Antebellum Labour
Introduction
Amelia, a Woman Worker, Protests Lowell Wage Slavery, 1845, and The Plantation Work Ethic both illustrate the status of labor in antebellum America. They both display the inhuman conditions faced by workers, both black and white, from poor working conditions to low wages. Plantation slavery systems in the United States were composed of a system of peasant culture. The attitude of slaves towards time and work was as a result of their work in plantations. This essay finds an antithesis between slave plantation labor and industrial wage work.
“Follow her now as she enters that large gloomy-looking building-she is in search of employment, and has been told that she might here obtain an eligible situation. She is sadly wearied with her journey, and withal somewhat annoyed by the noise, confusion, and strange faces all around her…The intervening time passes rapidly away, and she soon finds herself once more within the confines of that close noisy apartment …” This excerpt has been drawn from a personal encounter; it, therefore, allows readers to understand the horrible conditions faced by workers and why there were constant strikes and protests in response. The boycotts against the bosses seemed to have been driven by the exceedingly low wages, including poor living and working conditions.
According to Genovese, “neither did the planter class nor their slaves embrace bourgeois ideas of time and work discipline” (Genovese, 143). Many masters considered the preferences of slaves, which was for the collective patterns of labor. Following emancipation brought black and white, southerners and northerners were united in a struggle over the content and structure of the labor performed by former slaves. Within this set-up, the black work ethic developed surrounded by a Protestant Euro-American Community with its work ethic. The black ethic represented defiance against an enforced economic exploitation system with values associated with the preindustrial persons. This was more dominant in the American south and is developed in protest against the general American Society. The Euro-American, Anglo-Saxon shaped work ethic assisted in carving up slaves and southern work ethic, which at the same time produced extreme antithesis.
Conclusion
The emergence of clock-time signified the introduction labor-time within the factory system, where there was an increased division of labor within the capitalist society. On the other hand, slaves could not workout time in terms of factory industrial model or preindustrial model. The labor remained largely rural; even if slave owners wished to transform their slave workforce, it was relatively hard because it was entirely new for them.