Richard B. Morris, Government and Labor in Early America, 1946.

COMPARATIVE LABOR CONDITIONS

The scarcity and high cost of labor served as a brake upon the rapid expansion of colonial production, but by the same token assured the workman of a higher standard of living than was obtainable by a person of similar employment in England or on the Continent. Describing conditions in Virginia, Peter Arundle reported early in 1622: "Yea I say that any laborious honest man may in a shorte time become ritche in this Country."1 Poverty was the exception rather than the rule, especially in the seventeenth century. Governor Leete of Connecticut reported to the Committee for Trade and Plantations in 1680: "There is seldom any want relief; because labor is deare, vis., 2s., and sometimes 2s. 6d. a day for a day labourer, and provision cheap."2 Maryland reported in 1699 that the "Province wants workmen, workmen want not work; here are no beggars, and they that are superannuated are reasonably well provided for by the country."3 That enthusiastic promoter of immigration, Gabriel Thomas, exhorted the "Poor Labouring Men, Women, and Children in England" that in Pennsylvania there were "no Beggars to be seen (it is a Shame and Disgrace to the State that there are so many in England) nor indeed have any here the least Occasion or Temptation to take up that Scandalous Lazy Life."4 John Bolzius, writing in 1743 of pioneer days in Georgia, gave much the same picture. "All industrious people," he stated, "live more comfortably here than in their native country, and beg in their letters frequently that their relatives might follow them to this colony."5

The scarcity of labor, particularly of skilled workers, created a labor market which favored the laborer rather than the employer. The colonial workman commanded real wages which exceeded by from 30 to 100 per cent the wages of a contemporary English workman. All authorities agreed on the relatively high wages prevailing in the colonies. John Winthrop records the answer made by a servant to a master who had been obliged to sell a pair of oxen to meet his wages. The master told the servant that he saw no prospect of being able to continue to pay him. "Sell more cattle," said the workman. "What shall I do when they are gone?" "You can serve me and get them back," was the reply.6 John Winter wrote from Maine in 1639 that if the current high rate of wages continued, "the servants wil be masters and the masters servants."7

One discouraged New Englander wrote in 1660 that "help is scarce and hard to gett, difficult to please, uncertaine, etc." Samuel Sewall sought to solve his household servant problem by paying court to a likely prospect, and noted in his diary that it was "hard to find a good one" even in the year 1687.8 "Poor People," Gabriel Thomas wrote of Pennsylvania workmen, "can here get three times the wages for their Labour they can in England." High labor costs to some extent impaired the ability of colonial producers to compete with English manufacturers and rendered competition with continental producers in some fields virtually hopeless without subsidies. It was reported in 1694 that "Labour costs but one sixth of the price (in Sweden and Denmark) as it does in New England," and William Byrd 2d abandoned plans for the introduction of hemp. "Labour being much dearer than in Muscovy, as well as Freight, we can make no Earnings of it," he wrote in 1737.9

Those were the days when help-wanted advertisements vastly outnumbered notices inserted by artisans seeking employment. The cry, "help is not to be had at any rate,"10 was not unusual. Journeymen had to be offered "good," "generous," or "great" wages and "constant employ."11

After the Revolution American workmen continued to enjoy considerably higher wages than the workers of Great Britain.12 While Hamilton in his Report on the Subject of Manufactures indicated that in certain heavily populated areas of the country the labor shortage appeared to be disappearing, he nevertheless reassured business that "undertakers of manufactures in this country can, at this time, afford to pay higher wages to the workmen they may employ, than are paid to similar workmen in Europe."13

However, all was not beer and skittles in the life of a colonial workman. "In this Country is no living without hard labour," a pioneer labor overseer complained.14 Too often were indentured servants treated in a degrading manner and denied even a subsistence livelihood.15 In the eighteenth century the number of indigent persons increased considerably, particularly in the seaport towns, where poor immigrants collected and employment was dependent to a considerable degree upon the vagaries of the import trade. Currency depreciation and cyclical factors, becoming more marked as the Revolution drew near, created some degree of working-class insecurity.18

Much spade work will have to be done before we can ascertain the prevailing scale of wages in the various trades in colonial America. Available compilations are unsystematic and lacking in comprehensiveness, nor do they take into account varying living costs in diverse areas and the highly complex colonial currency. Adequate consideration has not as yet been given to the role of subsistence farming in the colonies in supplementing the income of wage earners. The decline of this supplementary income in eighteenth-century England owing to the effects of the enclosures and agricultural capitalism contributed materially to weakening the economic position of the English working class.17

The assumption that high wages, by attracting many immigrants, would in the long run glut the labor market and thus bring down the wage rate is contrary to the facts. In the main, the ultimate economic objective of colonial workmen was security through agriculture rather than industry. As this was the age of the enclosures when the yeoman was being displaced from his land in Britain, the attitude of the immigrant was quite understandable.18 As soon as a workman had accumulated a small amount of money he could, and in many cases did, take up a tract of land and settle on it as a farmer. This was the paradox of the high wage scale, for, as the author of American Husbandry pointed out, "nothing but a high price will induce men to labour at all, and at the same time it presently puts a conclusion to it by so soon enabling them to take a piece of waste land."19 A high colonial official reported to the Board of Trade in 1767:

the genius of the People in a Country where every one can have Land to work upon leads them so naturally into Agriculture, that it prevails over every other occupation. There can be no stronger Instances of this, than in the servants Imported from Europe of different Trades; as soon as the Time stipulated in their Indentures is expired, they immediately quit their Masters, and get a small tract of Land, in settling which for the first three or four years they lead miserable lives, and in the most abject Poverty; but all this is patiently borne and submitted to with the greatest chearfulness, the Satisfaction of being Land holders smooths every difficulty, and makes them prefer this manner of living to that comfortable subsistence which they could procure for themselves and their families by working at the Trades in which they were brought up.

The Master of a Glass-house; which was set up here a few years ago, now a Bankrupt, assured me that his ruin was owing to no other cause than being deserted in this manner by his servants, which he had Imported at a great expence; and that many others had suffered and been reduced as he was, by the same kind of Misfortune.20

This favored position of agriculture was maintained long after the Revolution. Talleyrand, an acute observer of economic conditions in America in the last decade of the century, observed that as long as farming "calls to it the offspring of large families it will obtain preference over industrial labor. It requires less assiduity, it promises greater independence, it offers to the imagination at least a more advantageous prospect, it has in its favor priority of habits."21 Thus, in a great many cases the opportunity of acquiring good land in freehold tenure rather than the prospects of higher wages attracted immigrants. This was all to the good in the opinion of men like Jefferson, by whom agriculture was not only considered a more profitable occupation than manufacturing, but one offering a sounder prospect upon which to build a social and political order. "Let our workshops remain in Europe," he once declared.22

On the other hand, as very little capital was required for the handicraft trades when they merely served their local communities, journeymen did not take long to accumulate adequate funds, and, in turn, in preference to husbandry, might in some cases choose to open up shops for themselves. There were constant opportunities for the artisan-entrepreneur in the expanding economy of the colonial and Revolutionary periods.

The fluid character of the colonial labor system offers a splendid field for research in which some of the techniques of the genealogist can be put to good use by the social historian. How many convict servants settled down and became substantial citizens? We know of only a few, notably Andrew Lamb, the transported convict, who settled in Philadelphia and acquired a reputation as an instrument-maker and teacher of mathematics, surveying, and navigation. His son, John, was a general in the Continental army. How many indentured servants actually took up land and settled down to husbandry at the expiration of their terms? Abbot Emerson Smith suggests that few did in seventeenth-century Maryland, perhaps 8 per cent was "a fair estimate of the proportion of indentured servants who achieved a reasonably stable position in the colonies."23 More studies remain to be made in this field if we are to be able to evaluate the economic and social role of the common man, the "village Hampden" and the "mute inglorious Milton."

A traditional theme of English and American ballads is that of the poor farmhand who marries the farmer's daughter and the apprentice boy who falls in love with his young mistress.24 The story was given a reverse twist in the cases of Benjamin Franklin's maternal grandmother, Mary Morrils, whom Peter Folger had bought as an indentured servant for £20 and afterward married, and of Eleanor Stevenson, a runaway servant girl of Sir Edmund Plowden, who married William Branthwait, a relative of Lord Baltimore, and Deputy-Governor of Maryland.25 How many journeymen actually set up in trades for themselves? Roger Sherman, apprenticed as a shoemaker, who worked at the trade until he was twenty-two, then turned to law and became both a Signer and a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, is an outstanding case. The meteoric career of Benjamin Franklin, the printer's apprentice, was certainly extraordinary and not typical of the times, nor was that of another Signer, the lawyer, George Walton, of Georgia, who had been apprenticed to a carpenter upon being left an orphan and was to a great extent a self-made man. Oliver Evans started his brilliant career as inventor and engineer by serving an apprenticeship to a wheelwright and John Fitch, steamboat inventor, was apprenticed to two different clockmakers before setting up his own brass foundry.26

However, we can safely conclude that the high wages commanded by colonial workmen, the relative independence enjoyed by them, and the wide recognition of the importance of labor accounted in large part for the greater esteem accorded workmen, particularly skilled craftsmen, in the colonies than in the mother country.27 Hence, class attitudes were not as sharply accentuated as in contemporary England, where men of property thought of the laborers as a composite class -- "the lower orders" and "the meaner sort," who, according to eighteenth-century mercantilists, were more in need of discipline than employment. In certain occupations, such as coal mining, they were widely regarded as not only uncouth, but also degraded.28 A number of observers asserted that these sharpened class differences were leading to mounting industrial clashes in Britain. George Blewitt complained of "idle and rioting Vermin,"29 and Daniel Defoe castigated the "Lab'ring Poor" for being "saucy, mutinous, and beggarly," in spite of "double pay."30 Describing labor conditions in the west of England in 1757, Josiah Tucker observed that the increase in the number of workmen in shops and factories was leading to a rise in union activity and rioting "upon every little Occasion."

The master -- however well-disposed in himself, is naturally tempted by his Situation to be proud and over-bearing, to consider his People as the Scum of the Earth, whom he has a Right to squeeze whenever he can; because they ought to be kept low, and not to rise up in Competition with their Superiors. The Journeymen on the contrary, are equally tempted by their Situation, to envy the high Station, and superior Fortunes of their Masters; and to envy them the more, in Proportion as they find themselves deprived of the Hopes of advancing themselves to the same Degree by any Stretch of Industry, or superior Skill.31
Mob activity and rioting in Great Britain became more marked on the eve of the American Revolution in no small part as a result of the unusual number of bad crops between 1756 and 1773.32

Despite the social stratifications that pervaded almost all areas of colonial settlement, the bulk of the settlers in this country had a greater respect for the dignity of hard labor,33 and the working class in turn was possessed of a greater spirit of independence. From early settlement they had participated in town government in New England and on Long Island. This led Governor Nicolls in 1666 to observe that "Democracy hath taken so deepe a Roote in these parts, that the very name of Justice of the Peace is an abomination!" The American Board of Customs Commissioners saw reason for alarm in reporting in 1768 that these town meetings were being diverted to "political purposes." "At these meetings, the lowest Mechanicks discuss upon the most important points of government, with the utmost freedom." English officialdom had little sympathy with the strivings of the working class in the colonies for political influence. It was fitting, one official observed, that "the lives and fortunes" of the settlers should be entrusted to persons "who have the best abilitys and the best estates."35 By the eve of the Revolution "democracy" and mob rule were considered one and the same thing by British officials.36 Men of wealth in America shared these views;37 but in the era of the American Revolution it became increasingly fashionable to acclaim the "virtuous" mechanics and to cloak them with respectability, even though social distinctions between "gentle" and "simple" were by no means obliterated. In the very same year in which one English writer stated that it was essential to "a flourishing state" that there be at the base of the social pyramid "a large and solid basis of the lower classes of mankind,"38 a Yankee almanac editor urged his countrymen "to prevent the execution of that detestable maxim of European policy amongst us, viz: That the common people, who are three quarters of the world, must be kept in ignorance, that they may be slaves to the other quarter who live in magnificence." A high standard of living would be the reward of the masses if trade and commerce, merchants and artificers were encouraged, and "foreign luxury, effeminacy, immorality, and idleness" banished. "He that will not work neither shall he eat."89 The notable role of the town mechanics in developing a revolutionary spirit in the colonies is now fully recognized, but it also must be born in mind that this labor group, though generally unenfranchised, supported the ratification of the Federal Constitution while at the same time insisting upon a bill of rights.40

Democracy, as we understand the term today, was not by any means achieved with the Revolution,41 but the process of freeing the individual from restraints that were external in origin was accelerated, and mercantilism was one of the principal casualties.42 At the same time the relation between the government and popular associations organized both for economic and political ends was becoming increasingly significant. The history of labor in Great Britain and the United States was to pursue a number of parallel courses. Clues to the points of departure are found in the greater economic and social democracy which prevailed in America in the Revolutionary and early Federal periods43 and in the continually expanding economy on this side of the Atlantic. With the rise of trade unionism these differences became even more accentuated.44


Notes

1 Va. Co. Rec., III, 589.

2 Conn. Pub. Rec., III, 300.

3 CSPA, 1699, No. 581, p. 320. See also ibid., No. 317, p. 176. Answer to the queries of the Board of Trade, 1697: "The scarcity of Artificers and labourers and their high wages is the chiefe and onely difficulty in procuring those things of which there is an inexhaustible quantity." Md. Arch., XIX, 540 (1697). Cf. also Hugh Jones, Present State of Virginia (Sabin's reprint, New York, 1865), pp. 53, 54.

4 Myers, Narr. of Pa., pp. 332, 333.

5 Ga. Col. Rec., XXIV, 41 (1743).

6 John Winthrop, History of New England from 1630 to 1649 (cited as Journal), ed. J. Savage (2 vols., Boston, 1853), II, 220. Servants were preferred to cash. See Essex, III, 371 (1666).

7 "Trelawny Papers," Me. Hist. Soc, Coll., Ill, 164, 200.

8 Cotton Mather, reporting in his diary on the scarcity of household servants, declared, with characteristic piety: "I resolve, if God bless me with Good Servants, I will serve Him with more Fidelity and activity." "Diary of Cotton Mather, 1681-1708," Mass. Hist. Soc., Coll., 7th ser., I, 554 (1706). Cf. also Winthrop Papers, IV (Mass. Hist. Soc, 1944), 139 (1639), 273 (1640).

9 See, e.g., Va. Co. Rec., III, 457; Essex, V, 50, 51 (1672); Conn. Pub. Rec., 1678-89, p. 293 (1680); CSPA, 1693-96, No. 967, p. 263 (1694), 1696-97, No. 108, p. 54 (1696), No. 783, p. 392 (1697), 1697-98, No. 25, pp. 9, 10 (1697), 1699, No. 769, p. 428, 1711-12, No. 454, pp. 305-306 (1712), 1716-17, No. 402, p. 205 (1716), 1719-20, No. 564, p. 357 (1719), 1720-21, No. 206, p. 173 (1720), No. 656, pp. 413-414 (1721); N.J. Col. Docs., V, 126, 127 (1773); WMCQ, 2d ser., I, 196 (1737); Ga. Col. Rec., XXIII, 170 (1741), 352, 444 (1742); Amer. Husbandry, pp. 8, 30, 127, 128, 253; N.J. Arch., 1st ser., XX, 256-261 (1758). In 1732 Byrd observed that labor costs in Virginia were five times as great as in Riga. Byrd, Writings, p. 367.

However, as Hasenclever observed, American ironmasters made up in part for the "exorbitant wages" by selling goods and provisions to their workers, averaging profits on such sales estimated at £ 1 10s. sterling per ton of bar iron. Remarkable Case of Peter Hasenclever, p. 80.

For a typical mercantilist denunciation by a colonist of the effect of high wages, see Pa. Chronicle, March 12, 1769.

10 F. L. Hawks, History of North Carolina (Fayetteville, N.C., 1859), II, 215.

11 See, e.g., Boston News-Letter, Aug. 23-30, 1714: Pa. Evening Post, Oct. 14, 1777; N.C. Gazette, Dec. 26, 1777; Nov. 30, 1778; Md. J. and Baltimore Advertiser, April 20, 1784; Dec. 6, 1785.

12 See Cole, Hamilton Corr., pp. 42, 64, 90, 192, 220-221.

13 ibid., pp. 268, 270.

14 "Trelawny Papers," Doc. Hist, of Maine, III, 313 (1642).

15 See infra, pp. 470-500.

16 See Jernegan, Laboring and Dependent Classes, pp. 197, 198; Boston Selectmen Rec., 1742-53, p. 161 (1747). See also Boston Town Rec., VII, 190 (1686); S.C. Gazette, Aug. 3, 1738. For the petition of the ministers, wardens, and vestry of the parish of Bruton in which there is reference to the increase in the number of vagabonds in the parish, see Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1752-55, p. 260 (1753).

17 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletin, No. 449 (1929) contains some tables, but the study is very partial. Even less satisfactory and of doubtful utility are the tables compiled by W. B. Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, 1620-1789 (2 vols., Boston and New York, 1890). To satisfy the formidable criteria for wage scales laid down by Mantoux in The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century (rev. ed., London, 1928), pp. 430-431, it will be necessary to pursue intensive regional studies by crafts, as Mrs. Gilboy did for eighteenth-century England. Such an investigation should parallel the price studies conducted by Arthur H. Cole of wholesale commodity prices for the period down to 1861, and the special regional studies conducted by Anne Bezanson, Robert D. Gray, and Miriam Hussey for Pennsylvania, and by Herman M. Stoker, G. F. Warren, and F. A. Pearson for New York. While newspapers provide a mine of information of wholesale commodity prices, they will not be of much utility for a wage study. Instead, account books and business papers, court records, and administrative records should prove very useful to such compilers. Of great utility for a limited area is T. M. Adams, "Prices Paid by Vermont Farmers for Goods and Services; Wages of Vermont Farm Labor, 1780-1940," Vt. Agricultural Experiment Station, Bull., No. 507 and Suppl. (1944). For some suggestive comparisons of English and colonial wage rates, see also Myers, Narr. of Pa., pp. 326 et seq.; CSPA, 1673-76, No. 628, pp. 259, 260 (1675); 7696-97, No. 1285, p. 591 (1697); 1702, No. 1135, p. 710 (1702); 1711-12, No. 192, pp. 166, 167 (1711). See also Stock, Proc. Brit. Parl., III, 304n. (1713); I. N. P. Stokes, Iconography of Manhattan Island (New York, 1915-28), IV, 554 (1737).

18 Rack-renting and the enclosures were among the principal reasons assigned in the Emigration Lists, 1773-76, for migrating to America. Treasury Papers 47: 9-11.

19 Amer. Husbandry, pp. 52, 54. Cf. also Lloyd's Evening Post, Aug. 12, 1768; London Chronicle, April 21, 1774. Franklin, who in later years developed the theory of the economics of high wages, concurred. Some Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc., (Boston, 1755).

20 Docs. Rel. to the Col. Hist, of N.Y., VII, 888, 889. A frequent ground for cancelling indentures of apprenticeship was the abandonment by a master of his trade for the "Business of Farming." See, e.g., Lane's case, N.Y.G.S., lib. III (Aug. 6, 1755).

21 H. Huth and Wilma J. Pugh, "Talleyrand in America as a Financial Promoter, 1794-96: Unpublished Letters and Memoirs," II, Amer. Hist. Assn., Ann. Report, 1941 (Washington, 1942), p. 127.

22 In his earlier years Jefferson felt that urban industrialization, with its accompanying evils, was to be avoided at all costs. Writings, ed. P. L. Ford, III, 268-270, IV, 87-90, 449; Writings, ed. A. A. Lipscomb and A. E. Bergh (Washington, 1903), V, 93-96. For a similar view, see Briggs, Ames Almanacks, pp. 448-449. However, Jefferson in his more mature period came to defend manufactures and the laboring classes, whose interests he regarded as threatened by excessive commercialism. See Writings, III, 319, XIV, 387-393, XV, 28; also Adrienne Koch, The Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1943), pp. 170, 173.

23 "The Indentured Servant and Land Speculation in Seventeenth Century Maryland," Amer. Hist. Rev., XL (1935), 467-472. In the early pioneering days a heavy proportion of bound laborers appear to have returned to England when their terms were up. See "Trelawny Papers," Me. Hist. Soc. Coll., Ill, 204 (1639).

24 See Louise Pound, American Ballads and Songs (New York, 1922), pp. 69, 71, 74-76; J. of Amer. Folk-Lore, XXVI (1913), 363.

25 WMCQ, 1st ser., IV, 29.

26 William Price, murdered in 1668, had risen from indentured servitude to become a land­owner and practicing attorney before the Charles County court. Md. Arch., LVII, xxvii-xxviii. Daniel Dulany the elder was reputed to have come over to Maryland from Ireland as an indentured servant -- a story perpetuated by his son's political opponent, Charles Carroll of Carrollton. Ellen H. Smith, Charles Carroll of Carrollton (Cambridge, Mass., 1942), pp. 101, 106. However, because of his family background he was not typical of the run of the redemptioners. See Md. Hist. Mag., XIII, 20 et seq. Thomas Ferguson began as a sawyer and plantation overseer and ultimately acquired nine plantations and married Christopher Gadsden's daughter. Connor Dowd came from Ireland as a laborer, and by the time of the American Revolution had established himself as a substantial plantation owner. Egerton, Royal Commission, pp. 216, 218. John Hennessey was an Irish redemptioner, bound for a four-year term. After twenty years he accumulated enough money as a carter and auction dealer in Charleston to buy a house in 1775 for £3,000 current. Ibid., p. 285. For further instances of "gentlemen" as bound servants, see WMCQ, 1st ser., XXVI, 31.

27 See "Report of the Journey of Francis Louis Michel from Berne, Switzerland, to Virginia, Oct. 2, 1701-Dec. 1, 1702," VMH, XXIV, 287, 288. For the attractive position of the artisan during and after the Revolution in a booming town, see T. J. Wertenbaker, Norfolk: History of a Southern Port (Durham, N.C., 1931), pp. 94 passim.

28 Henry Fielding, Enquiry into the Late Increase in Robbers (London, 1751); Elizabeth W. Gilboy, Wages in Eighteenth Century England (Cambridge, Mass., 1934), pp. xviii, xixn.; D. Marshall, The English Poor in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1926); M. D. George, London Life in the XVIIIth Century (London, 1926), passim; Furniss, The Position of the Laborer in a System of Nationalism, p. 104; J. U. Nef, The Rise of the British Coal Industry (London, 1932), H, 151 et seq., 175.

29 An Enquiry whether a General Practise of Virtue Tends to the Wealth or Poverty, Benefit, or Disadvantage of a People? (London, 1725), p. 208.

30 The Great Law of Subordination Consider'd (London, 1724), pp. 79-80.

31 Josiah Tucker, "Instructions for Travellers" (Dublin, 1758), in R. L. Schuyler, ed., Josiah Tucker: a Selection from His Economic and Political Writings (New York, 1931), pp. 244, 245.

32 Barnes, English Corn Laws, p. 31.

33 This was natural in a society where idleness was regarded as sinful. Jefferson declared at a later period: "My new trade of nail-making is to me in this country what an additional title of nobility is, or the ensigns of a new order are in Europe." Writings (Ford ed.), VII, 14 (1795). In fact, merchants and professional men were regarded by some as "supernumeraries" and "idlers" who should be put to work as farmers or mechanics. See Mass. Spy (Worcester), Sept. 11, 1788.

34 Report to the Treasury, Feb. 12, 1768, cited by L. H. Gipson, Jared lngersoll (New Haven, 1920), p. 270.

35 Opinion of Sir William Thompson, Dec. 19, 1717. Va. Hist. Soc.

36 See Gage Corr., I, 205, 358, 359; II, 29 ("that insolent and infatuated Mob"). For references by royal governors to "the dastardly Spirit of our common People" and the "rabble," see Md. Arch., IX, 59; William Smith, History of New York (New York, 1830), p. 333; Amer. Arch., 4th ser., I, 775, 1062; Ga. Hist. Soc, Coll., Ill, 228; J. K. Hosmer, The Life of Thomas Hutchinson (Boston, 1896), pp. 103, 104; C. L. Becker, The History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, 1760-1774 (Univ. of Wisconsin, Bulletin, No. 286, Madison, 1909), p. 115; N.Y. Hist. Soc, Coll. (1875), pp. 127, 128. Somewhat earlier Governor Lewis Morris of New Jersey had referred to the majority as "the meanest of the people," and was easily persuaded by Eccles. 38:25, 26, 33 that the "plowmen" who made up the legislature should be deprived of a voice in public affairs. N.J. Hist. Soc, Coll., IV, 40, 277, 278.

37 Gouverneur Morris, for example, considered the people as a "mob" and "poor reptiles," and denounced "this cursed spirit of levelling." Jared Sparks, Life of Gouverneur Morris (Boston, I932). I. 23-25; Pa. Packet, April 29, 1776. Some observers noted a growing hostility between labor and employer on the eve of the Revolution. J. Boucher, A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution (London, 1797), p. 306.

38 Sir James Stewart, Principles of Political Economy (London, 1767), I, 73-75.

39 Briggs, Ames Almanacks, pp. 382, 383 (1767). See also Brutus to the Free . . . Inhabitants. Lenox Broadsides, N.Y. Pub. Lib.; Thomas Young to John Lamb, Newport, Oct. 4, 1774. Lamb MSS, N.Y. Hist. Soc. With these views compare the charges of William Goddard, Loyalist printer, who in 1777 published a list of the names and vocations of the members of the Baltimore Whig Club, comprising sailors, haberdashers, tailors, and watchmakers, and asked how a man who was only fit to "patch a shoe" could have the temerity to attempt to patch the state. "Papers relating to the Whig Club," April 8-17, 1777, in Maryland Misc. MSS (1771-1838), Lib. of Cong.; also cited by E. P. Link, Democratic-Republic Societies, 1790-1800 (New York, 1942), p. 26. See also Greene, Revol. Generation, p. 97.

40 New York is the most clear-cut illustration, for in that state alone the principle of manhood suffrage was adopted in the election of delegates to the ratifying convention. In New York County, chief seat of the artisan class, the highest Federalist vote for delegates totalled 2,735; the highest anti-Federalist vote, 134. Following a large working-class demonstration in Baltimore, the Federalist delegate received 962 votes as against 385 votes for his leading opponent. See C. A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (New York, 1929), pp. 24T, 244, 247. The contrary view of F. T. Carlton -- Organized Labor in American History (New York, 1920), p. 52 -- is not supported by the evidence available. For the participation of masters, journeymen, and apprentices in the processions celebrating the ratification of the Federal Constitution, see Md. J., May 6, 1788; Mass. Spy (Worcester), May 29, 1788; Pa. Gazette, July 9, 1788. It must be borne in mind, however, that the workers generally supported the Republican Societies in their opposition to the Hamiltonian program of the new Federal government. See Link, op. cit., pp. 31, 93, 94, 96.

41 The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 was the greatest triumph of the democratic movement. See F. N. Thrope, ed., The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters, and Other Organic Laws (7 vols., Washington, 1909), V, 3084; J. C. Miller. Origins of the American Revolution (Boston, 1943), ch. xxi; also infra, pp. 503-506.

42 See C. M. Andrews, Col. Period of Amer. Hist., IV, 423n. To Lorenzo Sabine "the great object of the Revolution was to release labor from these restrictions." The American Loyalists (Boston, 1847), pp. 1, 2.

43 For egalitarian trends among the working class and the decline of the term "servant," see Elkanah Watson, Men and Times of the Revolution (New York, 1857), pp. 169-170; J. F. Watson, Annals of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1830), p. 165; Albert Matthews, "Hired Man and Help," Col. Soc. of Mass., Transactions (1897-98), pp. 225-254 at p. 250. There were no "masters" in America, Martin Chuzzlewit found out -- only "owners"!

44 In the 19th century the availability of land was an indirect, rather than an immediate, cause of the maintenance of higher labor standards in this country than prevailed abroad. The free-land alternative helped to maintain wages and served to direct native workers away from the laborious, unskilled jobs. See C. R. Daugherty, Labor Problems in American Industry (5th ed., New York, 1941), p. 246; Malcolm Keir, Labor's Search for More (New York, 1937), p. 4. There is a good deal of contemporary evidence from the West which casts grave doubt on the "Safety-Valve Doctrine" that the American workman solved his difficulties by moving Westward, unless he settled in other industrial centers. For an analysis of this doctrine, see Carter Goodrich and S. Davidson, "The Wage Earner in the Westward Movement," Pol. Sci. Q., L (1935), 161, LI (1936), 61, F. A. Shannon, "The Homestead Act and the Labor Surplus," Amer. Hist. Rev., XLI (1936), 637-651. See also E. E. Edwards, "References on the Significance of the Frontier in American History," U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Bibliographical Contributions, No. 25 (Washington, 1939). Labor historians such as Carlton (op. cit., pp. 7, 82-107) and Mary Beard -- A Short History of the American Labor Movement (New York, 1920), p. 3 -- place considerable stress upon this doctrine. A more realistic attitude is taken by Marjorie R. Clark and S. Fanny Simon, The Labor Movement in America (New York, 1938), p. 19.

For the role of labor as a democratic leaven in the society of the post-Revolutionary period, see infra, pp. 200, 201; Link, op. cit., ch. iv.