Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T06:03:43.806Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

How Choice Fueled Panic: Philadelphians, Consumption, and the Panic of 1837

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2015

Extract

This essay examines the role of working-class consumers in public debates over the public regulation of food and fuel markets in Philadelphia in the years leading up to the Panic of 1837. As price spikes in these necessities inflamed the cries for state authorities to insure fair prices for these goods and to put an end to the growing scale and scope of free market capitalism, these pleas went unfulfilled. Instead, urban residents saw many of the longstanding measures designed to protect less affluent Americans from devastating price swings—regulated marketplaces for meat, traditional fuel markets, and the bread assize, for example—had eroded as policymakers offered a vision of a free market economy that pushed aside longstanding assumptions about the role of public officials in the marketplace itself.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2011. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bibliography of Works Cited

Books

Balogh, Brian. A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Bezanson, Anne, Robert, D. Gray, and Hussey, Miriam Hussey. Wholesale Prices in Philadelphia, 1784–1861, vol. 3. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1936.Google Scholar
Breen, T.H. The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Boydston, Jeanne. Home and Work: Housework, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Brewer, Priscilla J. From Fireplace to Cookstove: Technology and the Domestic Ideal in America. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Brothers, Thomas. The United States of North America as They are; Not as They are Generally Described. Being a Cure For Radicalism. London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longman, 1840.Google Scholar
Bushman, Richard. The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.Google Scholar
Byrdsall, Fitzwilliam. The History of the Loco-Foco, or Equal Rights Party. New York: Clement & Packard, 1842.Google Scholar
Cole, Arthur Harrison. Wholesale Commodity Prices in the United States, 1700–1861, Statistical Supplement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938.Google Scholar
Conklin, Paul K. Prophets of Prosperity: America’s First Political Economists. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Crowley, John E. The Invention of Comfort: Sensibilities & Design in Early Modern Britain and Early America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Donohue, Kathleen. Freedom from Want: American Liberalism & the Idea of the Consumer. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Joshua. Advocating the Man: Masculinity, Organized Labor, and the Household in New York, 1800–1840. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Horowitz, Daniel. The Morality of Spending: Attitudes Toward the Consumer Society in America, 1875–1940. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University, 1985.Google Scholar
Horowitz, Roger. Putting Meat on the American Table: Taste, Technology, Transformation. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Larkin, Jack. The Reshaping of Everyday Life, 1790–1840. New York: Harper & Row, 1988.Google Scholar
Laurie, Bruce. Working People of Philadelphia, 1800–1850 Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Lepler, Jessica. “1837: The Anatomy of a Panic.” PhD dissertation, Brandeis University: 2007.Google Scholar
Margo, Robert A. Wages and Labor Markets in the United States, 1820–1860. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Martin, Ann Smart. Buying into the World of Goods: Early Consumers in Backcountry Virginia. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Meyers, Marvin. The Jacksonian Persuasion: Politics and Belief. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1957.Google Scholar
Montgomery, David. Citizen Worker: The Experience of Free Workers and the Free Market During the Nineteenth Century. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Novak, William. The People’s Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Pessen, Edward. Most Uncommon Jacksonians: The Radical Leaders of the Early Labor Movement. Albany: SUNY Press, 1967.Google Scholar
Powell, H. Benjamin, Philadelphia’s First Fuel Crisis: Jacob Cist and the Developing Market for Pennsylvania Anthracite. The Pennsylvania State University Press: University Park, 1978.Google Scholar
Rock, Howard. Artisans of the New Republic: The Tradesmen of New York City in the Age of Jefferson. New York: New York University Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Rockman, Seth. Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Schlesinger, Arthur M. The Age of Jackson. Boston: Little, Brown, & Company, 1945.Google Scholar
Sedgwick, Theodore. Public and Private Economy, vol. 1. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1836.Google Scholar
Schultz, Ronald. The Republic of Labor. Philadelphia Artisans and the Politics of Class. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Simpson, Stephen. The Working-Man’s Manual: A New Theory of Political Economy on the Principle of Production the Source of Wealth. Philadelphia: Thomas L. Bonsal, 1831.Google Scholar
Sklansky, Jeffrey. The Soul’s Economy: Market Society and Selfhood in American Thought, 1820–1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Snyder, Charles McCool. The Jacksonian Heritage: Pennsylvania Politics, 1833–1848. Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1958.Google Scholar
Stansell, Christine. City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789–1860. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Sullivan, William. The Industrial Worker in Pennsylvania, 1800–1840. Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1955.Google Scholar
Tangires, Helen. Public Markets and Civic Culture in Nineteenth-Century America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Temin, Peter. The Jacksonian Economy. New York: W.W. Norton, 1969.Google Scholar
Wainwright, Nicholas B. A Philadelphia Perspective. The Diary of Sidney George Fisher Covering the Years 1834–1871. Philadelphia: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1967.Google Scholar
Wilentz, Sean. Chants Democratic: New York City & the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788–1850. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Woloson, Wendy. In Hock: Pawning in America from Independence through the Great Depression. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.Google Scholar

Articles and Essays

Adams, Sean Patrick. “Warming the Poor and Growing Consumers: Fuel Philanthropy in the Early Republic’s Urban North.Journal of American History 95 (2008): 6994.Google Scholar
Appleby, Joyce. “Consumption in Early Modern Social Thought.” In Consumption and the World of Goods, edited by Brewer, John and Porter, Roy, 162177. New York: Routledge, 1993.Google Scholar
Arky, Louis. “The Mechanics’ Union of Trade Associations and the Formation of the Philadelphia Workingmen’s Movement.Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 76 (1952): 142–76.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Leonard. “The Working People of Philadelphia from Colonial Times to the General Strike of 1835.Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 74 (1950): 322–39.Google Scholar
Binder, Frederick. “Anthracite Enters the American Home.Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 82 (1958): 8299.Google Scholar
Blanke, David. “Consumer Choice, Agency, and New Directions in Rural History.Agricultural History 81 (2007): 182203.Google Scholar
Clemens, Paul G.E.The Consumer Culture of the Middle Atlantic, 1720-1820.William and Mary Quarterly 62 (2005): 577624 3rd series.Google Scholar
Harris, Howell. “Inventing the U.S. Stove Industry, c. 1815–1875: Making and Selling the First Universal Consumer Durable.Business History Review 82 (2008): 701–32.Google Scholar
Hazard, Erskine. “History of the Introduction of Anthracite Coal into Philadelphia. By Erskine Hazard, Esq., Communicated to the Society, Feb. 5, 1827; and a Letter from Jesse Fell, Esq. of Wilkesbarre, on the Discovery and First Use of Anthracite in the Valley of Wyoming.Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania 2 (1827): 157164.Google Scholar
Pessen, Edward. “The Ideology of Steven Stephen Simpson, Upperclass Champion of the Early Philadelphia Workingmen’s Movement.Pennsylvania History 22 (1955): 328–40.Google Scholar
Reznick, Samuel. “The Social History of an American Depression, 1837-1843.American Historical Review 40 (1935): 662687.Google Scholar
Sandoval-Strausz, A.K.Spaces of Commerce: A Historiographic Introduction to Certain Architectures of Capitalism.Winterthur Portfolio 44 (2010): 143158.Google Scholar
Strasser, Susan. “Making Consumption Conspicuous: Transgressive Topics Go Mainstream.Technology and Culture 43 (2002): 755–70.Google Scholar
Tinkcom, Margaret B. “The New Market in Second Street.Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 82 (1958): 379–86.Google Scholar

Magazines and Newspapers

American Daily Advertiser (Philadelphia).Google Scholar
Daily Chronicle (Philadelphia).Google Scholar
Mechanic’s Free Press (Philadelphia).Google Scholar
Niles’ Register (Baltimore).Google Scholar
The Pennsylvanian (Philadelphia).Google Scholar
The Philadelphia Gazette and Advertiser.Google Scholar

Pamphlets

Address of the President and Managers of the Schuylkill Navigation Company, to the Stockholders and to the Publick in General. Philadelphia: The United States' Gazette, 1817.Google Scholar
Carey, Mathew. An Appeal to the Wealthy of the Land, Ladies as Well as Gentlemen, on the Character, Conduct, Situation, and Prospects of Those Whose Sole Dependence for Subsistence is on the Labour of their Hands. Philadelphia: L. Johnson, 1833.Google Scholar
Gray, John. A Lecture on Human Happiness. Philadelphia: D&S Neall, 1825.Google Scholar
Heighton, William. An Address to the Members of Trade Societies and to the Working Classes Generally: Being an Exposition of the Relative Situation, Condition, and Future Prospects of Working People in the United States of America. Philadelphia: Young, 1827.Google Scholar
A History of the Fuel Savings Society of the City and Liberties of Philadelphia from its Organization to 1871. Philadelphia: Collins, 1875.Google Scholar
Packer, S.J. Report of the Committee of the Senate of Pennsylvania upon the Subject of the Coal Trade. Harrisburg, PA: Henry Welsh, 1834.Google Scholar
Union Benevolent Association, 1831–1881: Fifty Years of Work Among the Poor of Philadelphia. Historical Sketch of the First Half-Century of the Union Benevolent Association. Philadelphia: Chandler Printing House, 1881.Google Scholar

Archival Sources

Union Benevolent Association Records, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Wurts Family Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.Google Scholar