Ah trends.... started doing some research into the US Labor History

[nadinbrzezinski]

and started with a very General History on the subject.

Well there are trends that go all the way back to colonial history that I was all but surprised at this point.

1.- Indentured servants were fairly common (will have to do some research as to how common. The book I am readying goes back to 1966, alas that is part of the problem)

2.- Indentured servants fared far worst in the south than in the north, where they were better off, and were able to do fairly well once their service was over.

3.- Labor was suppressed in many ways. Strikes were met with lashings and people fleeing with the noose.

Oh and in general the Southern Colonies were far more stratified and labor had less rights.

So there you have it. This is not region bashing, just that patterns have been around for a while, like oh hundreds of years.

[WCGreen]

1. My earliest ancestor was a young woman from Ireland who came over

before the Revolution as an indentured servant.

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. It would be a family research project to find

out the actual conditions of her contract, and how much of that was actually followed.

[Ozymanithrax]

2. Southern colonies were built around plantation economies...

Where they used the cheapest possible labor. Cultural differences seemed to have played a part. I remember there were discussions about how the culture of the south came from areas of England that were commonly in revolt. It would be interesting to look at the origins of southern culture and see how their attitudes toward labor change.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Indeed that is something to do research into

Kentucky, for example, has a strong component of Mountain Men from Scotland, and the culture survives to this day.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

5. You may be able to do some firsthand research on indentured servitude soon.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. The way ilegal aliens are treated

I don't have to wait... in some ways the trends are there already.

Yes, as a medic I debriefed illegals turned to us by US Immigration, and got to debrief them. Things have just gotten that much worst.

Your connection... cheap labor

[mrs_p]

7. do you mean 1666?

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

but yes in the early colonial period, indeed that year. The history of labor I am readying is extremely general, but that is how you start. I will have to decide where to concentrate once I finish readying the extremely general history.

[mrs_p]

9. would you mind sharing the title of the book?

i love labor reads for some reason...

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. History of American Labor by Rayback

there is a paper edition and a kindle edition...

And no problem. I am starting to do the research because there are no modern books on the subject.

Yes, thinking of doing a book.

[Luminous Animal]

11. When you get to reading more specifically...

read The Rebel Girl, Elizabeth Gurly Flynn's autobiography.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Gurley_Flynn
http://www.cpusa.org/article/view/890/
http://www.amazon.com/Rebel-Girl-Autobiography-First-Life/dp/0717803686/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. Got it, into the references it just went

thanks