Federica P.

REACTION PAPER #4
1) In order to analyze the social changes occurred in the 19 th century, it is useful to
have a clear view of where we started from. The relationship between masters and
apprentices changed much over time. At the beginning of 19 th century, masters used
to share with their employees work, leisure and domestic life: they lived together in
the same places where they worked, or very close to them. According to the Protestant
values, the heads of these enlarged families (the masters) were accountable for what
both their children and dependants did. Therefore, they took care of the education of
every member of their enlarged family: the bound between the employer and his
employees was extremely tight and personal ("family centered work relations": labor
relations and family life were structurally and emotionally inseparable").
2) As the economy developed and grew, it wasn't physically possible to keep such
personal and close relationships between masters and apprentices; moreover, the
specialization of the different phases of the production process led to a dislocation of
each one of them, so that the master couldn't be supervising the whole process at the
same time. The natural consequence of such a phenomenon can't be anything but a
net of work relationships less and less personal.

3) The changing relationships between masters and apprentices belongs to a wider

set of social changes that occurred - in Rochester, but probably in other US industrial
centers - as the industry grew faster and bigger.
What happened? At a certain point, the paths of masters and of workingmen simply
took different directions. On one hand, starting from the late 1820s, masters increased
the pace, scale, regularity of production, in order to keep pace with the developing
industry and its new, faster processes; they started hiring young strangers, instead of
trustworthy (or, at least, vaguely known) workers: their relationship didn't go beyond a
simple contractual obligation: masters were now businessmen. They started being
absent from the workshops, as they had to follow and supervise different stages of the
production chain; to gain in efficiency, though, they imposed new discipline standards,
included restrictions on drinking alcohol.
On the other hand, we had the workingmen: they started building an autonomous
social life, not anymore bound by the strong work-family relationships they used to
have with their masters; moreover, the physical distance (both in the working and in
the family environment) allowed them to develop a new feeling: they started to see
themselves as a working-class, opposing the businessmen class, the one including
their "bosses"; the solidarity between them let them share their concerns and
complaints, allowing a feeling of anger to grow among them.
The whole phenomenon can be well represented by the alcohol - affair: the social role
of drinking changed alongside the relationships between masters and workers. Its role
shifted from ancient bond between two classes who were in very close contact to the
symbol of the working-class status and the badge of their anger and feeling of
injustice they sensed.
4) Personally, I had some difficulties with the contextualization of the first chapter of
the book. They would probably get a deeper significance - to me - if I read the whole
book. However, while I found the first chapter on ECONOMY slightly boring and

redundant, the second part about SOCIETY was much easier to read and to analyze:
the description of the different families of Rochester and their paths to richness are
historically very interesting, but I personally am more excited about topics in which I
can see a more applicable teaching for today's life.
I have been really impressed by the fact that a social matter as alcohol consumption
could represent the whole social situation in such a complete way: it reflects all the
features of a relationship that changed radically in a decade time. In my opinion,
Johnson has been able to understand it in a surprisingly brilliant way.
The changes occurred in the social pattern starting from the late 1820s were non good
for sure, but in some ways they couldn't be avoided: the pace of industrial growing
was extremely hard to chase, therefore the business class started caring less and less
about social and personal issues, focusing more on practical questions. Nowadays, we
could say that every working environment, in order to experience a healthy and
sustainable growth, has to develop every aspect of the workers' life, including the
personal one; in the 19th century, however, what happened was that masters - now
businessmen - had too much to worry about in following the industrial boom to stop
and think about the sustainability of their own growth. At that time, the consequences
of the social decay weren't clear in their entirety, especially because the two classes
didn't live close to each other anymore.
Today, the social division remains in the residential partitioning of the big cities. We
could probably find a situation similar to the one that Johnson describes in those
developing countries which are experiencing an industrial boom in these years: in
many countries we could observe a social situation in which the distance between the
different classes widen ad the economy grows bigger. This could be simplified by the
image of a scissors that opens bigger as the economy develops.