History 2700    Fall 2004    MacKay
   
Week 9 The Market Revolution 

Reading:    Major Problems, chpt. 11: documents 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, essays by Roediger and Ashworth

Also: Patricia West: "Irish Immigrant Workers..."

    Take a virtual tour of Five Points: http://r2.gsa.gov/fivept/fphome.htm

Also peruse the Internet site "Uses of Liberty Rhetoric Among the Lowell Mill Girls."   http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/americanstudies/lavender/lowell.html

Reading response topic: Answer at least two of the "Questions to ponder" in the Mill girls site.

Ours is a country where men start from a humble origin . . . and where they can attain the most elevated positions, or acquire a large amount of wealth, according to the pursuits they elect for themselves. No exclusive privileges of birth, no entailment of estates, no civil or political disqualification, stand in their path; but one has as good a chance as another, according to his talents, prudence, and personal exertions. This is a country of self-made men . . . . Calvin Colton, 1844

Oh! isn't it a pity, such a pretty girl as I
Should be sent to the factory to pine away and die?
Oh! I cannot be a slave, I will not be a slave,
For I'm so fond of liberty,
That I cannot be a slave....Song Lyrics sung by protesting workers at Lowell, 1836

The changes from subsistence-oriented, farming economy to market, industrial economy include:

a. Rise of Market: Dual economies exist--a staple- exporting seaboard economy  combined with inland subsistence-oriented farming communities. Subsistence-oriented farming characterizes inland U.S. in regions beyond fall line of rivers and outside about a 20-mile radius where no roads or water provide transportation to town markets with a non-agricultural populations. Economy is based on use-values; labor is exchanged for food, goods, services, or "cash if required." After 1815 concurrent and mutually stimulated transportation (turnpikes, canals, steamboats and railroads) and market revolutions (ca. 1815-50) create national market system in U.S. interior, bringing about dramatic decreases in shipment time and costs (Example: Shipping goods from Cincinnati to New York took 50 days in 1815 at 30-70 cents per ton-mile. The same trip took 6-8 days via R.R. in 1850 at 2-9 cents per ton-mile.) A profit-oriented money-value economy with production specialization emerges. Market revolution marks the transition between the staple-exporting mercantile economy of the colonial period and the industrial revolution of the mid-nineteenth century.

b. Population: Population pressure on land stimulates gradual inland migration, 1750-1800, creating agrarian, subsistence-oriented economy. Ninety percent of inhabitants of southern New England (for example) are subsistence-oriented farmers living in inland towns. Sixty-seven percent live in townships (40 square miles) of 1,000-2,000 people. Only 3 out 437 townships have more than 10,000 inhabitants. Average farm covers 100-200 acres. After 1815, population pressure coupled with market revolution and resolution of Indian lands stimulates great migration to Mississippi and Ohio valleys, with clearing of new lands.

c. Social Relations: Subsistence farming regions exhibit little social stratification and lack economic specialization. They show greater equality in wealth distribution than do seaboard areas, owing to absence of non-agricultural markets.  Social stratification is based primarily on age-stratification. Tools are shared and labor is exchanged. Non-agricultural communities that develop in same regions after market revolution exhibit wider range of stratification and specialization patterns.

d. Attitudes: Crèvecoeur in Pennsylvania and New York (1782) and Jefferson in Virginia (1787) idealize the subsistence farmer as the backbone of the democratic agrarian-based economy. Post market-revolution commentators such as Calvin Colton (1844) eulogize the "self-made man" and "his" ability to accumulate wealth and profit through hard work, industry, and merit, achieved through the "inexhaustible wealth" of the country's seemingly limitless abundance of natural resources.

Internet Resources