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, It is often said that the power of observation grants an enormous amount of power over others. From the panopticon jail where the inmates are perpetually kept alert by the possibility of a guard watching them to a cop on the highway, where just the sight of a police car can stop a speeding automobile in its tracks. Paul E. Johnson applies this theory to the shopkeepers and businessmen in many passages on economy, religion and social functions throughout A Shopkeeper’s Millennium.
In the early 1820s when the businessmen often housed and interacted with their employees for extensive periods of time, the upper class members could exercise subtle but significant power over the people they housed. They would drink with them, socialize and otherwise engage with them as though they were part of the family. This influence of businessmen was evident in that they would initiate trends of social behavior that were appropriate for different events such as drinking and socializing, which their employees would readily adopt in order to conform to the town’s standards and follow the lead of their boss whom they assumed ascribed to the common tradition. When it came to pass, however, that these businessmen opted for a more private life and they evicted many of their workers, the power and influence they had once possessed dissipated and two separate social spheres were created.
These social spheres culminated in a society where the wealthier peoples of Rochester still retained a large amount of power over their workers but in their private affairs the workers could get away with whatever they wanted from wanton drunkenness to abstaining from attending church. This kind of divergent behavior directly stemmed from the absence of a “moral authority” which would enforce temperance restrictions and Christian principles upon them. Johnson explains this progression, saying “but while masters asked wage earners to give up their evil ways, they turned workers out of their homes and into streets and neighborhoods where drinking remained a normal part of life.” This kind of condescending rhetoric aimed at the marginalized factions of society did little to relieve the tensions permeating the stratified peoples of Rochester.
This sort of behavior demonstrates the evolution in the Rochester community from 1820 to 1830. Price mentions that “before the religious behavior of 1830, the relationship was impersonal and strictly businesslike.” I am not sure if he means to address the newfound religious dichotomy in Rochester or the work scene, but I see it in a different light. Prior to the religious revivals and Finney’s actions, the workers and lay-people of the town had lived with their business leaders in a sort of mutual bond where they spent time together with their families and otherwise lived relatively harmoniously. This was a relationship not marked simply by business. After the religious revivals when the churches were filled with majority-upper class peoples, I believe the religious and geographical disparities fostered a greater sense of impersonality.
I would also like to question Johnson’s assertion that “Finney’s male converts were driven to religion because they had abdicated their roles as eighteenth-century heads of households.” This seems to be a fairly vague generalization of the social realities of Rochester. Men did not simply give up their positions as heads of house but instead opted to wield different types of power and administrate their business and the household from a more manufacture-oriented point of view and not only as someone who has symbolic, economic power. In the wake of the temperance movement, women would play larger roles in being moral authorities for sinners to aspire to. This kind of behavior is why their was such a vast economic, social and religious gap between the rich and poor peoples of the town.