How Did The Market Revolution Occur In The Early 19th Century

The Market Revolution describes the enlargement of the marketplace that happened in the early 19th-century brought on by the building of new roads and canals to allow remote communities access to each other for the first time. Influenced by the successfulness of the Erie Canal, states spent millions of dollars on transportation systems that propelled economic growth. Funded by private developers and state governments, thousands of miles of roads and canals permitted manufacturers, craftsmen, and farmers to cheaply take their wares to distant and usually more profitable markets. Prior to the early nineteenth century, most Americans only dealt with markets that were local and familiar. They did business with individuals they knew and every transaction was encapsulated within an extended weave of personal relationships. The primary rule of these local markets was simple: be fair. If you cheated someone, it would be discussed by your neighbors and portray you in a negative light for the rest of your life. With access to new profitable markets; they began to produce for the public instead of just for personal utilization, and they focused on complex
Small craftsmen were forced out of business by merchant capitalists, and skilled laborers and small business owners were made to become wage earners with not much chance for occupational progression. Even those who prospered under the new circumstances experienced a high rate of anxiety with the quickly fast moving changes that happened in American labor relations and gender roles. This anxiety brought on a flood of experimentation in areas such as labor organization, health, and