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Steamboat Economy In The 1800s

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For slaves, their lives and value were dictated the plant they labor for and their slave holder philosophy of a slave life expectancy. The slave trade focused with particular intensity on people of “prime age” which being fifteen to twenty five. Slaves were viewed in an animalistic and dehumanized connation. A Mississippi planter John Knight discussed how a planter ideal slave force would be “ half men and half women…young say 16-25,stout limbs, large chests, wide shoulders and hips, etc.”(159) Walter Johnson illustrated “slave labor was a bloody and hierarchical social relation. But the labor that slaves did was work…ex-slaves expressed about some of the work they done in slavery. (164) Labor also provided the spatial framework of slaveholding …show more content…

Operating a steamboat was a competitive business. The social world of the steamboat was characterized by of the curiosity desire, fear, and disgust that people experience when social hierarchy is compressed into proximity. Steamboats had also a lot of profit and capital because was everlasting resource and steamboats required small initial startup investment. Steamboats were developed during that time which could navigate in shallow waters as well as upriver against strong currents. The steamboats in the river trades were maximizing their capital by running harder, faster, and longer. most steamboat were owned by individuals or small partnership of merchants and river men. The steamboat economy depended upon black labor as many 3,000 slaves and 1,500 free people of color were working on riverboats at any given time in the 1850s. Owners carried insurance on their boats, although insurers generally agreed to cover no more than three-quarters of the boat’s estimated value in order to discourage fraud There were principal ways to do business in the steamboat economy: the transient trade and packet trade. Transients ran routes determined by business they could find on the river. Transients competed fiercely with one another for market share, especially during the low season, when routes shrank more boats crowed onto small rivers. The packet trade grew throughout the 1840s and 1850s. Packets ran fixed routes according to fixed schedule. Rivers like the Mississippi had long been important means of transporting goods and people, but with the establishment of steam power, they became the central way around

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Rikki Dianne Saul October 8, 2015 Influencing the Society Cornelius Vanderbilt was an entrepreneur who got his start in the steamboat industry. He was able to fight against the New York state government monopoly on steamboats by offering the same transportation for cheaper costs. He illustrated for us that the free market is better for bringing costs down, not only for stateside travels, but transatlantic and continental trips from the East Coast to the West Coast. John D. Rockefeller taught us the values of good stewardship, which is to not leave anything to waste.

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Traveling for trade’s or for visit was a lot more faster after the steamboat was invented. It was a lot more easier to travel upriver and going against its current. Before the steamboat was even invented, they took more time and a lot more energy when going up steam or against the current. The use of steam speed up the efficient transportation of perishable good and trades. Steamboat was extremely valuable during the civil war.

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During the early 1800’s, Robert Fulton developed the first commercial steamboat with the aid of Robert R. Livingston. This invention “secured American economic stability and influenced everyday life for over a century”. The steamboat made transportation much for efficient by shortening the time traveled, including that of upstream navigation. While Fulton and Livingston are the primary creators for this innovative invention, they do not deserve monopolies. Fulton and Livingston did however, create and extend a monopoly which the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional because of their excessive control of trade.

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Cornelius Vanderbilt keeping buying different steamboat companies which is called robber baron. Due to the war of 1812 Cornelius Vanderbilt had the opportunity to expand his company and he did. Cornelius had signed a contract that he could supply military forts around New York and because of the amount of money he made he was able to expand even more. He expanded to the Long Island Sound, Providence, Boston and Connecticut. Cornelius Vanderbilt also added two more steamboats to the coast to help out on trade and transporting people (Encyclopedia World).

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Robert had a 20 year monopoly over steam travel in New York, and was able to help Fulton build a steamboat. About a year later they launched a steamboat that traveled 2 to 3 miles per hour, and it was the first successful trial for steamboats.

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