A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815–1837

In this chapter, Johnson traces how the growth of Rochester’s industries fundamentally altered Rochester’s social order over the course of the 1820s. Though Rochester was presided over by a group of wealthy men with deep ties to the surrounding country, the vast majority of Rochester’s population was workers who lived as “young, unattached drifters” (37). As Rochester’s economy developed, the working class lived increasingly separate lives from Rochester’s wealthy elite, leading to a sense of a “loss of social control” amidst upper-class Rochesterians (38).

As Rochester’s industry grew, workers manufacturing goods became increasingly separated from the merchants whom they worked for. Johnson traces this development amidst the industries of shoemaking, coopering, and construction. Before Rochester’s growth in the 1820s, all of these industries were centered around small shops, with the owners conducting business directly next to the workers producing the goods. However, as businesses grew in the 1820s, most adopted a factory system centered around teams of workers who were separated from the shop owners. Workers became accustomed to never interacting with the “merchant capitalists” who paid their wages and began to experience “harsher, more impersonal, and more transparent forms of exploitation than had men in the same trades a few years earlier” (41-42). Such a separation between workers and owners led to workers developing antagonistic feelings toward their bosses.

The growth of industrialization also altered Rochester’s domestic life. Traditionally, merchants had provided their workers with accommodation in their own homes as part of their wages, and they often viewed these boarders as members of the family. These merchants understood themselves as personally responsible for their workers, ensuring that the workers behaved appropriately and did not “cause trouble” (44). However, as merchants began to employ larger numbers of workers, they became unable to continue the custom of offering lodging. As a result, many workers instead lived on their own in boardinghouses, with their social life completely separated from those of their bosses. This division became reflected in Rochester’s urban geography, with Rochester’s wealthy and working classes living in their own distinct neighborhoods.

The growing divisions and tensions between Rochester’s social classes became encapsulated in differing attitudes over alcohol and drinking. During the “household economy,” when workers and merchants lived closely together, drinking was seen by both groups as an acceptable and common leisure activity (57). However, as workingmen developed “an autonomous social life” that featured “heavy drinking,” Rochester’s middle-class residents became increasingly scandalized by alcohol, convinced that it led to criminality and promiscuity (58). Likewise, merchants also began to dissuade their workers from drinking, believing that partaking in alcohol dampened their productivity. Differing attitudes over alcohol quickly became symbolic of the growing antagonistic sentiments that existed between Rochester’s working and upper classes.