A Social History of the Laboring Classes

In this concise historical narrative, Jacqueline Jones provides a sweeping account of the most significant aspect of nearly every American's life.

Introduction. 1. 'Strangers' and Other Workers in the Seventeenth-Century Colonies. 2. 'Be Sure to Come Free': Workers in the Eighteenth Century. 3. Crosscurrents of Slavery and Freedom in the Antebellum South. 4. The Northern Laboring Classes at Odds With One Another, Before and During the Civil War. 5. Ideologies of Race in a Modernizing Economy: The Cases of African-American and Chinese Workers. 6. The Laboring Chattering Classes in Turn-of-the-Century America. 7. The Rise of the State in Depression and War: The American Workforce, 1916-1945. 8. American Workers and the New World Order in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century. Index.