Rural Life: The Springer Family
- Example of American lifestyle, lived in Delaware
- Delaware remained a slave state until the Civil War
- Slaves could buy their freedom
- Delaware was more liberal because climate could not grow cotton
- Springer's sold wool, milk, and butter in local markets
- Planted and produced a diverse range of crops for their own use
- Neighboring farmers shared their labor
- Springer's produced goods for their own use
- Local barter system
The Family Labor System
- Most work was done at home
- Women did housework
- In New England where farm surpluses were rare, home produced items were cheaper to obtain than ones from Britain or even Boston
- Families developed skills such as shoemaking that they could do over the winter
- No fixed prices and money rarely changed hands - this would soon change
- Used barter system
- The "just price" was an agreement between neighbors, not by a market
- No fixed production schedule
- "Home" and "work" were the same
Urban Artisans and Workers
- In urban areas skilled craftsmen had controlled preindustrial production since colonial times
- The apprentice system
- A boy would go work for a master
- Journeymen were former apprentices and worked for wages saving up till they could buy their own shops
- Worked long hours
- No separation between work and leisure
- Some women worked, as seamstress, cooks, and housemaids, some women even took over dead husbands shop
Patriarchy in Family, Work and Society
- An entire urban household was commonly organized around one kind of work
- Family lived in the shop
- Men were the boss, had all legal and voting rights
The Social Order
- Everyone had a fixed place in the social order
- Importance was placed on rank and status
- While many artisans were property owners, voted and participated in politics they usually didn't challenge the domination of the rich
The Market Revolution
- The most fundamental change in American communities
- Rapid improvements in transportation, commercialization, and industrialization
- Allowed people and goods to move fast
- Commercialization involved the replacement of household self-sufficiency and barter with the production of goods for cash market
- Developments turned ordinary Americans into a commercial market with abundant supplies of cheap manufactured goods
The Accumulation of Capital
- In the northern states, the business community was composed largely of merchant in the seaboard cities
- Many had made their fortunes in the Great Shipping Boom of 1790-1897
- The Embargo Act made all foreign trade illegal - traders turn inward
- Most of the capital came from banks, some came from families, religious groups, etc.
Most capital came from shipping, cotton - Northern capital came from slaves
The Putting-Out System
- Before the development of factories there was the "putting-out" system
- People still worked at home, but a merchant would supply (put out) the materials and sold them at a distant market
- Before this system the entire family made an entire item - no unskilled workers - Now workers made only a part of the finished product in large quantities for low per-piece wagon
- In new factory system, family ties were severed
- Factory system let boss employ more labor but spend the same amount of money
- Moved production control from the hands of the poor to the rich entrepreneur
- Shoe styles could be made to serve different markets as a result of better infrastructure
- A national market could be formed as there were enough shoes being produced
- The labor force could be cut back or enlarged due to flexible market conditions
- Many workers liked this as they were paid in cash (new thing) and therefore could buy other goods instead of making themselves
British and Technology and American Industrialization
- Even more important than the "putting-out" system was industrialization
- New England had lots of swift rivers - very condusive for mills
-Rich merchants looking to spend capital
Slater's Mill
- British enacted laws banning machinery and skilled labor into the United States
- Some passed through - eg. Samuel Slater, former apprentice in Britain
- Slater built machines in USA with help of local merchants - Slater's mill
- Slater drew workforce among children and women who were cheaper than men
- The yarn spun at Slater's mill was then put out to local home weavers, who turned it into cloth on handlooms - weaving flourished in areas near the mill
- After War of 1812, the British flooded the American market with cheap goods
- Led to Tariffs which led to the Nullification crises
The Lowell Mills
- Lowell went to England and spied on machinery
- Improved English machine design and invented the power loom
- Entire process from cleaning to making cloth could be done by machines in the same factory
- This needed more capital investment than a small factory such as Slater's Mill
- Size mattered in order to survive competition = Second Lowell Mill built the town of Lowell as a showcase (company town)
Family Mills
- Lowell was unique, no other textile Mill was such a showcase
- Small rural spinning mills, on the model of Slater's Mill were built near swiftly running streams near existing farm communities
- Smaller mills often hired entire families - became known as family mills
- Children were given unskilled work, while women did medial work and men did skilled work
- Needed an entire family's income to survive
- Relations between the town and mill were strained
- Argued over the placement of company schools, dams in the river and amount of company taxes
"The American System of Manufactures"
- American's pioneered the concept of the development of standard parts
- Seen in gun making, British called it "the American System of Manufactures"
- Standardized production soon became the norm
- Spread slowly
- That goods were uniform and available to everyone demonstrated that America was committed to democracy
Other Factories
- Other factories produced metal and iron
- Depended on natural water sources - rural areas
- Like mill factories, originally co-existed with the existing artisan system
- The rapid development of steamship industry in Cincinnati illustrates both the role of merchant capital and the coexistence of old and new production methods
- The foundries, engine factories and shipyards built the ships, while traditional artisans furnished the ship
- The new concepts of specialization and standardization and the increased production they brought about were basic to the system of industrials capitalism
Personal Relationships
- The putting-out system, with its division of each craft into separate tasks, effectively destroyed artisan production and the apprenticeship system
- Late apprenticeships no longer treated the apprentice as family and the apprentices family got money for the apprentice's work
- Apprenticeships were being replaced by child labor
- Artisans who helped destroy the older system did so unwillingly, in response to harsh new competition made by new transportation
- Artisans specialized in luxury goods while factories served the masses, though they still had to accept the putting-out system
- Since women began working they could begin to challenge men for control of the household
- Early factories provided room and board as well as food vs. late factories
While conditions were harsh it was freer than the slave system, although it was often the freedom to starve
Mechanization and Women's Work
- Industrialization was a major threat to the status and independence of skilled male workers
- Most tasks could be performed without skilled labor
- Males began to oppose women in the workplace - threatened their jobs
- The industrialization of textiles, first in spinning, then in weaving relieved women of time-consuming home occupations
- Respectable women did not do factory work
- Stayed home working in the clothing industry, relied on the "putting-out" system
Time, Work, and Leisure
- Preindustrial work had a flexibility that factory work did not, and it took factory workers a while to get accustomed to the constant pace of work
- In preindustrial times work and leisure were mixed
- Factory system left less time for work and made a clear distinction
The Cash Economy
- The transformation of a largely barter system into a cash economy was another marked effect of the Market Revolution
- New cash economy changed the relationships among workers and management
- Workers were no longer part of a settle stable community - they could be fired
- Now free to labor wherever they could, at whatever wages avaliable
- Many artisans moved west and tried to re-create the atmosphere
Free Labor
-The heart of the industrializing economy was the notion of free labor = strikes
Early Strikes
- Rural women workers led some of the first strikes in American labor history
- Most strikes were unsuccessful as there was an inexhaustible pool of labor
- The preindustrial notion of a “community of interest” between owner and workers no longer existed
- Eventually were successful in getting a 10-hour-work-day
A New Social Order
- The market revolution reached into every aspect of life, down to the most personal family decisions. It also fundamentally changed the social order, creating a new middle class with distinctive habits and beliefs
Wealth and Class
- Since the early colonial period, planters in the South and merchants in the North have comprised a wealthy elite
- Small middleclass made up of teachers, doctors etc
- Laboring poor were the majority
- Mostly fixed society
- The marker revolution ended the old social order, creating the dynamic and unstable one we recognize today: upper, middle, and working classes, whose members tried to go as high up as they could
- White collar jobs made by the new society filled by the old professional class
Religion and Personal Life
- Played a key role in the emergence of the new attitudes
- The Second Great Awakening had supplanted the orderly and intellectual Puritan religion of early New England
- more democratic, preached salvation through personal faith
- New religion believed that a willingness to be saved was enough to ensure salvation
- Charles Finney, led sermons in Rochester for the new Evangelical religion
- Evangelicalism rapidly became the religion of the new middle class
- Men found that evangelism's stress on self-discipline and individual achievement helped them adjust to new business conditions
- Evangelism went with the new theory that a worker was responsible for making his own way
The New Middle-Class Family
- The market revolution and the new evangelism also affected women's roles.
- The softer more emotional aspects of the new religion appealed to women
- Men were more concentrated on making money while women were responsible for raising children
- Men were expected to be steady, industrious, responsible, and attentive to business
- Women were to be kind, moral and devoted to their families
- Now clearly defined gender roles became a matter of social importance
- Men were now at work more - losing control
- Women were at home doing domestic chores, no longer directly contributed to income
Family Limitation
- Middle-class couples chose to have fewer children than their predecessors
- Children needed more care and would need schooling than working kids
- Abortion was new and widely used among the middle-class
- States soon made it illegal
Motherhood
- Child rearing had been shared in the preindustrial household
- Boys learning farming or craft skills from dad
- Girls learned domestic skills form mom
- New middle-class children needed an upbringing, one that involved a long period of nurturing in the beliefs and personal habits necessary for success
- Mothers were given the responsibility as fathers were to busy
- Women were considered more moral
- Children usually worked at age 15, but some were allowed to continue schooling
- Girls were trained to be the nurturing silent "support system"
- Women forged the distinctive social behavior of the new middle class
Sentimentalism
- Sentimentalism became a mark of middle - class status
- Widows were to wear mourning clothes
Transcendentalism and Self Reliance
- Middle-class men needed to feel comfortable about their public assertions of individualism and self interest
- One source of reassurance was the philosophy of transcendentalism and its well- known spokesman, Ralph Waldo Emerson
- A famous writer, he popularized transcendentalism
- A romantic philosophical theory claiming that there was an ideal, intuitive reality transcending ordinary life
- Helped the middle class forge values that were appropriate to their social roles
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