Common Labour: Workers and the Digging of North American Canals 1780-1860 Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Common Labour: Workers and the Digging of North American Canals 1780-1860 Book

The history of canal workers traces another strand of the labour story, one where the absence of skills bred powerlessness that made common labour's engagement with capital markedly unequal.Read More

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  • Product Description

    This study of canal construction workers between 1780-1860 challenges labor history's focus on skilled craftsmen. Canalers were unskilled workers, often members of despised social groups such as Irish immigrants and African-American slaves. They worked twelve or more hours a day in all weather, exposed to diseases and job-related risks, going home at night to rude shanty towns. Their harsh lifestyles bred conflict that undercut worker unity but promoted battles with employers over workplace issues, and the state was increasingly drawn in to enforce industrial production. Lacking the power that skill brought, canalers had little control over their working conditions. Their experiences represent a different strand of the labor story.

  • 0521102650
  • 9780521102650
  • Peter Way
  • 12 March 2009
  • Cambridge University Press
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 328
  • Reissue
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