Summary Of Class And Community By Alan Dawley

In Alan Dawley’s, “Class and Community”, Dawley portrays the transformation of Lynn, Massachusetts through the depiction of shoemakers and how the Industrial Revolution shaped their community’s overall way of life, and how a simple town of artisans became an epicenter for a nation the was becoming an industrial powerhouse. “Equal Rights” and community went together in Lynn as they both demand respectability and living up to certain standards. Before the central shop, most any land or building was a means of production, but once they came into the picture, they became the symbol for production. The pursuit of “equal rights” in Lynn made them a “microcosm of the industrial revolution” because everyone was fighting for the same cause, not just men, but both sexes. The treatment of the employees by factory owners was so unjust that people set aside other problems and struggles and came together under one cause, to fight something bigger than themselves.

These factories affected laborers as manufacturers rounded them up from their homes and placed them in these factories with new machines and methods to produce their goods, which eliminated the need for binders and journeymen. The floating population came into existence due to these factories, which created a “seasonal cycle”, where production peaked during certain months, and slacked during others, which created an ebb and flow of labor demand. The careers of Pratt, Breed, and Newhall were an example that “if I can make it, you can make it”, which relieved some of these pressures of labor intensity. They came up from simple artisans to owners of central shops and became even bigger than that. They displayed that anyone can make it if you put in the