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

Brian P Luskey

ISBN 10: 1469654326 / ISBN 13: 9781469654324

Published by University Of North Carolina Press Mär 2020, 2020

About this Item

Neuware - 'Men Is Cheap shows how the concepts of military and domestic necessity were connected in white northerners' minds and clarifies what they thought the war was fought over. In the process of winning the war, white 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'.

Seller Inventory # 9781469654324

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Men Is Cheap : Exposing the Frauds of Free Labor in Civil War America
• Publisher: University Of North Carolina Press Mär 2020
• Publication Date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1469654326
• ISBN 13: 9781469654324
• Binding: Buch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 239W x 163H x 23D millimeters 239 millimeters width by 163 millimeters height by 23 millimeters depth
• Weight: 544 grams

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Author

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.