Description
Canal construction played a significant role in the rise of industrial America – opening up new markets, employing and army of workers, and initiating the ties between capital and government that remain important to this day. The work went forward using simple tools and the brute strength of men and animals, with diggers working 12 hour days and suffering the ravages of disease and injury. In this study, the author challenges conventional views of the part these workers played in the early republic and of the culture they created. Increasingly made up of immigrants, he explains, the work force was housed in shanty towns hastily thrown up along the path of canal construction. Unlike the vibrant, proud working-class community so beloved in labour history, these towns were the scene of considerable off-hours vice and violence. As wages fell throughout the 1830s, workers’ discontent mounted to the point where riots were frequent and militia units often descended on towns to enforce order. This work traces a dark picture of powerlessness, depravity and rage in the lives of America’s canal diggers.
