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159 7 The period from about 1820 to 1850 is usually called the Jacksonian Era, or the Age of the Common Man. Historians have pointed to it as a time of great change; a market revolution, a transportation revolution, multiple reform movements, and the revivalism of the Second Great Awakening. The rise of Paterson, and the subtexts of the tale of Sam Patch and the creation of Forest Garden, all parts of the story Paul E. Johnson tells in the following selection, can help us understand aspects of New Jersey’s history in this time period, and look at major issues of concern to historians. Paterson was the brainchild of Alexander Hamilton and others who in 1792 created the Society for the Encouragement of Useful Manufactures (SUM), hoping to use water power from the Great Falls of the Passaic River to build the first planned industrial city in the country. The promoters assumed that manufacturing would build a stronger, more competitive nation. The project limped through ups and downs in the 1790s and War of 1812, then began to expand in the 1820s. By 1830 the town had seventeen cotton mills, producing 5,000,000 yards of cloth, and employing some 5,000 workers. Nationally, the time period saw an increase in production from 4,000,000 yards of cloth in 1817 to 323,000,000 by 1840. Most cotton cloth was produced in New England, but Paterson shared in developments even as it became better known for the production of locomotives and silk fabric. As the city industrialized , labor unrest increased; from 1824 to 1836 there were six strikes. In the 1830s workers pushed for a ten-hour day, and by the 1880s the demands were for eight hours. Strikes were frequent in Paterson, especially in the late nineteenth century, and in 1913 the much larger city that Paterson had become was the location of a famous walkout as silk workers left the mills en masse. Sam Patch was descended from a New England Puritan family of declining fortunes. Originally farmers, with each generation they made do with smaller and smaller pieces of land as population increased and farms were divided. His father turned to shoemaking, and the family to employment in the new textile mills. Sam himself started working in the mills in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, at age seven, and by the 160 / Paul E. Johnson mid-1820s he was a skilled boss mule spinner in Paterson. There, as the following selection shows, he challenged the local elites by attracting attention during their special events, and did so by dramatically leaping off a cliff and into the Great Falls. After he left Paterson, Patch went on to become an early American celebrity—he gave up mill work to become an entertainer. He jumped from heights at Hoboken, Niagara, and Rochester. Sadly, in the end a combination of alcoholism and daring proved fatal. Sam Patch’s life and adventures and the changing world in which he lived raise many issues, especially for labor historians. These scholars originally focused narrowly on trade unions, collective bargaining, and major strikes. By the 1960s and 1970s, reflecting democratization of the historical profession and the radicalism of the times, the perspective of the “new labor” historians had broadened to include numerous aspects of workers’ lives. Particularly influential were E. P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class (1963) and the work of Herbert G. Gutman on American workers and the culture of their communities. An interest in women and minorities has been added. Recently, the view has grown even wider, to include slave and indentured as well as free labor, management, and global comparisons . Labor historians who have looked at the early nineteenth century are particularly interested in the shift from artisans and craftsmen to unskilled workers as mass production, factories, and machines were introduced. In the process, older master-journeymen teaching apprentices their craft in home workshops were replaced by large, impersonal businesses. Examining the new arrangements, historians look for divisions between workers and their bosses and try to pinpoint when class consciousness arose. They note conflict over the conditions of work (wages, hours, and the rules of work), and the extent and impact of child labor. In examining Sam Patch and his experiences, Johnson looks at many of these issues, and more. What were the issues in Paterson in the 1820s that led workers to walk out in 1828? Why did the mill owners’ change of the lunch...

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