Chapter 10 - Review

US:  A Narrative History Volume 1 – Chapter 10 Review

The Opening of America [1815-1850]

From Boom to Bust with One-Day Clocks

In the years before the Civil War, the name of Chauncey Jerome could be found traced in neat, sharp letters in a thousand different places across the globe: everywhere from the fireplace mantels of southern planters to the log cabins of Illinois prairie farmers and even in Chinese trading houses in Canton. Chauncey Jerome was a New England clockmaker who’s clever, inexpensive, and addictive machines had conquered the markets of the world. Jerome, the son of a Connecticut blacksmith, at first barely made a living peddling his clocks from farmhouse to farmhouse. Then in 1824 his career took off thanks to a “very showy” bronze looking-glass clock. Between 1827 and 1837 Jerome's factory produced more clocks than any other in the country. But when the Panic of 1837 struck, the entrepreneur had to scramble to avoid financial ruin. Looking for a new opportunity, he set out to produce an inexpensive brass “one-day” clock—so called because its winding mechanism kept it running that long. Traditionally, the works of these clocks were made of wood, and the wheels and teeth had to be painstakingly cut by hand. Furthermore, wooden clocks could not be exported overseas because the humidity on board ship swelled the wood and ruined them. Jerome's brass version proved more accurate than earlier types and cheaper to boot. Costs came down farther when he began to use interchangeable parts and combined his operations for making cases and movements within a single factory in New Haven, Connecticut. By organizing the production process, Jerome brought the price of a good clock within the reach of ordinary people. So popular were the new models that desperate competitors began attaching Jerome labels to their own inferior imitations. Disaster struck again in 1855, when Jerome went into partnership with several unreliable associates. Within a few years his business faltered, then failed. At the age of 62, the once-prominent business leader found himself working again in a clock factory as an ordinary mechanic. He lived his last years in poverty. Like this peddler, young Chauncey Jerome sold his clocks from farmhouse to farmhouse. Jerome rose higher than most Americans of his generation, and he fell farther. Yet his fellow citizens shared his dreams of success, just as they were haunted by the fear of losing everything. For Jerome, it wasn't only material comforts that vanished; so did respect. “One of the most trying things to me now,” he confessed in his autobiography, “is to see how I am looked upon by the community since I lost my property. I never was any better when I owned it than I am now and never behaved any better. But how different is the feeling towards you, when your neighbors can make nothing more out of you…. You are passed by without notice.” As the boom-and-bust economy swirled around him, Jerome sensed that society had taken on a different tone—that the marketplace and its ethos had become dominant. “It is all money and business, business and money which make the man now-a-days,” he complained. “Success is everything, and it makes very little difference how, or what means he uses to obtain it.” The United States, according to one foreign traveler, had become “one gigantic workshop, over the entrance of which there is the blazing inscription ‘No admission here except on business.’ ” During the life of Chauncey Jerome, the United States became a commercial republic dominated by a national market. Americans from different regions tied themselves to one another eagerly, even aggressively, through the mechanism of the free market. They sold cotton or wheat and bought manufactured cloth or brass one-day clocks. They borrowed money not merely to buy a house or farm but also to speculate and profit. They relied, even in many rural villages, on cash and paper money instead of bartering for goods and services. Manufacturing changed as well, shifting from the master-apprentice system of production set in urban and rural workshops toward mechanization and the rise of the factory system. Those economic developments reshaped the lives and values of many Americans. They moved from face-to-face dealings with neighbors to impersonal transactions with distant buyers and sellers. They shifted from performing mechanically simple tasks to tackling the more technologically complex, and growing numbers moved from sparsely settled rural areas to densely populated cities and towns. Equally important, they came to regard free market capitalism, upward mobility, and conspicuous consumption as integral to the emerging American national identity. Such were the changes Chauncey Jerome witnessed—indeed, changes he helped to bring about himself, with his clocks that divided the working days of Americans into more disciplined, orderly segments.

The National Market Economy

In 1844 John Burrows heard that potatoes were selling for $2 a bushel in New Orleans. Potatoes fetched less than 50 cents a bushel in Davenport in the Iowa Territory where Burrows was a small merchant, so he loaded 2,500 bushels on a flatboat and started down the Mississippi River. Along the way he learned that other merchants, acting on the same information, had done the same and that the market in New Orleans was now glutted with potatoes. When he reached his destination 6 weeks later, he could not sell his load at all. Desperate, he finally swapped his potatoes at 8 cents a bushel, taking a load of coffee in return. He made nothing on the transaction, since it had cost him that much to ship the load to New Orleans. Burrows’ experience demonstrated that a national market economy required not just the efficient movement of goods but also rapid communications. Looking back many years later on the amazing transformation that had occurred in his lifetime, Burrows commented, “No one can realize the difficulties of doing a produce business in those days.” A truly national system of markets began to grow following the War of 1812, when the United States entered a period of unprecedented economic expansion. As it grew, the economy became varied enough to sustain and even accelerate its growth. Before the war it had been tied largely to international trade. The United States exported staples such as cotton, wheat, tobacco, and timber; if the nations that bought these commodities suddenly stopped doing so, the domestic economy suffered. That happened during the European wars of the 1790s and again after 1803. Because so many Americans remained rural and primarily self-sufficient, they could not absorb any increase in goods produced by American manufacturers. But the War of 1812 marked the turning point in the creation and expansion of a domestic market. First the embargo and then the war itself stimulated the growth of manufacturing, particularly in textiles. In 1808 the United States had 8,000 spindles spinning cotton thread; by the end of the war the number had jumped to around 130,000. In addition, war had also bottled up capital in Europe. When peace was restored, this capital flowed into the United States, seeking investments. Finally, the war experience led the federal government to adopt policies designed to spur economic expansion.

The New Nationalism

After the war with Britain, leadership passed to a new generation of the Republic—younger men such as Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and John Quincy Adams. All were ardent nationalists eager to use federal power to promote rapid development of the nation. Increasingly dominant within the Republican Party, they advocated the “New Nationalism,” a set of economic policies designed to foster the prosperity of all regions of the country and bind the nation more tightly together. Even James Madison saw the need for increased federal activity, given the problems the government experienced during the war. The national bank had closed its doors in 1811 when its charter expired. Without it the country had fallen into financial chaos. Madison had opposed Hamilton's national bank in 1791, but now, with his approval, Congress in 1816 chartered the Second Bank of the United States for a period of 20 years.Madison also agreed to a mildly protective tariff to aid budding American industries by raising the price of competing foreign goods. Passed in 1816, it set an average duty of 20 percent on imported woolen and cotton cloth, iron, and sugar. The measure enjoyed wide support in the North and West, but a number of southern representatives voted against it because most of its benefits went to northern manufacturers. Madison also recommended that the government promote internal improvements such as roads, canals, and bridges. The war had demonstrated how cumbersome it was to move troops or supplies overland. Although Madison did not believe that federal funds could be used merely for local projects, he was willing to support projects broader in scope. His successor, James Monroe, approved additional ones.

The Cotton Trade

Cotton proved to be the key to American economic development after 1815. By the end of the eighteenth century southern planters had discovered that short-fiber cotton would grow in the lower part of the South. But the cotton contained sticky green seeds that could not be easily separated from the lint by hand. The needed breakthrough came in 1793 when Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, a mechanical device that removed the seeds from the lint. The gin allowed a laborer to clean 50 pounds of cotton a day, compared with only 1 pound by hand. With prices high on the world market, cotton production in the Lower South soared. By 1840 the South produced more than 60 percent of the world supply, which accounted for almost two-thirds of all American exports. The cotton trade was the major expansive force in the economy until the depression of 1839. Northern factories increasingly made money by turning raw cotton into cloth, while northern merchants reaped profits from shipping the cotton and then reshipping the textiles. Planters used the income they earned to purchase foodstuffs from the West and goods and services from the Northeast.

The Transportation Revolution

To become truly national, a market economy needed an efficient transportation network linking various regions of the nation. The economy had not become self-sustaining earlier partly because the only means of transporting goods cheaply was by water. That limited trade largely to coastal and international markets, because even on rivers, bulky goods moved easily in only one direction—downstream. But dramatic change came after 1815, drawing new regions into the market. From 1825 to 1855—the span of a single generation—the cost of transportation on land fell 95 percent while its speed increased five-fold. Canals attracted considerable investment capital, especially after the success of the wondrous Erie Canal. Built between 1818 and 1825 the canal stretched 364 miles from Albany on the Hudson River to Buffalo on Lake Erie. Its construction by the state was an act of faith; in 1816 the United States had only 100 miles of canals, none longer than 28 miles. Then, too, the proposed route ran through forests, disease-ridden swamps, and unsettled wilderness. The canal's engineers lacked experience, but they made up for that by sheer ingenuity. Improving on European tools, they devised a cable and screw that allowed one man to pull down even the largest trees and a stump-puller that removed up to 40 stumps a day. The project paid for itself within a few years. The Erie Canal reduced the cost of shipping a ton of goods from Buffalo to New York City from more than 19 cents a mile to less than 3 cents a mile. By 1860 the cost had fallen to less than a penny a mile. Where its busy traffic passed, settlers flocked, and towns like Rochester and Lockport sprang up and thrived by moving goods and serving markets. “Everything in this bustling place appears to be in motion,” wrote one English traveler about Rochester in 1827. The steady flow of goods eastward gave New York City the dominant position in the scramble for control of western trade. New York's commercial rivals, such as Philadelphia and Baltimore, were soon frantically trying to build their own canals to the West. Western states such as Ohio and Indiana, convinced that prosperity depended on cheap transportation, constructed canals to link interior regions with the Great Lakes. By 1840 the nation had completed more than 3,300 miles of canals—a length greater than the distance from New York City to Seattle—at a cost of about $125 million. Almost half that amount came from state governments.  Because of its vast expanse, the United States was particularly dependent on river transportation. But shipping goods downstream from Pittsburgh to New Orleans took 6 weeks, and the return journey required 17 weeks or more. Steamboats reduced the time of a trip from New Orleans to Louisville from 90 to 8 days while cutting upstream costs by 90 percent. Robert Fulton demonstrated the commercial possibilities of propelling a boat with steam when his ship, the Clermont, traveled in 1807 from New York City to Albany on the Hudson River. But steamboats had the greatest effect on transportation on western rivers, where the flat-bottomed boats could haul heavy loads even when the water level was low. The number of steamboats operating in those waters jumped from 17 in 1817 to 727 in 1855. Since steamboats could make many more voyages annually, the carrying capacity on western rivers increased 100-fold between 1820 and 1860. Although railroads would end the steamboat's dominance by 1860, the steamboat was the major form of western transportation during the years in which the national market economy grew up, and it proved the most important factor in the rise of manufacturing in the Ohio and upper Mississippi valleys. In 1830 the nation had only 13 miles of railroad track, and most of the lines constructed in the following decade served as feeder lines to canals. But soon enough, cities and towns saw that their economic future depended on having good rail links, so that by 1840 railroad and canal mileage were almost exactly equal (3,325 miles). By 1850 the nation had a total of 8,879 miles of track. Railroad rates were usually higher than canal or steamboat charges, but the new iron roads operated year-round, offered more direct routes, and moved goods about twice as fast. Even so, not until the 1850s did they come to dominate the transportation system.

Revolution in Communications

What rail and steam engines did for transportation, Samuel F. B. Morse's telegraph did for communications. Morse patented a device that sent electrical pulses over a wire in 1837, and before long, telegraph lines fanned out in all directions, linking various parts of the country instantaneously. By 1860 more than 50,000 miles of telegraph lines had been laid. The new telegraph sped business information, helped link the transportation network, and allowed newspapers to provide readers with up-to-date news. A far cry from the sleek trains of today, the earliest railroad cars looked more like horse-drawn conveyances. The invention of the telegraph and the perfection of a power press (1847) by Robert Hoe and his son Richard revolutionized journalism. The mechanical press greatly increased the speed with which sheets could be printed over the old hand method. Mass-produced newspapers, often selling for only a penny, gained huge circulations, since ordinary families could afford them. Hoe's press had a similar impact on book publishing, since thousands of copies could be printed at affordable prices.

The Postal System

The development of a national market economy depended on mass communications that transmitted commercial information and connected producers and sellers separated by great distances. Although postage was relatively expensive, the American postal system subsidized the distribution of newspapers and spread other information widely. Indeed, in the years before the Civil War, the postal system had more employees than any other enterprise in the country. Although the postal system's primary purpose was to promote commerce, it made a profound social impact by accustoming people to long-range and even impersonal communication. By 1840 the post office handled almost 41 million letters and 39 million newspapers. Tocqueville was amazed at the scope of the postal system by the 1830s. “There is an astonishing circulation of letters and newspapers among these savage woods,” he reported from the Michigan frontier. There was hardly a village or town in the country, no matter how remote, that was not connected with the rest of the country through the postal system. While the British and French post offices handled a greater volume of mail, he noted, the United States throughout these years had a much more extensive postal system. In 1828 there were almost twice as many post offices in the United States as in Great Britain, and over five times as many as in France. In the Americas, the Canadian postal system was so limited that merchants and even government officials routinely used the United States postal system to get mail to other provinces, and by mid-century Mexico had no regularized mail service for the whole country. In China the government maintained a very efficient military-courier system for official communications, but foreigners developed the first private postal system, mainly for business correspondence. Most countries had no true postal system in these years, since literacy was so limited.

Agriculture in the Market Economy

The new forms of transportation and communication had a remarkable effect on farm families: they became linked ever more tightly to a national market system. Before the canal era wheat could be shipped at a profit no farther than 50 miles. But given cheap transportation farmers eagerly grew more grain and sold the surplus in distant markets. In this shift toward commercial agriculture, farmers began cultivating more acres, working longer hours, and adopting scientific farming methods, including crop rotation and the use of manures as fertilizer. Instead of bartering goods with friends and neighbors, they more often paid cash or depended on banks to extend them credit. Instead of taking the crops to market themselves, they began to rely on regional merchants, intermediaries in a far-flung distribution system. Like southern planters, western wheat farmers increasingly sold in a world market. Banks and distributors advanced credit to farmers, who more and more competed in a market controlled by impersonal forces centered in distant locations. As transportation and market networks connected more areas of the nation, they encouraged regional specialization. The South increasingly concentrated on staple crops for export, and the West grew foodstuffs, particularly grain. By 1850 Wisconsin and Illinois were major wheat-producing states. Eastern farmers, unable to compete with wheat yields from fertile western farms, shifted to grazing sheep or producing fruits, vegetables, and dairy products for rapidly growing urban areas. Although foreign commerce expanded, too, the dramatic growth in domestic markets far outstripped the volume of trade abroad. The cities of the East looked primarily to southern and western markets.

John Marshall and the Promotion of Enterprise

For a national market system to flourish, a climate favorable to investment had to exist. Under the leadership of Chief Justice John Marshall the Supreme Court became the branch of the federal government most aggressive in protecting the new forms of business central to the growing market economy. Marshall, who presided over the Court from 1801 to 1835, at first glance seemed an unlikely leader. Informal in manners and almost sloppy in dress, he was nonetheless a commanding figure, combining a forceful intellect with a genial ability to persuade. Time after time he convinced his colleagues to uphold the sanctity of private property and the power of the federal government to promote economic growth. In the case of McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) the Court upheld the constitutionality of the Second Bank of the United States. Just as Alexander Hamilton had argued in the debate over the first national bank, Marshall emphasized that the Constitution gave Congress the power to make all “necessary and proper” laws to carry out its delegated powers. If Congress believed that a bank would help it meet its responsibilities, such as maintaining the public credit and regulating the currency, then it was constitutional. The bank had to be only useful, not essential. “Let the end be legitimate,” Marshall wrote, “let it be within the scope of the Constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited … are constitutional.” By upholding Hamilton's doctrine of implied powers, Marshall enlarged federal power to an extraordinary degree. Marshall also encouraged a more freewheeling commerce in Gibbons v. Ogden (1824). The case gave Marshall a chance to define the greatest power of the federal government in peacetime, the right to regulate interstate commerce. In striking down a steamboat monopoly granted by the state of New York, the chief justice gave the term commerce the broadest possible definition, declaring that it covered all commercial dealings and that Congress's power over interstate commerce could be “exercised to its utmost extent.” The result was increased business competition throughout society. In the case of Fletcher v. Peck (1810), Marshall took an active role in defining contract law, then in its infancy, and showed how far he was willing to go to protect private property. The Supreme Court unanimously struck down a Georgia law taking back a land grant that a group of speculators had obtained by bribing members of the legislature. A grant was a contract, Marshall declared, and because the Constitution forbade states to impair “the obligation of contracts,” the legislature could not interfere with the grant once it had been made. Although the framers of the Constitution probably meant contracts to refer only to agreements between private parties, Marshall made no distinction between public and private agreements, thereby greatly expanding the meaning of the contract clause. Marshall's most celebrated decision on the contract clause came in Dartmouth College v. Woodward, decided in 1819. The case arose out of the attempt by New Hampshire to alter the college's charter granted by George III in 1769. The Court overturned the state law on the grounds that state charters were also contracts and could not be altered by later legislatures. By this ruling Marshall intended to protect corporations, which conducted business under charters granted by individual states. Thus the Marshall Court sought to encourage economic risk-taking by protecting property and contracts, by limiting state interference, and by creating a climate of business confidence.

General Incorporation Laws

Corporations were not new in American business, but as the economy expanded, they grew in number. By pooling investors’ resources, they provided a way to raise capital for large-scale undertakings. Then, too, corporations offered the advantage of limited liability: that is, an investor risked only the amount he or she had invested. Ventures such as banks, insurance companies, railroads, and manufacturing firms—which all required a large amount of capital—increasingly were incorporated. Originally, state legislatures were required to approve a special charter for each new corporation. Beginning in the 1830s, states adopted general incorporation laws that automatically granted a corporation charter to any applicant who met certain minimum qualifications. This reform made it much easier and faster to secure a charter and stimulated organization of the national market.

A RESTLESS TEMPER

Between 1815 and 1850, the nation reverberated with almost explosive energy. An emphasis on speed affected nearly every aspect of American life. Steamboat captains risked boiler explosions for the honor of having the fastest boat on the river, prompting the visiting English novelist Charles Dickens to comment that traveling under these conditions seemed like taking up “lodgings on the first floor of a powder mill.” American technology emphasized speed over longevity. Unlike European railroads, American railroadswere lightweight, were hastily constructed, and paid little heed to the safety or comfort of passengers. 

Population Growth

If the economic hallmark of this new order was the growth of a national market, there were social factors that also contributed to American restlessness. The American population continued to double about every 22 years—more than twice the rate of Great Britain. The census, which stood at fewer than 4 million in 1790, surpassed 23 million in 1850. Although the birthrate peaked in 1800, it declined only slowly before 1840. In the 1840s, it dropped about 10 percent, the first significant decrease in American history. At the same time, many basic population characteristics changed little throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. The population remained quite young, and early marriage remained the norm, especially in rural areas. Life expectancy did not improve significantly. A person who survived the hazards of childhood diseases was likely to live to the age of 50 or 60. From 1790 to 1820 natural increase accounted for virtually all of the country’s population growth. But immigration, which had been disrupted by the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, revived after 1815. In the 1830s some 600,000 immigrants arrived, more than double the number in the quarter century after 1790.

The Restless Movement West

The vast areas of land opened for settlement absorbed much of the burgeoning population. As settlers streamed west, speculation in western lands reached frenzied proportions. Whereas only 68,000 acres of the public domain had been sold during the year 1800, sales peaked in 1818, at a staggering 3.5 million acres. The Panic of 1819 sent sales and prices crashing, and in the depression that followed many farmers lost their farms. Congress reacted by abolishing credit sales and demanding payment in cash, but it tempered this policy by lowering the price of the cheapest lands to $1.25 an acre and reducing the minimum tract to 80 acres. Even so, speculators purchased most of the public lands sold, since there was no limit on the amount of acreage an individual or a land company could buy. These land speculators played a leading role in settlement of the West. To hasten sales, they usually sold land partially on credit—a vital aid to poorer farmers. They also provided loans to purchase needed tools and supplies. Many farmers became speculators themselves, buying up property in the neighborhood and selling it to latecomers at a tidy profit. “Speculation in real estate has been the ruling idea and occupation of the Western mind,” one Englishman reported in the 1840s. “Clerks, laborers, farmers, storekeepers merely followed their callings for a living while they were speculating for their fortunes.” Given such rapid settlement, geographic mobility became one of the most striking characteristics of the American people. The 1850 census revealed that nearly half of all native-born free Americans lived outside the state where they had been born. The typical American “has no root in the soil,” visiting Frenchman Michel Chevalier observed, but “is always in the mood to move on, always ready to start in the first steamer that comes along from the place where he had just now landed.” It was the search for opportunity, more than anything else that accounted for such restlessness. In 1851, a new railroad line bypassed the village of Auburn, Illinois. Despite its pretty location, residents quickly abandoned it and moved to the new town that sprang up around the depot. A neighboring farmer purchased the old village, plowed up the streets, and Auburn reverted to a cornfield.

Urbanization

Even with the growth of a national market, the United States remained a rural nation. Nevertheless, the four decades after 1820 witnessed the fastest rate of urbanization in American history. As a result, the ratio of farmers to city dwellers steadily dropped from 15 to 1 in 1800 to 5.5 to 1 in 1850. Improved transportation, the declining productivity of many eastern farms, the beginnings of industrialization, and the influx of immigrants all stimulated the growth of cities.

The most heavily urbanized area of the country was the Northeast, where in 1860 more than a third of the population lived in cities.

Important urban centers such as St. Louis and Cincinnati arose in the West. The South, with only 10 percent of its population living in cities, was the least urbanized region.

THE RISE OF FACTORIES

It was an isolated life, growing up in rural, hilly Vermont. But stories of the textile factories that had sprung up in Lowell and other towns in Massachusetts reached even small villages like Barnard. Mary Paul was working there as a domestic servant when she asked her father for permission to move to Lowell. “I am in need of clothes which I cannot get about here,” she explained. In 1845 two other friends from Barnard helped her find her first job at the Lowell mills, from which she earned $128 in 11 months. After four years she returned home, but now found “countryfied” life too confining, and before long she left her rural hometown— this time for good. Mary Paul was one of thousands of rural Americans whose lives were fundamentally altered by the economic transformations of the young republic. The changes in her lifestyle and her working habits demonstrated that the new factories and industries needed more than technological innovation to run smoothly. Equally crucial, labor needed to be reorganized.

Technological Advances

Before 1815 manufacturing had been done in homes or shops by skilled artisans. As master craftworkers, they imparted the knowledge of their trades to apprentices and journeymen. In addition, women often worked in their homes part-time under the putting-out system, making finished articles from raw material supplied by merchant capitalists. After 1815 this older form of manufacturing began to give way to factories with machinery tended by unskilled or semiskilled laborers. From England came many of the earliest technological innovations. But

Americans often improved on the British machines or adapted them to more extensive uses. In contrast to the more tradition-oriented societies of Europe, “everything new is quickly introduced here,” one visitor commented in 1820. “There is no clinging to old ways; the moment an American hears the word ‘invention’ he pricks up his ears.” From 1790 to 1860 the United States Patent Office granted more patents than England and France combined. To protect their economic advantage, the British forbade the export of any textile machinery or emigration of any craftworker trained in its construction. But in 1790 a mill worker named Samuel Slater eluded English authorities and built the first textile mill in America. Two decades later, the Boston merchant Francis Cabot Lowell imitated British designs for a power loom and then improved on them. The first machines required highly skilled workers both to build and to repair them. Eli Whitney had a better idea. Having won a contract to produce 10,000 rifles for the government, he developed machinery that would mass-produce parts that were interchangeable from rifle to rifle. Such parts had to be manufactured to rigid specifications, but once the process was perfected, these parts allowed a worker to assemble a rifle quickly with only a few tools. Simeon North applied the same principle to the production of clocks, and Chauncey Jerome followed North’s example and soon surpassed him.

Textile Factories

The factory system originated in the Northeast; where capital, water power, and transportation facilities were available. As in England, the production of cloth was the first manufacturing process to use the new technology on a large scale. Eventually all the processes of manufacturing fabrics were brought together in a single location and machines did virtually all the work.

In 1820 a group of wealthy Boston merchants known as the Boston Associates set up operations at Lowell, Massachusetts, which soon became the nation’s most famous center of textile manufacturing. Its founders intended to avoid the misery that surrounded English factories by combining paternalism with high profits. Instead of relying primarily on child labor or a permanent working class, the Lowell mills employed daughters of New England farm families.

Female workers lived in company boardinghouses under the watchful eye of a matron. To its many visitors, Lowell presented an impressive sight, with huge factories and well-kept houses. Female workers were encouraged to attend lectures and use the library; they even published their own magazine, the Lowell Offering.  The reality of factory life, however, involved strict work rules and long hours of tedious, repetitive work. At Lowell, for example, workers could be fined for lateness or misconduct, such as talking on the job, and the women’s morals in the boardinghouses were strictly guarded. Work typically began at 7 A.M. (earlier in the summer) and continued until 7 at night, six days a week. With only 30 minutes for the noon meal, many workers had to run to the boardinghouse and back to avoid being late. Winter was the “lighting up” season, when work began before daylight and ended after dark. The only light after sunset came from whale oil lamps that filled the long rooms with smoke. Although the labor was hard, the female operators earned from $2.40 to $3.20 a week, wages considered good by the standards of the time. (Domestic servants Female workers and seamstresses were paid less than a dollar a week.) The average “mill girl” was between 16 and 30 years old. Most were not working to support their families back home on the farm; instead, they wanted to accumulate some money for perhaps the first time in their lives and sample some of life’s pleasures. “I must . . . have something of my own before many more years have passed,” Sally Rice wrote in rejecting her parents’ request that she return home to Somerset, Vermont. “And where is that something coming from if I go home and earn nothing?” Like Rice, few women in the mills intended to work permanently. The majority stayed no more than five years before getting married. The sense of sisterhood that united women in the boardinghouses made it easier for farm daughters to adjust to the stress and regimen the factory imposed on them. So did their view of the situation as temporary rather than permanent. As competition in the textile industry intensified, factory managers tried to raise productivity. In the mid-1830s the mills began to increase the workloads and speed up the machinery. Even these changes failed to maintain previous profits, and on several occasions factories cut wages. The ever-quickening pace of work finally provoked resistance among the women in the mills. Several times in the 1830s wage cuts sparked strikes in which a minority of workers walked out. In the 1840s workers’ protests focused on the demand for a 10-hour day. As the mills expanded, a smaller proportion of the workers lived in company boardinghouses, and moral regulations were relaxed. But the greatest change was a shift in the workforce from native-born females to Irish immigrants, including men and children. The Irish, who made up only 8 percent of the Lowell workforce in 1845, amounted to almost half by 1860. Desperately poor and eager for any work, they did not view their situation as temporary. Wages continued to decline, and a permanent working class took shape.

Lowell and the Environment

Lowell was a city built on water power. Early settlers had used the power of the Merrimack River to run mills, but never on the scale of the textile factories. As the market spread, Americans came to link progress with the fullest use of the environment’s natural resources.

By 1836, Lowell had seven canals, with a supporting network of locks and dams, to govern the Merrimack’s flow and distribute water to the city’s 26 mills. As more and more mills were built, both at Lowell and other sites, the Boston Associates erected dams at several points along the river to store water and divert it into power canals for factories. At Lawrence, they constructed the largest dam in the world at the time, a 32-foothigh granite structure that spanned 1600 feet across the river. But even dammed, the Merrimack’s waters proved insufficient. So the Associates gained control of over 100 square miles of New Hampshire lakes that fed the river system. Damming these lakes provided a regular flow of water, especially in the drier summer months. In the course of establishing this elaborate water control system, they came to see water as a form of property, divorced from the ownership of land along the river. Water became a commodity that was measured in terms of its power to operate a certain number of spindles and looms. By regulating the river’s waters, the Associates made the Merrimack valley the nation’s greatest industrial center in the first half of the nineteenth century. But not all who lived in the valley benefited.  By raising water levels, the dams flooded farmlands, blocked the transportation of logs downstream, and damaged mills upstream by reducing the current and creating backwater that slowed waterwheels. The dams also devastated the fish population by preventing upstream spawning, while factories routinely dumped their wastes into the river to be carried downstream, thereby eventually contaminating water supplies. Epidemics of typhoid, cholera, and dysentery increased, so that by midcentury Lowell had a reputation as a particularly unhealthy city.

Industrial Work

The creation of an industrial labor force that was accustomed to working in factories did not occur easily. Previously, artisans had worked within the home. Apprentices were considered part of the family, and masters were responsible not only for teaching their apprentices a trade but also for providing them some education and for supervising their moral behavior. Journeymen knew that if they perfected their skill, they could become respected master artisans with their own shops. Nor did skilled artisans work by the clock, at a steady pace, but rather in bursts of intense labor alternating with greater leisure. The factory changed that. Factory goods were not so finished or elegant as those done by hand, and pride in artisanship gave way to rates of productivity. At the same time, workers were required to discard old habits, for industrialism demanded a worker who was sober, dependable, and self-disciplined. Absenteeism, lateness, and drunkenness hurt productivity and disrupted the regular factory routine. Thus industrialization not only produced a fundamental change in the way work was organized but also transformed the very nature of work. The first generation to experience these changes did not adopt the new attitudes easily. The factory clock became the symbol of the new work rules. One mill worker who finally quit complained revealingly about “obedience to the dingdong of the bell—just as though we are so many living machines.” With the loss of personal freedom also came the loss of standing in the community. The master-apprentice relationship gave way to factories’ sharp separation of workers from management. Few workers rose through the ranks to supervisory positions, and even fewer could achieve the artisan’s dream of setting up their own businesses. Even well-paid workers sensed their decline in status.

The Labor Movement

In this newly emerging economic order, workers sometimes organized to protect their rights and traditional ways of life. Craftworkers such as carpenters, printers, and tailors formed unions, and in 1834 individual unions came together in the National Trades’ Union. Union leaders argued that labor was degraded in America: workers endured long hours, low pay, and low status. Unlike most American social thinkers of the day, they accepted the idea of conflict between different classes. They did not believe that the interests of workers and employers could be reconciled, and they blamed the plight of labor on monopolies, especially banking and paper money, and on machines and the factory system. If the unions’ rhetoric sounded radical, the solutions they proposed were moderate. Reformers agitated for public education, abolition of imprisonment for debt, political action by workers, and effective unions as the means to guarantee social equality and restore labor to its former honored position. Proclaiming the republican virtues of freedom and equality, they attacked special privilege, denounced the lack of equal opportunity, and decried workers’ loss of independence. The labor movement gathered some momentum in the decade before the Panic of 1837, but in the depression that followed, labor’s strength collapsed. During hard times, few workers were willing to strike or engage in collective action. Nor did skilled craftworkers, who spearheaded the union movement, feel a particularly strong bond with semiskilled factory workers and unskilled laborers. More than a decade of agitation did finally win the 10-hour day for some workers by the 1850s, and the courts also recognized workers’ right to strike, but these gains had little immediate impact. Workers were united in resenting the industrial system and their loss of status, but they were divided by ethnic and racial antagonisms, gender, conflicting religious perspectives, occupational differences, party loyalties, and disagreements over tactics. For them, the factory and industrialism were not agents of opportunity but reminders of their loss of independence and a measure of control over their lives.

Sam Patch and a Worker’s “Art”

Some fought against the loss of independence in unusual ways. The waterfalls that served as a magnet for capitalists building mills also attracted their workers. Such cascades were places to come during off-hours to picnic, swim, fish, or laze about. And for those with nerve, the falls provided a place to show off skills in a different way. Every mill town had its waterfall jumpers, with their own techniques to survive the plunge (knees bent, chest thrust forward). No jumper won more notoriety than Sam Patch, a young man who had begun working at the Pawtucket mills at the age of 7. By the time he was in his 20s, Patch was working at the mills around Paterson, New Jersey, along the Passaic River. Sam Patch attracted attention in 1827, when he became disgusted by the conduct of a sawmill owner who had bought land around Passaic Falls and was set to charge admission to the scenic views in a new private “Forest Garden.” The fee was meant to keep out “the lazy, idle, rascally, drunken vagabonds” who might spoil the pleasure of more refined folk. Workers who resented this fencing out rejoiced when Patch vowed to spoil Forest Garden’s opening-day party. Constables locked him in a cellar to prevent any mischief, but a sympathizer set him free. And as proper folk gathered at the garden, thousands of ordinary laborers gathered on the opposite riverbank to see Patch jump 70 feet straight down. When he bobbed to the surface, raucous cheering broke out. Patch’s fame led him eventually to the biggest challenge of all: Niagara Falls. Twice he leapt more than 80 feet into the cascade’s churning waters. But he drowned a month later when he dared Genesee Falls in another mill town along the Erie Canal—Rochester, New York. Still, his fame persisted for decades. Leaping waterfalls was “an art which I have knowledge of and courage to perform,” he once declared defiantly. In a market economy where skilled “arts” were being replaced by machine labor, Patch’s acts were a defiant protest against the changing times.

SOCIAL STRUCTURES OF THE MARKET SOCIETY

Thousands of miles beyond Lowell’s factory gates a different sort of American roamed, who at first appeared unconnected to the bustle of urban markets. These were the legendary mountain men, who flourished from the mid-1820s through the mid-1840s. Traveling across the Great Plains, along upland streams, and over the passes of the Rockies, outdoorsmen like Jim Bridger, Jedidiah Smith, and James Walker wore buckskin hunting shirts, let their hair grow to their shoulders, and stuck pistols and tomahawks in their belts. Wild and exotic, the mountain men became romantic symbols of the American quest for individual freedom. Yet these wanderers, too, were tied to the emerging market society. The mountain men hunted beaver pelts and shipped them east, to be turned into fancy hats for gentlemen. The fur trade was not a sporting event but a business, dominated by organizations like John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company, and the trapper was the agent of an economic structure that stretched from the mountains to eastern cities and even to Europe. Most of these men went into the wilderness not to flee civilization but to make money—to accumulate capital in order to set themselves up in society. Of those who survived the fur trade, almost none remained permanently outside civilization but returned and took up new careers as shopkeepers, traders, ranchers, politicians, and even bankers. They, like farmers, were expectant capitalists for whom the West was a land of opportunity.

The revolution in markets, in other words, affected Americans from all walks of life: mountain men as well as merchants, laborers as well as farmers. Equally critical, it restructured American society as a whole.

Economic Specialization

To begin with, the spread of the market produced greater specialization. As we have seen, transportation networks made it possible for farmers to concentrate on producing certain crops, while factories could focus on making a single item such as cloth or shoes. Within factories, the division of labor meant that the process of manufacturing an item became more specialized. No longer did cobblers produce a pair of shoes from start to finish; the operation was broken down into more specialized (and less skilled) tasks. This process evolved at different rates. Textiles and milling were completely mechanized, while other sectors of the economy, such as shoes and men’s clothing, depended little on machinery. Moreover, large factories were the exception rather than the rule. Still, the tendency was toward more technology, greater efficiency, and increasing specialization. Specialization had consequences at home as well as in the workplace. The average eighteenth-century American woman produced items like thread, cloth, clothing, and candles in the home for family use. As factories spread, however, household manufacturing all but disappeared, and women lost many of the economic functions they had previously performed in the family unit. Again, textiles are a striking example. Between 1815 and 1860, the price of cotton cloth fell from 18 to 2 cents a yard, and because it was also smoother and more brightly colored than homespun, most women purchased cloth rather than making it themselves. Similarly, the development of ready-made men’s clothing reduced the amount of sewing women did, especially in urban centers.

Materialism

European visitors were struck during these years by how much Americans were preoccupied with material goods. The new generation did not invent materialism, but the spread of the market after 1815 made it much more evident. “I know of no country, indeed,” Tocqueville commented, “where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men.” In a nation that had no legally recognized aristocracy, no established church, and class lines that were only informally drawn, wealth became the most obvious symbol of status. Dismissing birth as “a mere idea,” one magazine explained, “Wealth is something substantial. Everybody knows that and feels it.” Materialism reflected more than a desire for goods and physical comfort; It represented a quest for respect and recognition. “Americans boast of their skill in money making,” one contemporary observed, “and as it is the only standard of dignity and nobility and worth, they endeavor to obtain it by every possible means.” The emphasis on money and material goods left its mark on the American character. Often enough, it encouraged sharp business practices and promoted a greater tolerance of wealth acquired by questionable means. Americans also emphasized practicality over theory. The esteem of the founding generation for intellectual achievement was mostly lost in the scramble for wealth that seemed to consume the new generation.

Wealth and the Emerging Middle Class

In the years after 1815, a new middle class took shape in American society. A small class of shopkeepers, professionals, and master artisans had existed earlier, but the separation of middle class from manual laborers greatly expanded its size and influence. As specialization increased, office work and selling were more often physically separated from the production and handling of merchandise. Businesspeople, professionals, storekeepers, clerks, office workers, and supervisors began to think of themselves as a distinct social group. Members of the growing middle class had access to more education and enjoyed greater social mobility. They were paid not only more but differently. A manual worker might earn $300 a year, paid as wages computed on an hourly basis. Professionals received a yearly salary and might make $1000 a year or more. Middle-class neighborhoods, segregated along income and occupational lines, also began to develop in towns and cities. In larger cities improved transportation enabled middle-class residents to move to surrounding suburbs and commute to work. Leisure also became segregated, as separate working-class and middleclass social organizations and institutions emerged. As middle-class Americans accumulated greater wealth, they were able to consume more. Thus material goods became emblems of success and status—as Material goods as emblems of middle-class success clockmaker Chauncey Jerome sadly discovered when his business failed and his wealth vanished. Indeed, this materialistic ethos was most apparent in the middle class, as they strove to set themselves apart from other groups in society. As American society became more specialized, greater extremes of wealth appeared. As the new markets created fortunes for the few, the factory system lowered the wages of workers by dividing labor into smaller, less skilled tasks. Indeed, local tax records reveal a growing concentration of wealth at the top of the social pyramid after 1815. Wealth was most highly concentrated in large eastern cities and in the cotton kingdom of the South, but everywhere the tendency was for the rich to get richer and own a larger share of the community’s total wealth. By 1860, 5 percent of American families owned more than 50 percent of the nation’s wealth. In villages where the market revolution had not penetrated, wealth tended to be less concentrated. In a market society, the rich were able to build up their assets because those with capital were in a position to increase it dramatically by taking advantage of new investment opportunities. Although a few men, such as Cornelius Vanderbilt and John Jacob Astor, vaulted from the bottom ranks of society to the top, most of the nation’s richest individuals came from wealthy families.

Social Mobility

The existence of great fortunes is not necessarily inconsistent with the idea of social mobility or property accumulation. Although the gap between the rich and the poor widened after 1820, even the incomes of most poor Americans rose, because the total amount of wealth produced in America had become much larger. From about 1825 to 1860 the average per capita income almost doubled to $300. Voicing the popular belief, a New York judge proclaimed, “In this favored land of liberty, the road to advancement is open to all.” Social mobility existed in these years, but not as much as contemporaries boasted. Most laborers—or more often their sons—did manage to move up the social ladder, but only a rung or two. Few unskilled workers rose higher than to a semiskilled occupation. Even the children of skilled workers normally did not escape the laboring classes to enter the middle-class ranks of clerks, managers, or lawyers. For most workers improved status came in the form of a savings account or home ownership, which gave them some security during economic downswings and in old age.

A New Sensitivity to Time

It was no accident that Chauncey Jerome’s clocks spread throughout the nation along with the market economy. The new methods of doing business involved a new and stricter sense of time. Factory life necessitated a more regimented schedule, where work began at the sound of a bell, workers kept machines going at a constant pace, and the day was divided into hours and even minutes. Clocks began to invade private as well as public space. With mass production ordinary families could now afford clocks, and even farmers became more sensitive to time as they were integrated into the market.

PROSPERITY AND ANXIETY

As Americans watched their nation’s frontiers expand and its economy grow, many began to view history in terms of continuous improvement. The path of commerce, however, was not steadily upward. Rather it advanced in a series of wrenching boom-bust cycles: accelerating growth, followed by a crash, and then depression. The country remained extraordinarily prosperous from 1815 until 1819, only to sink into a depression that lasted from 1819 to 1823. During the next cycle, the economy expanded slowly during the 1820s, followed by almost frenzied speculation in the 1830s. Then came the inevitable contraction in 1837, and the country suffered an even more severe depression from 1839 to 1843. The third cycle followed the familiar pattern: gradual economic growth during the 1840s, frantic expansion in the 1850s, and a third depression that began in 1857 and lasted until the Civil War. In each of these depressions, thousands of workers were thrown out of work, overextended farmers lost their farms, and many businesses closed their doors. In such an environment, prosperity, like personal success, seemed all too fleeting. Because Americans believed the good times would not last—that the bubble would burst and another “panic” set in—their optimism was often tinged by insecurity and anxiety. They knew too many individuals like Chauncey Jerome, who had been rich and then lost all their wealth in a downturn.

The Panic of 1819

The initial shock of this boom-and-bust psychology came with the Panic of 1819, the first major depression in the nation’s history. From 1815 to 1818 cotton had commanded truly fabulous prices on the Liverpool market, reaching 32.5 cents a pound in 1818. In this heady prosperity, the federal government extended liberal credit for land purchases, and the new national bank encouraged merchants and farmers to borrow in order to catch the rising tide. But in 1819 the price of cotton collapsed and took the rest of the economy with it. As the inflationary bubble burst, land values, which had been driven to new heights by the speculative fever, plummeted 50 to 75 percent almost overnight. As the economy went slack, so did the demand for western foodstuffs and eastern manufactured goods and services, sending the nation reeling into a severe depression. Because the market economy had spread to new areas, this downturn affected not only urban Americans but those living in the countryside as well. Many farmers, especially in newly settled regions, had bought their land on credit, and others in established areas had expanded their operations in anticipation of future returns. When prices fell, both groups were hard-pressed to pay their debts. New cotton planters in the Southwest, who were especially vulnerable to fluctuations in the world market, were particularly hard-hit. In the wake of the Panic of 1819, the New Nationalism’s spirit of cooperation gave way to jealousy and conflict between competing interests and social groups. One consequence was an increase in sectional tensions, but the Panic affected political life in even more direct ways. As the depression deepened and hardship spread, Americans viewed government policies as at least partly to blame. The postwar nationalism, after all, had been based on the belief that government should stimulate economic development through a national bank and protective tariff, by improving transportation, and by opening up new lands. As Americans struggled to make sense of their new economic order, they looked to take more direct control of the government that was so actively shaping their lives. During the 1820s, the popular response to the market and the Panic of 1819 produced a strikingly new kind of politics in the Republic.

Chapter Overview

This chapter examines the fundamental economic changes that occurred during the quarter-century after 1815 and traces the connection between these changes and the alteration of American values and society. The career of Chauncey Jerome illustrates many of the chapter's themes. The new market society depended on a stricter sense of time, and by providing inexpensive, mass-produced clocks and aggressively marketing them in the United States and even around the world, Jerome gained fame and wealth. However, the ups and downs of his career also demonstrated how fleeting success could be in the new boom-and-bust economy, as Jerome lost everything near the end of his life and died in poverty.

The Market Revolution
The development of widespread markets fundamentally transformed the nature of economic opportunity in the United States, a change in which government played an important role. After 1815, Congress enacted the program of the "new nationalism," including a protective tariff, a national bank, and federal aid for internal improvements, which primarily meant the development of canals, steamboats, and eventually railroads. The resulting transportation revolution stimulated economic growth by enabling producers to transport goods cheaply over land for the first time. The Supreme Court under John Marshall furthered this trend by adopting a pro-business stance that encouraged investment and risk-taking. Corporations increasingly became an important form of business organization to which the courts offered special legal protections and encouragements.

A Restless Temper
Economic expansion generated social and intellectual change. Eager to succeed in the new competitive markets, Americans became a restless people, driven by dreams of wealth and haunted by fears of failure. During this period, they moved constantly, pouring steadily westward or flocking to the burgeoning cities in search of opportunity. The majority of new western settlers were farmers, but speculators bought much of the available land, inciting a boom and bust cycle that caused prices to swing up and down with the economy. At the same time, truly significant cities developed in not just the older regions of the country, but in the West as well.

The Rise of Factories
As markets developed, entrepreneurs reorganized their operations to increase production. For the first time, factories developed in the United States, beginning with the textile industry. Eventually all operations (from opening the cotton bales to weaving the cloth) were combined on one site, with the work done largely by machines tended by semi-skilled operators. Lowell, Massachusetts, became the center of the textile industry and the symbol of this new mode of production. Factory work imposed a new discipline, oriented around the clock and strict schedules, on previously rural residents. In other sectors of the economy, the production process was reorganized without machinery. The shoe industry, for example, broke production down into a series of steps, with workers performing one step in the production process, though all of the work was still done by hand until the 1850s. Convinced that labor was losing its traditional status, workers increasingly protested against these changes by organizing unions, issuing political demands, going on strike, and even creating alternative ways, such as jumping waterfalls, to exhibit their unique skills. The union movement flourished briefly in the 1830s, only to be destroyed by the depression that began in 1837.

Social Structures of the Market Society
As opportunities for profit expanded, wealth became more unequally distributed in American society. The rich became richer and controlled a larger proportion of the nation's total wealth. Nevertheless, the belief in opportunity and social mobility remained widespread. In reality, while white Americans still had the opportunity to improve their status, actual social mobility became more limited in this period. In addition, status increasingly came to depend upon wealth, rather than family ties or education. As a result, Americans frantically pursued material goods and success. The workings of the market revolution appeared in many of the changes occurring in American society, including the separation of the commercial and the now economically based residential areas of Kingston, New York; the development of commercial agriculture in Sugar Creek, Illinois; and the careers of mountain men, who entered the fur trade hoping to achieve wealth and status back home.

Prosperity and Anxiety
Prosperity also brought anxiety, as Americans feared economic downturns that were beyond the control of individuals would plunge their families into poverty after 1815 the economy lurched forward in fits and starts, so wealth never seemed permanent or secure. Americans increasingly looked to government to relieve economic distress. Once again, social change precipitated political change.

Key Terms

Corporation - A corporation is a separate legal entity that has been incorporated either directly through legislation or through a registration process established by law. Incorporated entities have legal rights and liabilities that are distinct from their employees, shareholders,[1] and members, and may conduct business as either a profit-seeking business or not-for-profit. Early incorporated entities were established by charter (i.e. by an ad hoc act granted by a monarch or passed by a parliament or legislature). (Page 192)

Journeyman - A journeyman is an individual who has completed an apprenticeship and is fully educated in a trade or craft, but not yet a master. To become a master, a journeyman has to submit a master work piece to a guild for evaluation and be admitted to the guild as a master. Sometimes, a journeyman is required to accomplish a three-year working trip, which may be called the journeyman years. Page 194

Paternalism - Paternalism is behavior, by a person, organization or state, which limits some person or group's liberty or autonomy for that person's or groups own good. Paternalism can also imply that the behavior is against or regardless of the will of a person, or also that the behavior expresses an attitude of superiority. Page195

Social mobility - Social mobility is the movement of individuals, families, households, or other categories of people within or between social strata in a society. It is a change in social status relative to others' social location within a given society. Page 200

Boom-bust cycle - In economics, boom and bust is a process characterized by sustained increases in several economic indicators followed by a sharp and rapid contraction. It refers to a severe business cycle. The phrase “boom and bust” pertains to capitalism. Times of increased business and investment have seen these collapse leaving widespread poverty such as the depressions of 1837 and 1857 in the United States Page 201

Eli Whitney - Eli Whitney was an American inventor best known for inventing the cotton gin. This was one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution and shaped the economy of the Antebellum South. Whitney's invention made upland short cotton into a profitable crop, which strengthened the economic foundation of slavery in the United States. Despite the social and economic impact of his invention, Whitney lost many profits in legal battles over patent infringement for the cotton gin. Thereafter, he turned his attention into securing contracts with the government in the manufacture of muskets for the newly formed United States Army. He continued making arms and inventing until his death in 1825. Eli Whitney has often been incorrectly credited with inventing the idea of interchangeable parts, which he championed for years as a maker of muskets; however, the idea predated Whitney, and Whitney's role in it was one of promotion and popularizing, not invention. Successful implementation of the idea eluded Whitney until near the end of his life, occurring first in others' armories.

Robert Fulton - Robert Fulton was a colonial American engineer and inventor who is widely credited with developing the first commercially successful steamboat. In 1800, he was commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte to design the "Nautilus", which was the first practical submarine in history. He is also credited with inventing some of the world's earliest naval torpedoes for use by the British Royal Navy.

Samuel F. Morse - Samuel F. B. Morse, was an American painter and inventor who, independent of similar efforts in Europe, developed an electric telegraph (1832–35). In 1838 he developed the Morse code.

Robert Hoe - Robert Hoe, was an American printing-press manufacturer who, as head (1823–33) of R. Hoe and Company, bought (1827) and improved Samuel Rust’s patent for a wrought-iron framed printing press and successfully manufactured it as the “Washington” press. Hoe immigrated to the United States in 1803 and two years later became a partner with two brothers, Matthew and Peter Smith, in a newly founded enterprise, Smith, Hoe and Company, New York City, manufacturers of printers’ equipment. The company prospered, and among several innovations was the introduction of the cast-iron frame to replace the wooden frame in presses. After the death of Matthew (1820) and Peter (1823), Hoe renamed the firm R. Hoe and Company. In 1829 he began improving upon the Napier cylinder press imported from England. The Hoe version of this press was so superior that it supplanted all English-made presses in the United States. About 1830 Hoe bought the rights to a steam-powered press originally patented by Isaac Adams and manufactured it.

Chief Justice John Marshall – John Marshall was   fourth chief justice of the United States and principal founder of the U.S. system of constitutional law. As perhaps the Supreme Court’s most influential chief justice, Marshall was responsible for constructing and defending both the foundation of judicial power and the principles of American federalism. The first of his great cases in more than 30 years of service was Marbury v. Madison (1803), which established the Supreme Court’s right to expound constitutional law and exercise judicial review by declaring laws unconstitutional. His defense of federalism was articulated in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), which upheld the authority of Congress to create the Bank of the United States and declared unconstitutional the right of a state to tax an instrument of the federal government.

In his ruling on McCulloch, Marshall at once explained the authority of the court to interpret the constitution, the nature of federal-state relations inherent in a federal system of government, and the democratic nature of both the U.S. government and its governing. During his tenure as chief justice, Marshall participated in more than 1,000 decisions, writing more than 500 of them himself.

Mill girl - The "Mill Girls" (or "Factory Girls," as they called themselves) were female workers who came to work for the textile corporations in Lowell, Massachusetts, during the Industrial Revolution in the United States. The women initially recruited by the corporations were daughters of propertied New England farmers, between the ages of 15 and 30. (There also could be "little girls" who worked there about the age of 13.) By 1840, at the height of the Industrial Revolution, the textile mills had recruited over 8,000 women, who came to make up nearly seventy-five percent of the mill workforce. During the early period, women came to the mills of their own accord, for various reasons: to help a brother pay for college, for the educational opportunities offered in Lowell, or to earn a supplementary income for themselves. While their wages were only half of what men were paid, many were able to attain economic independence for the first time, free from the controlling influence of fathers and husbands. As a result, while factory life would soon come to be experienced as oppressive, it enabled these women to challenge assumptions of female inferiority and dependence.

Industrial labor force - The industrial labor force were workers that worked in factories. Previously, artisans had worked within the home. Factory goods were not so finished or elegant as those done by hand, and pride in artisanship gave way to rates of productivity. At the same time, workers were required to discard old habits, for industrialism demanded a worker who was sober, dependable, and self-disciplined. Absenteeism, lateness, and drunkenness hurt productivity and disrupted the regular factory routine. Thus industrialization not only produced a fundamental change in the way work was organized but also transformed the very nature of work. The first generation to experience these changes did not adopt the new attitudes easily   

Working class - The working class) is the class of people employed for wages, especially in manual or industrial work. Working-class jobs include blue-collar jobs, but also include large amounts of white-collar and service work. The working class relies on earnings from wage labour, thereby including a large majority of the population in industrialized economies, of the urban areas of non-industrialized economies, and also a significant number of the rural workforce worldwide.

Craftworkers – Craftworkers were skilled artisans who before 1815 manufactured products in homes or shops. As master craftworkers, they imparted the knowledge of their trades to apprentices and journeymen.

National Trade Union - In 1834 journeymen established the National Trades' Union, the first organization of American wage earners on a national scale.

John Jacob Astor/American Fur Co. - John Jacob Astor was a German-born American businessman, merchant, fur trader, and investor who was the first prominent member of the Astor family and the first multi-millionaire in the United States. He was the creator of the first trust in America.He immigrated to England as a teenager and worked as a musical instrument manufacturer. Astor moved to the United States after the American Revolutionary War, He entered the fur trade and built a monopoly, managing a business empire that extended to the Great Lakes region and Canada, and later expanded into the American West and Pacific coast. Astor took advantage of the Jay Treaty between England and the United States in 1794, which opened new markets in Canada and the Great Lakes region. In London, Astor at once made a contract with the North West Company, who from Montreal rivaled the trade interests of the Hudson's Bay Company, then based in London. Astor imported furs from Montreal to New York and shipped them to Europe. By 1800, he had amassed almost a quarter of a million dollars, and had become one of the leading figures in the fur trade. His agents worked throughout the western areas and were ruthless in competition. In 1800, following the example of the Empress of China, the first American trading vessel to China, Astor traded furs, teas, and sandalwood with Canton in China, and greatly benefited from it. The U.S. Embargo Act in 1807, however, disrupted Astor's import/export business because it closed off trade with Canada. With the permission of President Thomas Jefferson, Astor established the American Fur Company on April 6, 1808. He later formed subsidiaries: the Pacific Fur Company, and the Southwest Fur Company (in which Canadians had a part), in order to control fur trading in the Great Lakes areas and Columbia River region. His Columbia River trading post at Fort Astoria (established in April 1811) was the first United States community on the Pacific coast. He financed the overland Astor Expedition in 1810–12 to reach the outpost. Members of the expedition were to discover South Pass, through which hundreds of thousands of settlers on the Oregon, Mormon, and California trails passed through the Rocky Mountains.

Panic 1819 – The Panic of 1819 was the first major peacetime financial crisis in the United States followed by a general collapse of the American economy persisting through 1821. Though driven by global market adjustments in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, the severity of the downturn was compounded by excessive speculation in public lands, fueled by the unrestrained issue of paper money from banks and business concerns. The financial disaster and depression provoked popular resentment against banking and business enterprise, and a general belief that federal government economic policy was fundamentally flawed. Americans, many for the first time, became politically engaged so as to defend their local economic interests.

Population growth - Specifically, population growth rate refers to the change in population over a unit time period, often expressed as a percentage of the number of individuals in the population at the beginning of that period.

Factory Towns - A mill town, also known as factory town or mill village, is typically a settlement that developed around one or more mills or factories (usually cotton mills or factories producing textiles). Beginning with technological information smuggled out of England by Francis Cabot Lowell, large mills were established in New England in the early to mid-19th century. Mill towns, sometimes planned, built and owned as a company town, grew in the shadow of the industries. The region became a manufacturing powerhouse along rivers like the Housatonic, Quinebaug, Shetucket, Blackstone, Merrimack, Nashua, Cocheco, Saco, Androscoggin, Kennebec or Winooski.

Merrimack Valley - The Merrimack Valley is a bi-state region along the Merrimack River in the states of New Hampshire and Massachusetts, United States. The Merrimack is one of the larger waterways in the New England region and has helped define the livelihood and culture of those living along it since native times. Major cities in the Merrimack Valley include Concord, Manchester and Nashua in New Hampshire, as well as Lowell, Lawrence, Haverhill and Newburyport in Massachusetts. The Merrimack Valley was a major center of the textile industry in America during the 19th century.

Lowell Mills - Lowell Mills refers to the many mills that operated in the city of Lowell, Massachusetts during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Francis Cabot Lowell invented the first factory system "where people and machines were all under one roof." A series of mills and factories were built along the Merrimack River by the Boston Manufacturing Company, an organization founded in years prior by the man for whom the resulting city was named. Construction began in 1821, and the mills were at their peak roughly twenty years later. For the first time in the United States these mills combined the textile processes of spinning and weaving under one roof, essentially eliminating the "putting-out system" in favor of mass production of high-quality cloth. The workforce at these factories was three-quarters women. The Waltham-Lowell system, as it was called, was greatly impacted both by economic instability and by immigration. A minor depression in 1834 led to a sharp reduction in wages, which in turn produced organization of the female workers and two of the earliest examples of a successful strike. A feature of such organization was the magazines and newsletters put out by the girls, the most famous of which was the Lowell Offering. Then later, when the Panic of 1837 necessitated a true drop in wages, many Lowell girls were replaced by the lower paid Irish “biddies,” or “Bridgets.” By 1850 the majority of workers at Lowell factories were poor immigrants. One result of this large scale laying-off was that now there were many adult, single women in society, who were used to earning their own money. It was only sensible that they seek other positions (teaching, etc.) in which to make money; and by doing so they further contributed to the birth of the working women.

Middle-class neighborhoods - In the years after 1815, a new middle class took shape in American society. A small class of shopkeepers, professionals, and master artisans had existed earlier, but the separation of middle class from manual laborers greatly expanded its size and influence. As specialization increased, office work and selling were more often physically separated from the production and handling of merchandise. Businesspeople, professionals, storekeepers, clerks, office workers, and supervisors began to think of themselves as a distinct social group. Members of the growing middle class had access to more education and enjoyed greater social mobility. They were paid not only more but differently. A manual worker might earn $300 a year, paid as wages computed on an hourly basis. Professionals received a yearly salary and might make $1000 a year or more. Middle-class neighborhoods, segregated along income and occupational lines, also began to develop in towns and cities.

Second Bank of the United States - The Second Bank of the United States, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was the second federally authorized Hamiltonian National Bank in the United States during its 20-year charter from February 1816 to January 1836. A private corporation with public duties, the bank handled all fiscal transactions for the US Government, and was accountable to Congress and the US Treasury.

Twenty percent of its capital was owned by the federal government, the Bank's single largest stockholder Four thousand private investors held 80% of the Bank's capital, including one thousand Europeans. The bulk of the stocks were held by a few hundred wealthy Americans. In its time, the institution was the largest moneyed corporation in the world. The essential function of the Bank was to regulate the public credit issued by private banking institutions through the fiscal duties it performed for the US Treasury, and to establish a sound and stable national currency. The federal deposits endowed the BUS with its regulatory capacity. Modeled on Alexander Hamilton's First Bank of the United States, the Second Bank was chartered by President James Madison in 1816 and began operations at its main branch in Philadelphia on January 7, 1817, managing twenty-five branch offices nationwide by 1832. The efforts to renew the Bank's charter put the institution at the center of the general election of 1832, in which the Bank's president Nicholas Biddle and pro-Bank National Republicans led by Henry Clay clashed with the "hard-money" Andrew Jackson administration and eastern banking interests in the Bank War. Failing to secure recharter, the Second Bank of the United States became a private corporation in 1836, and underwent liquidation in 1838.

Cotton gin - A cotton gin is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, allowing for much greater productivity than manual cotton separation. The fibers are processed into clothing or other cotton goods, and any undamaged seeds may be used to grow more cotton or to produce cottonseed oil and meal. Although simple handheld roller gins have been used in India and other countries since at least 500 AD, the first modern mechanical cotton gin was created by American inventor Eli Whitney in 1793, and patented in 1794. It used a combination of a wire screen and small wire hooks to pull the cotton through, while brushes continuously removed the loose cotton lint to prevent jams. Whitney's gin revolutionized the cotton industry in the United States, but also led to the growth of slavery in the American South as the demand for cotton workers rapidly increased. The invention has thus been identified as an inadvertent contributing factor to the outbreak of the American Civil War.

Canals/Erie Canal - Canals attracted considerable investment capital, especially after the success of the wondrous Erie Canal. Built between 1818 and 1825 the canal stretched 364 miles from Albany on the Hudson River to Buffalo on Lake Erie. Its construction by the state was an act of faith; in 1816 the United States had only 100 miles of canals, none longer than 28 miles. Then, too, the proposed route ran through forests, disease-ridden swamps, and unsettled wilderness. The canal's engineers lacked experience, but they made up for that by sheer ingenuity. Improving on European tools, they devised a cable and screw that allowed one man to pull down even the largest trees and a stump-puller that removed up to 40 stumps a day. The project paid for itself within a few years. The Erie Canal reduced the cost of shipping a ton of goods from Buffalo to New York City from more than 19 cents a mile to less than 3 cents a mile. By 1860 the cost had fallen to less than a penny a mile. Where its busy traffic passed, settlers flocked, and towns like Rochester and Lockport sprang up and thrived by moving goods and serving markets. “Everything in this bustling place appears to be in motion,” wrote one English traveler about Rochester in 1827. The steady flow of goods eastward gave New York City the dominant position in the scramble for control of western trade. New York's commercial rivals, such as Philadelphia and Baltimore, were soon frantically trying to build their own canals to the West. Western states such as Ohio and Indiana, convinced that prosperity depended on cheap transportation, constructed canals to link interior regions with the Great Lakes.

Power press - The power press produced by Robert Hoe and his son Richard revolutionized journalism. The mechanical press greatly increased the speed with which sheets could be printed over the old hand method. Mass-produced newspapers, often selling for only a penny, gained huge circulations, since ordinary families could afford them. Hoe's press had a similar impact on book publishing, since thousands of copies could be printed at affordable prices.

Railroads – American railroads were built on a far larger scale than those in Continental Europe, both in terms of the distances covered and also in the loading gauge adopted, which allowed for heavier locomotives and double-deck trains. The railroad era in the United States began in 1830 when Peter Cooper's locomotive, Tom Thumb, first steamed along 13 miles (21 km) of Baltimore and Ohio railroad track. In 1833, the nation's second railroad ran 136 miles (219 km) from Charleston to Hamburg in South Carolina. Not until the 1850s, though, did railroads offer long distance service at reasonable rates. A journey from Philadelphia to Charleston involved eight different gauges, which meant that passengers and freight had to change trains seven times. Only at places like Bowling Green, Kentucky, were the railroads connected to one another. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad that opened in 1830 was the first to evolve from a single line to a network in the United States.  By 1831, a steam railway connected Albany and Schenectady, New York, a distance of 16 miles (26 km), which was covered in 40 minutes. The years between 1850 and 1890 saw phenomenal growth in the US railroad system, which at its peak constituted one third of the world's total mileage. Although the American Civil War placed a temporary halt to major new developments, the conflict did demonstrate the enormous strategic importance of railways at times of war. After the war, major developments include the first elevated railway built in New York in 1867 as well as the symbolically important first transcontinental railroad completed in 1869.

Steamboats - A steamboat is a boat in which the primary method of propulsion is steam power, typically driving propellers or paddlewheels. The era of the steamboat began in America in 1787 when John Fitch (1743-1798) made the first successful trial of a 45-foot (14-meter) steamboat on the Delaware River on August 22, 1787, in the presence of members of the Constitutional Convention being held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Fitch later built a larger vessel that carried passengers and freight between Philadelphia and Burlington, New Jersey on the Delaware. His steamboat was not a financial success and was shut down after a few months service. Oliver Evans (1755-1819) was an American inventor born in Newport, Delaware to a family of Welsh settlers. He designed an improved high-pressure steam engine in 1801 but did not build it (patented 1804). The Philadelphia Board of Health was concerned with the problem of dredging and cleaning the city's dockyards, and in 1805 Evans convinced them to contract with him for a steam-powered dredge which he called the Oruktor Amphibolos. It was built but was only marginally successful. Evans's high-pressure steam engine had a much higher power to weight ratio, making it practical to apply it in locomotives and steamboats. Evans got so depressed with the poor protection that the US patent law gave inventors that he eventually took all his engineering drawings and invention ideas and destroyed them to prevent his children wasting their time in court fighting patent infringements. Robert Fulton and Robert Livingston, who owned extensive land on the Hudson River in New York, met in 1802 and drew up an agreement to construct a steamboat to ply a route between New York City and Albany, New York on the Hudson River. They successfully obtained a monopoly on Hudson River traffic after Livingston terminated a prior 1797 agreement with John Stevens, who owned extensive land on the Hudson River in New Jersey. The former agreement had partitioned northern Hudson River traffic to Livingston and southern to Stevens, agreeing to use ships designed by Stevens for both operations.[14] With their new monopoly, Fulton and Livingston's boat, named the Clermont after Livingston's estate, could make a profit. The Clermont was nicknamed "Fulton's Folly" by doubters. On Monday, August 17, 1807, the memorable first voyage of the Clermont up the Hudson River was begun. She traveled the 150 miles (240 km) trip to Albany in a little over 32 hours and made the return trip in about eight hours. The use of steamboats on major US rivers soon followed Fulton's 1807 success. In 1811 the first in a continuous (still in commercial passenger operation as of 2007) line of river steamboats left the dock at Pittsburgh to steam down the Ohio River to the Mississippi and on to New Orleans. In 1817 a consortium in Sackets Harbor, New York funded the construction of the first US steamboat, Ontario, to run on Lake Ontario and the Great Lakes, beginning the growth of lake commercial and passenger traffic. In his book Life on the Mississippi, river pilot and author Mark Twain described much of the operation of such vessels.

US Patent Office - The United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO or USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that issues patents to inventors and businesses for their inventions, and trademark registration for product and intellectual property identification. The USPTO is "unique among federal agencies because it operates solely on fees collected by its users, and not on taxpayer dollars". Its "operating structure is like a business in that it receives requests for services—applications for patents and trademark registrations—and charges fees projected to cover the cost of performing the services it provides".

Supreme Court cases:

McCulloch v. Maryland was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States. The state of Maryland had attempted to impede operation of a branch of the Second Bank of the United States by imposing a tax on all notes of banks not chartered in Maryland. Though the law, by its language, was generally applicable to all banks not chartered in Maryland, the Second Bank of the United States was the only out-of-state bank then existing in Maryland, and the law was recognized in the court's opinion as having specifically targeted the Bank of the U.S. The Court invoked the Necessary and Proper Clause of the Constitution, which allowed the Federal government to pass laws not expressly provided for in the Constitution's list of express powers, provided those laws are in useful furtherance of the express powers of Congress under the Constitution. The Court determined that Congress did have the power to create the Bank. Chief Justice Marshall supported this conclusion with four main arguments. First, he argued that historical practice established Congress' power to create the Bank. Marshall invoked the first Bank of the United States history as authority for the constitutionality of the second bank.  The first Congress enacted the bank after great debate and that it was approved by an executive "with as much persevering talent as any measure has ever experienced, and being supported by arguments which convinced minds as pure and as intelligent as this country can boast." Second, Chief Justice Marshall refuted the argument that states retain ultimate sovereignty because they ratified the constitution. "The powers of the general government, it has been said, are delegated by the states, who alone are truly sovereign; and must be exercised in subordination to the states, who alone possess supreme dominion." Marshall contended that it was the people who ratified the Constitution and thus the people are sovereign, not the states. Third, Marshall addressed the scope of congressional powers under Article I. The Court broadly described Congress' authority before addressing the necessary and proper clause. Marshall admitted that the Constitution does not enumerate a power to create a central Bank but said that this is not dispositive as to Congress's power to establish such an institution. Chief Justice Marshall wrote, "In considering this question, then, we must never forget, that it is a constitution we are expounding." Fourth, Marshall supported the Court's opinion textually by invoking the Necessary and Proper Clause, which permits Congress to seek an objective that is within its enumerated powers so long as it is rationally related to the objective and not forbidden by the Constitution. In liberally interpreting the Necessary and Proper clause, the Court rejected Maryland's narrow interpretation of the clause, which purported that the word "necessary" in the Necessary and Proper Clause meant that Congress could only pass those laws which were absolutely essential in the execution of its enumerated powers. The Court rejected this argument, on the grounds that many of the enumerated powers of Congress under the Constitution would be useless if only those laws deemed essential to a power's execution could be passed. Marshall also noted that the Necessary and Proper Clause is listed within the powers of Congress, not the limitations.

Gibbons v. Ogden was a landmark decision in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the power to regulate interstate commerce, granted to Congress by the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution, encompassed the power to regulate navigation. The case was argued by some of America's most admired and capable attorneys at the time. Exiled Irish patriot Thomas Addis Emmet and Thomas J. Oakley argued for Ogden, while William Wirt and Daniel Webster argued for Gibbons. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Gibbons. The sole argued source of Congress's power to promulgate the law at issue was the Commerce Clause. Accordingly, the Court had to answer whether the law regulated "commerce" that was "among the several states." With respect to "commerce," the Court held that commerce is more than mere traffic—that it is the trade of commodities—it is also intercourse. This broader definition includes navigation. The Court interpreted "among" as "intermingled with." "If, as has always been understood, the sovereignty of Congress, though limited to specified objects, is plenary as to those objects, the power over commerce with foreign nations and among the several states is vested in Congress as absolutely as it would be in a single government, having in its constitution the same restrictions on the exercise of the power as are found in the Constitution of the United States." The part of the ruling which stated that any license granted under the federal Coasting act of 1793 takes precedence over any similar license granted by a state is also in the spirit of the Supremacy Clause, although the Court did not specifically cite this clause.

Fletcher v. Peck was a landmark United States Supreme Court decision. The first case in which the Supreme Court ruled a state law unconstitutional, the decision also helped create a growing precedent for the sanctity of legal contracts, and hinted that Native Americans did not hold title to their own lands (an idea fully realized in Johnson v. McIntosh). Following the Treaty of Paris ending the American Revolution, Georgia claimed possession of the Yazoo lands, a 35-million-acre (140,000 km2) region of the Indian Reserve west of its own territory. This land later became the states of Alabama and Mississippi. In 1795, the Georgia legislature divided the area into four tracts. The state then sold the tracts to four separate land development companies for a modest total price of $500,000, i.e. about 1.4 cents per acre ($3.46/km2), a good deal even at 1790s prices. The Georgia legislature overwhelmingly approved this land grant, known as the Yazoo Land Act of 1795. However, it was revealed that the Yazoo Land Act had been approved in return for bribes; after the scandal was exposed, voters rejected most of the incumbents in the next election, and the new legislature, reacting to the public outcry, repealed the law and voided transactions made under it. Robert Fletcher, and especially John Peck, were speculators in the Yazoo lands. Fletcher bought a tract of land from Peck while the 1795 act was still in force. Fletcher later (1803) brought this suit against Peck, claiming that Peck had not had clear title to the land when he sold it. Interestingly, this was a case of collusion. Both Fletcher's and Peck's land holdings would be secured if the Supreme Court decided that Indians did not hold original title—and so Fletcher set out to lose the case. The resulting case reached the Supreme Court which in a unanimous decision (with a separate concurring opinion written by William Johnson) ruled that the state legislature's repeal of the law was void because it was unconstitutional. The opinion written by John Marshall held that the sale was a binding contract, which according to Article I, Section 10, Clause I (the Contract Clause) of the Constitution, cannot be invalidated even if illegally secured and as a result the ruling lends further protection to property rights against popular pressures and is the earliest case of the Court asserting its right to invalidate state laws which are in conflict with or are otherwise contrary to the Constitution. William H. Rehnquist, one of Marshall's successors as Chief Justice wrote that Fletcher v. Peck "represented an attempt by Chief Justice Marshall to extend the protection of the contract clause to infant business."

Dartmouth College v. Woodward was a landmark decision from the United States Supreme Court dealing with the application of the Contract Clause of the United States Constitution to private corporations. The case arose when the president of Dartmouth College was deposed by its trustees, leading to the New Hampshire legislature attempting to force the college to become a public institution and thereby place the ability to appoint trustees in the hands of the governor of New Hampshire. The Supreme Court upheld the sanctity of the original charter of the college, which pre-dated the creation of the State. The decision settled the nature of public versus private charters and resulted in the rise of the American business corporation and the American free enterprise system.

New Nationalism - a set of economic policies designed to foster the prosperity of all regions of the country and bind the nation more tightly together.

Protective tariff - Protective tariffs are taxes, duties, or other roadblocks (generally in the form of monetary fees) placed on foreign goods by a national or state government in order to protect domestic products and markets.

The increased fees levied on foreign goods are generally passed on to the consumer, making the foreign goods considerably more expensive than similar goods produced within the country.

Internal improvements - Internal improvements is the term used historically in the United States for public works from the end of the American Revolution through much of the 19th century, mainly for the creation of a transportation infrastructure: roads, turnpikes, canals, harbors and navigation improvements.

Transportation networks – A transportation network, is a network of roads, streets, railways (or railroads), pipes, aqueducts, power lines, or nearly any structure which permits either vehicular movement or flow of some commodity.

American Postal Service - The United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the United States. It is one of the few government agencies explicitly authorized by the United States Constitution. The USPS traces its roots to 1775 during the Second Continental Congress, where Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first postmaster general. The cabinet-level Post Office Department was created in 1792 from Franklin's operation and transformed into its current form in 1971 under the Postal Reorganization Act.

Regional specialization - Regional specialization is defined as the distribution of the shares of an industry in total manufacturing in a specific region compared to a benchmark distribution.

Contract clause - The Contract Clause appears in the United States Constitution, Article I, section 10, clause 1. It states:

 No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

The Contract Clause prohibits states from enacting any law that retroactively impairs contract rights. The Contract Clause applies only to state legislation, not court decisions. The Framers of the Constitution added this clause in response to the fear that states would continue a practice that had been widespread under the Articles of Confederation—that of granting "private relief." Legislatures would pass bills relieving particular persons (predictably, influential persons) of their obligation to pay their debts. It was this phenomenon that also prompted the framers to make bankruptcy law the province of the federal government. During and after the Revolution, many states passed laws favoring colonial debtors to the detriment of foreign creditors. Federalists, especially Alexander Hamilton, believed that such a practice would jeopardize the future flow of foreign capital into the fledgling United States. Consequently, the Contract Clause, by ensuring the inviolability of sales and financing contracts, encouraged an inflow of foreign capital by reducing the risk of loss to foreign merchants trading with and investing in the former colonies.

Speculator - A land speculator is someone that buys a large amount of land for little money and also with no intention of using it, and then sells it for a larger amount of money to make money.

Geographic mobility - Geographic mobility is the measure of how populations move over time. Geographic mobility, population mobility, or more simply mobility is also a statistic that measures migration within a population.

Urbanization - Urbanization is the increasing number of people that migrate from rural to urban areas. It predominantly results in the physical growth of urban areas, be it horizontal or vertical. With the onset of the agricultural and industrial revolution in the late 18th century this relationship was finally broken and an unprecedented growth in urban population took place over the course of the 19th century, both through continued migration from the countryside and due to the tremendous demographic expansion that occurred at that time. In England, the urban population jumped from 17% in 1801 to 72% in 1891 (for other countries the figure was: 37% in France, 41% in Prussia and 28% in the United States). As laborer’s were freed up from working the land due to higher agricultural productivity they converged on the new industrial cities like Manchester and Birmingham which were experiencing a boom in commerce, trade and industry. Growing trade around the world also allowed cereals to be imported from North America and refrigerated meat from Australasia and South America. Spatially, cities also expanded due to the development of public transport systems, which facilitated commutes of longer distances to the city center for the working class.

Technological innovation - Technology innovation is the process through which new (or improved) technologies are developed and brought into widespread use.

Lighting -up season – In factories winter was the “lighting up” season, when work began before daylight and ended after dark. The only light after sunset came from whale oil lamps that filled the long rooms with smoke.

Interchangeable parts - Interchangeable parts are parts that are, for practical purposes, identical. They are made to specifications that ensure that they are so nearly identical that they will fit into any assembly of the same type. In the US, Eli Whitney saw the potential benefit of developing "interchangeable parts" for the firearms of the United States military. In July 1801 he built ten guns, all containing the same exact parts and mechanisms, and then disassembled them before the United States Congress. He placed the parts in a mixed pile and, with help, reassembled all of the firearms right in front of Congress, much like Blanc had done some years before. The Congress was captivated and ordered a standard for all United States equipment. Interchangeable parts removed problems concerning the inability to consistently produce new parts for old equipment without significant hand finishing that had plagued the era of unique firearms and equipment. If one firearm part failed, another could be ordered, and the firearm wouldn't have to be discarded. The catch was that Whitney's guns were costly and handmade by skilled workmen.  Whitney was never able to design a manufacturing process capable of producing guns with interchangeable parts. Fitch credited Whitney with successfully executing a firearms contract with interchangeable parts using the American System, but historians Merritt Roe Smith and Robert B. Gordon have since determined that Whitney never achieved interchangeable parts manufacturing. His family's arms company, however, did so after his death.

Specialization - The division of labour is the specialization of cooperating individuals who perform specific tasks and roles. Because of the large amount of labour saved by giving workers specialized tasks in Industrial Revolution-era factories, classical economists such as Adam Smith and mechanical engineers such as Charles Babbage were proponents of division of labour. Also, having workers perform single or limited tasks eliminated the long training period required to train craftsmen, who were replaced with lesser paid but more productive unskilled workers.

Mountain men - Thousands of miles beyond Lowell’s factory gates a different sort of American roamed, who at first appeared unconnected to the bustle of urban markets. These were the legendary mountain men, who flourished from the mid-1820s through the mid-1840s. Traveling across the Great Plains, along upland streams, and over the passes of the Rockies, outdoorsmen like Jim Bridger, Jedidiah Smith, and James Walker wore buckskin hunting shirts, let their hair grow to their shoulders, and stuck pistols and tomahawks in their belts. Wild and exotic, the mountain men became romantic symbols of the American quest for individual freedom. Yet these wanderers, too, were tied to the emerging market society. The mountain men hunted beaver pelts and shipped them east, to be turned into fancy hats for gentlemen. The fur trade was not a sporting event but a business, dominated by organizations like John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company, and the trapper was the agent of an economic structure that stretched from the mountains to eastern cities and even to Europe. Most of these men went into the wilderness not to flee civilization but to make money—to accumulate capital in order to set themselves up in society. Of those who survived the fur trade, almost none remained permanently outside civilization but returned and took up new careers as shopkeepers, traders, ranchers, politicians, and even bankers.

Sample Quiz

1. The chapter introduction tells the story of clockmaker Chauncey Jerome to make the point that:

A.    Clocks both made possible and symbolized the organized routines of an industrialized society.

B.     Jerome's rise and fall were made possible by the opportunities offered in a national market economy that bound Americans together in complex and specialized ways.

C.     The intricate but comprehensible mechanism of a clock was the favorite metaphor for an age that believed human reason could discern the workings of natural law and apply those discoveries to improving the material conditions of life.

D.    Jerome exemplifies the exploited urban laborer who becomes a helpless victim of the forces of rapid and relentless industrialization.

2. The story of John Burrows makes the point that:

A.    Merchants in cities had a substantial advantage over merchants in more remote areas.

B.     Potato farming was a risky business in the early nineteenth century.

C.     A market economy required efficient communications as well as rapid methods of transporting goods.

D.    A market economy could not function based on water transportation alone.

3. The Erie Canal:

A.    Was made financially feasible by the development of the steamboat.

B.     Connected the Hudson and Ohio rivers.

C.     Never repaid the original public investment, but stimulated migration and economic growth.

D.    Raised New York City to commercial dominance and stimulated canal construction by other cities and states.

4. Taken as a body of legal doctrine, the rulings of the Marshall Court created a climate of business confidence by:

A.    Enlarging federal power at the expense of the states.

B.     Expanding individual economic rights by limiting government's role in stimulating the economy.

C.     Protecting minority groups against the abuse of power by majorities.

D.    Protecting property and contract rights while limiting state interference in business affairs.

5. Corporations were an advantageous form for an expanding economy for all of the following reasons EXCEPT:

A.    They could make contracts with state governments.

B.     They continued beyond the lives of the individuals who created them.

C.     They provided a way to pool investors' resources to raise capital for large-scale projects.

D.    They offered a limitation of liability for the investor.

6. Europeans especially noted what tendency in American life?

A.    The emphasis on motion and speed that pervaded every aspect of life, even eating

B.     The tendency for native-born Americans to stay east of the Appalachians, while immigrants settled in the new western lands

C.     How rooted to a particular place Americans tended to be, despite geographic mobility

D.    How religious and other-worldly Americans tended to be, despite rapid economic growth

7. The factory system began in which industry?

A.    Textiles

B.     Shoemaking

C.     Firearms

D.    Iron production

8. The model factory community at Lowell:

A.    Emphasized profits over all else.

B.     Relied primarily on child labor.

C.     Employed the daughters of New England farm families.

D.    Housed their workers in family units.

9. Factory workers had a difficult time adjusting to:

A.    The wages of factory work.

B.     The disciplined work routine.

C.     Working alongside women.

D.    all of the above.

10. The market revolution created a society that was more differentiated and specialized, which, in turn, led to:

A.    Specialized labor unions that grew most rapidly in the depression of the late 1830s.

B.     An increased pride in craftsmanship that became more important than just sheer productivity.

C.     Greater extremes of wealth, with those at the top controlling a greater share of the wealth.

D.    A class of new rich, most of whom came from lower-class farm family backgrounds.

11. Economic specialization meant that women:

A.    Made more of their family's clothes than ever before.

B.     Began buying manufactured cloth rather than making their own.

C.     Began doing more agricultural work to compensate for the loss of their traditional duties within the home.

D.    Began having more babies to compensate for the loss of their traditional duties within the home.

12. That Americans accepted social mobility, materialism, and other values of a market economy can be seen in an emerging middle class:

A.    Drawn largely from those engaged in the mechanical trades.

B.     Who built neighborhoods near their places of employment in the new urban business districts.

C.     Whose income and wealth quickly rose to the levels of the very wealthy.

D.    Whose members judged success and status in terms of consumption and possessions.

13. The experience of Kingston, New York reveals:

A.    How the existence of a transportation network could significantly alter the fortunes of a town.

B.     The dangers of segregating residential areas along class lines.

C.     The importance of farming in the market economy.

D.    The transformations of the Second Great Awakening.

14. The Panic of 1819 was so significant because:

A.    The nation had never before experienced economic hard times.

B.     In reaction, land prices rose to speculative heights.

C.     As the first major American depression, it affected city and farm dwellers alike.

D.    It prompted a frenzy of canal building.

Practice Test

1. During the 1820s and 1830s, railroads:

A.      played only a secondary role in the nation's transportation system.

B.      replaced canals as the most important means of transportation.

C.      generated little interest among American businessmen.

D.     consisted of a few long lines, which were not connected to water routes.

E.      were built alongside the canals.

2. The most profound economic development in mid-nineteenth-century America was the:

A.      development of a national banking system.

B.      creation of corporations.

C.      decline of the small-town merchant and general store.

D.     rise of the factory.

E.      decline of American agriculture.

3. The decisions of the Marshall Court:

A.      established the primacy of the federal government in regulating the economy.

B.      gave strength to the doctrine of states' rights.

C.      destroyed what was left of Hamiltonian federalism.

D.     opened the way for an increased federal role in promoting economic growth.

E.      established the primacy of the federal government in regulating the economy and opened the way for an increased federal role in promoting economic growth.

4. American factory workers in early nineteenth-century textile mills largely consisted of:

A.      families and rural, single women.

B.      single men.

C.      unskilled urban workers.

D.     young immigrants.

E.      slaves.

5. In McCulloch v. Maryland, the Supreme Court declared the national bank unconstitutional.

A.      True

B.      False

6. The Supreme Court ruling in Gibbons v. Ogden (1824):

A.      strengthened the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce.

B.      narrowed the federal government's role in regulating the economy.

C.      declared transportation monopolies unconstitutional.

D.     reaffirmed the New York court's ruling regarding interstate trade.

E.      was a victory for Aaron Ogden, Robert Fulton, and Robert Livingston.

7.  According to "nationalists" in the government, "internal improvements" should be financed by:

A.      a series of local, internal improvement taxes.

B.      user fees or tolls.

C.      the states in which the "improvements" are made.

D.     private investments.

E.      the national government.

8. Eli Whitney is a major figure in American technology for introducing:

A.      the concept of interchangeable parts.

B.      the first modern factory.

C.      the steam engine.

D.     the mechanized assembly line.

E.      the steel plow.

9. After the War of 1812, it was clear that the United States needed an improved:

A.      trade policy with Europe.

B.      system of tariffs.

C.      system for selling public lands.

D.     internal transportation system.

E.      system of currency.

10. At the time it was completed, the Erie Canal was:

A.      already obsolete.

B.      beginning to fill with silt from the Great Lakes.

C.      the greatest construction project Americans had ever undertaken.

D.     cited as an example of how not to construct a canal.

E.      already paid for.

11. In McCulloch v. Maryland, the Supreme Court declared the national bank unconstitutional.

A.      True

B.      False

 12. Artisans, displaced by the factory system, formed the first American labor unions.

A.      True

B.      False

13. During the first half of the nineteenth century, the United States grew more rapidly in population than Britain or Europe.

A.      True

B.      False

14. The development of a railroad system weakened connections between the Northwest and the South.

A.      True

B.      False

15. The Marshall Court strengthened the federal government at the expense of the states.

A.      True

B.      False

16. The recruitment of young women to work and live in a factory setting was called the ________ system.

Lowell

17. When it was completed, the ________ was the greatest construction project Americans had yet undertaken.

Erie Canal

18. Sam Patch used his waterfall jumping skills to gain personal notoriety and as a defiant ________ against the changing times.

protest

19. The major form of transportation in the West as the national market was emerging was the ________.

steamboat

20. The national market economy made Americans susceptible to the boom-and-bust cycle, as first became evident with the ________, when world demand for cotton dropped.

Panic of 1819

21. The most important stimulus to economic development between 1815 and 1840, affecting both North and South (though in different ways), was the growth of the ________ trade.

cotton

22. Americans seemed notably materialistic to foreign visitors, as ________ became the most obvious symbol of social status.

wealth

23. What rail and steam engines did for transportation, the ________ did for communication.

telegraph

24. A transportation network grew rapidly as investors poured capital into improvement projects, especially after the opening of the ________ in the state of New York in 1825.

Erie Canal

25. The validity of contracts was upheld in the Supreme Court case of ________.

Fletcher v. Peck

26. The Marshall Court strengthened the ability of Congress to regulate interstate commerce in the case of ________.

Gibbons v. Ogden

27. Robert Fulton is associated with ________.

Steam-powered navigation

28. Samuel Morse invented the ________.

Telegraph

29. Eli Whitney's ________ revolutionized the American South's economy.

Cotton gin

30. In the great federal land rush, most of the public lands offered for sale were bought up by ________, who therefore played a key role in the settlement of the West.

speculators

Chapter Test

1. In McCullough v. Maryland (1819), the Supreme Court confirmed the:

A.      right of the federal government to tax states.

B.      right of states to tax the Bank of the United States.

C.      "implied powers" of Congress.

D.     right of states to prohibit the Bank of the United States.

E.      right of states to abolish slavery within its borders.

2. Artisan workers:

A.      successfully made the transition to factory work.

B.      created the nation's earliest trade unions.

C.      had abandoned the republican vision of American work.

D.     allied themselves with the new capitalist class.

E.      developed a niche market catering to the middle class.

3. The railroad network that developed during this period linked:

A.      the Northeast to the Northwest.

B.      the Northeast to the Gulf Coast.

C.      the East Coast to the West Coast.

D.     New York to New Orleans.

E.      Richmond to Atlanta.

4. Which of the following helped enlarge the urban population in this era?

A.      immigrants from Europe

B.      declining productivity of many eastern farms

C.      the growth of the population as a whole

D.     All of the above

5. One cause of the Panic of 1819 was:

A.      decreased foreign demand for American agricultural goods.

B.      restrictive credit practices prior to 1819.

C.      the announcement that year that dozens of new state banks were to be chartered.

D.     a drop in the demand for US cotton, when English textile manufacturers began importing from India

E.      an English embargo of American goods.

6. One of the immediate results of the new transportation routes constructed during the "canal age" was:

A.      an increased white settlement in the Northwest.

B.      an increased white settlement in the Southwest.

C.      the renewed cooperation between states and the national environment on internal improvement projects.

D.     the conviction that the national government should be responsible for all internal improvements.

E.      the dominance of steamboat transport.

7. The cotton gin was invented by:

A.      Robert Fulton.

B.      Eli Whitney.

C.      Samuel Slater.

D.     Albert Gallatin.

E.      Moses Brown.

8. The work of Eli Whitney:

A.      improved transportation in the South.

B.      spurred the industrial revolution in the American South.

C.      made the South a major textile-producing region.

D.     led to the decline of slavery, for fewer workers were needed to process cotton.

E.      led to the expansion of the cotton culture and slavery.

9. When compared to working conditions in European industries, the Lowell mills were a paradise for working women.

A.      True

B.      False

10. In the early eighteenth century, the American Robert Fulton:

A.      invented the steam engine.

B.      made significant advances in steam-powered navigation.

C.      developed the nation's first merchant marine.

D.     brought the first steam engines from England to the United States.

E.      launched America's first railroad engine, the Clermont, in 1807.

11. The Marshall Court upheld the constitutionality of the Bank of the United States.

A.      True

B.      False

12. The South was an important part of the national railroad network.

A.      True

B.      False

13. The American "mountain men":

A.      refused to consort with Mexican or Indian women.

B.      were closely tied to the expanding market economy of the United States.

C.      generally got to keep the bulk of their profits.

D.     established towns and villages to escape the isolation of the frontier.

E.      banded together to found the Rocky Mountain Fur Company.

14. The lasting significance of Gibbons v. Ogden was that it:

A.      opened the way for steamboat travel on the Mississippi.

B.      confirmed the state's right to regulate commerce.

C.      made peace between the Court and the Adams administration.

D.     ruled that contracts could easily be violated.

E.      defined the right of the federal government to regulate interstate commerce.

15. The Supreme Court ruling in Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819) was a victory for:

A.      corporate contracts.

B.      the Republican Party.

C.      state government.

D.     public education.

E.      state courts.