This is a lecture/discussion course designed to help students acquire a good introduction to the history of labor in the United States, broadly conceived. It includes wage labor, chattel slavery, and domestic work; slave owners, employers, supervisors, and corporate officials of many different sorts; law and law enforcement at the municipal, state, and federal levels; intellectuals, popular beliefs, and ideologies; and the influence of race, nationality, gender, religion, region, migration, and economic and technological change. Although the focus is on the United States, connections with, and comparisons to, other nations will be highlighted. |