Plantation Goods

Seth Rockman

University of Chicago Press

Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore (Studies in Early American Economy and Society from the Library Company of Philadelphia)

Cowinner, 2010 Merle Curti Award, Organization of American Historians
Winner, 2010 Philip Taft Labor History Book Award, ILR School at Cornell University and the Labor and Working-Class History Association
Winner, 2010 H. L. Mitchell Award, Southern Historical Association
Enslaved mariners, white seamstresses, Irish dockhands, free black domestic servants, and native-born street sweepers all navigated the low-end labor market in post-Revolutionary Baltimore. Seth Rockman considers this diverse workforce, exploring how race, sex, nativity, and legal status determined the economic opportunities and vulnerabilities of working families in the early republic.
In the era of Frederick Douglass, Baltimore's distinctive economy featured many slaves who earned wages and white workers who performed backbreaking labor. By focusing his study on this boomtown, Rockman reassesses the roles of race and region and rewrites the history of class and capitalism in the United States during this time. 
Rockman describes the material experiences of low-wage workers―how they found work, translated labor into food, fuel, and rent, and navigated underground economies and social welfare systems. He also explores what happened if they failed to find work or lost their jobs. Rockman argues that the American working class emerged from the everyday struggles of these low-wage workers. Their labor was indispensable to the early republic’s market revolution, and it was central to the transformation of the United States into the wealthiest society in the Western world. 
Rockman’s research includes construction site payrolls, employment advertisements, almshouse records, court petitions, and the nation’s first "living wage" campaign. These rich accounts of day laborers and domestic servants illuminate the history of early republic capitalism and its consequences for working families.

History

Americas

The Johns Hopkins University Press

Scraping By Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore

JHU Press

In the decades following the American Revolution, elected officials, moral crusaders, and relief administrators scrutinized the public welfare programs that assisted thousands of impoverished people. Seth Rockman uses documents ranging from sermons to almshouse admission rolls to show how reformers investigated the causes of poverty and pursued solutions that ranged from massive institutionalization of the poor to the total abolition of public charity—issues that are remarkably similar to the welfare debates of today. Also included are headnotes to the documents, questions for consideration, an annotated chronology, suggestions for further reading, and an index.
 Table of Contents:
 Part I: Introduction: Poverty "in a Land Flowing with Milk and Honey"
 Poor Relief in Early America / The Growing Problem of Poverty and Its Victims / Religious Reform and Moral Benevolence / Public Responsibility for the Poor / Structural Solutions for Poverty / The Legacy of Welfare Reform / A Note about the Text
 Part II: The Documents
 Elite Perceptions of Poverty as a Moral and Social Crisis
1. The Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of Public Economy, 1817
2. The New York Society for the Prevention of Pauperism, 1818
3. On Doing Good to the Poor, 1818 (Heman Humphrey)
4. Of Intellectually and Morally Neglected Children, c. 1828 (Joseph Tuckerman)
Private Benevolence and Moral Cures for Poverty
5. The Friendly Society of St. Thomas's African Church, 1797
6. The Providence Female Society for the Relief of Indigent Women and Children, 1801
7. The Female Humane Association Charity School, 1803
8. Preacher to the Poor in New York, 1811 (Ezra Stiles Ely)
9. The Boston Society for the Moral and Religious Instruction of the Poor, 1819
10. Subjects of the New York House of Refuge, 1825 1830
11. Letter to Graduates of the House of Refuge, 1829
12. Subjects of the New York Colored Orphan Asylum, 1837 1838
Public Institutions
13. Rules for the Government of the New York Almshouse, 1801
14. Rules and Regulations of the Salem Almshouse, 1816
15. The Boston House of Industry, 1821
16. Inmates of the Baltimore Almshouse, June 1825
17. Report of the Trustees of the Baltimore Almshouse, 1827
18. Philadelphia Board of Guardians of the Poor, 1827
Structural Explanations and Cures for Poverty
19. Petition of New Jersey Working Widows to the U.S. Senate, 1816
20. The Working People of New Castle County, Delaware, 1829
21. Rights of Man to Property, 1829 (Thomas Skidmore)
22. Lecture on Existing Evils and Their Remedy, 1829 (Frances Wright)
23. Address to the Wealthy of the Land, 1831 (Mathew Carey)
24. The Manayunk Working People's Committee, 1833
25. On Wage Slavery, 1836 (Philadelphia National Laborer)
 Appendixes: A Chronology of Welfare Reform (1788 1840) / Questions for Consideration / Selected Bibliography

Welfare Reform in the Early Republic: A Brief History with Documents

Waveland Press. Inc.

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