The Market Revolution

Themes

Changing patterns of work, consumption, and economic behavior; rising anxiety over dramatic social changes, especially class shifts; emergence of a more distinct middle class; increasing immigration leading to nativism; evolving roles for women; questions about how the South fits into the broader narrative of the Market Revolution; and the expression of class identity through popular culture.

Transportation and Communication: Conquering Annihilating Time and Space 

The rise of new transportation networks, including toll roads and turnpikes, the National Road (begun in 1806), and the development of steamboats—especially Robert Fulton's successful steamboat in 1807, which could travel upstream and revolutionized river transport.

Transportation and Communication

Major transportation and communication innovations included canals such as the Erie Canal (completed in 1825, stretching 363 miles), the expansion of railroads beginning with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1828 (growing to 30,000 miles of track by 1860), and the invention of the telegraph by Samuel Morse in the 1830s (with 50,000 miles of telegraph wire by 1850, used mainly for business).

Business and Indusrty- The chicken and egg 

The Market Revolution in the North involved farmers producing for market and purchasing goods, aided by new agricultural inventions like John Deere’s steel plow and Cyrus McCormick’s reaper; a boom in urban population accompanied these shifts, along with major changes in production that led to the de-skilling of labor. 

The Textile Industry

Early American industrialization copied English technology and began with the “putting-out” system, but the Embargo of 1807 and War of 1812 cut off British goods, pushing the U.S. to manufacture its own products; the 1814 Lowell Mill brought all production under one roof, while mass production and interchangeable parts—pioneered by Eli Whitney for War of 1812 muskets—helped form the American system of manufactures, with early factories concentrated mainly in New England.

Effects on Workers

Industrialization changed the rhythm of life by introducing strict time discipline and shifting the concept of labor to wage work, often under harsh conditions, raising questions about whether wage labor—submitting to the authority of an employer—was truly compatible with freedom.

Work at women 

To make factory work appear “respectable,” employers used boarding houses, close supervision, and “wholesome” activities, promoting the idea that mill work was a temporary stage in a young woman’s life rather than a lifelong career.

Capitalism

Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations argued that human self-interest and laissez-faire economics allow an “invisible hand” to guide prosperity and rising consumerism, while Karl Marx countered that the bourgeoisie owned the means of production at the expense of the wage workers.

The SOUTH

The northern industry was directly tied to the south

Immigrants

In the 1840s–1850s, about 4 million immigrants—mainly Irish fleeing famine and Germans escaping political turmoil—came to the U.S., mostly settling in the North, where they provided manual labor; German communities formed in the Midwest, and their arrival sparked rising nativist movements.