Working-Class Manhood

Artisanal Manhood

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the artisan provided the model of working-class masculinity. A highly skilled craftsman, the artisan owned his own shop, hired journeymen and apprentices to work for him, provided for his family, and was a solid member of the political community. He exemplified independent republican manhood, assuring his personal independence from the influence of other men through property ownership—and demonstrating the power of that independence though prudent political participation and his ability to care for, and command the work of, dependent family members and employees. In contrast to the independent manhood of the white artisan, women, children, wage earners (who relied on other men for their livelihood), and African-American slaves were without these advantages.

By the early nineteenth century, however, fewer skilled white men were likely to achieve the independence of the property-owning artisan. Economic downturns prevented journeymen from acquiring sufficient capital to buy their own shops; job competition, which increased with immigration and urbanization, lowered journeymen's wages; and employers hired larger numbers of journeymen to produce more, and cheaper, goods. In northeastern cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, journeymen formed political parties and unions to protest what they saw as their disfranchisement. They staged elaborate parades emphasizing their craft skills and asserting that knowledge and skill assured their political and social independence.

Such demonstrations, however, subtly altered the sources and meaning of independence and manhood. Manly independence, these unions and parades suggested, could now be assured through the skilled production of useful commodities. Journeymen continued to assert both their manhood and their whiteness by contrasting themselves to women and slaves, whose perceived inability to produce commodities without supervision and guidance continued to ensure their dependent status. But journeymen also contrasted themselves to nonproductive men, such as stockbrokers, gamblers, lawyers, and speculators, who profited off others' labor without actually making anything themselves.

Industrial Manhood

One dominant labor organization of the postbellum period, the Knights of Labor, continued to assert the close connections among manhood, producing, and independence. The Knights' platform demanded “the abolition of wage slavery” and emphasized the desirability of cooperatively owned factories. They envisioned a nation of independent producers, who themselves owned and controlled the means of production. The Knights' understanding of producer was quite broad: Anyone who made things, whether male or female, working-class or middle-class, white or black, qualified as a producer. The Knights sought an alliance of all producers, and called for the inclusion of the middle class, women, African Americans, and unskilled workers in the organization. Yet in practice the union represented mostly skilled white men.

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