"Good Hands, Stout Heart, and Fast Feet": The History and Culture of Working People in Early America

This article examines some of the structural and cultural dimensions of capital-labour relations in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century America. It situates the lives of labouring people within an expansive transatlantic economy and a labour-scarce colonial economy, a combination that created both a heavy dependence upon unfree labour and persistent struggles over the mobility of workers. The article explores the major types of labour in early America — hunting, craft, domestic, free wage, free farming, indentured servant, and slave — and argues that a general culture of labour was emerging from the converging experiences of working men and women. The conclusion suggests that the pervasive experience of unfree labour in early America is intertwined with America's long history of ferocious conflict at the point of production.