Defending Democracy

Abstract

This chapter describes how early nineteenth-century Massachusetts, France, and Prussia were characterized by radically different political systems, institutional structures, and social worlds. It highlights France as a constitutional monarchy in which democratic rights were restricted to the upper echelon, whereas Prussia was an absolute monarchy where policy making was controlled by a powerful, centralized bureaucracy. Massachusetts, on the other hand, was a rapidly urbanizing and industrializing democracy in which political participation was widespread, and social mobility was a real possibility for many. The chapter details how Massachusetts became the first US state to regulate child labor in 1836, when it required children working in manufacturing establishments to attend school for at least three months a year. Although the democratic institutions structuring the early nineteenth-century Massachusetts policy field were robust, the field was in other respects undeveloped compared with the European states.