Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Free Wage Labor in the History of the West
- PART ONE AMERICAN CONTRACT LABOR AND ENGLISH WAGE LABOR: THE USES OF PECUNIARY AND NONPECUNIARY PRESSURE
- 1 “Free” Contract Labor in the United States: An Anti-essentialist View of Labor Types I
- 2 “Unfree” Wage Labor in Nineteenth-Century England: An Anti-essentialist View of Labor Types II
- 3 Explaining the Legal Content of English Wage Labor
- 4 Struggles over the Rules: The Common Law Courts, Parliament, the People, and the Master and Servant Acts
- 5 Struggles under the Rules: Strategic Behavior and Historical Change in Legal Context
- 6 Struggles to Change the Rules
- 7 Freedom of Contract and Freedom of Person
- PART TWO “FREE” AND “UNFREE” LABOR IN THE UNITED STATES
- Conclusion
- Index
1 - “Free” Contract Labor in the United States: An Anti-essentialist View of Labor Types I
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Free Wage Labor in the History of the West
- PART ONE AMERICAN CONTRACT LABOR AND ENGLISH WAGE LABOR: THE USES OF PECUNIARY AND NONPECUNIARY PRESSURE
- 1 “Free” Contract Labor in the United States: An Anti-essentialist View of Labor Types I
- 2 “Unfree” Wage Labor in Nineteenth-Century England: An Anti-essentialist View of Labor Types II
- 3 Explaining the Legal Content of English Wage Labor
- 4 Struggles over the Rules: The Common Law Courts, Parliament, the People, and the Master and Servant Acts
- 5 Struggles under the Rules: Strategic Behavior and Historical Change in Legal Context
- 6 Struggles to Change the Rules
- 7 Freedom of Contract and Freedom of Person
- PART TWO “FREE” AND “UNFREE” LABOR IN THE UNITED STATES
- Conclusion
- Index
Summary
Although the main concern of this book is wage labor in the nineteenth century, I want to begin by approaching the subject through the back door, as it were. The conventional view is that wage labor is one of a small number of standard labor types. Each form of labor is thought to possess its own timeless characteristics. Freedom from physical or other nonpecuniary forms of coercion is considered to be wage labor's most notable characteristic. Imported contract labor represents another of these standard types. Its most salient feature, however, is thought to be that it is compelled by threats of confinement or corporal punishment. In this chapter I ask whether, as a matter of historical practice, contract labor has always been unfree in the sense that it has been enforced through nonpecuniary threats. If it has sometimes been “free” labor in the sense that only pecuniary sanctions have been available to employers, this would raise difficulties for the assumption that a particular labor “type” is invariably either “free” or “unfree.” It would also make necessary a revision of the view that the history of labor should be understood in terms of fixed types used only at particular stages of social and economic development.
Until about 1830 the American experience with imported labor conformed to the conventional wisdom. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries land was readily available in the American colonies, and hired labor was expensive and difficult to retain. During this time, Americans did import large numbers of unfree workers (indentured servants and slaves) to satisfy their labor needs.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001