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."--Jacket
Print Book, English, 2001
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [England], 2001
History
xi, 329 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.
9780521773607, 9780521774000, 9780511549564, 0521773601, 0521774004, 0511549563
43328909
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:
'Free' contract labor in the United States: an anti-essentialist view of labor types I
'Unfree' wage labor in nineteenth-century England: an anti-essentialist view of labor types II
Explaining the legal content of English wage labor
Struggles over the rules: the Common Law Courts, parliament, the people, and the master and servant acts
Struggles under the rules: strategic behavior and historical change in legal context
Struggles to change the rules
Freedom of contract and freedom of person
Part II. 'Free' and 'Unfree' Labor in the United States:
'Involuntary servitude' in American fundamental law
Labor contract
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