4.5 & 4.6: The Market Revolution
4.5: Explain the causes and effects of the innovations in technology, agriculture, and commerce over time.
4.6: Explain how and why innovation in technology, agriculture, and commerce affected various segments of American society over time.
In the last set of notes, we went over politics, regional interests, and the world stage. Now, we’re going to be moving on to the topic of economics. Namely, the Market Revolution.
The Market Revolution
So what was the Market Revolution? Essentially, it was the connecting of the American economy together, with the linking of northern industries with western and southern farms. This connectivity marked a transition from the United States being an agrarian (farming) economy to a capitalist economy focused on producing goods for sale and trade.
So now let’s go over each of the main advances that caused the Market Revolution: Transportation, industry, and agriculture.
Immigration and Migration
In the North, many new industrial cities grew and developed due to a surge of European immigrants arriving, especially from Ireland and Germany. The Irish were fleeing the Irish Potato Famine, while the Germans left due to crop failures, the failed Revolutions of 1848, or to seek a more democratic way of life. The number of immigrants rose from 150,000 to 1.5 million between the 1820s and the 1840s. Upon arrival, many of these immigrants settled along the East Coast. Because they were mostly poor and unskilled, they provided manufacturers with a cheap source of labor and therefore found a lot of work in factories. The immigrants also brought their own cultures and religions, establishing synagogues and churches. The ones that settled further west developed new communities and settled on farms. However, the rise in immigrants led to the rise of Nativism in the 1830s and 1840s, which was the fear that the Irish and German immigrants would take their jobs and ruin American culture.
As for migration, the reduced prices of goods and the surplus of them had led to people being able to afford more food and rapid population growth across America. This led to many migrating to other areas. Some, called squatters, lived on public land illegally. Others, called speculators, bought public land and sold it to farmers as fast as they could, causing the price of land to rise. Finally, a third group moved out west and began settling the frontier territories.
Due to both immigration and migration, along with general population growth, cities started to become more crowded and unsanitary. People lived in crowded houses and often experienced infectious diseases along with a lack of plumbing or sewage.
Transportation
Starting in the early 19th century, many roads were built to connect the country together, allowing people to transport raw materials and goods quickly between cities and states. For example, the National Road, or the Cumberland Road, was constructed and stretched for about a thousand miles, connecting Maryland to Illinois.
Many canals were also constructed during this period, the most significant being the Erie Canal in 1825, which linked Lake Erie in the west to the Hudson River in New York. The new invention of steamboats allowed ships to travel upstream a river for the first time. This not only allowed fo rships to travel in both directions up and down a river, but also increased their speed.
By the 1830s, canals and ships became overshadowed by the rise of railroads. Railroads and trains allowed for goods and people to be transported extremely quickly between cities. As a result, local and state governments began to provide special loans, tax exemptions, and land grants to railroad companies to encourage them to build more railroads. However, railroads were more common in the North than the South.
Technology
During this era, new patent laws were passed which protected the rights of inventors, leading to a rapid rise in the creation of new technologies. Eli Whitney's innovation of interchangeable parts was one of the most important. This was the idea that different parts of a product should be produced separately and then put together. This meant that people were no longer required to create an entire product from start to finish, and that if a component broke, it could be replaced rather than having to purchase a new item entirely.
Eli Whitney’s innovation led to the rise of the factory system in the 1820s. In these factories, workers would mass-produce identical parts that would later be assembled together and then sent to markets. This flooded the markets with new goods because now, anybody could help create a product due to each worker only needing to know how to produce one part of a product over and over again. Skilled artisans were no longer needed to create an entire product from start to finish.
Agriculture
Eli Whitney’s cotton gin revolutionized the process of separating cotton seeds from fibers, allowing plantations to produce more cotton than before. The McCormick Reaper was an invention that helped farmers harvest grain faster, reducing wheat prices. In addition, people shifted from subsistence farming to commercial farming, meaning that instead of producing crops to feed themselves, people were now producing crops to be sold. These cash crops were crops such as cotton and tobacco, both of which were in high demand all around the world. Cotton was especially needed in British textile factories. This would connect American production to other foreign economies across the world.
Now let’s talk about how the Market Revolution affected American society and culture. For example, with immigration and migration.
The Middle Class
The Market Revolution created a lot of prosperity in the American economy, leading to the creation of a middle class. The middle class was made up of people who primarily didn’t work physical jobs, such as businessmen, journalists, doctors, and lawyers. Members of this class began developing their own culture. For these people, education and temperance (or moderation in alcohol consumption) were incredibly important. The middle class was mostly Protestant and spent their time on leisure activities, such as attending plays, listening to opera, going to circuses, and watching sports.
Women
The Market Revolution also had an impact on the role of women in society. It led to the creation of the Cult of Domesticity. This was the idea that a woman's duty in life was to have children, raise them well, and make the home a comfortable place to live in while men worked jobs outside. However, this concept only applied to middle-class women. The working-class women still had to work in factories for long hours, six days a week. Often, women received lower wages compared to men. One such factory was the Lowell Factory located in Massachusetts.
