Reinventing Free Labor
Padrones and Immigrant Workers in the North American West, 1880–1930

This 2000 study is of the history of the padrone, a mafia-like immigrant boss who allegedly enslaved his compatriots.

Gunther Peck (Author)

9780521641609, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 29 May 2000

332 pages, 32 b/w illus. 11 maps 20 tables
23.4 x 15.6 x 1.9 cm, 0.64 kg

'Gunther Peck reworks familiar ideas about free labor and reconceives the historical spaces in which they have operated. His analysis is a wonderful combination of engagement with both the structural constraints of capitalism at a given moment and the ways in which seemingly powerless workers contest, challenge and sometimes change the economic and social limits that they face and the ideologies intended to confine them.' Richard White, Stanford University

One of the most infamous villains in North America during the Progressive Era was the padrone, a mafia-like immigrant boss who allegedly enslaved his compatriots and kept them uncivilized, unmanly, and unfree. In this history of the padrone, first published in 2000, Gunther Peck analyzes the figure's deep cultural resonance by examining the lives of three padrones and the workers they imported to North America. He argues that the padrones were not primitive men but rather thoroughly modern entrepreneurs who used corporations, the labour contract, and the right to quit to create far-flung coercive networks. Drawing on Greek, Spanish, and Italian language sources, Peck analyzes how immigrant workers emancipated themselves using the tools of padrone power to their own advantage.

List of illustrations and tables
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I. The World Padrones Made: 1. Free land and unfree labor
2. Padrones and corporations
3. Defenders of contract
Part II. Reinventing Free Labor: 4. Manhood mobilized
5. Mobilizing community
6. Spaces of freedom
Epilogue: the vanishing padrone
Appendices
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], History of the Americas [HBJK]