1. Chapter 8 Business

2. Industrialization
Following the American revolution, Americans began to accept possession of material goods as a mark of gentility (as opposed to family name or station, like in Britain).
Americans began to demand more crafted goods than home- based craftsmen could produce.
Producers responded by expanding workshops, training more artisans, working with larger stocks of materials at a time, and using labor-saving machines.

3. American factory production began (slowly) in 1790
American factory production began (slowly) in (Remember how protectionist policies like the Embargo Act somewhat-inadvertently encouraged the growth of American manufacturing?)
Gap between owners and workers
Blurred line between skilled and unskilled workers
Workers also grew less able to argue for change in the workplace, as the importance of skilled labor began to decline
America did not develop a self-conscious working class, though. Why?
Frontier
Ethnic/racial differences
Immigrants’ willingness to accept low wages
Opportunities for escape

4. Lowell’s Waltham System: Women as factory workers Who and why?
Living conditions were strict and sometimes poor
Discontent grew; women found other work
Replacement of women with others (immigrants)
Immigration: mostly Irish and German
Push and pull factors
Good long-term effects; not-so-great short-term effects
Cotton and slavery
Increased demand and increased production
Revival of the “peculiar institution”*: greater prejudice and discrimination
*Have you all heard that phrase before?

5. Marshall Court
Federalist at heart; strong central government
Business and commerce viewed as an agent of progress
McCulloch v. Maryland
Gibbons v. Ogden