Reflections in Bullough's Pond - Thesis

Thesis

Muir makes a complex, Malthusian argument for the origin of an industrial revolution in New England independent of the English industrial revolution. Demonstrating that the economic model of colonial New England was large families of children on small-hold farms, producing sufficient wealth not only to live comfortably but to enable all of the children to purchase farms, she argues that a crunch point was reached when cheap, unsettled land ceased to be available. Focusing on the decades following 1790, she argues that families had accumulated wealth to set their children up on farms, but that land was not available until after the federal government broke the armed strength of Tecumseh in the Ohio country. During that twenty-year period, she demonstrates the development of numerous innovative techniques in the early stages of Interchangeable parts manufacturing and precision tool manufacturing, the aspects of industrialization in which southern New England was to lead the world.

Muir argues that, "The Agricultural Revolution saved hunters and gatherers from starving after they wiped out their bigger prey and populations grew too big to be supported by remaining food supplies. The Industrial Revolution saved the Yankees from poverty, but it depended on fossil energy, the by-products of which are polluting the earth. Muir thus argues that a Third Revolution is now necessary, one that will entail the discovery and deployment of new kinds of energy and materials."