preview

Market Revolution In America Essay

Decent Essays

In the late 1800s, there was a drastic change in the manual labor system originating in the south, that soon moved to the north, and later spread to the entire world. Traditional commerce became outdated with new modes of transportation and other inventions. As a result, the north began to have a more powerful economy that started to challenge the economies of some mid-sized European cities of the time. These changes caused by the Market Revolution had significant effects on U.S. society, workers’ lives, and gender and family relations.

The beginning of technological innovations in America included the steamboat, the train, better roads and canals, the telegraph, and interchangeable parts. Steamboats replaced slow barges, and new riverboats …show more content…

The commercial and industrial growth of the United States greatly elevated the average income of the American people, but this increasing wealth was being distributed unequally. The urban poor were mostly widows, orphans, immigrants, or free blacks and almost entirely without resources, often homeless, and dependent on charity or crime for survival. Yet, a large number of workers managed to move at least one notch up the social ladder, even if they did not go from poverty to riches. More importantly, geographical mobility meant that some workers saved money, bought land, and moved west to farm it, but few urban workers could afford to make the move. Much more common was the movement of laborers from one industrial town to another after layoffs, looking for better opportunities. Changes in the economy contributed to changed ideas about class, gender, and family. The ideas of “republican motherhood” that had been prevalent following the American Revolution, gave way to the “cult of domesticity”. Women were expected to remain in the household and were relegated to second-class citizens. Additionally, children in urban households were much more likely to leave the family in search of work than they had been in the rural world. This was because of the shift of income-earning work out of the home. Before, the family

Get Access