Citizen Worker
The Experience of Workers in the United States with Democracy and the Free Market during the Nineteenth Century

Discusses the relationship between workers and the government by focusing not on the legal regulation of unions and strikes, but on popular struggles for citizenship rights.

David Montgomery (Author)

9780521483803, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 31 March 1995

204 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.297 kg

"...it is a seedbed for the eventual flowering of people's culture." Ray B. Browne, Journal of American Culture

This book discusses the relationship between workers and the government by focusing not on the legal regulation of unions and strikes, but on popular struggles for citizenship rights. This discussion includes the role of democracy in the dismantling of indentured servitude, judicial decisions shaping the rights and obligations of the development of vagrancy law and of municipal police forces. The book also examines the role of the Democratic, Republican, and Know Nothing parties in shaping popular political culture and in mobilising and channeling the political activity of white and black workers.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I. Wage-Labor, Bondage and Citizenship: 1. The Right to Quit
2. Free Labor in the Shadow of Slavery
3. Quitting and Getting Paid
4. Citizenship and the Terms of Employment
Part II. Policing People for the Free Market: 5. The Definition and Prosecution of Crime
6. The Privatization of Poor Relief
7. The Crime of Idleness
8. Arms and the Man
9. Police Powers and Workers' Homes
Part III. Political Parties: 10. Black Workers and Republicans in the South
11. Industrial Workers and Party Politics
12. Workers and Tammany Hall
13. Labor Reform and Electoral Politics
14. Citizenship and the Unseen Hand
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], History of the Americas [HBJK]