Brian P. Luskey's Books

On the Make

Clerks and the Quest for Capital in Nineteenth-Century America

By: Brian P. Luskey

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On the Make

Clerks and the Quest for Capital in Nineteenth-Century America

By: Brian P. Luskey

In the bustling cities of the mid-nineteenth-century Northeast, young male clerks working in commercial offices and stores were on the make, persistently seeking wealth, respect, and self-gratification. Yet these strivers and "counter jumpers" discovered that claiming the identities of independent men—while making sense of a volatile capitalist economy and fluid urban society—was fraught with uncertainty. In On the Make, Brian P. Luskey illuminates at once the power of the ideology of self-making and the important contests over the meanings of respectability, manhood, and citizenship that helped to determine who clerks were and who they would become. Drawing from a rich array of archival materials, including clerks’ diaries, newspapers, credit reports, census data, advice literature, and fiction, Luskey argues that a better understanding of clerks and clerking helps make sense of the culture of capitalism and the society it shaped in this pivotal era.

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Page Count

288

Publisher

NYU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0814753108

ISBN 13

9780814753101

Men Is Cheap

Exposing the Frauds of Free Labor in Civil War America

By: Brian P. Luskey

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Men Is Cheap

Exposing the Frauds of Free Labor in Civil War America

By: Brian P. Luskey

When a Civil War substitute broker told business associates that "Men is cheep here to Day," he exposed an unsettling contradiction at the heart of the Union's war effort. Despite Northerners' devotion to the principles of free labor, the war produced rampant speculation and coercive labor arrangements that many Americans labeled fraudulent. Debates about this contradiction focused on employment agencies called "intelligence offices," institutions of dubious character that nevertheless served the military and domestic necessities of the Union army and Northern households. Northerners condemned labor agents for pocketing fees above and beyond contracts for wages between employers and employees. Yet the transactions these middlemen brokered with vulnerable Irish immigrants, Union soldiers and veterans, former slaves, and Confederate deserters defined the limits of independence in the wage labor economy and clarified who could prosper in it. Men Is Cheap shows that in the process of winning the war, Northerners were forced to grapple with the frauds of free labor. Labor brokers, by helping to staff the Union military and Yankee households, did indispensable work that helped the Northern state and Northern employers emerge victorious. They also gave rise to an economic and political system that enriched the managerial class at the expense of laborers--a reality that resonates to this day.

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Page Count

296

Publisher

UNC Press Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1469654334

ISBN 13

9781469654331

On the Make

Clerks and the Quest for Capital in Nineteenth-Century America

By: Brian P. Luskey

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On the Make

Clerks and the Quest for Capital in Nineteenth-Century America

By: Brian P. Luskey

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N/A

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Page Count

288

Publisher

NYU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0814753108

ISBN 13

9780814753101

Some Lives of Brian

By: Brian Stuart

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Some Lives of Brian

By: Brian Stuart

An only child living in Aldershot, Brian Stuart has always been in touch with the arts. When his father was called up to the army in 1940 his mother decided to take in boarders who performed weekly in the Hippodrome.

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Page Count

137

Publisher

Pen Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

190717284X

ISBN 13

9781907172847

Book's by Brian P. Luskey

On the Make

On the Make

Men Is Cheap

Men Is Cheap

On the Make

On the Make

Some Lives of Brian

Some Lives of Brian

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