The Material Lives of Laboring Philadelphians, 1750 to 1800

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. TOHN Shenton, a Philadelphia mariner, sailed four times to Antigua Con the snow Mary between October I750 and November I752. He yearned between Li3 and LI 5 per voyage, plus 3s. 6d. for each day he may have worked unloading or stowing cargo, for an annual income of approximately ?32 during those years. Shenton's personal expenses must have been minimal, for room and board were provided on ship, and the only financial difficulties he may have encountered would have resulted from supporting a wife and children, if he had such. The material conditions that he and his hypothetical family experienced, however, are not clear to us.Fifteen years later, Joseph Graisbury earned about Li8o annually by outfitting some of Philadelphia's wealthiest citizens in the latest fashions from Holland-cloth breeches to silk vests. He bought a house worth ?I 20 in Lower Delaware ward, in which he resided with his wife, at least seven children, all under eight years of age, and a slave. But the standard of living provided by his tailoring, and the ways it varied during the decade before the Revolution, are unknown.Late in the I78os, John and Elizabeth Baldwin performed occasional jobs for the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Sick Poor. John whitewashed fences and walls for 5s. 5d. per day, and spread dung on the hospital's garden for is. 6d. per day. Elizabeth washed clothes, cleaned rooms, made candles, cooked, and nursed, usually for 2s. 6d. per day. The couple and their two children lived in a "brick tenement" rented from the hospital for LI2 annually and may at times have paid 9d. for a meal at the hospital. Again, the material circumstances of their lives and the nature of their struggle to make ends meet cannot be clearly understood from these fragmentary data.' Mr. Smith is a member of the Department of History at Douglass College of Rutgers University. He wishes to thankThese vignettes provide glimpses into the material world of urban laboring people in America during the second half of the eighteenth century. They are a summons to research the day-to-day lives of ordinary Americans rather than a basis for easy generalizations about their physical existence. Despite limited evidence, historians usually describe the living standards of the urban lower classes as comfortable, perpetuating the hoary myth that labor scarcity in early America inevitably meant high wages for anyone who cared to work. Thus Sam Bass Warner finds Revolutionary Philadelphia a city of "abundance for the common man." "An unskilled laborer without connections," Warner claims, "could find work with board and wages to begin accumulating a little money for tools," and the "earnings of the ordinary artisan . .. could support a wife...

Economic growth in the Mid-Atlantic region: Conjectural estimates for 1720 to 1800

“…We combined the evidence on wages for Philadelphia laborers from Nash (1979) for 1727 to 1775 with that from Smith (1981) for 1751 to 1800, and then deflated these by an estimate of the cost of living to arrive at an estimate of real wages. 40 We used five-year averages 39 According to Harrington (1935, p. 53) "In New York no business of any importance seems to have rested on a capital investment of less than £2,000" which was a considerable amount at that time.…”

“…The nonagricultural output per worker series is based on wages of Philadelphia laborers taken from Nash (1979) for 1727 to 1775 andSmith (1981) for 1751to1800. We used five year averages to construct an index which was used to extrapolate the 1800 base year value of nonagricultural output per worker.…”

“…The current Census definition would put it in the South Atlantic region. 5 Smith (1981) makes clear that not everyone enjoyed this relatively high standard of living.…”

American Incomes 1774-1860

“…Following the leads of Billy Gordon Smith (1981Smith ( , 1984Smith ( , 1990 and Lucy Simler (1990Simler ( , 2007Clemens and Simler 1988) in particular, we estimate the number of household heads from c1774 and c1800 population data from invoking assumptions detailed elsewhere (Lindert and Williamson 2011: Section II). These assumptions have generated total households by placethat is, by region and by urban versus rural.…”

Popular Justice or Why Were There No Sans-Culottes in America?

“…Labour market relations were similar too: manual workers predominated in Paris and in America. 64 John Dickinson's twelve Letters from a Farmer -a catechism of colonial resistance -published by the colonial press and many times as a separate pamphlet, came from the pen of a 'moderate oppositionist', yet for the establishment in the metropolis it was a case of lèse of British majesté and instigation of rebellion. The pamphlet cost two shillings in England.…”