In addition to controls over wages, entry into trades, apprenticeships, indentured servitude, and black slavery, the labor contract was also subject to nonmarket controls over business enterprise in general. . . . [T]he colonial world was no hotbed of laissez-faire for labor. It was a world well described by A. E. Smith not as a democratic arcadia, but a place where men with money thrived by making the poor work. A tradition was established: "It is a familiar story that mankind, when confronted in America with a vast and trackless wilderness . . . threw off its ancient shackles of cast and privilege and set forth upon the road to freedom. Among the social institutions found most useful in the course of this march were those of African slavery and white servitude."The reference is to Abbott Emerson Smith's Colonists in Bondage: White Servitude and Convict Labor in America, 1607-1776, 1947.
Proudly delegitimizing the state since 2005
"Aye, free! Free as a tethered ass!" —W.S. Gilbert
"All the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and . . . the State should be abolished." —Benjamin Tucker
"You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." —James Madison
"Fat chance." —Sheldon Richman
Friday, February 16, 2007
No Hotbed of Laissez-Faire for Labor
From the free-market economic historian Jonathan R. T. Hughes's The Governmental Habit Redux (37):
Ah, the good old days.
ReplyDeleteWait.
There's no such thing as the good old days.
The good old days are ahead of us.
ReplyDeleteSounds like something Kurt Vonnegut would have written circa 1966.
ReplyDeleteBut I will borrow a cup of optimism from you today, Sheldon. Much obliged!
James, you are welcome to the cup so long as you promise to return it on the next day that I need it.
ReplyDelete