The colonies generally did not show quick profits. However, the English investors often turned over their colonial charters to the settlers. The political implications, although not realized at the time, were enormous. The colonists were left to build their own lives, their own communities, and their own economy. What early colonial success there was resulted from
This means that the prices for stock were too high, far higher than they were really worth, then they fell drastically. People who had borrowed money to buy high-priced stocks (intending to sell the stocks at a profit and repay lenders), went bankrupt. That’s further expounding on what I said about buying on margin. Black Tuesday also marks the beginning of the great depression (Regan3). Living conditions during this time were unsanitary and horrible.
The Tariff placed high taxes on imports leading to a decline in international trade. The United States held many loans with European countries that began to default. Reduction in international market spending in the US, coupled with the high tariffs placed on foreign countries led to unemployment abroad and foreign countries were forced to impose their own tariffs on other countries (Kelly, n.d.). The Great Depression was perhaps most devastating to the individual and family. The Depression was recorded to have decreased the marriage rate which helped lead to a decline in the birth rate.
High birth rates and heavy immigration bespoke easily available land, widely distributed among the farming population. The colonists' dispersion and ethnic diversity helped produce the fragmentation and political instability that became pronounced as populations spread westward after the French and Indian War (known in Britain as the Seven Years' War). The easy availability of land weakened American elites; lacking the ability to live off rents, gentlemen also lacked a secure economic and political base. The southern colonies had stable aristocracies, based on slave ownership; but even the greatest planters lived in fear of slave rebellions. Nor did colonial institutions create stability: governments were small, poor, unbureaucratized, and lacked permanent constabularies; neither a unified market economy nor a
Serfs who for centuries had worked the land for little or not pay, suddenly began to demand higher wages and, increasingly, revolted against a nobility that sought to work them for lower wages of the past. Social Effects - The greatest social impact of the plague was that the rigid feudal system, in place in Europe for a thousand years, was dismantled. Feudalism was based on the nobility controlling land and the peasants who worked it. With immense labor shortages, serfs were free to leave the lands of the lords to seek higher wages. Additionally, land that had traditionally been the primary source of wealth was now worthless.
On farms that had become vacant, peasants took ownership and started making more money. In many cities, the wages were rising so rapidly that the government tried putting laws on the amount that wages were to rise since the amounts in which they were going up was so ridiculous. (Zahler, pg. 34) Since people were making so much more money, and since serfdom had been reduced to such a miniscule amount, a new class was created, the working class. It enabled people to work for the money they needed, rather than resting soley on the decisions of landlords.
Thus to entice labor wages must be high. Extrapolating Franklin’s assessment of the relationship between the colonies and Great Britain, what are the long-term consequences of such population growth on business? As the population increases colonial production might eclipse that of Great
Capitalist development and economic downturn eroded American workers sense of pride and progress throughout the sixty years leading up to 1840. Beginning after 1844, mass immigration from Europe to the United States gave American business owners and employers a new source of cheap human labor, which further undermined organized American labor. Most of these immigrants were unskilled Catholic Irish and German agricultural workers. American working class Protestants despised them for their faith and heritage, in addition to their poverty. Likewise, by the 1840s, the free black population in the U.S. had expanded due to the emerging belief that slavery was immoral.
New England, in general, was well-organized and sturdy in comparison to Jamestown’s swampy land and unequipped settlers. Immigrants who settled in the Chesapeake area seemed to have been little affected by religious motives. However, religion influenced many settlers in New England. Unlike Separatists, this Congregationalist man wanted to reform the Church of England rather than abolish it. He and other Congregationalists believed Charles I was more hostile to the Puritans than his father had been.
Another core cause examined is economic expansion. Among the recent debates about spending cuts and tax increases, it really calls to attention that America was born from an economic expansion. In about 20 years, 1747 to 1765, American exports doubled, as did the imports. As a result people became rich in this flourishing economy, but more importantly a sort of aristocracy, such that has never been seen in America before, is created. As sure as taxes, the clash of the classes begins.