American Labor (History of American Civilization)

Henry Pelling

"This brief volume surveys the history of organized labor in America with a concise clarity that comes from a perceptive knowledge of the subject. Mr. Pelling, an English scholar in the fields of labor economics and politics, has limited himself to basic developments and broad interpretations, but he has slighted nothing of historic value. Thus in his description of labor in colonial times he points out that conditions in seventeenth-century America had severely restricted even the free laborer, since he had to function under English common and statute law-laws and practices "based on the needs of a hierarchical society and mercantilistic economy." From that time to the present, Pelling makes clear, the American worker had to accept the political and economic limitations of his minority status, first in a predominantly agricultural society and now in an economy in which the...

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