Citizen worker the experience of free workers in the united states and the free market during the nineteenth century The Experience of Workers in the United States with Democracy and the Free Market during the Nineteenth Century

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.