Title: American exceptionalism, American anxiety : wages, competition, and degraded labor in the Antebellum United States /
Authors: Glickstein, Jonathan A., 1948-
Publisher: University of Virginia Press,
Year: 2002
Subjects: Labor Northeastern States History; Working poor Northeastern States History; Wages Northeastern States History; Subsistence economy Northeastern States History; Work ethic Northeastern States History; Capitalism Northeastern States History; Social classes Northeastern States History; Slavery Southern States History; Labor economics United States States History; Competition United States States History; Exceptionalism United States.; United States Economic conditions
Abstract: "The Mythology of nineteenth-century American economic exceptionalism trumpeted the positive work incentives prevailing in a society of scarce labor, weak class barriers, and abundant opportunity. This ideology agreed with the optimistic vein of political economy, in which high wages went hand in hand with increased productivity. What, then, was the supposed role of poverty, the fear of poverty, and other negative work incentives in the era of early industrial capitalism and escalating sectional conflict over slavery? American Exceptionalism, American Anxiety examines a wide spectrum of antebellum American thought on these and related issues, including slavery and cheap immigrant and female sweated labor."--Jacket.
Contents: Introduction -- The world's dirty work and the wages that sweeten it -- Pressures from below : chattel slavery, and the ideological construction of free-market labor incentives -- "Buy cheap, sell dear" -- Further social constructions of the market mechanisms, economic justice, and competitive hierarchy -- George M. Weston and slave labor : free labor, Gresham's Law, and antebellum cultural anxieties -- Convict labor, free labor, and Gresham's Law -- The "pauper labor" of the old world, free labor, and Gresham's Law -- Some elaborations and conclusions.