Robert J. Steinfeld, Coercion, Contract, and Free Labor in the Nineteenth Century. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. xi + 329 pp. $59.95 (cloth), ISBN: 0-521-77360-1; $22.95 (paper), ISBN: 0-521-77400-4.
Reviewed for EH.NET by Gillian Hamilton, Department of Economics, University of Toronto. March 2002
In 1991 Robert Steinfeld (SUNY-Buffalo) published The Invention of Free Labor, a study of the legal history of labor in the U.S. and England between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was an important volume that excited economic historians interested in labor markets. Workers were "free," Steinfeld argued, when they were no longer compelled to complete their contracts under threat of criminal sanction such as imprisonment. Contrary to popular opinion, it was not just indentured servants that faced such strictures in the seventeenth century -- it was the norm for all workers. By the early nineteenth century, workers achieved "freedom." By this time specific performance and imprisonment for labor contract breaches, even for immigrant workers, was perceived as little different from enslavement and made illegal. The book described the legal transformation of indentured servitude and wage work in the United States, offering a less detailed treatment of contract workers in England for comparison.
In Coercion, Contract and Free Labor, Steinfeld pursues similar themes but reverses the geographic emphasis. Drawing on a wide variety of sources that includes court cases, judicial opinions, parliamentary minutes, bills and testimony, as well as prosecutions under the Master and Servant Act, he offers an in-depth narrative of the steps that led to the repeal of criminal sanctions for labor contract breaches in England. Steinfeld begins by arguing that enforcement through criminal sanction was an integral part of the employment relationship. Examining the numbers of prosecutions under the Act, he illustrates that prosecutions were not at all rare (more than 10,000 cases per year between the 1850s and early 1870s), generally grew over time, varied by county and varied with the business cycle.
We also learn about different groups' agendas and their attempts to change the laws; the evolving court interpretation of existing laws; and the responses of employers and employees to these changes. For example, the court's interpretation of the legislation became increasingly broad. It drew more and more workers under the Act as its definition of coverage evolved. It also ensured that contracts were more enforceable when it no longer required contracts to specifically state that the employer would provide work -- this "mutuality" obligation was deemed implicitly obvious. Steinfeld's narrative makes it clear that one cannot be lulled into believing that a legal environment was static even if there were no changes in the law.
As the author notes, the possible effects of changes in the court's interpretation of the Act on such factors as contract length and the method and frequency of compensation (piece rate versus straight time, for example), should be of interest to economic historians (p. 166). To illustrate, Steinfeld focuses on changes in contract length. "Minute" contracts, which did not require notice and so essentially circumvented the Act, became more common at least in some coal mining regions. He discusses the pros and cons of short versus long contracts in some detail, invoking a game theoretic approach to help explain the move towards shorter contracts. Ultimately he concludes that there may be no clear relationship between duration and the interpretation of the law: "the new rule [mutuality] may have led them [employers] to press workers harder for shorter contracts without earnings guarantees, and perhaps even on occasion long contracts without earnings guarantees" (p.188). This conclusion undoubtedly reflects the complexity of the subject matter, but having read more than sixty pages on legal interpretation I was eager to read about more substantive effects of these changes! In-depth empirical analysis of these relationships is generally beyond the scope of this book, however, because the author does not have a set of employment contracts from which to draw inferences. The book does, however, offer us considerable opportunity for (very interesting) future research. Did the incidence of piece rate contracts change over time, for example, and did this reflect changes in the court's willingness to include these workers under the Act?
Steinfeld goes on to discuss the political process of reform. One of the most surprising elements of this story is that criminal sanctions were so entrenched and accepted in England that although individuals and groups had been agitating for reform of the Master and Servant Act since the early 1800s, no one had even considered removing them from the legislation until just before it was struck down in 1875.
Steinfeld also discusses other countries, primarily the United States, for a comparative perspective. In a departure from his earlier work, he argues that while workers could quit without threat of criminal sanctions by the early nineteenth century, they were not truly free because they was still subject to coercion. American employers relied on a variety of pecuniary means of enforcement. In situations where workers could either complete their contract or forfeit all of the wages owed to them (which could amount to several months pay) they were left with little choice but to complete their term. Depending on the circumstances, Steinfeld argues, pecuniary enforcement could have been as unpalatable (and hence coercive) as imprisonment. Modern legal freedom for workers was not achieved until the early twentieth century when sufficient legal strictures were put in place to limit employers' ability to construct coercive contracts that effectively denied workers the right to quit.
This is another stimulating thesis that is worth pursuing. Are penal and pecuniary penalties perfect substitutes? Overall, were English workers more or less coerced than their American counterparts and what effect did this have on productivity, turnover, and employment relations? Early on, Steinfeld argues that "[without criminal sanctions] the contract labor system never developed into a significant source of labor for American employers" (p. 32). But later he argues that pecuniary remedies could be as disagreeable as non-pecuniary ones (p. 310). If so, why wasn't contract labor more common?
The Invention of Free Labor is a hard act to follow. Steinfeld does an admirable job with Coercion, Contract and Free Labor. It will enrich those interested in labor relations and stimulate further research.
Gillian Hamilton is Associate Professor at the University of Toronto. She is the author of "The Decline of Apprenticeship in North America: Evidence from Montreal," Journal of Economic History, 60, No.3 (Sept., 2000): 627-664.
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