Currents of Change in the Old Northwest (The Market Revolution)

Study Guide

Nash, chapter 8

Natural resources: Abundant with natural resources – timber, coal, iron ore, deep navigable rivers, plenty of arable farmland, long coastline, etc (Jefferson’s “empire of liberty” – the natural foundation of a continental empire

Increasing population: dynamic, youthful population – Massive amounts of immigration (by mid century) – energized and hard working, eager for “advancement”

Domestic and European capital: Investment capital that had been accumulated during the merchant capital phase of American development and also capital freed up following the end of the Napoleonic Wars – This is invested in infrastructure as well as manufacturing and finance

Immigration: A population explosion in Europe and the disruption of industrialization there caused many to seek a new life in America. The Irish became the most numerous group, escaping the potato blight and resultant famine at home. Although providing cheap labor, immigrants contributed to problems of urban congestion, racial tensions, and labor disunity.

The “famine” Irish – Sinead O’Connor (“Famine”) – “there was no famine” – from a trickle to a flood as the “famine Irish” responded to the classic patterns of “push” and “pull”

Tariff rate: A relatively high tariff rate in certain key areas of manufacture --

Market infrastructure (increased speed, lowered expense): Physical market infrastructure and communications infrastructure – In terms of physical infrastructure (e.g., roads, factories, canals, port facilities, railroads); Communications (e.g., telegraph, steam press, newspapers, stock exchanges, etc) – together (transportations and communications), this represents the bedrock of the American “market revolution” (capitalism) – All of this is made possible by an abundance of cheap natural resources and cheap LABOR (child labor)

western settlements (squatting, mutuality, infrastructure accelerates pace):

John O’Sullivan: “manifest destiny” – Notions of white supremacy and Anglo-Saxon Christian “progress” – appeals to “civilization,” order and progress and signs of God’s divine favor – A creed of imperial expansion

canals and steamboats – American waterways interconnecting the Eastern seaboard with the Northwestern interior (Great Lakes region – the hub is Chicago) – Efficiency = cash = an improved rate of profit = improves competitive edge and democratizes consumer

Erie Canal – Albany and Buffalo – This makes the robust port hub city (entrepot) of New York

Railroads and regional specialization: Railroads knit together a national marketplace -- a marketplace of regional specialization: South (cotton); Northwest (Wheat – grains – “granary of the nation”); Northeast (Northeastern corridor – specialization -- manufacturing and shipping)

State bond issues: States are underwriting bonds in order to attract capital – In order to help facilitate the building of the market infrastructure

Supreme Court and contract law: The legal system must define and protect private property and commercial exchanges --- i.e., contract law

The corporation & new market economy – “corporation” is a legal instrument that is designed to raise capital and to get things done relatively efficiently

Limited liability – Limits the liability of the shareholders and owners of the enterprise

Chartered special privileges and powers – monopoly privileges (under very narrow conditions)

Raising capital – Raise capital quickly to get things done to enhance the commonweal

Early distrust of corporate charters --

Gibbons v. Ogden – A landmark decision in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the power to regulate interstate commerce was granted to Congress by the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution. Regulating interstate commerce – laying down some of the early precedent for the regulation – an early challenge to the “laissez faire” doctrine – rationalize the marketplace

Entrepreneurial ethos & technological innovation – Intangible quality of earnest pursuit of material wealth or at least self improvement defined often in material terms – “tinkerers” – every American working person is adept at working with machines in a way that is innovative – constantly pushing forward technological innovation – This is built into capitalism because the motor of the system is the profit drive/efficiency – rate of profit

The goddess of liberty: John Gast’s “American Progress” (1872). John O’Sullivan coined the phrase manifest destiny (1845) In future generations this notion is was overlaid with a “scientific” patina known as social Darwinism

Transcendentalism: A philosophy blending American individualism and notions of freedom with eastern religious tenets, particularly, Hinduism, also, even Native or indigenous animism – Ralph Waldo Emerson – Mostly clustered in the Northeast – the transcendentalists were troubled by the assault on nature and the rampant materialism increasingly manifest in the culture

Henry David Thoreau on the market revolution: An experiment in self-reliance at Walden Pond in New England – He withdrew from society to the forest where he lived alone and worked out the means to provide for himself. – Walden – On Civil Disobedience (1849)

Second Great Awakening – Evangelical Christianity (Christ is your personal savior) – Redemption (earning God’s grace) is available to everyone

Religious underpinning to personal self-improvement

Democracy and American Christianity – Were all equal because we’re all sinners

Revivalist preachers and transportation infrastructure – Particularly in moments of rapid transformation and economic stress the evangelical movement rises and or ebbs – the period known as the “market revolution” (about 1820-1860) is a very uncertain time for many people, especially the poor and uneducated

Charles Grandison Finney

Horace Mann – This is educational reform in New England, Massachusetts in particular – Mass is the first state to institute a state tax to form a public school system – early manufacturing (e.g., the mill) – a literate labor force that can operate complex machinery independently of supervision – Horace Mann applied a common curriculum to the school system

Habits of discipline: every classroom is dominated by the clock – every tick and tock on clock is money made or money lost – It is the discipline of a wage labor force

Education as counter to unsettling effects of economic change(?): Various reformers were concerned about the rapid pace of change in society – and how it was impacting the traditional family – the fear was the youth would become “barbarized” – teaching the young manners, respect, and discipline

The American system of manufactures: This is standardization of parts – i.e., the manufacture of interchangeable parts on assembly lines (the idea is for markets become increasingly rationalized across regions) – Eli Whitney (cotton gin) was responsible for the American system of manufacturing in the musket manufacturing business – interchangeable parts

Domestic system (transition) & sewing machine – Also known as the “putting-out system” – In between artisan labor and full-blown factory output

First industry shaped by large factory system – textiles – mill streams – the first laborers were the daughters of the small farmers who were trying to supplement their income

Francis Cabot Lowell mill system – Industrial espionage (stealing industrial secrets from Britain) – Lowell purchased (capitalized) a “mill town” in the New England countryside – he hoped to create a model system of production that could avoid the exploitation and pollution characteristic of English mill towns like Manchester (as portrayed in the work of Charles Dickens – The Old Curiosity Shop)

Women of Lowell – Lowell recruits the labor of farm women to come to his factory town – Under the terms of patriarchy – at the mill they live in boardinghouses

“Loosening the bonds” – A loosening of the bonds of patriarchy and patriarchal authority – Not only do they develop a sensibility as women out from under male authority but also as workers

Lowell strike 1834 – In the context of a 15% wage cut (a depression cycle) – and they win – the women were also drawing upon the revolutionary republican traditions of their fathers (independence and competency) – A resistance to “wages slavery”

Undermining woman labor at Lowell --- The bosses are gonna figure how to undermine the solidarity of these yankee girls – they will import immigrants as “scabs” – Partly by segregating women from men

34. Reformist critique of “wealth and labor” – separate and antagonistic – a class analysis – Help people see themselves as workers in the context of proletarianziation – deskilling, i.e., the creation of a wages labor force wherein labor power is bought and sold on the market as a commodity

“Wages slavery” (e.g., Cincinnati) – The emergence of a proto-class consciousness --- Industrialization undermined traditional skills and reduced most workers to "wage slaves." Periodic depression made workers reluctant to endanger jobs through organized protests. Waves of immigration increased the numbers of workers and contributed to a growing cultural and ethnic diversity which compounded workers' differences.

Antebellum labor protest (Workingman’s Parties) – Labor militancy is expressed among skilled working craft trades – mostly artisans who are seeing their trades and their culture undermined by processes of industrialization – will begin to morph into wage labor resistance and or skilled trades within the wage labor system

New York urban growth (trade entrepot): finance, manufacturing and trade

Concentration of wealth and power: A smaller and smaller slice of the population controlling more and more of the wealth and power in American society – both at the urban level and nationally

Steady rise of “middle class” (non-manual labor) – As the system becomes more complex and hierarchical (a increase in the division of labor) there by necessity a demand for middle class service sector professions – This is still a relatively small demographic but steadily growing – the middle class is made up almost exclusively of White families dominated by White men

Philadelphia’s artisan class – Increasingly under stress and strain due to mechanization of production and proletarianization (deskilling) – This artisan class is used an example because these are the “free men” who backed the revolution

Role of the ideal woman – She should be married in the home taking care of the children – The ideology that is dominant is patriarchal

Domesticity and “female morality” (separate spheres) – women as morally superior to men and the keepers of republican virtue

Female job mobility and opportunity – under domesticity, middle class women could perhaps become nurses, primary school teachers (woman as nurturer); working class women will take jobs as domestic servants – Resistance begins to build over time

Cops and order – Increasing class tension, demonstrations, strikes and riots comes the first professional police forces (1830s) – tasked with maintaining “order”

Race & class tensions in Philadelphia riots 1834 – Immiseration – White working people vent their frustration through the lens of race

Ethnic and cultural disunity of workers – This divides working class people to benefit of the owners ---

Jim Crow, Northern style – 90% black people live in the South as slaves and “free” blacks – About 10 percent of black people are in the North. By 1840, over 90 percent of the northern free black population lived in states where law or custom prevented them from voting.

Free blacks and new economic opportunities

Last hired, first fired, worst work, lowest pay

Free blacks, public schools and other public facilities

Free blacks and access to public land in the West

Richard Allen & Bethel A.M.E.: First independent African American church. Located in Philadelphia, Bethel became a center of African American life and anti-slavery agitation. The American Colonization Society raised funds to transport free blacks out of the United States, either to Haiti or the newly established nation of Liberia in West Africa (patterned after British Sierra Leone). At first, Allen supported the idea of American free blacks emigrating to Africa but in the face of strong opposition by Philadelphia’s black community, Allen dropped ideas of emigration. Most blacks disagreed with organized the emigration movement. They wanted rights in what they considered their own country; they were native born and many had generations of family in the United States.

Scientific methods in agriculture: Farming in the east became more "scientific" and commercial. Eastern capital, settlers, and transportation projects opened up the frontier of the Old Northwest, creating an economic as well as cultural link. Farming in the northwest switched from corn and hog production for southern markets to wheat production for eastern markets.

Old Northwest: By the late 1830s, the Old Northwest had become the country's granary.

The South (most important export crop?): Still export-oriented plantation agriculture. The most important crop is cotton in the antebellum decades but tobacco, rice and sugar were also important crops.

The Northeast: By 1800, Northeastern farm families worked smaller farms with decreasing soil fertility. From 1820 to 1860, more eastern farmers used "scientific" methods to increase profits. In the cities, especially in the so called urban corridor (Boston, New York, Philadelphia), manufacturing, based on wage labor (free labor) was dominant. Banking and finance were also clustered in the Northeastern big cities, especially New York.

Business cycle: Although the American economy developed rapidly between 1820 and 1860, expansion was cyclic in nature, interrupted by periods of depression. During these contraction cycles, industrialists protected themselves through wage cuts and layoffs. Older paths to economic independence disappeared and many Americans fell victim to "wage slavery." An increasing concentration of wealth in fewer hands characterized both urban and rural life. Workers failed to organize because of ethnic, racial, religious, and gender divisions. Environmental consequences of industrialization included deforestation, destruction of wildlife, and pollution of air and water.

Mechanization of agriculture: As the mechanization of agriculture lessened the available jobs in the country, more people came to the cities looking for work.

steel plow and reaper

Steady displacement of small farmer

Urbanization rates

Chicago: The market revolution and the railroad transformed this settlement into a major commercial and transportation center of the Old Northwest.

Famine

Sinead O’Connor

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVf2NCGkgTU

OK, I want to talk about Ireland
Specifically I want to talk about the "famine"
About the fact that there never really was one
There was no "famine"
See Irish people were only allowed to eat potatoes
All of the other food
Meat fish vegetables
Were shipped out of the country under armed guard
To England while the Irish people starved