Common Labour: Workers and the Digging of North American Canals 1780-1860
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...
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This study of the unskilled canal construction workers and their experiences challenges labour history's focus on skilled craftsmen and represents a different strand of the labour story.
List of tablesAcknowledgementsChronology of construction for main canalsAbbreviationsMap: Main canals of the North American Canal Era, 1780-1860Introduction11Early canals, 1780-1812182"As low as labor and capital can afford": the contracting system, 1817-1840473"Human labor, physical and intelligent"764Payment "fit for labouring people"1055"The greatest quantity of labour"1316"Canawlers and citizens"1637"Guerilla war": labour conflict in the 1830s2008"This new order of things": the 1840s-1850s229Conclusion265Appendix 1. Tables 1-16275Appendix 2: Tables 17-18287Index301
