Market Revolution In The United States

The Market Revolution was a time of wrenching economic change that drew increasing numbers of people into a commercial economy based on market agriculture, early industrial production, and the sale and consumption of manufactured goods. Thomas Jefferson’s vision of America slowly disappeared. Self-sufficient farmers died out. Craftsmen and artisans who produced goods in their entirety died out. Capitalism grew: entrepreneurs and capitalists commanded large sums of money, and unskilled workers worked for wages. People no longer relied on barter to acquire needed goods; they paid coins or banknotes. An early form of industrialization slowly developed in the USA. Proto-factories developed: workers were gathered in workshops to produce useful goods. These factories often used simply …show more content…
Crops were grown for sale, not consumption. The South produced cotton. Eli Whitney’s cotton gin made this possible. The West and rural areas of the North produced corn and wheat. Farmers benefited from John Deere’s steel plow and Cyrus McCormick;s mechanized reaper. The steel plow enabled farmers to develop more land, more quickly and efficiently, turning soil that would otherwise break weaker wood or iron plows. The mechanized reaper allowed farmers to rapidly harvest crops with less labor. Many farmers came to use chemical fertilizers (developed by Sir John Lawes), to develop more land: they were less reliant on animals to provide manure for them. The United States slowly developed and slowly integrated. Early urbanization took hold. New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore became commercial centers due to their location near harbors, which facilitated trade and population growth. Cities became the heart of regional markets: urban workers produced goods that people in rural areas needed. Cities drew from resources from surrounding rural areas and turned them into finished goods, and sold them to people in cities and in the