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Sam Patch the Famous Jumper Essay

Decent Essays

In the late 1700’s and early 1800’s the United States was in a transformation from the Jeffersonian vision of an agricultural nation, into Alexander Hamilton’s vision of an industrial America. The book Sam Patch, the Famous Jumper gives a good idea of what America was like during the Early Republic period. The industrial life would turn America into a country that is dependent on the work of manufactories. Sam Patch came from a long family history of farming and shoemaking. His father Mayo Greenleaf Patch, married into a wealthy family after his family’s name went under with their bankruptcy. The marriage would allow him to possess resources his family had lost such as land, housing, workshop, etc. Greenleaf Patch was loaned the …show more content…

Children would work long twelve hour shifts for pennies, and would grow so tired that they would crawl into corners of the factories to take naps. Woman along with the children were affected while working during the industrial revolution. During 1834 and 1836 Harriet Martineau, a British feminist and abolitionist, visited America and enthusiastically embraced the social implications of the Industrial Revolution, (DTA, 223). Martineau compared the lifestyle of women to slaves and said the United States contradicted the principles of the Declaration of Independence. She did believe though with some progress that it could become New England’s new industrial order. One of the Mill factories Martineau visited, Waltham Mill, was a prime example of the scheduled lifestyle of women mill workers. Women Mill workers of all ages worked at Waltham Mill, which I compared to a boarding school because of their strict schedules. The ladies had a time to wake up, to be at work, to eat, and to go to school. A lot of women did not mind the harsh conditions they lived and worked in because they fought for their equality of rights for a long time now. Sam Patch was a great Mill Spinner and this really showed when he became one of the first American-born boss Spinners in the 1820s. Although Sam Patch was a great Mill Spinner boss, he had also become a drunk and an adrenaline junky that jumped from high

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