Citizen Worker: The Experience of Workers in the United States with Democracy and the Free Market During the Nineteenth CenturyIn the 1990s democracy and market freedom are often discussed as though they were either synonymous or interchangeable. The experience of workers in the United States reveals that as government became more democratic, what it could do to shape daily life became more restricted. The extent and failures of workers' efforts to exercise power through the political parties provide insights and warnings from the nineteenth century to guide our thinking about the twenty-first. When industrialization began in the United States, both free and bound labor supplied commodities whose flow was dominated by merchant capital, while the legacy of the Revolution made possible the inclusion of white males from society's lower strata in the active citizenry. The voting rights and freedom of association enjoyed by working-men hastened the dismantling of personal forms of subordination, most dramatically in the brief moment when African Americans claimed those rights after the destruction of slavery. Nevertheless, neither white nor black workers fashioned the new rules for a society based on wage labor. Both the shaping of economic development and the allocation of poor relief were effectively insulated from democratic control, while new forms of social domination disguised as freely contracted market and familial relationships were sanctioned by the courts, by the newly restructured police and military forces, and by the criminalization of unemployment. Workers' use of their access to political power on behalf of their visions of the commonweal challenged, but never defeated, the new style of class rule, which both strengthened government and limited its sphere of action. |
Contents
Wage Labor Bondage and Citizenship | 13 |
The Right to Quit | 25 |
Free Labor in the Shadow of Slavery | 31 |
Quitting and Getting Paid | 39 |
Citizenship and the Terms of Employment | 43 |
Policing People for the Free Market | 52 |
The Definition and Prosecution of Crime | 59 |
The Privatization of Poor Relief | 71 |
Police Powers and Workers Homes | 104 |
Political Parties | 115 |
Black Workers and the Republicans in the South | 117 |
Industrial Workers and Party Politics | 130 |
Workers and Tammany Hall | 137 |
Labor Reform and Electoral Politics | 145 |
Citizenship and the Unseen Hand | 157 |
163 | |
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Citizen Worker: The Experience of Workers in the United States with ... David Montgomery No preview available - 1994 |
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absconding African Americans AICP almshouse army artisans Binns Black Codes Blackmar charity Chicago citizens city's Civil common law contract courts criminal Democracy Democratic E. P. Thompson economic elected electorate employers employment enforcement factories federal force George hired History homes immigrant indentured indentured servants indentured servitude industrial Irish World Jeffersonian John John Binns justice Knights of Labor labor movement labor reformers land leaders legislation legislature magistrates male manufacturing Massachusetts master mayor ment military militia Montgomery municipal neighborhoods nineteenth century officers organizations outdoor relief party Pennsylvania percent Philadelphia police political poor relief popular Powderly prison prosecution quotation quoted regulate republic Republican residents riots Robert Watchorn role rules servants slavery slaves social Socialist Society soldiers South southern streets strikes suffrage Tammany Hall tion trade unions tramp United urban vagrancy voters voting wage earners wage labor women working-class workingmen York's
Popular passages
Page 8 - Man hath his daily work of body or mind Appointed, which declares his dignity, And the regard of Heaven on all his ways; While other animals unactive range, And of their doings God takes no account. To-morrow, ere fresh morning streak the east With first approach of light, we must be risen, And at our pleasant labour, to reform Yon...
Page 8 - Thus certain experiences, meanings, and values which cannot be expressed or substantially verified in terms of the dominant culture, are nevertheless lived and practised on the basis of the residue cultural as well as social - of some previous social and cultural institution or formation.
Page 9 - The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.
Page 7 - Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980); Mary Beth Norton, Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980); and Jan Lewis, "The Republican Wife: Virtue and Seduction in the Early Republic...