===================== HES POSTING ==================== THE NEWBERRY SEMINAR IN AMERICAN SOCIAL HISTORY "Buy Cheap, Sell Dear": Social Constructions of the Market Ethos, Economic "Justice," and Competitive Hierarchy in Antebellum Society Jonathon Glickstein University of California, Santa Barbara at The Newberry Library (Chicago) Thursday, May 20, 1997 3:30-5:30 p.m. This paper is the draft of part of a book on early nineteenth-century perceptions of manual labor. It treats the general subject of middle- and working-class representations of labor's "extrinsic rewards" in antebellum society and is concerned with much-debated issues of class consciousness among wage-earners during early industrialization. Competitive free market forces imposed considerable economic and cultural pressures on workers to behave in self-maximizing ways, yet they commonly exhibited, in strike manifestos and other documents, a yearning for something "better" than the capitalist market's "rules of the game." The paper's exploration of class consciousness includes several issues: the pull of material and occupational success (as embodied by early- nineteenth-century entrepreneurial capitalists and professional men), labor reform movements' reception of the radical, anticapitalist versions of the labor theory of value (which the paper takes to be emblematic of worker ambivalence to the emergent occupational hierarchy), and mainstream political party ideologies. ***** If you plan to attend, please call Beth Rillema at (312) 255-3524 or e-mail [log in to unmask] for a copy of the paper. The seminar format assumes that all participants have read the essay, and all those who request a paper will attend the seminar. Beth Rillema <[log in to unmask]> ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]