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.

Afterward for Contours of Class in Early Republic:

How the development of capitalism and class distinctions lay the groundwork for Abolitionism

By Kristina Kelleher

In seminar on Monday we discussed the historiography questions raised in this week’s readings extensively. Therefore, I am going to focus my afterward on how the articles read and discussed this week can enhance our understanding of the development of capitalism and class during the early 19th century in American history. (To do this in the space constraints here, I will focus my analysis on the articles by Gienapp and Bushman.) I hope in doing this I will help us begin to think about how these developments lay the groundwork for the rise of abolitionism, our topic of discussion for next week’s seminar.

First, if we look to Gienapp’s article on Seller’s class based history of Jacksonian America, we can see that Gienapp makes a strong argument for how widely “capitalists attitudes were diffused in American society” (page 246) during this time period and were becoming more so. Gienapp argues that part of how the market system was able to triumph so quickly in comparison say to Britain was because there was “Probably no country were capitalist attitudes more firmly entrenched or widely distributed throughout the population before industrialization began than in the United States.” (page 248) As we discussed in class and Gienapp discusses on page 247, “resistance to the market and its values was generally weak” in Jacksonian America.” Gienapp points to much evidence of this widespread acceptance of the capitalist market driven mentalities throughout this period including, on page 247, the wide distribution of clocks. (For more on how capitalist notions of time even took root on Southern slave plantations during this time see Mastered By the Clock, Mark M. Smith) The entrenchment of these capitalist mentalities changed society drastically, particularly in the area of class development.

Gienapp’s article also brings our discussion back to evangelilcialism seen last week in Southern Cross, and in particular, Gienapp argues that the spread of evangelicialism “strengthened capitalist values among workers and farmers.” (pages 245-7) It is even a story of a Methodist minister, Peter Cartwright, on page 246, that Gienapp uses to bring out the development of the idea of “Domestic Respectability” during this time period. Particularly this idea focuses on the time’s movement towards gendering of American labor responsibilities that are tied so closely to the division occurring between the workplace and home (which Bushman discusses.) American women are painted of being particularly guilty of “indulging in this emphasis on fashion and status through consumption and appearance” (page 248) that the capitalist market system brings and that the development of the idea of respectability requires.

The development of the idea of “respectability” and its connection to the Gentility development is further discussed Bushman’s chapter on Culture and Power. The idea of “respectability” became necessary during this time of rapid growth in capitalism and therefore for global trading market economy based on trust and quick assessments of possible business partners. Bushman ties this development to the destruction of traditional communities at the time, when “people were cast adrift, status and identity lost” (page 404) (this search for belonging reminds me of how Hellenistic religions of salvation became popular in the Roman Empire.) And further explains the development of the necessity for a way to judge one’s “respectability” by stating that this is when: “established hierarchies dissolved, and strange faces replaced familiar ones. Strangers had no preconceived idea of each other’s places in the word, especially in the flux of the city. They could only judge by appearances and manners.” (page 404)

Another interesting issue we discussed but did not take as far as we could have in class from Bushman’s article is how this culture of gentility is transmitted and how it interacts with the “American democratic instinct.” In Bushman’s article we see many descriptions of how it is transmitted through culture, particularly written culture such as Griswold, in a top down fashion though less is discussed if there is something to discuss about cultural movement from the down upwards socially. I think it would be worthwhile to consider how Bushman’s and our own thoughts on that topic connect to Johnson’s ideas on Agency and how perhaps giving agency to groups that truly lack power is hurtful because it fails to appropriately respect and communicate the nature of the power dynamics at the time. What’s also often lacking from discussions around the development of this idea of respectability for the upper and middle classes (which Bushman actually does address) is how “by fixing standards of polite conduct for the elite, gentility marked humble people just as distinctly, with their contrasting disheveled clothes, rough houses and coarse manners.” (Page 420) In addition, how the creation of a middle and upper class that could occasionally claim to share some aspects of culture of the gentility ideal also redefine lower social classes. In light of our discussion next week, I think it would be particularly pertinent to look at how this develops alongside the shift during this time where the spectrum of positions of social coercion and “un-freedom” become fewer with clearer distinctions, such as between “free” and “slave” labor.