380 Percy Wells Bidwell 



The Home Market. 



With the growth of manufactures in the inland towns of southern 

 New England came the rise of a specialized non-agricultural popu- 

 lation and a market for the farmer was created, not far away in the 

 Southern states or in the West Indies, but right at home, often in 

 his own town. And thus came to an end the Age of Homespun, 

 the era of commercial isolation. It was not a change accomplished 

 in a single decade; in many out-of-the-way villages conditions remained 

 practically constant until 1840 or 1850; but in 1810 an era of change 

 had set in. From that time to the Civil War an Industrial Revolution 

 was in progress, comparable in scope and in its effects to that which 

 had preceded it by a half-century in England. 



