Men Is Cheap: Exposing the Frauds of Free Labor in Civil War America - Hardcover

Buch 141 von 177: Civil War America

Luskey, Brian P.

 
9781469654324: Men Is Cheap: Exposing the Frauds of Free Labor in Civil War America
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1469654326 ISBN 13: 9781469654324
Verlag: UNIV OF NORTH CAROLINA PR, 2020

Inhaltsangabe

When a Civil War substitute broker told business associates that "Men is cheep here to Day," he exposed an unsettling contradiction at the heart of the Union's war effort. Despite Northerners' devotion to the principles of free labor, the war produced rampant speculation and coercive labor arrangements that many Americans labeled fraudulent. Debates about this contradiction focused on employment agencies called "intelligence offices," institutions of dubious character that nevertheless served the military and domestic necessities of the Union army and Northern households. Northerners condemned labor agents for pocketing fees above and beyond contracts for wages between employers and employees. Yet the transactions these middlemen brokered with vulnerable Irish immigrants, Union soldiers and veterans, former slaves, and Confederate deserters defined the limits of independence in the wage labor economy and clarified who could prosper in it.

Men Is Cheap shows that in the process of winning the war, Northerners were forced to grapple with the frauds of free labor. Labor brokers, by helping to staff the Union military and Yankee households, did indispensable work that helped the Northern state and Northern employers emerge victorious. They also gave rise to an economic and political system that enriched the managerial class at the expense of laborers--a reality that resonates to this day.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Brian P. Luskey is associate professor of history at West Virginia University and author of On the Make: Clerks and the Quest for Capital in Nineteenth-Century America.

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Verlag
UNIV OF NORTH CAROLINA PR
Erscheinungsdatum
2020
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1469654326
ISBN 13 
9781469654324
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
296
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
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