY AND THE NORTH, 179os-184os

11-1 Joshua and Sally Wilson,

NW Letters to George Wilson (1823)

The market revolution ended this stable and hierarchical social order, cre-

ating the dynamic and unstable one we recognize today: upper, middle, and work-

ing classes, whose members all share the hope of climbing as far up the social

ladder as they can. This social mobility was new. The expanding opportunities of

the market revolution enriched the already rich. At the other extreme, fully one-

third of the population possessed little more than the clothes they wore and some

loose change. The major transformation came in the lives of the "middling sort."

The market revolution downgraded many independent artisans. Formerly

independent artisans or farmers (or, more frequently, their children) joined the

rapidly growing ranks of managers and white-collar workers. These new white-

collar workers owed not only their jobs but also their lifestyles to the new structure

and organization of industry. The new economic order demanded certain habits

and attitudes of workers: sobriety, responsibility, steadiness, and hard work.

Inevitably, employers found themselves not only enforcing these new standards but

also adopting them themselves.

RELIGION AND PERSONAL LIFE

Religion, which had undergone dramatic changes since the 1790s, played a key role

in the emergence of the new attitudes. The Second Great Awakening had sup-

planted the orderly and intellectual Puritan religion of early New England. The

new evangelical religious spirit, which stressed the achievement of salvation through

personal faith, was more democratic and more enthusiastic than the earlier faith.

Conversion and repentance were no longer private, because they now took place

in huge revival meetings in which an entire congregation focused on the sinners

about to be saved and where group support actively encouraged individual con-

version. The converted bore a heavy personal responsibility to demonstrate their

faith in their own daily lives through morally respectable behavior. In this way, the

new religious feeling fostered individualism and self-discipline.

The Second Great Awakening had its greatest initial success on the western

frontier in the 1790s, but by the 1820s, evangelical religion was reaching a new audi-

ence: the people whose lives were being changed by the market revolution and who

needed help in adjusting to the demands made by the new economic conditions.

In 1825, in Utica, New York, and in other towns along the recently opened Erie

Canal, evangelist Charles G. Finney began a series of dramatic revival meetings.

His spellbinding message reached both rich and poor, converting members of all

classes to the new evangelistic religion.

Middle-class women in particular carried Finney's message by prayer and

pleading to the men of their families, who found that evangelism's stress on self-

discipline and individual achievement helped them adjust to new business condi-

tions. The enthusiasm and optimism of evangelism aided what was often a profound

personal transformation in the face of the market's stringent new demands. More-

over, it gave businessmen a basis for demanding the same behavior from their

workers. Businessmen now argued that traditional paternalism had no role in the

new business world. Because achievement depended on individual character, each

worker was responsible for making his own way.

THE NEW MIDDLE-CLASS FAMILY

The economic changes of the market revolution reshaped family roles, first in the

middle class and eventually throughout the entire society. As men increasingly

concentrated their energies on their careers and occupations, women assumed

major new responsibilities for rearing the children and inculcating in them the new

attitudes necessary for success in the business world.

QUICK REVIEW

Class Consciousness

• Social class always existed in

America.

• Market revolution downgraded some independent artisans and elevated others.

• New work patterns helped form distinctive attitudes of new middle

class.

Am

INDUSTRY AND THE NORTH, 179os-184os CHAPTER 12 3 1 5

When the master craftsman became a small manufacturer, or the small sub- sistence farmer began to manage a large-scale commercial operation, production moved away from both the family home and its members. Husbands and fathers

became managers of paid workers—or workers themselves—and although they were still considered the heads of their households, they spent most of the day away

from their homes and families. Their wives, on the other hand, remained at home, where they were still responsible for cooking, cleaning, and other domestic tasks but no longer contributed directly to what had previously been the family enter- prise. Instead, women took on a new responsibility, that of providing a quiet, well- ordered, and relaxing refuge from the pressures of the industrial world.

As the work roles of middle-class men and women diverged, so did social attitudes about appropriate male and female characteristics and behavior. Men were expected to be steady, industrious, responsible, and painstakingly attentive to their business. In contrast, women were expected to be nurturing, gentle, kind, moral, and selflessly devoted to their families. They were expected to operate within the "woman's sphere"—the home.

The maintenance or achievement of a middle-class lifestyle required the joint efforts of husband and wife. More cooperation between them was called for than in the preindustrial, patriarchal family. The nature of the new, companion- ate marriage that evolved in response to the market revolution was reflected most

clearly in decisions concerning children. Middle-class couples had fewer children than did their predecessors. The dramatic fall in the birthrate during the nine- teenth century (from an average of seven children per woman in 1800 to five in 1860) is evidence of conscious decisions about family limitation, first by members of the new middle class and later by working-class families.

When mutual efforts at birth control failed, married women often sought a surgical abortion, a new technique that was much more reliable than the folk

remedies women had always shared among themselves. Surgical abortions were widely advertised after 1830, and widely used, especially by middle-class married women seeking to limit family size. Some historians estimate that one out of every four pregnancies was aborted in the years from 1840 to 1860 (compared to one

in six in 2000). The rising rate of abortion by married women (in other words, its use as birth control) prompted the first legal bans; by 1860, twenty states had out- lawed the practice.

Accompanying the interest in family limitation was a redefinition of sexual- ity. Doctors generally recommended that sexual urges be controlled, but they believed that men would have much more difficulty exercising such control than women, partly because they also believed that women were uninterested in sex. Although it is always difficult to measure the extent to which the suggestions in advice books were applied in actual practice, it seems that many middle-class women accepted this new and limited definition of their sexuality because of the desire to limit the number of their pregnancies.

MIDDLE-CLASS CHILDREN

Child rearing had been shared in the preindustrial household, boys learning farm- ing or craft skills from their fathers while girls learned domestic skills from their mothers. The children of the new middle class, however, needed a new kind of upbringing, one that involved a long period of nurturing in the beliefs and per- sonal habits necessary for success. Mothers assumed primary responsibility for

this training, in part because fathers were too busy but also because people believed that women's superior qualities of gentleness, morality, and loving watchfulness were essential to the task.

11-3 The Mother's Magazine, "Early

Habits of Industry' (1834)

di316 CHAPTER 12 INDUSTRY AND THE NORTH, 179os-184os

11-8 Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance" (1841)

Middle-class status required another sharp break with tradition. As late as 1855, artisanal families expected all children over 15 years to work. Middle-class families, in contrast, sacrificed to keep their sons in school or in training for their chosen professions, and they often housed and fed their sons until the young men had "established" themselves financially and could marry. Mothers took the lead in an important informal activity: making sure their children had friends and con- tacts that would be useful when they were old enough to consider careers and marriage. Matters such as these, rarely considered by earlier generations living in small communities, now became important in the new middle-class communities of America's towns and cities.

Contrary to the growing myth of the self-made man, middle-class success was not a matter of individual achievement. Instead it was usually based on a family strategy in which fathers provided the money and mothers the nurturance. The reorganiza- tion of the family described in this section was successful: from its shelter and support emerged generations of ambitious, responsible, and individualistic middle-class men. But although boys were trained for success, this was not an acceptable goal for their sisters. Women were trained to be the silent "support system" that undergirded male success. And women were also expected to ease the tensions of the transition to new middle-class behavior by acting as models and monitors of traditional values.

SENTIMENTALISM AND TRANSCENDENTALISM

Just as factory workers were forced by the nature of their work to develop new atti- tudes, so too the new middle class adopted attitudes that suited their new social roles. Two new "isms" soon emerged: sentimentalism, which appealed particularly to women, and transcendentalism, which encouraged men to a new self-reliance.

The individualistic competitiveness brought by the market revolution caused women of the new middle class to place extraordinary emphasis on sincerity and feel- ing. So-called sentimentalism sprang from nostalgia for the imagined trust and secu- rity of the familiar, face-to-face life of the preindustrial village. Middle-class women were expected to counteract the impersonality and hypocrisy of the business world by the example of their own morality and sincere feeling.

For guidance in this new role, women turned to a new literary form, the sen- timental novel. Although denounced by ministers and scholars as frivolous, immoral, and subversive of authority, the novel found a ready audience among American women. By 1850, Harper's Magazine estimated, four-fifths of the reading public were women, and they were reading novels written by women.

Sentimental novels concentrated on private life. Religious feeling, antipathy toward the dog-eat-dog world of the commercial economy, and the need to be pre- pared for unforeseen troubles were common themes. Although the heroines usu- ally married happily at the end of the story, few novels concentrated on romantic love. Most of these domestic novels, as they were known, presented readers with a vision of responsibility and community based on moral and caring family life.

Although sentimentalism originally sprang from genuine fear of the dangers individualism posed to community trust, it rapidly hardened into a rigid code of eti- quette for all occasions. Moments of genuine and deep feeling, such as death, were smothered in elaborate rules concerning condolences, expressions of grief, and appro- priate clothing. Transformed into a set of rules about genteel manners to cover all occa- sions, sentimentalism itself became a mark of middle-class status. And it became one of the tasks of the middle-class woman to make sure her family conformed to the social code and associated only with other respectable families. In this way, women forged and enforced the distinctive social behavior of the new middle class.

As the new middle class conformed to the rules of sentimental behavior, it also sought a more general intellectual reassurance. Middle-class men, in particular,

INDUSTRY AND THE NORTH, 179os-184os CHAPTER 12 lit 317

CHRONOLOGY

1790 Samuel Slater's first mill opens in Rhode Island

1798 Eli Whitney contracts with the federal government for 10,000 rifles, which he under- takes to produce with interchangeable parts

1810 Francis Cabot Lowell tours British textile factories

First steamboat on the Ohio River

1812 Micajah Pratt begins his own shoe business in Lynn, Massachusetts

1813 Francis Cabot Lowell raises $300,000 to build his first cotton textile factory at Waltham, Massachusetts

1815 War of 1812 ends; British competition in manufactures resumes

1817 Erie Canal construction begins

1818 National Road completed to Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia)

1820s Large-scale outwork networks develop in New England

1823 Lowell mills open

1824 John Hall successfully achieves interchangeable parts at Harpers Ferry armory

Women lead strike at Pawtucket textile mill

1825 Erie Canal opens

1830 Baltimore and Ohio Railroad opens

Charles G. Finney's Rochester revivals

1833 National Road completed to Columbus, Ohio

1834 First strike at Lowell mills

Cyrus McCormick patents the McCormick reaper

1837 John Deere invents steel plow

1841 Catharine Beecher's Treatise on Domestic Economy published

1845 New England Female Reform Association formed

needed to feel comfortable about their public assertions of individualism and self- interest. One source of reassurance was the philosophy of transcendentalism and its well-known spokesman, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Famous as a writer and lecturer, Emerson popularized transcendentalism, a romantic philosophical theory claim- ing that there was an ideal, intuitive reality transcending ordinary life. The best place to achieve that individual intuition of the Universal Being, Emerson sug- gested, was not in church or in society but alone in the natural world. The same asser- tion of individualism rang through Emerson's stirring polemic "Self-Reliance" (1841). Announcing "Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist," Emer- son urged that "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."

Emerson's younger friend, Henry David Thoreau, pushed the implications of individualism further than the more conventional Emerson. Determined to live the transcendental ideal of association with nature, Thoreau lived in soli- tude in a primitive cabin for two years at Walden Pond, near Concord, Massa- chusetts, confronting "the essential facts of life." His experience was the basis for Walden (1854), a penetrating criticism of the spiritual cost of the market rev- olution. Margaret Fuller, perhaps the most intellectually gifted of the transcen- dental circle, was patronized by Emerson because she was a woman. She expressed her sense of women's wasted potential in her pathbreaking work Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845).

Although Thoreau and Fuller were too radical for many readers, Emer- son's version of the romantic philosophy of transcendentalism, seemingly so at odds with the competitive and impersonal spirit of the market revolution, was in fact an essential component of it. Individualism, or, as Emerson called it, self-reliance, was at the heart of the personal transformation required by the market revolution. Sentimentalism, transcendentalism, and evangelical religion all helped the new middle class to forge values and beliefs that were appropri- ate to their social roles.

Emerson's romantic glorification of nature included the notion of himself as a

"transparent eyeball," as he wrote in "Nature" in 1836. This caricature of Emerson is from "Illustrations of the New Philosophy" by Christopher Pearce Cranch.

3 18 CHAPTER 12 INDUSTRY AND THE NORTH, 17gos-184os

Flashcard Review

CONCLUSION

T he three transformations of the market revolution—improvements in transportation, commercialization, and industrialization—changed the ways people worked, and in time, changed how they thought. For most people, the changes were gradual. Until midcentury, the lives of

rural people were still determined largely by community events, although the spread of democratic politics and the availability of newspapers and other print- ed material increased their connection to a larger world. Wage earners made up only 40 percent of the working population in 1860, and factory workers made up an even smaller percentage.

The new middle class was most dramatically affected by the market revolution. All aspects of life, including intimate matters of family organization, gender roles, and the number and raising of children, changed. New values—evangelical religion, sentimentalism, and transcendentalism—helped the members of the new middle class in their adjustment. As the next chapter describes, the nation's cities were the first arena where old and new values collided.

REVIEW QUESTIONS

1. What changes in preindustrial life and work were caused by the market

revolution?

2. 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?

3. Discuss the opinion offered by historian David Potter that mass produc- tion has been an important democratizing force in American politics. Do you agree? Why or why not?

4. Consider the portrait of the nineteenth-century middle-class 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?

KEY TERMS American system (p. 309) Market revolution (p. 300)

Putting-out system (p. 302)

m hist lab YWhere it's a good time to connect to the past!

litINDUSTRY AND THE NORTH, 179os- 184os CHAPTER 12 319 RECOMMENDED READING Jeffrey S. Adler, Yankee Merchants and the Making of the Urban West (1991). The im-

portance of New England entrepreneurs in St. Louis.

Peter L. Bernstein, Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation (2005). The economic consequences of one of the first public works projects.

Christopher Clark, The Roots of Rural Capitalism: Western Massachusetts, 1780-1860 (1990). The most thorough examination to date of how the

commercial spirit changed rural life.

Alan Dawley, Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn (1976). A pathbreaking study of the shift from artisanal to wage labor.

Susan E. Gray, The Yankee West (1996). Demonstrates the Yankee connection between capitalism and community in lower Michigan.

David Houndshell, From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932 (1984). How an entire network of New England "mechanics" contributed to the invention of interchangeable parts.

Paul Johnson, Sam Patch, the Famous Jumper (2003). Johnson uses the story of Patch, famous for plunging over Niagara Falls, to explore the bumpy tran- sition from independent artisan to wage worker.

Mary Ryan, The Making of the Middle Class (1981) . A study of Utica, New York, demonstrating the role of women in the family strategies of the new middle class.

Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846 (1991).

A synthesis of the political, religious, and economic changes of the period.

Carol Sheriff, The Artificial River: The Erie Canal and the Paradox of Progress, 1817-1862 (1996). Shows how the building of the Erie Canal changed per- sonal lives and fostered religious beliefs in human perfectability.

George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815-1860 (1951). The indis-

pensable book on all aspects of the American economy during this period.

For study resources for this chapter, go to www.myhistorylab.com and choose Out of Many, Teaching and Learning Classroom Edition. You will find a wealth of study and review material for this chapter, including pretests and posttests, customized study plan, key-term review

flash cards, interactive map and document activities, and documents for analysis.

The Second Great Awakening and Religious Diversity in America

0 ne of the reasons that separation of church and state has worked so well in the United States

is the wide diversity of religious affiliations within the American population. From the begin-

ning of English colonial efforts to the time of the American Revolution, this happy scenario

was not necessarily present. In the northern colonies the Congregationalist Church was the estab-

lished state religion among Puritan settlers. In the middle and southern colonies the Anglican

Church or Church of England was the established church.

In 1801 the Danbury Baptist Association wrote a let-

ter to newly elected President Thomas Jefferson complain-

ing that the dominant Congregationalist sect in Connecticut

was threatening to legislate against them and called for reli-

gious freedom. Jefferson responded with a letter outlining

what we now call the separation of church and state.

the early years of the American colonies and nation. The

THE SECOND Great Awakening (1800-1830s) led to the creation of many new religious

affiliations and an increased diversity within

American religious life. How has this growing

diversity impacted American society.

Religious diversity grew slowly in

First Great Awakening of the 1730s and 1740s strengthened the Presbyterian, Baptist, and

Methodist churches in their quest to attract the followers of the Congregationalist and Anglican

churches and create diversity of American religions. The Second Great Awakening created even

greater diversity. ■

CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY, LECTURES ON THE REVIVAL OF

RELIGION, 1835

I WOULD say nothing to undervalue, or lead you to undervalue a thorough education for ministers. But I do not call that a thorough education, which they get in our colleges and sem- inaries. It does not fit them for their work.... Those fathers who have the training of our young ministers are good men, but they are ancient men, men of another age and different stamp from what is needed in these days of excitement, when the church and world are ris- ing to new thought and action. Those dear fathers will not, I suppose, see this; and will - perhaps think hard of me for saying it; but it is the cause of Christi'

FROM AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF PETER CARTWRIGHT, THE BACKWOODS

PREACHER

The revival, or "camp meeting" was the signal event of the Second Great Awakening. Somewhere between 1800 and 1801, in the upper part of Kentucky, at a memorable place called "Cane Ridge," there was appointed a sacramental meeting by some of the Presbyter- ian ministers, at which meeting, seemingly unexpected by ministers or people, the mighty power of God was displayed in a very extraordinary manner; many were moved to tears, and bitter and loud crying for mercy. The meeting was protracted for weeks. Ministers of almost all denominations flocked in from far and near. The meeting was kept up by night and day. Thousands heard of the mighty work, and came on foot, on horseback, in car- riages and wagons. It was supposed that there were in attendance at times during the meet- ing from twelve to twenty-five thousand people. Hundreds fell prostrate under the mighty

A Rev. Charles G. Finney — 1839

A Religious camp meeting, ca. 1839

A Shaker Dance, Joseph Becker, Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, 1873

power of God, as men slain in battle. Stands were erected in the woods from which preach- ers of different Churches proclaimed repen- tance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and it was supposed, by eye and ear wit- nesses, that between one and two thousand souls were happily and powerfully converted to God during the meeting.

SIMPLE Gwrs

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,

'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain'd,

To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,

To turn, turn will be our delight,

Till by turning, turning we come round right.

"Simple Weis a Shaker quick dance or dancing song used in worship services. The hymn was written by Elder Joseph Brackett Jr. in 1848. Although they originated much earlier than the Second Great Awakening, the Shakers benefited from the diversity and growth of religious move- ments during the first decades of the 19 th cen- tury. Shakers lived a communal, celibate lifestyle. Men and women lived in separate quar- ters, used separate stairs, and sat on opposite sides of the room during worship. Their devo- tions included rituals of trembling, shouting, dancing, shaking, singing, and speaking in unknown tongues. By the end of the 19 th cen- tury the Shakers were practically extinct.0

CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF

LATTER-DAY SAINTS

Founded in 1830 in New York by Joseph Smith, Jr., the Church ofJesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is based upon the Book of Mormon. Smith moved his followers to Missouri in the 1830's where controversy and persecution resulted in the Mormon War of 1838 after which the gover- nor of the state ordered Smith to move his church elsewhere. Smith settled his people in Illinois and built the town of Navuoo. Mormon practices led to more persecution and the mur- der of Smith in 1844. Leadership of the church was taken over by Brigham Young who led his followers out of Illinois to the Mexican territo- ries in Utah in 1846. The Mormon Church con- tinued to thrive in Utah and the Southwest and in the 20th century has become one of the faster growing denominations in the ■ A Brigham Young, Mormon leader and Second Mormon President