Financial History Issue 133 (Spring 2020) | Page 24

Cholera Map of New York City, 1832.
before rebounding to $103 by the end of
August. The Mohawk and the Paterson
and Hudson Railroads, by contrast, both
dropped by $15 to $20 per share over
the summer and recovered much more
slowly, not returning to their 1832 highs
until April 1833. Many railroad stocks
were already considered “fancies,” the
newly launched playthings of speculators,
so it is not clear that any of those move-
ments had anything to do with cholera.
Massachusetts Scarlet Fever Epidemic
(1858–1859)
Scarlet fever, nee scarlatina, killed 2,089
people, almost all younger than 16 years
old, in Massachusetts between December
1858 and December 1859. According to the
1860 Census, the population of the state
was about 1.2 million, of whom about
350,000 were under 16. Some of the chil-
dren were employed, but the labor force
exceeded 450,000, so the shock was more
emotional than economic.
Indeed, the Boston stock market was in
bull mode throughout 1859. While most
bank and some insurance stocks remained
range-bound, some insurers, including
American, Boston, Boylston, City and
Commercial were up strongly. The Boston
and Lowell Railroad increased from $89
to $98 per share over the year, and the
Boston and Providence and Boston and
Worcester railroads were likewise steadily
but modestly up.
The biggest gains were in manufactur-
ing. Amoskeag was up from $890 to $1,000
per share over the year, Appleton from
$950 to $1,000, Bates from $85 to $106,
Boott from $470 to $725, Boston and Rox-
bury Mill Dam from $29 to $50 and Boston
Duck from $375 to $500. If the death of
young workers, or potential workers, put
an upward strain on wages in 1859, it was
clearly swamped by other effects.
How could life go on while thousands
of children died and thousands more lay
stricken? A better question might be, how
could it not? More people per 1,000 died at
each age then, especially the younger ages.
Death was a simple fact of life that people
22    FINANCIAL HISTORY  |  Summer 2018  | www.MoAF.org
suffered through with lots of prayer and
sex for reproductive purposes. Families
that lost children usually tried to have
more of them.
The government’s role in the scarlet
fever epidemic, like the yellow fever and
cholera epidemics, was limited by consti-
tutions, precedent and expectation. Every
family was left to its own devices. Medical
treatment was palliative at best. Those
obviously ill were quarantined, but healthy
people continued business as usual. No
hope for a miracle cure was held, and any
attempt to shut down Boston or other
commercial centers to stop the spread
would have been met with derision and
then open rebellion. Even in small towns
like Deerfield, local factories remained
open, making cutlery in Deerfield’s case.
The frequently occurring epidemics of
18th- and 19th-century America, like the
ones sketched above, had limited eco-
nomic and financial effects. In part, this
was because they were localized epidem-
ics over in a few months, not pandemics
affecting every place and everyone. Most