Market Revolution

1
Market Revolution

• I. The Market Revolution
• A. American Economy, 1800
• B. First Industrial Revolution
• C. Transportation
• II. The Transformation of Work
• A. Common labor
• B. Deskilling
• C. Manufacturing
• III. Freedom and Frustration
• A. The Decline of Servitude
• B. From Craftsman to Laborer
• C. Community under Pressure
• IV. Worker Responses
• A. Ambition
• B. Association
• C. Labor Protest
• D. Mass Politics

2
American Economy, 1800

• Farming
• Hand Labor
• Craft work
• Local Family Firms
• Upward Mobility
• apprentice
• journeyman
• master

3
Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850

• Spinning jenny
• Steam engine
• Iron puddling furnace
• Cotton gin
• Telegraph
• Sewing machine

4
Transportation

• Canals create market towns and cities.
• Incentive for mass production

5
Common Labor
6
Deskilling Manufacturing

• Division of labor
• Machines
• Teamwork
• Discipline

7
Creating Class
An anxious blacksmith, circa 1850
8
The Decline of Servitude

• Courts begin replacing paternalism with
  employment at-will.
• Freedom of contract
• Employer and employee have equal rights to make
  and break contracts.
• Ignores difference in bargaining power.

Massachusetts Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw
(1781-1861)
9
Community under Pressure
Five Points, NYC, 1840s
10
Ambition

• System offers opportunities for economic mobility.

Sewing machine inventor, Elias Howe
11
Association

• Religion
• 2nd Great Awakening
• 1820-40
• Church membership
• Grows 100K in 1831
• Revivals
• 10-25K people attend
• Mutual benefit
• Fire companies
• Insurance companies
• Fraternal Societies

12
Labor Protest

• Violence
• Unskilled labor
• Canal diggers
• Boycotts
• Skilled workers
• Cordwainers
• General Trades Union
• Strikes
• Machine Operatives
• Women of Lowell

Workers in political cartoon, circa 1830s
13
Mass Politics

• Workingmans Party
• Jacksonian Democracy
• Free labor ideology

President Andrew Jackson