One of the major themes traced throughout A Shopkeeper’s Millennium is how the growth of capitalism and industrialization fundamentally altered the class system in Rochester. Over the course of the 1820s, a myriad of social forces convened to lead to the separation of the working and middle classes, profoundly affecting social customs and moral values. A Shopkeeper’s Millennium explores how this transformed relationship between classes created a social crisis by the end of the 1820s.

Prior to Rochester’s population boom in the early 1820s, Johnson describes a small city in which workingmen and their employers lived in close contact with each other. This earlier version of Rochester more closely resembled the rural small towns that peppered the Genesee Valley, from which came most of the city’s merchants and shop owners. Crucial to this close relation between classes was the fact that many employers offered their employees lodging in their own homes as a part of their wages—a system which Johnson deems the “household economy” (57). The relation that the household economy entailed went beyond mere contractual obligations, as many of the employers considered their co-resident employees as outright members of the family. This familial relation meant that shop owners felt a personal responsibility for their employees, ensuring that they behaved civilly.