18th century AD

Magazine Antiques, May, 2005 by Wendell Garrett

The grand complaint with laborers among us is that we do not pay them
sufficient prices for their work. A plain reason may be assigned for
this; we consume too little of their manufactures to keep them employed
the whole year round; their wages therefore must of consequence be
proportionably higher during the few months they do work.
Benjamin Rush probably to his brother Jacob Rush, January 26, 1769

In the mid-eighteenth century Philadelphia flourished on every front, causing Robert Morris to write to John Hancock in 1777, "from its centrical situation, the extent of its commerce, the number of its artificers, manufacturers and other circumstances, to be to the United States what the heart is to the human body in circulating the blood."

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Numerically the Philadelphia mechanic class accounted for one-third of the city's population, according to the city directory of 1785. Although the gentry tended to define them as the unthinking multitude, these craftsmen longed for respectability and strove to be recognized as contributing to the community. One of the keys to Benjamin Franklin's success as an urban organizer was his skill in appealing to the dignity that artisans felt as members of the producing class. These men expected to earn a decent living, and with rare exceptions they did not accumulate riches or achieve high social status. Economic security rather than upward mobility was their goal.

One of the hazards to this modest aim in preindustrial America was the irregularity of work patterns caused by the weather, the hours of daylight, the erratic delivery of raw materials, and the vagaries of consumer demand. The hurricane season in the West Indies from August to October, for example, caused slowdowns in trade because few shipowners were willing to risk sailing, and, when the cost of lamp oil was more than the income from the extra work, craftsmen quit at sundown. The irregularity of work for Philadelphia artisans that Benjamin Rush noted in 1769 persisted into the nineteenth century.

Nonetheless, these Philadelphia artisans could anticipate more favorable conditions than prevailed in the Old World that they had left behind. Unemployment was almost unknown in the early decades of settlement in the New World. Labor commanded a better price in relation to the cost of necessities, and land in the cities could be bought at a reasonable price for shop and dwelling. "You may depend upon it," boasted Chief Justice William Allen in 1760 of his native Pennsylvania, "that this is one of the best poor Man's Countrys in the World."