[lbo-talk] RE: Activism

dredmond at efn.org dredmond at efn.org
Mon Feb 9 21:01:20 PST 2004


Quoting Mathias Bismo <mathiasb at broadpark.no>:


> The USA was the total opposite. If workers objected to the working
> conditions, new waves of immigrants, willing to work under these
> circumstances, came all the time.

Most estimates I've seen say US wages were fairly high in the 19th century. One of the reasons may have been labor scarcity: immigrants took low-paying jobs in the Eastern cities, but second-generation laborers moved to the frontier. The South didn't have the same sort of labor mobility, thanks to slavery, and the result was lower average wages and internal colonization (via unequal exchange) by the North. (I'm horribly simplifying the argument, of course).

-- DRR



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list