Work and labor in early America / edited by Stephen Innes.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Innes, Stephen.

Institute of Early American History and Culture (Williamsburg, Va.)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Labor--United States--History.

Labor.

Labor movement--United States--History.

Labor movement.

Working class--United States--History.

Working class.

United States.

History.

United States--Economic conditions--To 1865.

Economic conditions.

United States--Social conditions--To 1865.

Social conditions.

Physical Description:

297 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill : Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture by the University of North Carolina Press, [1988]

Summary:

Ten leading scholars of early American social history here examine the nature of work and labor in America from 1614 to 1820. Their essays recover the regimen that consumed the waking hours of most adults in the New World, defined their economic lives, and shaped their larger existence. Subjects include farmers, farmwives, urban laborers, plantation slave workers, midwives, and sailors; locales range from Maine to the Caribbean and high seas. The authors emphasize the choices that, over time, might lead to prosperity or to the poorhouse.

Stephen Innes's Introduction emphasizes the vision of Captain John Smith: that the New World offered abundant reward for one's "owne industrie." Important motifs in the essays that follow are the role of family labor, family size and sex ratio, the intensification of work patterns, surplus production and higher consumption, and fluid labor relations in the face of changing market demands. The authors address as well the larger questions of American development and directions for future research in this growing field.

Contents:

Introduction. Fulfilling John Smith's Vision: Work and Labor in Early America / Stephen Innes 3

1. Working the Fields in a Developing Economy: Essex County, Massachusetts, 1630-1675 / Daniel Vickers 49

2. Martha Ballard and Her Girls: Women's Work in Eighteenth-Century Maine / Laurel Thatcher Ulrich 70

3. Rural Labor and the Farm Household in Chester County, Pennsylvania, 1750-1820 / Paul G. E. Clemens, Lucy Simler 106

4. Economic Diversification and Labor Organization in the Chesapeake, 1650-1820 / Lois Green Carr, Lorena S. Walsh 144

5. Task and Gang Systems: The Organization of Labor on New World Plantations / Philip D. Morgan 189

6. The Vicissitudes of Fortune: The Careers of Laboring Men in Philadelphia, 1750-1800 / Billy G. Smith 221

7. The Anglo-American Seaman as Collective Worker, 1700-1750 / Marcus Rediker 252.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0807817988

0807842362

OCLC:

17354122