Coercion, Contract, and Free Labor in the Nineteenth Century
Coercion, Contract, and Free Labor in the Nineteenth Century
This book presents a fundamental reassessment of the nature of wage labor in the nineteenth century, focusing on the common use of penal sanctions in England to enforce wage labor agreements. Professor Steinfeld argues that wage workers were not employees at will but were often bound to their employment by enforceable labor agreements, which employers used whenever available to manage their labor costs and supply. In the northern United States, where employers normally could not use penal sanctions, the common law made other contract remedies available, also placing employers in a position to enforce labor agreements. Modern free wage labor only came into being late in the nineteenth century, as a result of reform legislation that restricted the contract remedies employers could legally use.
- Reassesses the nature of nineteenth-century wage labor, focusing on the common use of penal sanctions to enforce wage labor agreements
- Raises serious questions about the conventional distinction between free and coerced labor
- Reexamines the history of American fundamental law governing involuntary servitude and peonage
Reviews & endorsements
'With his comprehensive histories of 'free' labour, Professor Robert J. Steinfeld … unsettles the economistic equation of the market economy as a self-regulating system with individual autonomy of its citizens.' Scandinavian Economic History Review
'Much of this book is about English legal history, in the sense that it discusses the shifting views of courts about the contractual powers of employers and workers, and the arguments by which legislation was introduced and chanted … A fascinating account is given of the shift that occurred during the mid-nineteenth century from long term contracts enforced by criminal penalties to open-ended 'minute' contracts with agreed periods of notice … The important message today of this persuasive study is that the weakening of trade unions, and the revival of the myths of labour flexibility, may lead to the erosion of the freedom of employment contracts.' Labour History Review
'A fascinating account is given of the shift that occurred during the mid- nineteenth century from long-term contracts enforced by criminal penalties to open-ended minute' contracts with agreed periods of notice … The important message today of this persuasive study is that the weakening of trade unions, and the revival of the myths of labour flexibility, may lead to the erosion of the freedom of employment contracts.' Labour History Review
Product details
April 2001Hardback
9780521773607
342 pages
229 × 152 × 22 mm
0.67kg
1 b/w illus. 2 maps 3 tables
Available
Table of Contents
- Introduction: free wage labor in the history of the West
- Part I. American Contract Labor and English Wage Labor: The Use 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 II. 'Free' and 'Unfree' Labor in the United States:
- 8. 'Involuntary servitude' in American fundamental law
- 9. Labor contract enforcement in the American north
- Conclusion.
