Attached Files: File Walter Johnson – River of Dark Dreams Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom.pdf (165.23 KB) File Folbre The Unproductive Housewife.pdf (1.033 MB) File Freeman Behemoth The Lowell Mills.pdf (35.896 MB) Please make sure to do the reading and submit your responses BEFORE the class on September 18. Please answer each question fully, in multiple paragraphs, providing evidence to support your claims. Week Three Questions Unusually, this week, three questions. In the first week’s class, I proposed that sugar plantations and silver mines were the first “factories,” with an employer seeking profits, large numbers of workers toiling under horrendous conditions, a division of labor, and, of course, oppression. Later (and as we read last week), opponents of the actual factory system called it a “new form of slavery.” But Johnson is about the real thing, and cotton plantation slavery was its most developed form – so much so that there are debates about whether American slavery was “capitalist.” Technically no, insofar as capitalist production by definition utilizes wage labor. But otherwise? In what ways does the technology and organization of the cotton plantation workplace, and the relationship between slave and slaveowner, remind you of early industrial production? In what ways do the comparisons break down? In Folbre and Freeman, we see two “special cases” involving women workers. Explain Folbre’s argument about how household labor came to be excluded from the category “work.” How did this affect women – and men? How did the Lowell that Freeman describes come to be seen as different in the public’s mind from Engel’s Manchester, despite the same technology and a mostly similar workforce? How did that affect the attitude of Americans toward factory work? Attached Files: File Brody Steelworkers in America.pdf (4.587 MB) File Freeman Behemoth Steel.pdf (19.63 MB) Please make sure to do the reading and submit your responses BEFORE the class on September 25. Please answer each question fully, in multiple paragraphs, providing evidence to support your claims. Week Four Questions What were the various factors that brought about “economizing” in steel manufacture? In what ways did the combination of the drive toward economizing, new technology, and scientific management affect workers? Remember to differentiate between skilled and unskilled. How did the drive toward economizing and the new technology lead to what Freeman calls “class war” at Homestead and elsewhere? (Remember to use information from Brody Ch. 3 also.) What factors helped management in this ongoing war? What factors helped workers? Bonus question please answer In the 19th century, in the context of new technology, increasing division of labor, and management control, what should workers do? Smash the “labor-saving” machines; try to return to the old technologies Build unions within the workplace to improve working conditions and wages and decrease hours of work Create workers’ national organizations & political parties to abolish capitalism while retaining technology Work within existing political parties to pass pro-worker laws Accept these changes as inevitable fate Seek individual or generational advancement If you were a worker in early-mid 19th century England, which response(s) to the capitalist industrial revolution would you prefer? Explain why. Which is your least favorite response? Explain why?
