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Lynn, Massachusetts

Alan Dawley, in Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn, explores the effects of that 19th century revolution on the shoemaking community of Lynn, Massachusetts. Essentially, before the Industrial Revolution, Lynn was a community without strong class differences, while afterwards a great class gulf opened up between the few capitalists and the many workers. Before the revolution, those workers were part of a system of masters and apprentices with the household as the center of the community and of work. After the revolution, the apprenticeship system was broken, and workers became dependent on the factory, weakening the household as the center of life and work which held the community and its people together in relative equality.

These differences were all generally negative for the people of Lynn. However, because the people had previously had such a strong sense of unity for so long, and because their system of labor had been so strong and entrenched, they fought back against the new conditions wrought by the revolution. Dawley's book, then, is about both the negative effects of that revolution and the efforts of the people of Lynn to fight back.

As Dawley writes, "The concept of class is the analytical foundation of the present work" (4). In other words, the story of Lynn is the story of the progression from a relatively classless community, o the class division created by the revolution, and finally to the class struggle between the workers and the capitalists. What makes this process more compelling and special is that it took place in one single community. This fact also allows for the kind of concentrated study provided by Dawley.

Dawley writes that the lack of strong class differences before the revolution does not mean that Lynn was a worker's paradise. One speaks in generalities and relative values when one notes the equality which existed before the revolution and after the revolution. Still, as t...

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Lynn, Massachusetts. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 11:10, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1707946.html