Richard B. Morris, Government and Labor in Early America, 1946.
Abbreviations
CONTENTS
Introduction
- The Mercantilist Background of American Labor Relations
- Compulsory labor
- Poor relief
- Restraints on dismissals
- Maximum wage-fixing and restraints on combinations
- The supply of skilled labor
- The labor population and the size of the industrial unit
- Comparative labor conditions
Part I: Free Labor
- The Regulation of Wages Prior to the Revolution
- New England
- The Middle Colonies
- The Tobacco Provinces
- The Rice and Sugar Colonies
- The Regulation of Wages during the Revolution
- Regulation by the States and Congress
- Enforcement of economic controls
- Military regulation
- Consequences of regulation
- Concerted Action among Workers
- The Common Law and collective action
- Combinations to maintain craft monopolies
- Concerted action by workers in licensed trades
- Concerted action by bound servants
- Concerted action by white workmen against Negro artisans
- Political action by working class groups in the Revolutionary period
- Concerted action by journeymen workers for labor ends
- The Terms and Conditions of Employment
- The System of Wage Payment
- The period of employment
- Enforcement of the contract
- Maritime Labor Relations
- European origins of American maritime labor law
- Colonial legislation dealing with maritime labor relations
- The seamen in the courts of common law
- The maritime contract of employment in vice-admiralty
- The discipline of the sea
- Labor and the Armed Services
- Exemptions and deferments from military service
- The military service of servants
- Impressment and enlistment of servants, free workers, and other landsmen in the navy
- Nonmilitary services of artificers, laborers, and servants in the army
- Artificers and laborers in the Continental and British armies during the American Revolution
Part II: Bound Labor - The Nature of Bound Labor
- The Sources of Bound Labor
- Immigration
- Servitude in satisfaction of criminal sentences imposed by colonial courts
- Servitude for debt
- Apprenticeship and child labor
- The Legal Status of Servitude
- Terms and conditions of employment
- The master's quasi-proprietary interest in the services of his servant
- Disciplinary problems
- Legal and political rights of servants
Persistent Problems of Labor Relations in the Light of Early American Experience
Conclusion Index