Free and Unfree Labor Lecture 1 Antebellum Slavery.

Free and Unfree Labor

Lecture 1

Antebellum Slavery

Administrative

• Reading for next class

• Newman Internship reminder

• Essay Reminder

• Return quizzes at end of class

Review

• Factory Work and the Challenges it provided to both workers and employers

• Issues of most concern to workers

• Employer responses in the antebellum period and their similarity to employer responses today

Today

I. Slavery as a system of labor extraction

II. Extent of slavery

III. Slavery as an employment relationship

IV. Genovese

V. Fogel and Engermann

I- Slavery as a Labor Extraction System

• People have analyzed slavery from a variety of perspectives

• For our purposes, we’ll view it primarily as a system to extract labor from slaves– Masters initiated slavery as a labor system– It was a way to earn income from the work of

others

Slavery as a Human Resource Management System

• It is a system of rule-making to govern the relationships between managers and the managed – system of recruiting, selecting, training, motivating and compensating workers

• It differs from others in two basic ways• Differences

– Considerably more extreme in terms of authority granted to employers

– Employer authority extends beyond work

II- Extent of Slavery

• 1790 Virginia

• About 4 million slaves by 1860

• Pattern of Employment

Slave Tasks - Male

• Large majority served as field hands

• Others served in variety of trades and occupations

Occupations slaves followed

• Engineers

• Coopers

• Blacksmiths

• Stonemasons

• Mechanics

• Weavers

• Worked in factories and on railroads

Slave Tasks - female

• In colonial period large majority of females worked as field hands

• After 1800 that gradually decreased although a majority always remained field hands

• Other tasks included household and domestic work, spinning, and tending animals

III- Slavery as an employment relationship

• Role of Masters

• Small farms– Most farms small enough that masters worked

alongside slaves– Most slave owners had fewer than 20 slaves

Role of Masters - Plantations

• Most slaves on plantations large enough that master didn’t work with them

• So relationship more typically employer-employee than fellow worker

• Discretion of master to set work– Gang system– Task System

Working Conditions

• Commonly “sun up to sun down” but could be longer

• Work often stopped early on Saturdays and not normal to work on Sundays although not unheard of

• Slaves might be expected to do much of their own work at these times, e.g. tending their own garden plots

Working Conditions

• Master determined size of work force

• Master determined techniques of motivation

• Techniques of Motivation?

Role of slaves in the employment system

• No formal role in determination of rules

• Sometimes considerable informal role

• Even in such an extreme system, at some level the consent of the employees is required

Role of slaves

• Testimony of overseers and masters• Masters clearly feared slave resistance

and especially violent resistance• Examples

– 1800 1000 armed slaves marched on Richmond

– 1811 400 rebellious slaves in Louisiana subdued by troops

– 1831 Nat Turner’s rebellion

Slave Resistance

• Extensive evidence of slave resistance

• Shows clearly the lack of truth behind such assertions as that slaves didn’t desire freedom, slaves were not intelligent or that slaves were lazy

• Shows extent that whites would go to justify a system that could not be justified

IV. Genovese

• Genovese – Were slaves lazy or hard working?

• What was his evidence?

V- Time on the Cross – Fogel and Engerman

• Major work on the history and economics of American slavery

• Methodology largely statistical

• Focused on three hypotheses, two of which were novel

Fogel and Engerman Hypotheses

1) Consumption patterns of slaves compared favorably to those of northern white workers

2) Economic rationality prevented slavery from being a system of extreme and unremitting cruelty

3) Slave plantations were more efficient than northern family farms because slaves were so industrious

Next Time

• First unions and early unionism

• Attitude of government toward early unions

• Race, Sex and the Working Class

Free and Unfree Labor

Lecture 2

Unions, Unionism and Government

Administrative

• Reading for next time

• Essay Reminder

Review

• Slavery as a system of Labor Extraction• The vast extent of slavery in the antebellum

United States• Slaves had no formal control over their work

lives but occasionally significant informal control

• Regular resistance to abusive work conditions

• Evidence of Genovese on diligence of slaves• Fogel and Engerman Hypotheses

Today

I. The First Unions

II. Early Unions – Membership and Policies

III. Government and the unions

IV. Race, sex and the working class

I- The First Unions

• What is a labor union?

• “A continuous association of wage earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their working lives”

The First Unionists

• What kinds of workers formed the earliest unions in the United States?

• Were they factory workers?

• Were they low-skilled or highly skilled workers?

• Why were they the ones to form the early unions?

First Unions

• Journeymen Cordwainers of Philadelphia 1792

• What were cordwainers?

• Journeymen Printers of New York 1795

• Why might printers be among the first to unionize?

Early Unions

• After 1800, widespread organization of skilled workers

• Printers, shoemakers, tailors, carpenters, cabinet‑makers, shipwrights, coopers, weavers, building trades, millwrights, stonecutters, and hatters

• All focused on economic action, not mutual benefits

• Organized single skilled occupation

Union Behavior

• Economic action v. mutual benefits

• Mutual benefits – Older model preceding the earliest unions– Protected members from death and in some

cases illness or unemployment

• Economic action– Focused on dealing with employers– Withdrew labor when they felt it necessary

Union Rules

• Typically proceedings and membership kept secret

• Oath to abide by agreed wage scale

• Promise to assist fellow members to gain employment ahead of any others

Techniques

• Collective Bargaining – more emphasis on closed shop than at any time since

• Individuals or committees would inspect workplaces (often in secret) for compliance with union rules

• Turnouts, often fought out largely in newspapers

II- Early Unions - Membership

• Make up of these early unions generally entirely white and male

• Women and African-Americans

• Even various immigrant groups often excluded, e.g. the Irish

Early Unions

• Early unions almost entirely based around a single occupation, usually a craft

• Non-craft workers

• Frequent strikes

Unions and the Business Cycle

• Did unions do better in prosperity or depression?

• Why?

1850s

• Closing of the Frontier – Impact on Workers?

• At the same time, the first unions of common laborers emerged

Attempts at Labor Unity

• Long history of attempts to bring workers and their various unions together

• First in Philadelphia in 1827, Mechanics Union of Trade Associations

• By the 1830s many cities had “city central trade councils”

Attempts at National Organization

• National Trades Union

• 1834-1837

• President was a printer, Ely Moore

10 Hour Day

• Most abiding goal

• By 1840 most skilled trade workers in major Eastern cities had it. Most factory workers did not

• State legislatures flooded with petitions for it and a few granted it

• Legislatures dominated by business people so not sympathetic

III- The Law of Criminal Conspiracy

• Definition of conspiracy

• Two or more persons may not band together to prejudice the rights of others

• Based on English Common Law

Philadelphia Cordwainers Case – 1806

Accusations against the workers

• Conspiring to achieve artificially high wages by threats

• Conspiring not to work for masters who didn't pay the rates

• Conspiring to prevent others from working for masters who didn't pay the rates

Prosecutor

"Is there any man who can calculate (if this is to be tolerated) at what price he may safely contract to deliver articles for which he may receive orders, if he is to be regulated by the journeymen in an arbitrary jump from one price to another?"

Verdict

• Jury

• Judge – instructions to jury– Can interpret this as attempt to benefit

members or to injure nonmembers – Law condemns both

• Unions illegal on their face

Commonwealth v. Hunt 1842

• Further developments in the law of criminal conspiracy as applied to unions

• Facts– Boston Journeymen Bootmakers organized a

strike – Employer had hired a non-unionist– Object was to force employer to cease

violating the closed shop

Verdict

• Object of the union was to get all members of the occupation to join so as to increase the organization's power

• Means chosen clearly legal and no showing that power, once achieved, would be used for illegal ends

• Hence, since neither means nor ends illegal, organization not illegal

Impact on Employers

• Looked elsewhere to justify help from government

• Property Doctrine– Any interference with their use of their

property should be illegal– Workers have no property rights in their jobs– Military and police frequently were available to

help protect employers’ property rights

Other Employer Tools

• Spies

• Firing unionists

• Blacklists

• Yellow Dog Contracts

• Control of publicity (e.g. association of unions and strikes with foreign ideologies)

IV- Race, Sex and the Working Class

• How did white workers react to African-American workers among them?

• How did African-Americans respond to this reaction?

• How did male workers react to women in the labor force?

• How did women respond to this?

Next Time

Begin unit on labor and employment in the Civil War and Reconstruction periods