The American Nation A History of the United States, Combined Volume (14th Edition)

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But economic growth during the 1820s and 1830s

eroded the ties between masters and workers. Historian Paul

Johnson (A Shopkeeper’s Millennium) described how this

process worked in Rochester, New York. In 1823, the Erie

Canal had been completed as far as that city, enabling grain

from the Genesee Valley to be loaded onto canal boats and

taken to markets in New York City. During the next ten years

Rochester became the fastest growing city in the nation.

Master workers enlarged their shops, hired more workers,

and focused on profits rather than traditional obligations of

masters to workers. Manufacturing processes were increas-

ingly moved out of the shops, which now became shoe

stores. Journeymen, with paid assistants, performed the work

of shoemaking in separate locations.

This physical separation of masters and journeymen is

reflected in the accompanying maps. In 1827, for example,

most journeymen lived near their masters’ shops. But by 1834

journeymen were scattered throughout Rochester. A similar

separation of journeymen and masters was found among

skilled workers in the building trades. In Johnson’s words, the

journeymen and apprentices “worked for men they seldom

saw.” The gulf between masters and workers widened.

Johnson found the same shift, from apprentice and

journeyman to wage earner, and from master to merchant

capitalist, in many other trades.

Increasing Physical Separation of

Masters and Workers

During the 1700s boys in their teens learned a skill by
serving as apprentices to master workmen. After five to
seven years of training, apprentices usually became wage-
earning journeymen. The master’s workshop commonly
functioned as both a tiny factory and small store. One
journeyman shoemaker in Rochester, New York, explained
the process:

It was customary for the boss, with the younger appren-

tices, to occupy the room in front where, with bared

arms and leather aprons, they performed their work and

met their customers. A shop in the rear or above would

be occupied by the tramping journeyman and the older

apprentice....The shops were low rooms in which from

fifteen to twenty men worked...

Because they lived and worked under the same roof,
masters commonly treated apprentices almost as their chil-
dren. Journeymen usually lived in boardinghouses near the
masters’ workshops; if they proved industrious, talented, and
frugal, they became master workers, opened a shop of their
own, and hired apprentices.

MAPPING THE PAST

The Making of the

Working Class

ErieCan

al

ErieCan

al

Ge

ne

se

eR

ive

r

Ge

ne

se

eR

ive

r

State

Brown Street

Clinton Street

St. Paul Street

Exchange Street

Sophia StreetFitzhugh Street

Washington Street

Ford Street

Troop Street

Buffalo

Main

Cornhill

Brown Street State

Clinton Street

St. Paul Stre

et

Exchange Street

Washington StreetSophia StreetFitzhugh Street

Ford St

reet

Troop Street

Buffalo

Main

Cornhill

1827 1834

Class formation: Journeymen and master shoemakers in Rochester,

New York take separate residences, 1827–1834

Residences of journeymen shoemakers Masters’ households