Ohio History Journal

JACK S. BLOCKER JR.

 

Market Integration, Urban Growth

and Economic Change in an Ohio

County, 1850-1880

 

 

In March 1870, the editor of a local newspaper in Washington

Court House, county seat of Fayette County, Ohio, announced the

inauguration of a new service by the Cincinnati and Muskingum

Valley Railroad:

 

The Train which leaves this place at 6.16 in the morning, arrives in the city

at 10.5, and leaves Cincinnati at 3:50 p.m., thus affording our citizens some

FIVE HOURS for business or pleasure. It is a real accomodation, and we

hope it will be appreciated by the public along the line and continued. By

this arrangement, Washington is rendered almost one of the wards of Cin-

cinnati, and when the weather becomes a little more pleasant, we expect

this morning Train will be extensively patronized, and we are afraid to the

injury of our local business.1

The mingled eagerness and anxiety expressed by this editor have

provided durable themes for commentators on small-town life in the

nineteenth century. Beyond such impressions, however, we know

little about the possibly complex effects when small towns become

integrated into urban systems.² Studies of regional and national

systems have been unable to follow the internal development of all

 

 

 

 

 

Jack S. Blocker Jr. is Associate Professor of History at Huron College, London,

Ontario, Canada. Research and analysis were supported by a research grant from the

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The author wishes to

thank George N. Emery and Dianne C. Newell for their comments on an earlier

version of this paper.

 

1. Ohio State Register, March 31, 1870.

2. It is of course virtually inconceivable that any community in nineteenth-

century America would not be part of an urban system (although historians of com-

munities sometimes forget this fact). The term "integration" is used in this essay to

denote movement along an ideal spectrum whose poles are isolation and incorpora-

tion.

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Market Integration                                                 299

 

but the largest cities.³ At the same time community microstudies

too rarely have been designed to relate the internal changes they

describe to shifts in their communities' external relationships.⁴ This

paper seeks to employ both external and internal perspectives to

understand economic change within a small urban community dur-

ing the process of integration.

Edward K. Muller has described the shifts in urban relationships

in the middle Ohio Valley during the period 1800-1860 as a three-

stage process of increasing integration. In the pioneer period (1800-

1830) urban growth depended upon control over a growing local

hinterland. Both hinterland growth and achievement of control de-

pended in turn upon location with respect to the region's principal

transportation routes, primarily the Ohio River and its main tribu-

taries. In the second stage (1830-1850) development of the regional

transportation network through construction of canals and early

railroad lines stimulated rural settlement and encouraged special-

ized staple production. Staple production in turn led to the growth of

processing industries in towns located on a canal or railroad line.

Cities such as Cincinnati, Dayton and Columbus, which enjoyed

both access to a large, growing hinterland and good connections to

national markets, experienced significant growth based upon a di-

versifying manufacturing sector. This shift in the basis for urban

growth toward nonprocessing industries became more evident dur-

 

 

 

3. David Ward, Cities and Immigrants: A Geography of Change in Nineteenth

Century America (New York, 1971); Edward K. Muller, "Selective Urban Growth in

the Middle Ohio Valley, 1800-1860," Geographical Review, 66 (1976), 178-99; John B.

Sharpless, City Growth in the United States, England and Wales, 1820-1861: The

Effects of Location, Size and Economic Structure on Inter-Urban Variations in Dem-

ographic Growth (New York, 1977).

4. Gordon W. Kirk, Jr., The Promise of American Life: Social Mobility in a

Nineteenth-Century Immigrant Community, Holland, Michigan, 1847-1894 (Phil-

adelphia, 1978), shows transportation improvements producing industrialization and

urban growth. Stuart Blumin, The Urban Threshold: Growth and Change in a

Nineteenth-Century American Community (Chicago and London, 1976), and Clyde

and Sally Griffen, Natives and Newcomers: The Ordering of Opportunity in Mid-

Nineteenth-Century Poughkeepsie (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1978), describe

Hudson River towns dependent upon national markets since well before the begin-

ning of their study periods. Robert Doherty, Society and Power: Five New England

Towns, 1800-1860 (Amherst, Mass., 1977), demonstrates ordering of opportunity

according to an urban hierarchy, but studies in detail change over only a single

decade, 1850-1860. Anthony F. C. Wallace, Rockdale: The Growth of an American

Village in the Early Industrial Revolution (New York, 1978), Don Harrison Doyle,

The Social Order of a Frontier Community: Jacksonville, Illinois, 1825-70 (Urbana,

Ill., 1978), and Robert J. Mitchell, "Tradition and Change in Rural New England: A

Case Study of Brooksville, Maine, 1850-1870," Maine Historical Society Quarterly. 18

(Fall, 1978), 87-105, do not address the question of integration.

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300                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

ing the third stage, the 1850s, when construction of the rail network

was pushed forward rapidly. Transportation improvements pro-

duced an "upward shift of... manufacturing functions in the urban

hierarchy" by reducing transport costs for both agricultural pro-

ducts and manufactured goods. By 1860 the middle Ohio Valley had

become well integrated with national markets; interregional and

intraregional integration had produced relatively rapid growth for

those centers possessing the best connections within the transporta-

tion network, and in such centers growth was increasingly based

upon secondary manfactures.⁵

Washington Court House and its hinterland during the years

1850-1880 furnish a laboratory within which this process of integra-

tion may be examined in detail.⁶ Founded in 1811, by 1850

Washington Court House was a small district trade center, isolated

by its location off Ohio's canal and early railroad lines. The building

of a railroad line between Washington Court House and Cincinnati

in the early 1850s marked a new stage in the town's integration into

regional and national markets, and the ensuing quarter-century,

accessible through manuscript and published federal census data,

provides a long enough period to assess the principal effects of the

connection. Fayette County will be used as an approximation of the

hinterland for Washington Court House.⁷

The questions to be asked concern the effects of the railroad as an

instrument of integration into a larger market system. The timing

of those effects is also of interest. As an isolated local trade center

achieving interregional connections relatively late, did Washington

Court House experience rapid or slow growth, or decline? What

demographic and economic changes took place in its agricultural

hinterland? What structural changes in the community's economic

 

 

5. Muller, "Selective Urban Growth." See also Margaret Walsh, "The Dynamics of

Industrial Growth in the Old Northwest 1830-70: An Interdisciplinary Approach," in

Business and Economic History: Papers Presented at the Twenty-first Annual Meeting

of the Business History Conference, ed. Paul Uselding (Urbana, Ill., 1975), 12-29.

Secondary, or nonprocessing, manufactures finish the product of another factory;

examples are hardwares, railroad cars, clothing, farm implements, and machinery.

Primary, or processing, industries operate on the products of agriculture, mining or

forestry. Examples include milling, distilling and meatpacking.

6. Washington Court House is one of the towns whose growth was examined by

Muller in "Selective Urban Growth."

7. Fayette County contained no competing centers: in 1880, when Washington

Court House had a population of 3,798, the next largest community, Bloomingburg,

contained only 526 persons. Washington Court House's hinterland was probably no

larger than Fayette County, as the county was surrounded by six places of the same

or larger size than Washington Court House, all within a 30-mile radius of the latter.

• 3
 

Market Integration                                     301

base were produced by integration, and how were they related to demographic shifts? Fayette had never ranked among Ohio's more populous counties. Settled during the first years of the century, until the coming of the railroad it had exceeded the statewide rate of population growth only once, during its pioneer decade (Figure 1). In 1850 Fayette stood 66th in population among the state's 87 counties. Farming was the principal activity of most of its citizens. Some livestock and livestock products were sold outside the county, but further develop- ment of commercial agriculture was restricted because of the diffi- culty of access to regional markets. In 1850, two turnpikes provided the best routes to market, one to Circleville on the Ohio Canal, 30 miles east of Washington Court House, the other to Xenia on the

• 4
 

302                                                 OHIO HISTORY

 

Little Miami Railroad, 30 miles northwest. This meant a journey of

at least three days from the center of the county simply to bring a

farmer's hogs or sheep to a railroad or canal line, although corn and

wool could be moved somewhat more rapidly. Thus, although the

county in 1850 ranked fifteenth in bushels of Indian corn raised and

twenty-second in number of swine, it stood thirty-first in value of

livestock and forty-first in cash value of farms.⁸ Manufactures were

locally oriented and small in scale: Fayette ranked seventy-fifth in

value of manufactured products and seventy-seventh in capital in-

vested in manufacturing.⁹

The Cincinnati and Muskingum Valley Railroad arrived at

Washington Court House in 1853, providing Fayette County a

direct line to the Ohio River metropolis. The county fathers capital-

ized on the opportunity for marketing Fayette's farm products by

constructing a network of turnpikes so extensive that by 1870 the

county ranked fifth in the state in length of roads.¹⁰ Although the

distance as the crow flies from Washington Court House to Col-

umbus is about half that to Cincinnati, the railroad placed Fayette

County firmly within the orbit of the larger city. By 1870 Cincinnati

and Muskingum Valley trains made a scheduled daily stop each

way for passengers and another for freight, as well as unscheduled

freight stops. The trip to Cincinnati took about four-and-one-half

hours. In contrast, Washingtonians travelling to Columbus relied

upon a thrice-weekly stagecoach which took seven hours to travel

the shorter distance, returning on the following day.11

The railroad achieved its most dramatic effect in stimulating

Fayette County's agricultural sector. Direct connection with the

pork-packing center of the Midwest and, through Cincinnati, with

the national pork market encouraged Fayette's farmers to extend

and intensify their cultivation of corn and production of hogs.12

Cattle and sheep raising declined as farmers shifted resources into

corn and hogs. By 1860 the county had risen to eighth place among

 

 

8. Muller, "Selective Urban Growth," 186; Map of Ohio, Williams' Ohio State Reg-

ister and Business Mirror for 1857 (Cincinnati, 1857); J. D. B. DeBow, Seventh Cen-

sus, . .. 1850 (Washington, D. C., 1853),862-64.

9. J. D. B. DeBow, A Statistical View of the United States (Washington, D. C.,

1854), 295.

10. Annual Report of the Secretary of State of Ohio, 1870, 267-73.

11. Ohio State Register, March 24, 31, May 26, 1870.

12. Margaret Walsh has pointed out the dependence of the pork industry in the

mid-nineteenth century upon the national market. See "Pork Packing as a Leading

Edge of Midwestern Industry, 1835-1875," Agricultural History, 51 (October 1977),

715.

• 5
 

Market Integration                                                  303

 

Ohio's now 88 counties in bushels of corn produced, and by 1870 to

third. In 1860 only ten counties raised more swine than Fayette, in

1870 only two, and only a single county reported a higher value for

animals slaughtered or sold for slaughter. By 1870 Fayette County

had risen to seventh place in value of livestock, twenty-second in

cash value of farms, and third in value of all farm products.^l3 In

1880 Fayette County still ranked among the top corn and hog pro-

ducing counties of Ohio, although the value of its products had

declined both absolutely and relatively as a result of the lengthy

depression of the 1870s, which seems to have affected pork prices

more severely than those of other farm products.14

Clearly the increased integration into a regional marketing net-

work produced by the railroad stimulated staple production in

Fayette County. It also encouraged population growth, as both the

county as a whole (Figure 1) and its rural areas saw population

increase faster than the statewide average. Rural population

growth in Fayette County did not however imply extensive settle-

ment of new farms upon unoccupied land, for in 1850 84 percent of

the total farmland of 1880 was already included in existing farms.15

More land was put into production, but most of it was simply por-

tions of existing farms that had been left uncleared or uncultivated

because of restricted market opportunities.¹⁶ Rural population

 

 

 

13. Joseph C. G. Kennedy, Agriculture of the United States, 1860 (Washington,

D.C., 1864), 112-19; Ninth Census, vol. 3, Statistics of Wealth and Industry (Washing-

ton, D. C., 1872), 222-29. Value of farm products was not reported in 1850 or 1860; in

those years the census also reported only the value of animals slaughtered in each

county rather than the more inclusive category of 1870.

14. Report on the Productions of Agriculture As Returned at the Tenth Census

(June 1, 1880) (Washington, D. C., 1883), 129-30, 166-67, 201-02; G. F. Warren and F.

A. Pearson, Wholesale Prices for 213 Years, 1720-1932 (Ithaca, N. Y., 1932), 69-71,

84-86; Anne Bezanson et al., Wholesale Prices in Philadelphia, 1852-1896 (Phil-

adelphia, 1954), 20-22, 84, 87, 253-55; Joseph D. Weeks, "Report on the Average

Retail Prices of Necessaries of Life in the United States," Report on Statistics of

Wages in Manufacturing Industries, Tenth Census, vol. 20 (Washington, D. C., 1886),

74-83; Cf. O. V. Wells, "The Depression of 1873-79," Agricultural History, 11 (July,

1937), 242.

15. DeBow, Statistical View, 292; Report on the Productions ofAgriculture, 129-30.

16. Improved acreage increased between 1850 and 1860 by 37.5 percent, faster

than the statewide average, from 59.2 percent of total farmland in Fayette County to

77.8 percent. At the same time the number of farms and total farm acreage increased

by only 5.7 percent and 4.6 percent respectively, both well below the statewide rate.

Computed from DeBow, Statistical View, 169, 292, and Kennedy, Agriculture of the

U. S., 116, 211. In 1860 the total number of farms was not reported for each county;

instead the Census reported only those farms three acres or more in size. I have

assumed that, as in 1870, there were no farms under three acres in Fayette County.

See Ninth Census, vol. 3, 360.

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304                                                 OHIO HISTORY

 

growth was therefore provided less by new farm operators than by

new hands hired by Fayette farmers to place increased acreage

under cultivation.

By increasing the demand for services, agricultural expansion

and population growth in its rural hinterland produced urban

growth in Washington Court House. The town's population increase

from 569 in 1850 to 1,035 in 1860 was greater, compared to other

urban places in the middle Ohio Valley region, than its relative size

in 1850 would have led one to expect.¹⁷ Population growth was

based upon expansion in both commerce and primary manufactures.

The 1850s saw Fayette's capital invested in manufacturing and

value of manufactured products increase faster than both the

statewide average and the rate of Cincinnati's Hamilton County.

But while Cincinnati was diversifying into secondary manufactur-

ing, Fayette's growth occurred primarily in processing industries

such as flour-milling and distilling.¹⁸

By 1860, then, increased market integration had produced urban

growth in Washington Court House by stimulating specialized sta-

ple production and population growth in its rural hinterland. The

performance of this interior trade center shows that Muller's model

correctly predicts the direction of change and identifies the relevant

variables. But it also reveals that secondary manufactures were not

the only stimulant to urban growth in this region during the 1850s.

Together with other interior trade centers gaining railroad connec-

tions for the first time in the 1850s, Washington Court House ex-

perienced the sort of growth based upon commerce and primary

manufactures which urban centers on the canal and early railroad

network had enjoyed during the previous two decades.19 Washing-

ton Court House and other previously isolated urban places

achieved market integration and consequent growth characteristic

of second-stage development while other centers, previously inte-

grated, experienced third-stage growth. Still, Washington Court

 

 

 

 

17. Muller, "Selective Urban Growth," 193.

18. Capital invested in manufacturing increased by 279 percent in Fayette County

during the 1850s, compared to 156 percent for Hamilton County and 97 percent for

Ohio. Value of manufactured products grew by 479 percent in Fayette County, 126

percent in Hamilton County, and 95 percent in the state. DeBow, Statistical View,

179, 295; Manufactures of the United States in 1860 (Washington, D. C., 1865), 450,

456, 484.

19. Other exceptions, generally in newly settled areas, included Muncie, Winches-

ter, and New Castle, Indiana, and London, Ohio. Muller, "Selective Urban Growth,"

194-95.

• 7
 

Market Integration                                   305

House was only a way-station on the Cincinnati and Muskingum Valley Railroad, not a junction town in the new railroad network. Therefore one should expect to find its growth levelling off after 1860, as its hinterland stabilized and its manufacturing functions moved upward in the urban hierarchy.20 Such a process has been documented by Roberta Balstad Miller's study of a single urban community (Syracuse, New York) and its hinterland (Onondaga County) during the period 1790-1860. Miller has reported finding a decline in hinterland commercial and manu- facturing activity as a result of transportation-related urban growth. The railroads built through Onondaga County "indirectly contributed to the decline of hinterland industrial and commercial facilities by encouraging the development of superior facilities in the regional transportation center, Syracuse." The total population of the hinterland stagnated and, as it did, the proportion of its resi- dents living in country villages increased.21 Population growth and distribution in Fayette County during 1850-1880 conformed to the pattern found by Miller. For the county as a whole, neither the agricultural expansion of the 1860s nor the     20. Ibid. 21. Roberta Balstad Miller, City and Hinterland: A Case Study of Urban Growth and Regional Development (Westport, Conn., 1979), 87-88.

• 8
 

306                                                    OHIO HISTORY

 

agricultural slump of the following decade produced population

growth higher than the statewide rate (Figure 1). What population

growth occurred after 1860 took place largely in Washington Court

House, which grew to 2,117 in 1870 and 3,798 in 1880.22 Conse-

quences of population growth included the founding of new Baptist

("colored," 1855), African Methodist Episcopal (1867), and Evangel-

ical Lutheran (1873) churches, and construction of a new building

for the Roman Catholic parish organized in 1852.23 The year 1873

saw the creation of a lecture association to sponsor visiting

speakers.²⁴ Meanwhile, Washington Court House suffered from a

housing shortage which continued into the mid-1870s, and local

lawyers, judges and juries had begun the series of remonstrances

over the inadequacies of the courthouse and jail that would lead in

the 1880s to construction of the present building.²⁵ The proportion of

the county population living in urban places increased steadily from

seven percent in 1850 to 23 percent in 1880.26 These population

trends reflected Fayette County's further integration into the

hinterland of Cincinnati. Population growth in Washington Court

House was undoubtedly connected with its position as local trans-

portation center. But what was the precise link between transporta-

tion network centrality and population growth?

The manufacturing sector's spurt of growth in the 1850s, based

upon expansion in the processing industries, was followed in the

1860s by much slower growth and a shift in orientation.²⁷ Distilling

disappeared from Fayette County, and the number of gristmills de-

clined. Manufacturing establishments, never large, grew slightly

 

 

22. Washington Court House accounted for 86.6 percent of county population

growth in the 1860s and 52.6 percent in the 1870s, compared to 14.5 percent in the

1850s.

23. Presbyterian (1813), Methodist Episcopal (1817) and Baptist (1840) congrega-

tions had been founded before the coming of the railroad. Fayette County Herald, May

30, 1872; Ohio State Register, April 10, 1873; R. S. Dills, History of Fayette County

(Dayton, 1881), 489-511.

24. Ohio State Register, March 27, 1873.

25. Fayette County Herald, March 23, 1871, November 27, 1873; Ohio State Regis-

ter, February 4, 1875.

26. The figures for 1860 and 1870 were nine percent and 17 percent respectively.

Urban places were defined broadly as those places distinguished from their

townships in the aggregate census population reports. Their size during the three

decades ranged from 87 to 3,798 population.

27. Fayette County's capital invested in manufacturing increased by 33 percent in

the 1860s, while in Hamilton County it increased 125 percent and statewide, 148

percent. Value of manufactured products increased by 66 percent in Fayette, 68

percent in Hamilton, and 122 percent statewide. Manufactures of the U. S. in 1860,

450. 456, 484; Ninth Census, vol. 3, 392, 557.

• 9
 

Market Integration                                            307

 

smaller: the number of hands per establishment was 3.9 in 1860, 2.9

in 1870, and 3.3 in 1880.28 The largest establishment in 1870 was

the Van Deman and Dews Woolen Mill, which occupied a former

distillery in Washington Court House, employing 15 hands. This

suggests that most Fayette County manufactures were produced by

artisans in small shops catering to a local clientele.²⁹

In the 1870s all indices of manufacturing in Fayette County

showed absolute declines. Capital invested in manufacturing de-

creased by 29 percent, and the value of manufactured products fell

off by 46 percent. This undoubtedly reflected the impact of the de-

pression of the 1870s, but the manufacturing sector in Fayette

County suffered far more than those of Hamilton County and the

state of Ohio, both of which showed positive though reduced growth.

By 1880 both the capital invested in Fayette County's manufactur-

ing and the value of its manufactured products had fallen below

their 1860 levels.³⁰

Population growth in Washington Court House after 1860 thus

took place in a context of stagnation, if not decline, in the manufac-

turing sector. Processing functions located in Washington Court

House during the 1850s moved upward in the urban hierarchy as

transportation costs fell. Secondary manufactures were never estab-

lished on more than a local basis due to Washington Court House's

unfavored position within the railroad network; in fact, even local

needs were supplied more and more by larger centers.

The manner in which Fayette County's last woolen mill closed

confirmed the triumph of the new order. Since one railroad, the

Cincinnati and Muskingum Valley, had supplied the market con-

nection which undermined local manufacturing, it was fitting that

another railroad should be the instrument which finally killed this

central branch of Fayette County industry. In 1877 the former Van

Deman and Dews mill found its retail trade cut off by a new railroad

 

 

28. Manufactures of the U. S. in 1860, 450; Ninth Census, vol. 3, 557; Tenth Cen-

sus, vol. 2, Manufactures (Washington, D. C., 1883), 161. This contrasts with Miller's

finding that average number of workers per firm increased in both Syracuse and its

hinterland. City and Hinterland, 99-100.

29. The distillery had employed twenty persons in 1860. For a contemporary recog-

nition and lamentation of the lack of manufacturing in Washington Court House, see

Fayette County Herald, November 5, 1874.

30. Manufacturing capital grew by 29 percent in Hamilton County and 18 percent

in the state, while value of manufactured products increased by 37 percent in Hamil-

ton County and 29 percent in the state. In 1880 Fayette County ranked 86th in

capital invested in manufacturing, and 84th in value of manufactured products.

Ninth Census, vol. 3, 392, 557; Tenth Census, vol. 2, 161-62.

• 10
 

308                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

line, the Dayton and Southeastern, passing between it and the rest

of the community. Unable to expand into wholesale trade, the own-

ers sold the machinery to a buyer in Kansas. Thereafter, the wool of

Fayette County sheep would be carded, spun and woven outside the

county.³1

Manufacturing stagnation however did not necessarily imply

general economic stagnation, as per capita wealth grew at least

through 1870.32 It did mean a shift in the relative sizes of various

functional groups within Washington Court House, with corres-

ponding implications for social structure. Two apparent shifts in the

functional-structure of the work force were simply artifacts of a

change in census enumeration procedures between 1850 and 1860

(Table 1).³³ The enumeration of women's occupations for the first

time in 1860 was responsible for both an increase in the percentage

of service occupations and a percentage decline in commercial posi-

tions. The railroad did bring some jobs to Washington Court House

over the long term, and these were reflected in the relative growth

of the transport sector.

The principal real shift was a decline in the percentage of the

work force whose occupations could be readily identified with manu-

facturing, from over half of the work force in 1850 to less than

one-third in 1880. At the same time the Unclassified group, consist-

ing primarily of those reported as laborers without place or mode of

work, increased from two to 15 percent. Possibly all of these laborers

actually worked in manufacturing; if this were the case, the actual

relative decline in the crafts and manufacturing category from 1850

to 1880 would have been substantially smaller, from 53.0 to 45.5

percent. More likely, the growing number of laborers were dis-

tributed over several functional categories, including some or all of

the following: those who worked for nearby farmers while living in

town (farm); those who hauled or carried for merchants (commerce

 

 

31. Dills, History of Fayette County, 582.

32. Total wealth per capita grew from $846 in 1860 to $1519 in 1870, an increase of

79 percent. Discounting for inflation leaves a real per capita increase of 24 percent.

The value of real wealth per capita was $205 in 1850, $535 in 1860, and $932 in 1870,

resulting in nominal percentage increases of 161 percent during the 1850s and 74

percent during the 1860s. Discounting for inflation leaves real per capita increases of

136 percent during the 1850s and 20 percent during the 1860s. Computed from the

manuscript federal censuses of 1850, 1860, and 1870, and from U. S. Bureau of the

Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 (Washing-

ton, D. C., 1975), 201. Ownership of wealth was not reported in 1880.

33. Carroll D. Wright, The History and Growth of the United States Census

(Washington, D. C., 1900), 152, 154.

• 11
 

Market Integration                                         309

 

Table 1: Occupation of Work Force by Functional Category, Washington

Court House, 1850-1880 (in percentages)

 

 

Functional

Category

1850    1860    1870   1880

All

Commerce                                                           26.1            17.8         21.0         20.4

Crafts and Manufacturing                                   51.0            39.5         32.2         30.4

Service                                                                 12.4            22.3         22.3         21.5

Government                                                          0.7            3.1           2.3             1.1

Transportation                                                      0.7            1.4           2.7             6.3

Farm                                                                      7.2            4.5           6.1             5.2

Unclassified                                                           2.0            11.3         13.3         15.1

N                                                                         153             354          732          1086

 

Men

Commerce                                                           26.1            21.6         24.6         23.6

Crafts and Manufacturing                                   51.0            42.6         35.9         32.0

Service                                                                 12.4            11.3         10.3         11.6

Government                                                          0.7            3.8           2.8             1.4

Transportation                                                      0.7            1.4           3.3             7.6

Farm                                                                      7.2            5.5           7.4             6.5

Unclassified                                                           2.0            13.4         15.7         17.2

N                                                                         153             291          610          877

 

Women

Commerce                                                                              0.0           3.3             7.2

Crafts and Manufacturing                                                     25.4         13.9         23.4

Service                                                                                   73.0         82.0         62.7

Government                                                        Not             0.0           0.0             0.0

Transportation                                                   Recorded    0.0           0.0             0.5

Farm                                                                                      0.0           0.0             0.0

Unclassified                                                                           1.6           0.8             6.2

N                                                                                            63            122          209

Source: Manuscript U. S. Census, Fayette County, 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880

 

 

or transportation); those who dug or carried for local builders or for

the railroad (crafts and manufacturing, transportation); those who

did odd jobs (service). In this case, decline in the crafts and manufac-

• 12
 

310                                                    OHIO HISTORY

 

turing occupations would have been the principal functional

change.

A complementary perspective on economic change in Washington

Court House may be obtained through examination of the vertical

distribution of its work force (Table 2).³⁴ Over the period 1850-1880

two groups, proprietary/low white-collar and unskilled, increased in

relative size, while the remaining two, professional/high white-

collar and skilled, experienced relative decline. This overall pattern

held as well for the male work force; for women a decline in the

skilled category was matched by an increase among the proprietary/

low white-collar group, while the remaining two groups in 1880

retained virtually the same shares as in 1860.

In Washington Court House as in other communities, occupation

and opportunity to acquire property were closely linked (Tables 3

and 4). Yet the town's increasing prosperity in the period 1850-1870

meant that both the opportunity to acquire property and the amount

held increased for nearly all occupational groups.³⁵ The single ex-

ception, skilled women workers, made up only three percent of the

1870 work force.³⁶

It is now possible to construct a general picture of economic

change in Washington Court House and its Fayette County hinter-

land in the aftermath of increased market integration. The railroad

connection with Cincinnati brought twenty years of prosperity to

Fayette County farmers by providing improved access to a regional

processing center and a national market. Agricultural prosperity

stimulated rural population growth during the first decade of in-

tegration. After 1860 rural areas experienced much slower popula-

tion growth as their urban center, Washington Court House,

 

34. The discrepancy in size of the 1880 work force between Tables 1 and 2 is

composed of the following: 14 retired persons who were considered to hold the status

of their former occupations although no longer performing their functions; one person

classifiable by status but not by function; two persons classifiable by function but not

by status.

35. The distribution of wealth changed very little. For real estate holdings among

males 16 years of age and over, the Gini index of inequality stood at .85 in 1850, .84 in

1860, and .84 in 1870. For total wealth holdings among all persons aged 16 years and

over, the Gini index was .86 in 1860 and .85 in 1870. Computed from the manuscript

federal censuses of 1850, 1860, and 1870.

36. Another, larger group, the male proprietary/low white-collar workers (175 in

1870, 23.9 percent of the work force) showed a nominal increase in mean total wealth

of 34.9 percent, but in fact experienced a real decline of 10.2 percent when the

massive inflation of the 1860s is taken into account. This was the only group whose

increase in mean wealthholding fell behind the rate of inflation. It might seem that

this would imply a similar decline for workers in commercial occupations, but the two

groups were not identical: the group, male workers in commerce, registered a real

increase in mean total wealthholding, 1860-1870, of 27.7 percent.

• 13
 

Market Integration                                           311

 

Table 2: Occupation of Work Force by Vertical Category, Washington

Court House, 1850-1880 (in percentages)

 

Vertical

Category

1850     1860   1870   1880

All

Professional and High

White Collar                     24.2     11.6    5.6     5.6

Proprietary and Low

White Collar                                                    19.6            24.3         25.4         28.8

Skilled                                                                 53.6            41.2         36.3         31.0

Unskilled                                                               2.6           22.9         32.7         34.5

N                                                                         153             354          732          1099

 

Men

Professional and

High White Collar                24.2     14.1    6.7     6.7

Proprietary and Low White

Collar                                                              19.6            27.5         28.7         32.1

Skilled                                                                 53.6            43.6         39.7         32.4

Unskilled                                                               2.6           14.8         24.9         28.8

N                                                                         153             291          610          889

 

Women

Professional and High

White Collar                               0.0    0.0     1.0

Proprietary and Low

White Collar                                                   Not            9.5           9.0           15.2

Skilled                                                                 Recorded    30.2         19.7         25.2

Unskilled                                                                               60.3         71.3         58.6

N                                                                                            63            122          210

Source: Manuscript U. S. Census, Fayette County, 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880

 

absorbed most of the population increase taking place in the county.

The population of Washington Court House continued to grow fairly

rapidly until 1890, at least 30 years after stabilization of population

growth in its hinterland (Table 5). In 1850 only one of every 15

residents of Fayette County lived in Washington Court House; by

1890 one of every four did so.³⁷

37. Commercial activity and population growth in Washington Court House were

probably stimulated during the 1880s by the arrival of narrow-gauge railroad lines

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312                                               OHIO HISTORY

 

Table 3: Propertyholding Incidence in Work Force by Vertical Occupation-

al Category, Washington Court House, 1850-1870

 

Percent Property-

Vertical                                                                                                  holders

Category                                   1850*                                  1860    1870

All

Professional and High

White Collar                             73.0    95.1   97.6

Proprietary and Low

White Collar                                                                      40.0         66.3         76.9

Skilled                                                                                    35.4         43.1         61.6

Unskilled                                                                                  0.0           9.9         34.3

Total                                                                                      44.4         47.2         58.6

 

Men

Professional and High

White Collar                             73.0    95.1   97.6

Proprietary and Low

White Collar                                                                       40.0         68.8         78.3

Skilled                                                                                    35.4         43.3         65.3

Unskilled                                                                                  0.0         18.6         52.0

Total                                                                                      44.4         54.0         67.9

 

Women

Professional and High                                                                             No     No

White Collar                                                              women women

Proprietary and Low

White Collar                                                                       Not          33.3         54.5

Skilled                                                                                     recorded   42.1         25.0

Unskilled                                                                                                   0.0         3.4

Total                                                                                                      15.9         12.3

 

* - Only real wealth holdings were reported in 1850

Source: Manuscript U. S. Census, Fayette County, 1850, 1860, 1870

 

 

from Dayton in 1877 and from Springfield in the following year, and of a standard-

gauge line, the Columbus and Cincinnati Midland, in 1884. Both narrow-gauge lines

were converted to standard gauge during the early 1880s. By 1891 the railroad lines

through Washington Court House had become part of two national east-west sys-

• 15
 

Market Integration                                           313

 

Table 4: Mean Wealthholding of Work Force by Vertical Occupational

Category, Washington Court House, 1850-1870 (in dollars)

 

Vertical

Category                                   1850*   1860   1870

All

Professional and High

White Collar                              1189   6187   21078

Proprietary and Low

White Collar                                                                        977        4942         6856

Skilled                                                                                     462        941           1842

Unskilled                                                                                 0                37         370

All                                                                                           727        2314         3713

 

Men

Professional and High

White Collar                              1189   6187   21078

Proprietary and Low

White Collar                                                                        977        5294         7144

Skilled                                                                                      462        952           1992

Unskilled                                                                                 0                69         578

All                                                                                           727        2753         4400

 

Women

 

Professional and High                                                                            No     No

White Collar                                                                                       women women

Proprietary and Low

White Collar                                                                         Not        250           2264

Skilled                                                                                  recorded     863           337

Unskilled                                                                                                   0                 6

All                                                                                                          284           275

 

* - Real estate only in 1850; real and personal estate combined in 1860 and

1870

Source: Manuscript U. S. Census, Fayette County, 1850, 1860, 1870

 

 

tems, the Pennsylvania and the Baltimore and Ohio, and two regional north-south

systems, the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton and the Ohio Southern. See Traveler's

Official Railway Guide (New York, 1893), and Henry V. Poor, Manual of the Rail-

roads (New York. 1891).

• 16
 

314                                           OHIO HISTORY

 

Population growth and economic prosperity in Washington Court

House were based upon the town's commercial role as local entrepot,

where farm products were sold and shipped and where manufac-

tured goods were purchased. The most obvious manifestation of this

function was the monthly stock sale day instituted in 1871, when

buyers, farmers and livestock all converged on Washington Court

House, converting the town itself into a huge market.³⁸ (Public

drinking on stock sale day dramatized the dangers of widespread

liquor consumption and thus helped to provoke the Women's

Temperance Crusade of 1873-74, in which Washington Court House

women were prominent by their success.) In the 1850s Washington

Court House played a part, although probably a relatively minor

one, in the processing of some of the farm products shipped from its

hinterland. By the 1870s, however, nearly all of the farm products

shipped out of Washington Court House were processed elsewhere.

In all likelihood, so were most of the manufactured goods shipped

into Washington Court House and sold there. The Cincinnati con-

nection thus influenced Washington Court House in two ways: by

solidifying its position as trading center for its local hinterland, thus

opening the way for further commercial growth; and by setting an

upper limit to the development of manufacturing, thereby closing

off a second avenue for growth. The damage to local business feared

by the newspaper editor in 1870 had indeed been done, though not

in the manner he expected.

By defining the possibilities open to Washington Court House, the

process of integration also defined the channels of opportunity with-

in the community. Local commercial dominance brought prosperity

at least during the years of agricultural expansion before 1870; it

also meant that Washington Court House became a beneficiary of

population flows from its hinterland as well as from outside the

county. The structural limit on manufacturing growth set by

Washington Court House's position vis-a-vis Cincinnati meant that,

while property mobility was increasingly available before 1870,

occupational mobility into the skilled trades which made up most of

the manufacturing sector was tightly circumscribed.

Decline of occupational mobility into the skilled trades was of

course not limited to Washington Court House during the years

1850-1880. Although it affected different trades at different times,

the advance of factory production during these years generally

 

 

 

38. Dills, History ofFayette County, 356-57.

• 17
 

Market Integration                                      315

undercut the position of artisan producers and local manufacturers.39 But it was market integration that exposed Washington Court House artisans and manufacturers to the com- petition of factory production, by bringing outside manufactured goods to Washington Court House and by providing its hinterland farmers with the cash incomes they needed to purchase them. Since white collar positions as a whole also did not keep pace with population increase, the result was a steady growth at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy. If this situation was likely to produce discontent among the growing numbers of unskilled workers, such discontent may have been muted or redirected in Washington Court House as elsewhere by a high rate of geographic mobility, racial and ethnic divisions, and, for the geographically stable, increasing opportunity to acquire property. 40 In addition, unskilled workers in     39. This process has been carefully documented by Griffen and Griffen, Natives and Newcomers, chs. 7-8. See also Alan Dawley, Class and Community: The Indus- trial Revolution in Lynn (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), ch. 3. 40. Between 1860 and 1870 the crude persistence rate for unskilled male workers was 20.9 percent, compared to 61.0 percent for professional and high white-collar, 31.3 percent for proprietary and low white-collar, and 37.0 percent for skilled work- ers. In 1860, one-fifth of the male work force were black, while another two-fifths were foreign-born. In 1870 the two groups' proportions of the male work force were nearly reversed.

• 18
 

316                                          OHIO HISTORY

 

Washington Court House were dispersed rather than concentrated

in a single industry.

For Fayette County, then, urbanization and industrialization did

not proceed together. Indeed, urban growth in Washington Court

House was accompanied by what one might call de-

industrialization, a relative decline in the manufacturing sector of

its local economy. Increasingly Washington Court House became a

place where products were bought and sold rather than made. A

shift in the structures which encompassed Washington Court House

had entailed both growth and structural change within the com-

munity.

• 19