At the end of the eighteenth century New Jersey was predominantly rural and agricultural. The decades following the War for Independence witnessed a market revolution that changed the way goods were made and sold. To accomplish this transformation, new forms of business organizations were chartered by the State of New Jersey. Under existing legal theory, corporations were grants from the state that bestowed exclusive privileges.
A prerequisite for the market revolution was an improved transportation network. The New Jersey legislature decided that rather than spending public funds to construct turnpikes and bridges, it would authorize private companies to do the job. To ensure that these privately financed internal improvements would be profitable, the charters prohibited other roads or bridges from being built in the general vicinity. These monopolies granted to the turnpike and bridge companies established the precedent that was invoked to promote the steamboat and the railroad in the early nineteenth century. In 1798 Robert Livingston and Robert Fulton obtained a monopoly grant from the State of New York for steamboat transportation on the Hudson River. This put Livingston in competition with his brother-in-law, Colonel John Stevens, who ran a steam-driven ferry between Hoboken and New York City. The Livingston-Fulton monopoly continued in force until 1824, when it was finally overthrown by the United States Supreme Court in the famous Gibbons v. Ogden case.
Meanwhile, John Stevens and his sons shifted their attention from steamboats to steam-driven railroad engines. They came up with a plan to build a railroad line between South Amboy and Camden. But they had competition from other interests, including Robert F. Stockton of Princeton, who had plans to build a canal between New Brunswick and Trenton. A compromise was proposed by New Jersey governor Peter Vroom. On February 4, 1830, the legislature chartered both the Camden and Amboy Railroad and the Delaware and Raritan Canal. However, the canal company had trouble selling its stock, so the railroad and canal merged into the so-called Joint Companies, with Robert Stockton as president. In 1832 the legislature granted the Joint Companies a monopoly on transportation between New York and Philadelphia in exchange for a so-called transit duty, which provided most of the funds for the state government in the years prior to the Civil War.
Improvements in transportation and the chartering of corporations in the first two decades of the nineteenth century transformed the lives of average New Jerseyans. In cities such as Newark, the local market economy based on small farmers and craftspersons was transformed. The nineteenth-century mechanics began to expand their workshops to appeal to larger markets.
The Market Revolution transformed the home as well as the workplace. The colonial housewife, who worked alongside her husband producing goods primarily for their own consumption, found herself constricted to taking care of the household and the children, while for her husband work became more removed from the home. The colonial goodwife became the republican mother.
For a teachers guide go to:
nj.gov/state/h...
21 окт 2024
