History of American Labor

Joseph G. Rayback

• Publisher: Free Press
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9780029258507
• eBook ISBN: 9781439118993
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Joseph Rayback's updated and comprehensive history of the American labor movement. Considered to be a foundational text for any readers interested in learning the important role of American labor union history, The History of American Labor delves into the history of labor in America from the colonial days until the mid-1950's.

PART ONE
The Colonial and Revolutionary Era

The Colonial Economy

Like all pioneer societies the American colonies had an agricultural economy. But while the overwhelming majority of inhabitants in every colony earned their livelihood either as farm owners, tenants, or hired hands, the colonial economy was not exclusively agrarian. From earliest days farmers hired workers to build houses, bedsteads, and to make shoes and other products. The farmer supplied the raw materials to be transformed into finished products; the workers supplied the tools. Under such circumstances the farmer’s household became a “manufactory” and the hired men became the first industrial laborers. These laborers were itinerant, moving from farmhouse to farmhouse with their tools and skills; securing lodgings, board, and wages; and departing when the needs of the farmer-employer were satisfied. The itinerant laborer never disappeared from the colonial scene. Throughout the era, farmers continued to hire farm hands and wandering “mechanicks” whenever needs demanded. Even in the nineteenth century the itinerant worker was a common sight in sparsely settled frontier areas.

Itinerant manufacturing did not long dominate the colonial industrial scene. As population increased and thickened, the nonagricultural laborer who had accumulated a little capital settled down in town, erected a home, and opened a workshop. At this point industry entered the “custom-order” stage. A one-man industry, it depended largely at first on individual orders from merchants and farmers who could supply the materials to be transformed. Later, the workshop owner himself began to supply the raw materials of his trade which were transformed at the customer’s bidding.

While custom-order industry remained widespread throughout most of the colonial era, it gradually gave way to another form of enterprise. The change was occasioned primarily by the transformation of towns into cities and by the growth of a large population within the city environs. As the market expanded, the workshop owner began to employ journeymen to increase production; simultaneously he began to stock up on finished products made by his journeymen for sale to “sojourners” and visitors. Two classes of product were developed: a superior quality for the custom-trade and an inferior quality known as “shop” work for the lower-level trade. The new stage, known as “retail-order” industry, appeared as early as 1715 and reached a climax in the last twenty years of the century.

The change produced America’s first industrial classes. In earlier stages there were no distinct employer-employee elements; in the retail-order stage the workshop owner became an employer-merchant. He ceased, except on occasion, to perform manual labor and secured remuneration mainly from his managerial ability and his investments. Relations between him and his journeymen were harmonious. The workshop master was still a skilled worker intimately acquainted with his journeymen’s psychology. Moreover, the market was still local: the existing turnpikes were primarily feeders from the city to the near countryside. Since the market was restricted and all masters were confronted with similar conditions, it was simple to equalize competition and to satisfy journeymen’s wage demands by shifting any increase in wages to consumers. Journeymen, in turn, recognizing that their wages could best be maintained by cooperating with the masters in suppressing price-cutting competitors, actively supported their employers against those masters who refused to abide by established standards. Evidence of this harmony of interest was revealed by the establishment of “mechanics’ societies” during the eighteenth century.

Throughout these developments, manufacturing remained essentially a handicraft enterprise. A considerable portion of it was always conducted, with or without the supervision of an itinerant laborer, in the household, and some was carried on in plantation workshops. But most manufacturing occurred in or near towns and cities. In these the typical workshop of the retail-order stage employed one or two journeymen and an equal number of apprentices. Some shops were larger—notably in the carpentry and cabinet trades, in weaving, and in the tanning and shoe industries. Saw, grist, and flour mills, in which water or wind power supplemented handicraft labor, employed from two to five men. Distilleries, breweries, paper and gunpowder manufacturies, shipyards, and ropewalks achieved greater size, employing generally from five to ten, and sometimes as many as twenty-five laborers. The giant of colonial manufacturing enterprise was the iron industry, established in rural areas where there was an adequate supply of ore, water power, and large quantities of wood to be used for charcoal. An iron plantation averaged twenty-five employees; a number in every colony had more than one hundred workmen.

Manufacturing was only one of the colonial enterprises that developed employer-employee classes. In very earliest times fishing was an individual enterprise, but as a trade in fish with the West Indies developed, owners of fishing boats began to hire labor on a large scale both to help with the catch and to dry and salt the ocean product for export. Whaling went through the same development even more rapidly.

Commerce progressed through similar stages. The first merchants in America, whether trading-company agents or private individuals, were essentially importers; but as soon as surplus agricultural products appeared, they began to develop an export trade as well. Simultaneously the merchants went in search of their own supplies and the enterprise developed several divisions: shipping with its use of ships and its employment of seagoing and longshore labor; wholesaling with its use of warehouses and its employment of factors; retailing with its use of shops and its employment of clerks; and a distributing trade with its use of horses and wagons and its employment of draymen, porters, and carters.

Colonials divided the labor element engaged in their varied enterprises into three kinds: indentured servants, who in exchange for payment of passage to the colonies worked for masters under long-term contracts; free labor which included those hired for wages on farms, those engaged as artisans or as unskilled help in handicraft shops and mills, or in the longshore and distributing trades; and seagoing labor which included fishermen, whalers, and sailors—who were also free labor but were regarded as a special class. Generally, it is concluded that this laboring element formed a relatively minor portion of the colonial population. Actually, the total group constituted a substantial proportion of the population. While there are no reliable statistics upon the subject, a rough figure can be ascertained.

Information concerning the indentured servant class is best. Two census reports made by Maryland in 1707 and 1755, together with certain known trends concerning the rise or decline of indentured servitude in different colonial areas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and incomplete immigration figures lead to the conclusion that the indentured servant class constituted about 10 per cent of the white population.

More difficult to determine is the size of the free labor population. There are literally no clues to the number of free laborers who hired themselves out to farmers. It is equally difficult to determine the number of free laborers employed in workshop, longshore, and distributing trades. Judging by the amount of enterprise carried on in the colonies and by the ubiquity of colonial manufacturing enterprise, it would seem fair to guess that the total amount of free labor ran between 2 and 4 per cent of the white population. As for seagoing labor, it has been estimated, and the figure is generally accepted, that there were 33,000 seamen employed in the colonies on the eve of the Revolution—about 2½ per cent of the white population. This proportion of seagoing laborers to the rest of the population probably remained fairly constant throughout the colonial era.

The total labor supply of the colonies can thus be reckoned as somewhere between 14 and 17 per cent of the whole white population. Of this portion about two-thirds were indentured servants, and the remainder belonged to the ranks of free labor. Similarly, about two-thirds of the whole labor element was employed in agricultural callings and the remaining third in manufacturing, fishing, and commerce.

Colonial Labor

Of the three kinds of colonial labor, indentured servitude was in many ways the most important. Created originally by the London Company to fill the acute need for manpower in its Virginia settlements, it was thence transferred to all other American colonies. No less than 50 per cent of the total white population came to the colonies as servants. In the seventeenth century they came chiefly from England; in the eighteenth century so many Scots, Scotch-Irish, Irish, Germans, Swiss, and other nationalities came into the country as servants that by the time of the Revolution 50 per cent of the population south of New England was of non-English stock. The institution was one of the greatest colonizing agencies of history.

The overwhelming majority of servants migrated to the colonies voluntarily. Contrary to general opinion, they were not the traditionally poor, but came from the class made homeless and jobless by current economic developments—by enclosures and by the decline of the guilds. A prime force of encouragement to their migration was the persuasions of those who saw profit in the trade. Merchants early recognized that indentured servants made a fine cargo. Accordingly, they circulated printed handbills and pamphlets throughout Britain and the Continent setting forth the opportunities afforded in the American colonies in language that was the forerunner of modern advertising. This paper-and-ink campaign was supplemented by agents who worked upon the longings of the gullible and persuaded them to sign up for the long voyage.

Along with those who came freely there was another group: the convicts. Crime greatly increased in Britain, along with economic instability, after 1500. For a time the effort to suppress it took the form of a brutal code which punished some three hundred felonies with death. But in 1615 some leniency was introduced into the system by substituting exile for the death penalty. Very few convicts were sent to the American colonies in the first half of the seventeenth century, but after 1655 the numbers increased steadily. In all about 35,000 convicts were transported with Maryland and Virginia together receiving the largest bloc. Despite efforts to glamourize this element, the convicts thus bestowed on the colonies were a sorry lot; most of them were outright criminals, and probably one-fifth were guilty of serious crimes.

Not all servants were imported; a substantial amount of servant labor was recruited in the colonies. Colonial authorities regularly sentenced to servitude persons guilty of criminal actions on the ground that servitude would be a corrective. Imposition of servitude for crime was applied both to servants and to free persons. Applied to servants, the penalty did not create new labor; it merely lengthened the term of indenture. It was imposed for a number of offenses, chief of which was unlawful absence. A sentence of servitude upon free persons was imposed for most felonies. A more important colonial source of labor was the judgment debtor. The colonies originally adopted the practice of imprisoning debtors, but the need for labor led to the passage of legislation releasing the debtor from prison to serve the creditor for a period of time sufficient to satisfy the debt. The institution, despite its inequities, worked fairly satisfactorily. Debtors often petitioned the court to sell them and advertised themselves in the press to the same purpose. In the eighteenth century, with the development of an indigent poor element in colonial society, the judgment debtor became a common character.

The times and conditions under which servants were employed and lived were severe. Typical indentures—those imported from Europe—generally reached an American port in miserable condition, undernourished and disease-weakened by the voyage across the Atlantic. Upon arrival their outward appearance was refurbished and they were marched ashore where their terms of service were promptly auctioned to the highest bidder. Once sold, the indentured servant found himself bound to labor for a master at whatever tasks appointed for the period of time stipulated in his contract, if he had brought one with him, or according to the “custom of the country” if no written indenture had been made. The term of service varied from as little as one year to seven years or more. The bulk of the contracts averaged about four years. Compensation for the indentured servant consisted of food, clothing, and shelter during the term of servitude.

The colonies for the most part regarded and treated a servant, or more correctly his term of service, as private property. A servant was bought and sold at will and could be leased or hired out with almost no restrictions. He was likewise regarded as the property of a deceased person’s estate to be passed on by will, distributed by an administrator, or attached to satisfy debts.

The law gave masters authority to administer corporal punishment as a corrective to a servant for neglect of duty, abusive conduct, or general insubordination, which in practice meant refusal to work in accordance with the master’s direction or wishes. It provided for and permitted masters to extend the term of a servant who took French leave for a few days’ dissipation or who attempted to run away from his contract. The law—particularly in the southern colonies—provided severe penalties for servants who in combination refused to work or who deserted in a group. Whipping, branding, and laboring in irons were imposed upon the comparatively mild conspiracy of refusing to work; imprisonment and hanging were common punishments for the greater crime of desertion.

The disciplinary measures imposed upon the indentured servant indicate that his lot was not a happy one. Yet no accurate generalization can be made. An analysis of court records shows that cruelty and oppression of servants was not typical of New England or New York, where servants were but a small part of the population and were more frequently artisans than field hands. South of the Hudson the lot of the servant was worse. In Pennsylvania maltreatment was common. In the “tobacco colonies,” where many of the masters led drunken and dissolute lives, treatment was often brutal and sadistic.

But the temper of a master was not the only cause of misery. Those who came to America as servants were accustomed to obedience and suffering. They were not, however, accustomed to the American climate or the American working conditions. In the South the heat of the sun was fearful and exacted a heavy toll of migrants both in illness and in death until experience taught the colonists that rest during the heat of the day, on Saturday afternoon, and upon the Sabbath was more profitable. Work in the field—the lot of most servants—was more exhausting than in Europe because it included the task of preparing new land for planting. Trees had to be felled, trimmed, and dragged away; brush had to be cleared, stumps removed, and the soil turned for the first time in the history of the earth without good tools and sometimes even without the help of animals. It was a back-breaking task; even seasoned European farmers suffered under the load.

While the colonies for the most part treated the indentured servant as property, they also recognized him as a human being, different only because his mobility, his freedom of occupational choice, and certain liberties were curbed for a term of years; his children did not inherit his condition. In all other respects his rights remained unimpaired.

The factor which confirmed the servant’s status as a person was his right to a day in court. In general his appearance there revolved around enforcement of the conditions of his contract against his master. He came to pray for relief on grounds of undue discipline or insufficient food and clothing, and to sue for his freedom when his term ended. On the whole the courts were sympathetic to his plight, New England judges were especially eager to curb physical maltreatment of servants, even occasionally calling in the church to aid them. New York courts had a record unsurpassed in according relief to servants abused by their masters; in every single case of maltreatment brought before the judicial authorities of that colony before 1774 the servant was given his freedom. New Jersey and Pennsylvania courts could also boast fine records. Though they seldom discharged an abused servant, they often granted relief by transferring the servant to another employer or by admonishing the master to better performance on pain of future loss of his servant. The records of the southern colonies, however, were marred by palpable injustices. The laws of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas specifically provided against abusive or negligent treatment, but it was no easy task to convict a master of wrongdoing in the South where the bench was invariably occupied by members of the master class and where there was a tendency to look upon servants as brute beasts. Nevertheless the courts granted redress, usually admonition to the master, in about two-thirds of the cases brought to their attention.

In addition to the right of redress in court the servants also had limited property rights. A servant who brought goods to the colonies had absolute right of property in them and full right of disposal. He had the right to receive gifts, bequests, and inheritances, and to lend money. He had the right to engage in trade and to work for himself, with his master’s permission. A term of servitude in the colonies, miserable as it was on occasion, was not wasted time. It seasoned the servant to colonial climate, accustomed him to new modes of living and working, and taught him the best methods of farming and the colonial system of marketing. It gave him acquaintances which might become useful at the end of his term; if he was an artisan his skills became known and he might acquire customers in advance for the days of his freedom. Once freed of his contractual obligations the former servant was readily accepted as a free man with the same opportunities as others. Scarcity of labor meant that he could readily acquire independence.

How many servants took advantage of their opportunities is unknown. In the southern colonies it appears that only about one in ten survived his seasoning, worked out his time, took up land, and became prosperous; probably a like number joined the ranks of the artisans, living comfortably without owning any land. The remainder died by the way, or returned to England, or became “poor whites” owning a little land, living as tenants, or earning a precarious living as hired farm labor. Outside the South the record of success was better. The indentured class of the North, more carefully culled and more liberally treated, had a much better chance to achieve an average standard of living. Taking the element in its entirety, its success in later days was probably not too far behind the record established by those who came to the colonies as free men.

Important as the institution of indentured servitude was to the colonies, it had little influence upon the condition of other forms of colonial labor and no influence upon the history of American labor as a whole. Far more significant were the condition and development of free and seagoing labor. The free-labor supply of the colonies was recruited from three sources: immigrants who paid their own way and brought with them their tools and skills, indentured servants who became free to use their skills after their term of bondage had ended, and the children of these groups, who learned their trades in America.

The condition of free labor rested upon two factors: the condition of the economy and the Tudor Industrial Code. In Britain the Code sought to assure a profit to the agricultural or industrial proprietor by guaranteeing him an adequate low-wage labor supply and, at the same time, to safeguard the worker against undue and unrestrained exploitation. The principles of the code were extensive:

1. With few exceptions it provided for the compulsory labor of all able-bodied persons;

2. To protect the workingman and to check unemployment, it restrained wrongful dismissal of employees;

3. It provided for the fixing of maximum wages by justices of the peace “according to the plenty or scarcity of the times”;

4. It declared illegal any combination of workmen to secure higher wages;

5. It provided that no workman was to depart before the end of his agreed term, and then he was required to produce letters testimonial to show that he was free to hire himself out;

6. To assure an adequate supply of skilled workmen and good quality in the manufactured product it set a term of apprenticeship of seven years; eighteenth century amendments to the code further attempted to maintain the skilled labor supply by restricting the emigration of artisans.

Every American colony made some attempt to apply the principles of the Tudor Industrial Code in whole or in part in both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. While the application was neither complete nor entirely successful in practice, it made a recognizable impression upon the condition of labor.

All colonies adopted the principle of compulsory labor. As pioneer societies, short on manpower, they resented idleness and denounced it as the parent of all vices. The earliest laws punished idleness by whipping or fines; eighteenth century enactments provided for forced labor or commitment to the workhouse and for deportation of newly arrived unemployed individuals to the colony from which they came. All colonies, moreover, required that men between the ages of sixteen and sixty work at certain times during the year o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• PART ONE The Colonial and Revolutionary Era
• PART TWO The Transitional Era
• PART THREE The Modern Era
• Bibliography
• Index