Summary Of Shopkeeper's Millennium By Paul E Johnson

Shopping, a common activity conducted by almost everyone at least once a month, is such a normal subject in our everyday life, one barely puts any thoughts into the potential semiotic explanations behind it. According to the two essays, “The Signs of Shopping” and “The Science of Shopping,” Shopping has significant impacts on one’s self-identification. It is a two way straight, the consumers’ shopping styles can also influence the economic status of the retails businesses.

The industrial revolution in both the United States and England relied heavily on roles in the household and society. Men, woman, children and minorities all had a set place in society before the industrial revolution. During the revolution and sense of enlightenment changed the roles of these individuals. In the middle of the 1800’s there was change in the role of men, the workplace was no longer a farm or working in the town, rather men were expected to be entrepreneurs. Men, unlike woman, were seen as aggressive and built to work in a savage work place were they could bring home the bread for the family. In England several factory jobs were quite laborious, as well as in the US, however many emigrants that came to the United States had a different sense of what labor as a man meant. Labor was no longer

The Market Revolution can be described as an early manifestation of capitalism, an era associated with a new sense of individual rights, equality, and freedom. The Market Revolution took place in the early 19th century, and it drastically changed not only the market and commerce of Americans but their personal lives as well. Before the Market Revolution America hadn’t seen any new life changing innovations, most of their goods, such as clothing and farming tools, were still being made from home, and trade was limited by poor roads and little means of transportation. In addition, the poor road system meant that there was little interaction and movement between each state. It wasn’t till the creation of new ways of communicating, steamboats, and the building of canals, railroads, and turnpikes that prompted American expansion. As a result, the United States began to see a movement of settlements westward and the rise cities. The Embargo of 1807 and the War of 1812, led to the cutoff of British imports and the need to establish the first large –scale factories; the rise of factories then led to new employment and a boom in domestic manufacturing (Foner 331). The changes led by the advances in the society of the Market Revolution evidently gave women the opportunity to gain a level of equality in both domestic and work environments, it also gave Americans the

For decades, Looking Backward has been an influential novel since it focuses on the idea of social reform. The novel’s publication was in 1888 during an era when most Americans were afraid of violence associated with the working class. Another relevant aspect that disgusted a majority of individuals in public was the idea that conspicuous consumption is only for the privileged minorities in the American society. Intense demonstrations commenced following the emergence of labor unions, as well as large trusts that became a central factor in the nation’s economy. Arguably, the author managed to make the novel extraordinarily popular among the middle-class by painting a portrait of Americans who behold the possibilities of a desirable future.

After the civil war finished American economy went through a period of extra industrial growth. People had started moving into the cities from rural areas, in hopes of finding work in the factories. As a result Population of New York & Chicago went over a million residents.(Rosenzweig, Pg 23). But in these newly established industries, the owners were looking into maximizing their profits anyway they could, so they cut the workers’ wages as low as they could. The American dream of “Artisan Republicanism”, basically meant that through one's perseverance and handwork, someday you could become your own master. But American workers realized that this dream of theirs was quickly fading away because working in these factories meant that they could

As Americans entered an era of transition and instability, they sought to expand democratic ideals in the society. In response to sudden changes occurring and traditional values being challenged, various reform movements during 1825-1850 began to focus on democratic ideals. The rise of religious revivals, movements for equal rights and protecting liberties of different social groups, want to advance society technologically, and desire to bring order and control helped reform the society to live up to the nation’s founding ideals. Teaching them (I don’t get who “them” is) the habits of thrift, orderliness, temperance and industry was a way to not only better their lives but a way to instill certain democratic values and advance the

Most eighteenth century Americans lived in self-maintaining rural areas. The Industrial Revolution saw the advancement of large urban hubs, such as Boston and New York City, and impelled an enormous migration of workers. “From the beginning, cities formed part of the western frontier. Western cities like Cincinnati and St. Louis that stood at the crossroads of inter-regional trade experienced

Accurately established by many historians, the capitalists who shaped post-Civil War industrial America were regarded as corrupt “robber barons”. In a society in which there was a severe imbalance in the dynamics of the economy, these selfish individuals viewed this as an opportunity to advance in their financial status. Thus, they acquired fortunes for themselves while purposely overseeing the struggles of the people around them. Presented in Document A, “as liveried carriage appear; so do barefooted children”, proved to be a true description of life during the 19th century. In hopes of rebuilding America, the capitalists’ hunger for wealth only widened the gap between the rich and poor.

This concept of the dignity of labor was not new. Most Americans came from a Protestant background, in which “nobility of labor was an article of faith.” [3] In Calvinist theology, each man had a divine calling. In order to properly live life, each man should provide evidence that he was predestined to enter heaven. Wealth became a way of serving God on earth in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Labor was a religious value and many aspects of a successful work ethic were obligations. These beliefs were more concentrated in the Northeast. In Rochester, New York, in the 1830s for example, Charles Finney, an evangelist during the Second Great Awakening, took part in this spiritual revival. The Second Great Awakening is known as “a missionary crusade that transformed America”. [4] People who wished to slow the social and political change of the Industrial Revolution and reinforce social control through Christian values organized this resurgence. They wished for modernity with Christian self-control. [5] Charles Finney’s arrival in Rochester provided a solution to the “social disorder” and “moral confusion” the town was facing. [6] The town was encountering much uncertainty with its adjustment to a free labor economy. Therefore, industrial capitalist beliefs of the free labor ideology became attached to visions of a perfect moral order based on individual freedoms.

In Maury Klein's. “The Lords and the Mill Girls,” industrialization is attempting to rid itself of the horrible standards adhered to at most European and other New England factories through the endeavor of the Lowell Mills. The Associates, who open the Lowell mills, attempt to create an atmosphere which is the best of both worlds. They want to create profit, but don't want to abandon their virtues and principles by creating an industrial district which, “degraded workers and blighted the landscape”(Klein). The key to their success is their working population. They seek civilized workers, who save money, attend church, and adhere to the pious principles of religion and culture(Klein). They find their laborers in women of the New England farmers,

Malcolm Gladwell is currently a non-fiction writer for The New Yorker. After college, he took a journalism position in Indiana and later took a position in Washington. In 1996, he moved to New York, where he is today. He has written five books and each has been on the New York Times best seller list (Famous Authors). In his first year of working as a journalist for The New Yorker, he wrote, “The Science of Shopping.” In this piece, Gladwell objectively evaluates Paco Underhill’s research within the business industry. Underhill “would have from a hundred to five hundred pages and pages of carefully annotated tracking sheets and anywhere from a hundred to five hundred hours of films” for each experiment that he conducts (99). With Underhill’s determination and research, and Gladwell’s journalistic qualities, this report changes the way anyone views shopping.

At the same time, as we learned in class, America’s population grew because of labor mobility. People began to migrate from rural to urban areas, and from Europe to North America, in search of better economic opportunities, and to improve their lives. The job market became more and more competitive Hubert Gutman’s “Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America 1815-1919” sheds light on the struggle of farmers and tradesmen who were forced into unskilled labor positions during the industrial revolution and the many new immigrants that were finding their way to America Gutman states, “A factory worker in New

Industrialization in the North caused social upheaval with the assistance of transportation innovation and the commercialization of agriculture. Paul E. Johnson uses Rochester, New York in the Antebellum period as a microcosm of the changes occurring in the North. He explains, “The loss of social control began, paradoxically, with the imposition of new and tighter controls over the process of labor.” This control over the process of labor sparked from the need to manufacture more goods

Throughout the novel, The Romance of a Shop, by Amy Levy, money was constantly brought up and referenced in almost all decisions being made. As the novel starts out it shows how important money is going to be throughout the rest of the book. The book is based around four sisters, Fanny, Gertrude, Lucy, and Phyllis, and how they must adapt to life after their father passes away leaving the sisters very poor. This leads them to open a photography shop as a way of making money. Which leads to see how money impacted courtship in the late nineteenth century, as it was seen in the novel that the sisters Aunt Caroline told Fanny to not waste her time on a Mr. Marsh because he simply was not rich enough to advance her in her life. Lastly, for

As industry was booming, the mass immigration into the cities proved to be hurtful for some parishes that did not have the space to hold many parishioners. Money from the upper class, however, erected new churches and places of worship, large enough and accommodating for most, but now discriminatory against the lower class. Religious leaders thought that lucrative churches would solve the economic problems of the time, but all it really did is widen the gap between social classes even more.[4] Religion was no longer about faith, but rather it became a business, aiding to the rich, taking from the poor. Karl Marx saw a need for equality without religious interference, and he expressed it in the Communist Manifesto, stating, “Society could no longer live under this bourgeois.”[5]