Common Labour: Workers and the Digging of North American Canals 1780–1860 - Softcover

Way, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521102650 ISBN 13: 9780521102650

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2009

Synopsis

This study of canal construction workers between 1780-1860 challenges labor history's focus on skilled craftsmen. Canalers were unskilled workers, often members of despised social groups such as Irish immigrants and African-American slaves. They worked twelve or more hours a day in all weather, exposed to diseases and job-related risks, going home at night to rude shanty towns. Their harsh lifestyles bred conflict that undercut worker unity but promoted battles with employers over workplace issues, and the state was increasingly drawn in to enforce industrial production. Lacking the power that skill brought, canalers had little control over their working conditions. Their experiences represent a different strand of the labor story.

About this title

Book Description:

The history of canal workers traces another strand of the labour story, one where the absence of skills bred powerlessness that made common labour's engagement with capital markedly unequal.

From the Back Cover:

Composed increasingly of Irish immigrants, Way explains, the work force was housed in hastily built shanty towns along the path of canal construction.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0521102650
• ISBN 13: 9780521102650
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 328