The Impact Of The Market Thoreau's Walden

The Market Revolution that lasted for about the first half of the 19th century changed the way Americans would live their lives for the next 200 years. The idea of buying things at a market instead of making it yourself was an idea that swept through the United States and is still how we live our lives today. Certainly, after the market revolution, the economy flourished and the standard of living for people increased dramatically. Many people fought against the revolution and what it stood for, but they could not stop it from becoming the new culture of America and eventually the world. This culture is what has brought us to where we are today and we are much better off because of that. A massive increase in transportation started the Market

He pointed out everything he thought was wrong with the new world we live in saying we “live too fast” and “our life is frittered away by detail” (Thoreau 181). He ended his piece by saying “Why should we live with such a hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.” (Thoreau 183). He believed that our lives were becoming unnecessarily complicated and he promoted “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!” (Thoreau 182). He even used a metaphor of the railroad to show that in our need for increased transportation, the mistreatment and death of laborers was occurring in the U.S. saying, “We do not ride on the railroad; it rides up on us. Did you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them.” (Thoreau

“We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds…if the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.” (Emerson 179). He believed that Americans were relying too much on the ideas of our British ancestors and our ideas should instead come from the culture and history of the United States. “We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe.” (Emerson 178). Emerson believed that the best men throughout history have been the men who come up with their own beliefs and their own ideas and this is what the people of America must do