SHAPING AMERICA FINAL SCRIPT

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1 SHAPING AMERICA FINAL SCRIPT Lesson : The Market Revolution PREPARED FOR: Dallas Telelearning WRITER: Gretchen Swen PRODUCER: Julia Dyer DRAFT: Final DATE: February, 0

2 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0 FADE IN: INTRODUCTION. MONTAGE OF IMAGES OF PERIOD TECHNOLOGY THE COTTON GIN, THE STEAMBOAT, THE TELEGRAPH, POWER LOOMS, CANAL BARGES, STAGECOACHES, MILL WHEELS, ROADS AND RAILROADS AS WELL AS IMAGES OF HUMAN HANDS AT WORK ON MACHINES OF THE DAY. B-ROLL: POWER LOOMS (), TELEGRAPH (0), CARRIAGE WHEELS (), BLACKSMITH (). IMAGES OF NORTHEASTERN CITIES, PIONEERS GOING WEST NARRATOR: The early th century was fueled by an explosion of technological innovation, backed up by a lot of hard work. The cotton gin was rapidly boosting cotton production in the South; steamboats were churning up the Mississippi River; power looms were transforming the New England textile industry. By mid-century, the telegraph would drastically increase the speed of long-distance communication. And Americans were on the move. Transportation was greatly improved, and people relocated in record numbers: to the burgeoning cities of the northeast, or out west in search of land and economic opportunity. Together, these social and technological changes created what s been called a market revolution.

3 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0. JOHN MAJEWSKI ON CAMERA (:0::). JOYCE APPLEBY ON CAMERA (:::) JOHN MAJEWSKI: The market revolution can most simply be defined as growth of commerce, of buying and selling on commercial markets. And during this time, you had the expansion of transportation. You had growth of turnpikes, improved roads, canals, railroads, introduction to the steamboat which greatly reduced transportation costs and which encouraged people to buy and sell, whether they would be farmers, artisans, manufacturers. JOYCE APPLEBY You had an intensification of commerce. You had an increase in the number of occupations, just as you had an increase in the number of commodities that people could buy which led to a retail specialization. So you can see the market becoming denser and more complicated in this period and it is the carrier of opportunities.

4 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0 SEGMENT ONE The Working Women of Lowell. LOWELL FACTORY B-ROLL (); NOTE: THERE IS ALSO SOME LOWELL FOOTAGE FROM AMERICAN ADVENTURE. SHOTS OF COTTON, POWER LOOMS, AND CLOSE-UP ON THE HANDS OF A FEMALE MILL WORKER ACTOR: Female. At first, the sight of so many bands, and wheels, and springs in constant motion, was very frightful. NARRATOR: The cotton boom of the early th century fueled the first large-scale manufacturing in the United States. Textile mills began to spring up across the northeast, and towns grew up around them to house their workers. This innovation not only changed the textile industry it transformed the social landscape as well.. TOM DUBLIN ON CAMERA, (:0::) TOM DUBLIN: With the development of the carding machine, spinning frame and the power loom and the growth of textile production in factory settings, we begin to see the birth of a female labor force. They re beginning to see possibilities. They re

5 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0. IMAGE OF MR. LOWELL; IMAGE OF POWER LOOM; IMAGE OF LOWELL, MA beginning to see the possibilities for consumer goods that weren t there before. They re beginning to have some questions about what the possibilities are in the countryside for them, whether or not there really are opportunities for them. They re going to the city to earn money for themselves, sometimes to help their families but almost certainly to put away something toward their own marriages later in life at a time when families are beginning to have a bit of trouble assuring all their children a place in the countryside. NARRATOR: In Francis Cabot Lowell, a clothing manufacturer, returned to Boston energized by an invention he had seen while on a business trip in England. He reconstructed a power loom from memory, then went on to establish several textile factories along the banks of the Merrimack River. The town of Lowell, Massachusetts was born.. A COLLAGE OF DRAWINGS AND By 0 more than,000 young women were

6 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0 PHOTOGRAPHS OF NEW ENGLAND MILL GIRLS. TOM DUBLIN ON CAMERA (:::00) employed in different mills in Lowell alone. These women, most of them between the ages of and, labored in hot, poorly ventilated workrooms surrounded by noisy machines. TOM DUBLIN: For this effort, standing on their feet, hours a day, they made, in the 0s, maybe $.0, $. a week, so they made four or five cents an hour would be what they were paid. Out of that three dollars and something a week, they d pay $. a week for their room and board in the boarding house. But this meant that they could save $., maybe $ a week and over time, some of them might develop a bit of a savings account in the local savings bank and have some money to take back to them when they were done.. B-ROLL OF BOARDING HOUSE (/) NARRATOR: Harriet Hanson Robinson came to Lowell in, when her mother took a job running a company boarding house. At the age of, Harriet went to work in one of the Lowell factories as a bobbin girl.

7 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0. PICTURE OF A BOBBIN GIRL ACTOR: HARRIET HANSON ROBINSON. I can see myself now, racing down the alley, between the spinning frames, carrying in front of me a bobbin-box bigger. PICTURE OF A DRAWING-IN GIRL. NEWSPAPERS ANNOUNCING THE STRIKES than I was. We mites had to be very swift, so as not to keep the spinning-frames stopped long. NARRATOR: Harriet worked her way up from bobbin girl to tending a spinning frame and then to a better paying, skilled position as a drawing-in girl. ACTOR: HARRIET HANSON ROBINSON. We drew in, one by one, the threads of the warp, through the harness and the reed, and so made the beams ready for the weaver s loom. NARRATOR: In and the female workers banded together to protest attempts to lower their wages. ACTOR: HARRIET HANSON ROBINSON.

8 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0. PICTURE OF IRISH MILLWORKERS. TOM DUBLIN ON CAMERA (BELOW :::0) When the day came on which the girls were to turn out, those in the upper rooms started first, and so many of them left that our mill was at once shut down. Then, when the girls in my room stood irresolute, I became impatient, and started on ahead. I marched out, and was followed by the others. NARRATOR: But by 0, the fledgling women s labor movement at Lowell was undercut by an increasing supply of immigrant workers. TOM DUBLIN: There was a ready supply of Irish immigrant workers to come into the mills and as the Irish come into the mills more and more, you begin to see the mills changing character. As the mills grow between let s say the 0s and the 0s, they don t tend to build as many boarding houses so more and more of the workers are expected to find their own homes somewhere in Lowell. More and more of them come to Lowell as whole

9 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0 families with the women working in the mills, perhaps the men working on canals or doing unskilled labor in Lowell. So that as the wages relatively go down and as the workforce is transformed from a rural migrant labor force to an immigrant labor force, what particularly distinguished Lowell from other places, begins to disappear.. PHOTOGRAPH OF LOWELL NARRATOR: In, Harriet, at age, left her job in the mill to marry William Robinson, a Lowell newspaper editor. They remained in town. Many Lowell girls, having tasted city life, chose not to return to the hard, rural. TOM DUBLIN ON CAMERA (:::00) existence of their parents. TOM DUBLIN: You find a number of women who had been mill operatives become active in the woman s rights movement that evolves. So that there definitely are people who I would say became familiar with the idea that women could have a public presence and could protest ill treatment. And they carried that over from the class issues that they first

10 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0. B-ROLL OF HOMAGE TO WOMEN SCULPTURE () SHORT-TAKE PROGRESS IN PRINT addressed while working in the mills to more political and social issues for women generally in American society. ACTOR: Female. Woman is never thought to be out of her sphere at home, in the nursery, in the kitchen, over a hot stove cooking from morning till evening, over a washtub, or toiling in a cotton factory hours per day. But let her once step out, plead the cause of right and humanity, plead the wrongs of her slave sister of the South, or the operative of the North, and a cry is raised against her, out of her sphere.. SHOT OF THE LOWELL PAPERS ACTOR. Female Journalist. OR DRAWING OR PHOTO OF WOMEN AT WORK ON THE PAPERS; SOURCE OF QUOTE: We should look upon each other THE LOWELL OFFERING, VOL. II, ) something as a band of orphans do. We re fatherless and motherless. We re alone

11 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0 and surrounded by temptation. Let us caution each other. Let us watch over and endeavor to improve each other. Let us strive to promote each other s comfort and happiness. I say let us all strive to do this; and if we succeed, it will finally be acknowledged that Factory Girls shine forth in ornaments more valuable than Gold Watches. NARRATOR: Newspapers at Lowell provided factory girls with an opportunity to express themselves, and often to defend themselves, in print. The Lowell Offering was a literary magazine with the mission of showing what factory girls could do without sacrificing their femininity. The Voice of Industry was a labor newspaper that focused more on social reform.. MONTAGE OF SHOTS OF The Lowell Offering and the Voice of Industry NEWSPAPERS, MAGAZINES, AND BOOKS OF THE ERA AND were just two among a plethora of publications ADVERTISEMENTS FOR THESE VARIOUS PRINT MEDIA that flourished during the 0s.

12 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0. B-ROLL OF PRINTSHOP (0). JOYCE APPLEBY ON CAMERA (:::). B-ROLL OF SCHOOLHOUSE (0) JOYCE APPLEBY: It s just incredible the number of printing presses and newspapers and reform movements and religious movements that use print media. This, of course, puts a tremendous premium on literacy, so that all these little rural areas had formed districts so at least their children will go to school maybe months in a -year life, but they ll become literate. So this is not just related to economic development, it also has something to do with political development but you can see how they re interactive. You have a more literate public; then you have people that make more of a demand for printed works. You have a demand for printed works, you ve got occupations for more writers. It s interactive and mutually enhancing, these developments. SEGMENT TWO THE BIG DITCH

13 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0. FOOTAGE OF THE ERIE CANAL (0, 0, 0) NARRATOR: July,. Daybreak. Cannons roared as a crowd gathered near Rome, New York to witness the beginning of America s most ambitious construction project to date. The honor of shoveling the first spade-full of dirt for the Erie Canal went to Judge John Richardson.. SHOT OF GOODS THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN SHIPPED ON CANAL BARGES. IMAGE OF WORKERS ON CANAL ACTOR: Judge John Richardson. By this great highway unborn millions will easily transport their surplus productions to the shores of the Atlantic, procure their supplies, and hold a useful and profitable intercourse with all the marine nations of the world. NARRATOR: After that first symbolic spade plunged into the ground, members of the crowd, along with the hired workers, eagerly followed suit. The nation s first major public-works project was underway. The goal was to create a. B-ROLL OF MOHAWK VALLEY (0,, ) mile-long artificial waterway. It would connect the Hudson River at Albany to Lake Erie in

14 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0 0. JOHN STEELE GORDON ON CAMERA (:::00). PORTRAIT OF DEWITT CLINTON. MAP -, TOPOGRAPHICAL MAP SHOWING GAP IN APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS. JOHN MAJEWSKI ON CAMERA (:0:0:). IMAGES OF NEW YORK CITY, EARLY TO MID TH CENTURY Buffalo by following the contours of the Mohawk River Valley. JOHN STEELE GORDON: The Erie Canal was the child of Governor Dewitt Clinton. He saw that New York had a unique geographical feature which was a gap in the Appalachian mountains, which otherwise run uninterrupted from New Hampshire to Georgia. But at Albany there is a gap and so you could put a canal through there. Run it to the Great Lakes and thus trade with the Trans-Appalachian part of the country which was a very large rapidly growing part of the country at the time. JOHN MAJEWSKI: Another very important factor was New York City. Merchants in New York City are looking for access to the West. They know if they can have access to the west that they ll be the number one port of entry for goods coming into the United States; as well as being the number one commercial depot for grains and other goods being produced by the farm economy of the Midwest coming to New York.

15 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0. JOHN STEELE GORDON ON CAMERA (:::00). PORTRAIT OF DEWITT CLINTON. NEWSPAPER HEADLINES ANNOUNCING THE PROGRESS OF THE CANAL; IMAGES OF CANAL JOHN STEELE GORDON: And DeWitt Clinton just became determined to do it, and he tried to get the federal government to fund it, federal government turned it down. Jefferson thought it was an absolutely lunatic idea. But Clinton got it through the New York state legislature. He was a masterful politician. NARRATOR: Clinton s tireless support of the canal would prompt his critics to call the endeavor Clinton s Big Ditch. Despite their sneers, popular support for the project grew each year. By the eastern end at Albany was completed. In honor of the occasion, a resident of Brockport, New York offered a toast: ACTOR: Resident of Brockport. To our Internal Navigation Pork and Flour coming down, Tea and Sugar coming up. Things are as they should be; some up, some down.. IMAGE OF THE WESTERN END; NARRATOR: In another milestone was IMAGES OF CANAL-BUILDING EMPHASIZING ENGINEERING

16 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0 CHALLENGES. JOHN MAJEWSKI ON CAMERA (BELOW :0::00) 0. IMAGES OF THE LOCKS; B- ROLL OF MOHAWK VALLEY achieved when the western end at Buffalo was finished. But the mid-section still needed to be completed. JOHN MAJEWSKI: There were grave doubts about the engineering capabilities of the day. Most of the engineers who worked on it were actually quite amateur engineers by the standards of our day. Most of them were prominent gentlemen in New York who had some experience surveying and some experience in engineering but no formal education in engineering itself. NARRATOR: The Erie Canal had to overcome a -foot differential in elevation from beginning to end point. Ultimately, locks were required to raise and lower boats along the way.. SOURCE OF QUOTE: A BRITISH TOURIST ON VIEWING THE LOCKS OF LOCKPORT ACTOR: A British Tourist. It certainly strikes the beholder with astonishment, to perceive what vast difficulties can be overcome by the pigmy arms of little mortal man, aided by science

17 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0. IMAGE OF DIGGERS AT WORK ON THE CANAL. JOHN STEELE GORDON ON CAMERA (:00::00). PHOTOGRAPH OF POOR TH CENTURY IRISH IMMIGRANTS and dictated by superior skill. NARRATOR: The Canal engineers did a great deal of improvising as they went along. In addition to their ingenuity, the project required the brute strength and endurance of nearly,000 laborers, who felled trees, hauled boulders, rechannelled streams, and shoveled tons of dirt. JOHN STEELE GORDON: The Erie Canal was the last major public work to be built almost entirely by hand. It was built by thousands of workers using pick and shovel and they simply dug it. And they blasted out rocks and stuff like that but otherwise it was done entirely by hand, many of them by immigrant labor and many of them Irish. ACTOR: Irish Male. I think being here is better than staying in Ireland, landless and powerless, without food or clothing. NARRATOR: Most canal laborers lived in dismal

18 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0 circumstances and were paid under a dollar a day. Their meager salary was augmented by an allotment of whiskey and food. ACTOR: Male.. FOOTAGE THAT EMPHASIZES THE NATURE BEAUTY OF THE AREA FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF A CANAL TRAVELER There s so many Irish, keep coming every day. And they work so cheap, it makes it bad for laboring people. In, after eight years of effort, the Canal was finally completed all the way from the Hudson River to Lake Erie. That year over 0,000 passengers traveled upon it.. IMAGES OF THE ERIE CANAL The barges only traveled at miles per hour, but they still cut the travel-time between Albany and Buffalo in half. There were no luxury accommodations on the overcrowded, mosquitoinfested barges. Passengers had to fling themselves on deck each time they passed under a bridge to avoid decapitation. But during the next few decades, millions traveled the Erie Canal for business and pleasure. And it revolutionized the movement of goods, bringing

19 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0. JOHN STEELE GORDON ON CAMERA (:0::00) wheat, pork, cattle, and whiskey to the East and sending textiles, household goods, books, guns, and people to the West JOHN STEELE GORDON: Previously, western farmers had had to ship their goods either down the Mississippi and then through New Orleans and then around Florida or up the Great Lakes to Montreal and the St. Lawrence and to the Atlantic. Before the Erie Canal it would have cost about $ to ship a barrel of flour from Buffalo to New York City. After the Erie Canal, it cost about six bucks and took about you know one third of the time.. JOHN MAJEWSKI ON CAMERA (:::0) JOHN MAJEWSKI: New York City was by far the biggest winner of the Erie Canal. It got a head start in capturing the trade of the Midwest. And because people were shipping grains and other goods to New York City, New York City. JOHN STEELE GORDON ON CAMERA (:0::00) became a natural place in order to manufacture goods as well. JOHN STEELE GORDON: As Oliver Wendell

20 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0 SHORT-TAKE Nothing runs like a Deere 0. B-ROLL OF THE JOHN DEERE MUSEUM (). IMAGE OF JOHN DEERE Holmes, the poet and the Supreme Court Justice said, that the Erie Canal and New York City had become that tongue that is licking up the cream of commerce of a continent. NARRATOR: In John Deere emigrated from Vermont to the Illinois frontier. Two days after his arrival in Grand Detour, Illinois, he set up a forge and went to work as a blacksmith. In, Deere successfully forged the first selfpolishing, steel-bladed plow, soon dubbed the singing plow for the sound it made as it cut right through the thick, gummy soils of the Midwestern prairie. Deere quickly turned his invention into a lucrative business that was instrumental in the expansion of farming in the Midwest.. B-ROLL OF FARMERS USING DEERE PLOWS, ETC. () By mid-century, Deere was selling over,000 plows a year. In, he incorporated, establishing Deere & Company, a manufacturing operation that is still a major player in the farm

21 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0 equipment business today. SEGMENT THREE MOVING WESTWARD. PAINTING OF THE NORTHWESTERN FRONTIER SOURCE OF QUOTE: Caleb Atwater, quoted in the Springfield Sangamo Journal, September,. ACTOR: Farmer No poor man in the Eastern states, who has feet and legs and can use them has any excuse for remaining poor where he is, a day. JOHN MAJEWSKI ON CAMERA (::0:0) or even an hour. JOHN MAJEWSKI: The one thing that almost all people had in common was a search for independence. Many Americans valued propertied independence, of owning their own farm or perhaps owning their own shop. And as the seaboard states became increasingly populated, land ran scarce in those states. The way people at the time envisioned the economy working is that you might work as a wage laborer in an older seaboard state, accumulate enough savings to move west and to buy your own homestead and that was the ideal that many western settlers strove for.

22 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0. B-ROLL FOR SEGMENT: PIONEER VILLAGE (,, ) AND MIDWESTERN LANDSCAPES (,, ). JOYCE APPLEBY ON CAMERA (::0:) NARRATOR: Thanks to improvements in transportation like the Erie Canal, tens of thousands of white settlers relocated to the northwestern prairies in the mid-nineteenth century. The combined population of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa went from 00,000 to million, a growth rate four times greater than that of the country as a whole. JOYCE APPLEBY: There was very rich agricultural land available and you had a population of people who were farmers and they were farmers sons and daughters who started working when they were seven or eight. They knew how to do all the tasks that would be involved in taking a wilderness and turning it into fertile acres, production. There was also the fact that the United States army. IMAGES OF ROADS, FAMILY FARMS IN THE MIDWEST was willing to fight the indigenous population, which fiercely defended their homelands. NARRATOR: The federal government

23 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0. JOHN MAJEWSKI ON CAMERA (:::0) promoted western expansion in other ways as well. JOHN MAJEWSKI: The road system was not very well developed but a bad road was better than no road at all and it was usually federal and state governments that built the earliest roads in these territories. And then land policies was also especially important; and the federal government owned most of the land in the old Northwest and the federal government was willing to sell that land quite cheaply to settlers, especially to independent family farmers.. DRAWINGS AND PHOTOGRAPHS OF JACKSONVILLE FROM THAT ERA (SEE: THE SOCIAL ORDER OF A FRONTIER COMMUNITY: JACKSONVILLE, ILLINOIS, - ); NARRATOR: The town of Jacksonville, Illinois was the product of the agricultural boom on the frontier. Named for the brash military hero Andrew Jackson, it began in with the construction of three taverns. The following year 0. SOURCE OF QUOTE: JOHN ELLIS, a meeting-house and a school were added. ACTOR: John Ellis. Few towns have risen so rapidly as

24 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0. IMAGES OF JACKSONVILLE OR B-ROLL OF PIONEER VILLAGE Jacksonville. About a dozen frame buildings finished in good style have gone up the last year. NARRATOR: By 0 it had nearly,000 residents. That same year, a small college was founded with an initial enrollment of nine. The town boosters began referring to Jacksonville as the Athens of the West. ACTOR. Jacksonville is destined to become one of the most prosperous as well as one of the most beautiful cities in the State.. B-ROLL VILLAGE CHURCH (0) NARRATOR: But various social problems accompanied Jacksonville s rapid growth. Julian Sturtevant, who was invited to town to give a sermon to Jacksonville s Presbyterian community, was astounded by the religious factionalism he encountered there: ACTOR: Julian Sturtevant Here every man s hand was against his

25 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0. IMAGES OF SLAVES AND NEWSPAPER HEADLINES ABOUT THE LOGAN INCIDENT. B-ROLL LOG CABIN (, ) brother. The possibility of Christian cooperation was absolutely limited to these little cliques into which the body of Christ was divided. NARRATOR: The town was also divided over the issue of slavery. This rift came to the fore in, when a Kentucky couple arrived in Jacksonville accompanied by two of their slaves. Some Jacksonville residents convinced the slaves, Bob and Emily Logan, that they were legally free now that they were in Illinois. They helped the Logans to escape and find shelter with a free black family. Then another set of citizens helped to kidnap Bob. SOURCE OF QUOTE: JULIAN STURTEVANT, AN ABOLITIONIST back. Emily, however, evaded capture. ACTOR: Julian Sturtevant. The shock to the whole community occasioned by this outrage is beyond description. From that time onward there was a slow but steady progress in the antislavery sentiment.

26 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0. B-ROLL OF PIONEER VILLAGE, CU OF TRAIN CARS MOVING FAST () NARRATOR: The case of Emily and Bob Logan did in fact bolster Jacksonville s reputation among abolitionists; the town eventually became a stop on the Underground Railroad. Meanwhile, community members were promoting the development of the actual railroad. An editorial composed by one citizen in February of captures the community s sense that railroad links would be essential to the town s future.. B-ROLL RAILROAD DEPOT WITH WAITING ROOM AND MAPS (, ) ACTOR: J.R. Bailey. Jacksonville has, thus far, attained a fair start in the race with her sister towns in the state, but if she neglects laying a firm basis by securing those commercial advantages now within her reach, she may yet be outstripped and shorn of much future prosperity.. ILLINOIS RAILROAD MAP, THE NARRATOR: By 0 Jacksonville had five SOCIAL ORDER OF A FRONTIER COMMUNITY P. separate rail links, along which they exported wheat, pork, and beef.

27 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0. DISSOLVE TO A PAINTING OF TRAVELERS MOVING WEST; SOURCE OF QUOTE: TRUMAN POST, RESIDENT SINCE SUMMARY ANALYSIS A FREE LABOR ECONOMY But the ambitions of Jacksonville s early settlers only met with moderate success. ACTOR: Truman Post. Many came here with no idea of permanent stay, but as a place for outlook for a future home still further on in the wilds. NARRATOR: Jacksonville remained a community of continual migration, as the lure of the frontier beyond increased with each passing year. 0. WESTERN LANDSCAPE NARRATOR: The seemingly infinite western frontier was a major factor in making the midnineteenth century a time of unprecedented economic opportunity for white Americans.. JOYCE APPLEBY ON CAMERA (BELOW ::0:0) JOYCE APPLEBY: Americans took advantage of this opportunity; a very hardworking country and they do bring in new

28 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0. TOM DUBLIN ON CAMERA (:0::)) acreage. They do move west. They do go into new industries. They do begin to innovate and invent, build manufacturing in the Northeast. When they do this and as they prosper, they say, We ve prospered because of our democratic institutions. So to them, certainly for this generation, economic and political freedom seem to be absolutely supporting each other TOM DUBLIN: There develops a free labor ideology, a set of beliefs around free labor that s very important in this period. The idea that northern wage laborers were free to accept the terms of their employment or not, that they were not under compulsion to do this work, that they could benefit from the wages they earned and from the resources that they controlled.. JOHN MAJEWSKI ON CAMERA (:::0) JOHN MAJEWSKI: Increasingly in the North, people viewed the South with disdain. The South has a growing economy of its own, but it s a much different type of economic growth.

29 Final Script Lesson : The Market Revolution //0 It s more based on cotton plantations and slaves. And people in the North increasingly view that economy as falling behind the times. People in the North began to celebrate the virtues of what they called a free labor economy; economy dominated by small farmers, by small enterprises in which men could rise up through the social system and achieve landed independence. And they increasingly viewed the South as a society in which the majority of people, whether slaves or poor whites, were exploited by large plantation owners who generated most of the wealth for themselves. And so Northerners viewed themselves increasingly as special, as a kind of driving progressive force of the nation.