Well hey there and welcome back to Heimler’s History. We’ve been going through Unit 4 of the AP U.S. History curriculum and in the last video we dealt with the all the technological and agricultural innovations that led to the Market Revolution. And this is basically part two and we’re going to talk about how the Market Revolution affected society and culture in the first half of the nineteenth century. So get them brain cows ready because I’m about to milk them, let’s get to it. So in case you forgot, let’s start with a definition of the Market Revolution. Essentially, it was the linking of northern industries with western and southern farms which was created by advances in agriculture, industry, and transportation. And with all this change going on, you didn’t think it wasn’t going to affect society did you? So let’s have a look. First let’s talk about migration. Across the northern part of the country, industrial cities exploded in both size and diversity. A hulking portion of this growth was thanks to European immigrants, especially Irish and German folks, who were flooding the shores of the United States. The Irish came in large part because of the Irish Potato Famine which led to hunger and starvation throughout the land. The Germans came for less dramatic reasons. Many of them were displaced farmers whose crop failures invited them to look elsewhere to settle. Others were disillusioned by the failure of the democratic revolutions in 1848, and sought a land where a democratic way of life was flourishing. And so in the 1820s 150,000 immigrants were registered on the rolls. By the 1830s it was 600,000. ANd by the 1840s, it was 1.7 million. That’s a lot of immigrants, Tony. It was indeed. Many of these folks settled on the eastern seaboard and went to work in the industrial sector. ANd because manufacturers now had an expanding pool of cheap labor—because hey what’s the use of hiring an immigrant if you can’t underpay them and expose them to dangerous working conditions, am I right?—northern industry expanded greatly. But these immigrants didn’t simply provide labor, they also changed the urban landscape in the places where they settled. Often crowded into poorly ventilated, high capacity building units, they brought their culture with them. Jews established synagogues and Catholics established churches and convents. Others of these immigrants sought to settle on some land out west and so they moved west of the Appalachians and developed new communities along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. But, as you can imagine, not everyone was too excited about these immigrant cultures establishing themselves in their towns. Nativists flourished in the 1830s and 1840s spewing stereotypical invective against Catholics and Jews. Jews they portrayed as avaricious, underhanded moneylenders, and Catholics were accused of being agents of the pope sent to overturn American culture. Now, of course, these stereotypes weren’t true, but you know, nativists be nativists, as nobody says. Now thanks to this expansion of industry and its accompanying expansion of prosperity, an emerging middle class developed first in the North. The middle class included folks like businessmen and shopkeepers and journalists and doctors and lawyers. And the middle class developed its own kind of society with its own norms. Education was a big deal for them. So was temperance, which is to say moderation in alcohol consumption. Additionally, religious affiliation meant a great deal to the middle class, especially Protestant affiliation. And it really didn’t matter what kind of Protestant you were, just as long as you weren’t Catholic. And so if you had enough money and you adhered to these social markers, well, baby, you’re in the middle class. And one of the main distinguishing factors that the middle class had from the lower, laboring classes, is that they had money to spend on leisure. And they spent that money attending plays, going to circuses, and spectating sporting events. Now, since we’re talking about how the Market Revolution changed culture, we also have to talk about how things changed for women. And here’s where I tell you about the cult of domesticity. This idea was presented to women through an increasing number of books and magazines and it basically said this. A woman’s identity and purpose was to have babies, raise them, and provide a home that was a haven of rest to her husband. Her husband, on the other hand, was out doing real work in the world. And this idea of the separation of public and private spheres, and that one gender was assigned to each took firm hold, especially in the middle class. I mean, laboring class women had nothing to do with that because they didn’t have the excess income that allowed them to stay home and make their husband’s sandwiches all day. They were off, like their husbands, working in factories all day or out plowing the fields. Speaking of women in factories, we should probably look at that for a minute. Women who worked in factories typically worked six days a week for exceedingly meager wages for 12 or 13 hours a day. The Lowell Factory in Massachusetts was kind of a showcase for this situation. Mostly it was staffed by former New England farm girls who were closely supervised by bosses who also effectively controlled every aspect of their lives including what they did in their leisure time. And so all this to say, the Market Revolution fundamentally altered American society in the first half of the 19th century. Okay, that’s what you need to know about Unit 4 topic 6 of the AP U.S. History curriculum. If you need more help than these videos are giving you then you might want to check out on your exam in May. I would like to keep making these videos for you, but I need you to tell me if that’s something you want. And the way you tell me is by subscribing, so if that’s something you’re into, click away. Heimler out.