The Market Revolution, continued; October 29

Today we continued discussing the Market Revolution.

• The culture of craftsmen was similar to that of subsistence farmers. Apprentices and journeymen worked for the master craftsmen in hopes of one day opening their own shops.
• This culture experienced a strain with the movement towards factories. Master craftsmen began bringing in multiple people to produce goods, but this meant that each product turned out slightly differently. By the 1820s, master craftsmen begin subdividing the labor so that unskilled (cheaper) laborers could be incorporated into the building process. These laborers were kept under close supervision.
• Former journeymen lose out on pay and opportunities because the subdivision of labor prevents them from sharpening the skills that would have one day allowed them to become master craftsmen.
• A gap in wealth occurs as the established masters get richer and the journeymen slip back.
• However, master craftsmen are also threatened by the mass production method.
• For example, an enormous bakery opens in NYC that mass produces bread and baked goods. Even with the division of labor smaller stores cannot compete, and are put out of business.
• Industrialization soon begins. In 1791 Samuel Slater builds the first factory in America: a small textile mill that uses water-powered machinery. Slater's mill spins cotton fibers into threads, a task that was previously performed by women in the home.
• By 1814, America's first complete cotton factory opens in Waltham, MA. This factory incorporates all of the processes to make raw cotton into finished fabric. This cheap manufactured cloth served as a stimulus to the economy.
• Spinning wheels and hand looms become obsolete because factory-made cloth is cheap and accessible.
• The expansion of country stores occurs in the 1820s. These stores experience a 45% increase in stock variety, now offering bolts of cloth, local farm products, flour, sugar, salt, and coffee, as well as some luxury items from New England. Customers are also able to order wallpaper, silverware, dishes, etc. from these stores.
• From the 1820s onward, the Transportation Revolution plays a key role in the progression of the Market Revolution. Private investors build toll roads, steamboats (1815) allow for two-way river trade, and railroads begin appearing in the late 1820s and even more so in the East in the 1940s.
• The dramatric reduction in transportation time and cost make more regions accessible and connected.
• The cotton belt housed some of the most intensely commercialized farms in the world.
• Many planters grow nothing but cotton, which is well suited to slave labor and the Southern climate.
• The slave system becomes more systematic and humane, although slaves are harshly disciplined for misconduct.
• Owners establish a paternalistic system on their plantations and begin treating their slaves more kindly. Much of the motivation behind the kindness was the fear that if the slaves felt mistreated, they would perform poorly and cause a reduced profit.
• Planters with more slaves and more land are able to plant more cotton and make a larger profit.
• The South had a dual economy: plantations were the center of the commercial cotton industry, while the yeomen farmers were on the fringes of the market. A sort of caste system develops.
• Small farmers live in the upcountry and possess many of the qualities of the 18th century subsistence farmers.
• While northern farmers commercialize, southern farmers continue in a neighborly agricultural system. The yeomen generally stay out of the market.
• A large group of yeomen practice mixed farming and exchange goods with one another, although they do eventually begin to send their surplus to market. They do not, however, become dependent on the market, and they control their involvement in it based on their own needs.
• Most yeomen own their own land and possess few or no slaves.
• Plantation owners were among the richest men in the Western Hemisphere, while the slaves who created all this wealth owned nothing.
• 2-3% Southern white men owned half of all Southern slaves.
• The widening gap between the planters and the yeomen creates a sort of fault line.
• The South continued to be a poor market for manufacatured goods and revolved around the production of cotton.
• In the North, the Market Revolution changes all of society; in the South, it only produces more slavery.
• The South becomes more and more dependent because it does not produce its own goods and relies on the sale of cotton.