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Artisan Origins of the American Working Class

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Sean Wilentz
Affiliation:
Princeton University

Abstract

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Type
Essays
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 1981

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References

NOTES

1. Montgomery, David, “The Working Classes of the Pre-industrial, American City, 1780–1830,” Labor History, 9 (1968). 322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. Montgomery, David, “The Shuttle and the Cross: Weavers and Artisans in the Kensington Riots ot 1844,” Journal of Social History, 5 (1972), 411446CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gutman, Herben G.. Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America (New York, 1974), 378Google Scholar; Thompson, E.P., The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1963).Google Scholar Limits of time and space do not permit a thorough review of all the pertinent recent works on early nineteenth-century artisans; I have thus arbitrarily limited myself to books on sizeable cities that focus primarily on early industrialization. Other important studies include Faler, Paul G.. “Workingmen. Mechanics, and Social Change: Lynn, Massachusetts. 1800–1860” (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin. 1971)Google Scholar; Kulik, Gary, “Pawtucket Village and the Strike of 1824: The Origins of Class Conflict in Rhode Island,” Radical History Review. 17 (1978). 538CrossRefGoogle Scholar: Johnson, Paul E., A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815–1837 (New York. 1978)Google Scholar; Wallace, Anthony. Rockdale: The Growth of an American Village in the Early industrial Revolution (New York, 1978).Google Scholar These will soon be joined by major works by Charles Steffen, on early national Baltimore, Gary Kornblith. on the master artisans of early national and Jacksonian New England, and John Jentz on artisans and abolition in Jacksonian New York City.

3. Dawley, Alan. Class and Community: The industrial Revolution in Lynn (Cambridge. Mass., 1976).Google Scholar

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6. Foner, Eric. Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (New York. 1976).Google Scholar

7. See Wilentz, Sean. “Whigs and Bankers,” Reviews in American History, 8 (1980), 344350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. McCoy, Drew R., “Benjamin Franklin's Vision of a Republican Political Economy for America,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series. 35 (1978), 605628.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. For more of the “making” of the middle class, see Ryan, Mary, Cradle of the Middle Class: A Case Study of Oneida County. New York. 1790–1865 (Cambridge. 1981)Google Scholar; and Johnson. A Shopkeeper's Millennium.

10. Dawley alters the view of religion presented in his book, at least to some degree, in Dawley, Alan and Faler, Paul, “Working Class Culture and Politics in the Industrial Revolution: Sources of Loyalism and Rebellion.” Journal of Social History. 9 (1976). 466478.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Unfortunately, while this article sees connections between evangelicalism and labor radicalism, its own ideal types do not manage to subtilize these links.

11. Gutman. Work, Culture, and Society, 79–117.

12. See Foner, Eric, Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War (New York. 1980), 7476.Google Scholar

13. It will seem even more so when Herbert Gutman completes his project on the demographics of the American working class in the mid-nineteenth century.

14. Hirsch, Susan E., Roots of the American Working Class: The Industrialization of Crafts in Newark. 1800–1860 (Philadelphia, 1978).Google Scholar

15. In addition to Howard Rock's book discussed below, see Morris, Richard B., Government and Labor in Early America (New York. 1946)Google Scholar; and Nash, Gary B., The Urban Crucible: Social Change. Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge. Mass. 1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16. Samuel, Raphael. “The Workshop of the World: Hand Power and Steam Technology in Mid-Victorian Britain,” History Workshop Journal. 3 (1977), 672.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17. Cf. Alexander, Sally, “Women's Work in Nineteenth-Century London: A Study of the Years 1820 1850.” in Mitchell, Juliet and Oakley, Ann, eds., The Rights and Wrongs of Women (Harmondsworth, 1976). 59111Google Scholar: Stansell, Mary Christine. “Women of the Laboring Poor in New-York City, 1820–1860” (Ph.D., Yale University, 1979).Google Scholar

18. For fuller development of this point, see Stansell. “Women of the Laboring Poor.”

19. Black, William Neill, “The Union Society of Journeymen House Carpenters: A Test Study in Residential Mobility in Antebellum New York City, 1830–1840” (M. A., Columbia University. 1975).Google Scholar

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21. See Wilentz, Sean, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class (forthcoming. New York. 1982).Google Scholar chapters seven and eight.

22. Harrison, Brian H.. Drink and the Victorians: The Temperance Movement in England, 1815–1872 (Pittsburgh, 1971).Google Scholar

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24. See Pessen, Edward. Most Uncommon Jacksonians: Radical Leaders of the Early Labor Movement (Albanv. N.Y., 1967)Google Scholar; and Wilentz, Chants Democratic, chapter five.

25. Rock, Howard B.. Artisans of the New Republic: The Tradesmen of New York City in the Age of Jefferson (New York. 1979).Google Scholar

26. Thernstrom, Stephan. “Reflections on the New Urban History,” Daedalus. 100 (1971), 365Google Scholar

27. Lyud, Staughton. “The Mechanics and New York City Politics 1774–1785.” Labor History. 5 (1964). 215246Google Scholar; Young, Alfred F., “The Mechanics and the Jeffersonians: New York. 1789–1801.” Labor History, 5 (1964), 247276.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28. Fischer, David Hackett, The Revolution of American Conservatism: The Federalist Party in the Era of Jeffersonian Democracy (New York. 1965).Google Scholar

29. Sharon V.Salinger, “Under One Roof: Artisans and the Transformation of Labor in Late Eighteenth Century Philadelphia” (unpublished paper). See also Smith, Billy G., “Struggles of ‘the Lower Sort’ in Late Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia,” Working Papers from the Regional Economic History Research Center, 3 (1980), 130.Google Scholar

30. Wilentz. Chants Democratic, chapters four, five, six.

31. Miller, Perry. The Life of the Mind in America from the Revolution to the Civil War (New York. 1965). 395Google Scholar; Foster, Charles. An Errand of Mercy: The Evangelical United Front, 1790–1837 (Chapel Hill, 1960)Google Scholar; Carwardine, Richard. Transatlantic Revivalism: Popular Evangelicalism in Britain and America (Westport, Ct., 1978).Google Scholar

32. Laurie, Bruce, Working People of Philadelphia. 1800–1850 (Philadelphia, 1980).Google Scholar

33. Wallace. Rockdale. 322–369.

34. Johnson. A Shopkeeper's Millennium.

35. Foner. Tom Paine. 211–270.See also Jentz, John Barkely. “Artisans. Evangelicals, and the City: A Social History of Abolition and Labor Reform in Jacksonian New York” (Ph.D., City University of New York, 1977).Google Scholar

36. Ware, Norman, The Industrial Worker. 1840–1860(Chicago, 1924).Google Scholar

37. See. in addition to Thompson, Prospero, lowerth, Artisans and Politics in Early Nineteenth-Century London: John Gast and his Times (Folkestone, 1979)Google Scholar; Moss, Bernard. Origins of the French Lahor Movement: The Socialism of Skilled Workers (Berkeley, 1977)Google Scholar; and Sewell, William H. Jr., Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (Cambridge. 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wende, Peter, Radikalismus im Vormärz: Untersuchungen zur politischen theorie der frühen deutschen Demokratie (Frankfurt, 1975).Google Scholar

38. Davis, Natalie Zemon, “Women in the Arts Mecaniques in Sixteenth-Century Lyon.” in Lyon et L'Europe: Hommes et Sociétés. Mélanges d'histoire offerts à Richard Gascon (Lyon, 1980), 139167.Google Scholar

39. Foner. “Abolitionism and the Labor Movement in Antebellum America,” reprinted in Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War.

40. Agulhon, Maurice, Marianne Au Combat: L'Imagerie et la Symbolique Républicaines de 1789 à 1880 (Paris, 1979).Google Scholar

41. Hobsbawm, E.J.. “From Social History to the History of Society,” Daedalus. 100 (1971). 2045.Google Scholar

42. See. for example, the discussions of class consciousness in Sewell. Work and Revolution In France.