Framing Essay 4/12/09 for Scraping By

Kristina Kelleher

In and out of seminar in the last few weeks, we have focused a lot of our discussion around the idea of agency in historical writing. I found that Scraping By articulated the difficulties that the poor common laborers of early America faced without an over emphasis on proving or providing agency to these laborers. Personally, in many ways I found the consistent look at structures that continued to hold these laborers—black and white, free and slave, female and male—throughout the book painted a fuller picture of these laborers lives and the effects of the capitalist market system on them than other texts that focus more on providing agency for the subjects of research. I think this would be an interesting topic of discussion in seminar tomorrow so I will expound on it here further.

For example, Professor Rockman describes how in the 1770’s Maryland law made it illegal to import new slaves into the state but select people and groups were allowed resettle their slaves in the city, highlighting who had the ability to alter and avoid punishment under the law (pages 36-37.) He likewise describes how laborers were largely left off city directories (page 76.) Rockman also provides examples of how men could take advantage of women, particularly those whose sexual reputations were compromised (page 118.) Rockman also describes how white male day laborers were largely unable to secure employment in racially exclusive job sites, which evidence argues they would have preferred (page 56.) The same principle of uneven power dynamics is reinforced when he describes how the category of “free” being defined as all those who weren’t slaves and therefore could claim control over their own body, work and wages, made little sense when “married women could not own their own wages, free people of color could not testify against whites in court, and free white men forfeited wages they had already earned if they left a job prematurely” (page 242.) In my own eyes, power ought to be a central issue in any discussion of the early market economy, since free and equal power positions to enter into contracts is exactly what’s assumed by free market ideology.

Rockman does provide numerous examples of agency on behalf of common laborers, such as laborers selecting to enter the almshouse at given times—including being able to navigate the roadblocks set up for doing so, females repurchasing their year-long street grazing pigs (page 178), slave women negotiating hiring out agreements with their owners (page 124) and females taking advantage of the fact that they would not be imprisoned for debts not paid, to name a few. Yet, he also consistently reinforces what the power dynamics of the time (and perhaps today) really were. For example, he describes how a system of needing approval from a ward manager to enter the almshouse was instituted—as well as how some laborers were able to get around it (Pages 208 and 209.) It is not that I think providing agency for the poor is bad but rather I think it is important to recall how the power structures of the time and place were designed to, and often effectively did, take power and agency away from those without power, such as the common laborer. For example, I agree with Rockman’s argument when he writes that the presence of female prostitution might more aptly be seen as indicating poor women’s financial desperation than attesting to their agency (Page 129.)

On a different note, I also think we should discuss how the ideas of character and reputation (see discussion beginning on page 117 regarding women seeking domestic service jobs, for example) are seen in Scraping By, particularly in relation to what we’ve already talked and read about relating to the development of middle class ideas of respectability.

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