Upon the Altar of Work: Child Labor and the Rise of a New American Sectionalism (Working Class in American History) - Hardcover

Wood, Betsy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0252043448 ISBN 13: 9780252043444

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2020

Synopsis

Rooted in the crisis over slavery, disagreements about child labor broke down along sectional lines between the North and South. For decades after emancipation, the child labor issue shaped how Northerners and Southerners defined fundamental concepts of American life such as work, freedom, the market, and the state.

Betsy Wood examines the evolution of ideas about child labor and the on-the-ground politics of the issue against the backdrop of broad developments related to slavery and emancipation, industrial capitalism, moral and social reform, and American politics and religion. Wood explains how the decades-long battle over child labor created enduring political and ideological divisions within capitalist society that divided the gatekeepers of modernity from the cultural warriors who opposed them. Tracing the ideological origins and the politics of the child labor battle over the course of eighty years, this book tells the story of how child labor debates bequeathed an enduring legacy of sectionalist conflict to modern American capitalist society.

About this title

About the Author

Betsy Wood is an assistant professor of history at Bard Early College.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0252043448
• ISBN 13: 9780252043444
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 266