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David R. Roediger and John Ashworth discuss the implications and the debate over the term \u201cWhite Slavery\u201d and how it was used in mid-19th century America. This term, as Roediger says, sparked when the editor of The Plebeian, Levi Slamm, organized a protest referred to as the \u201ccoffin handbill protest\u201d using pamphlets that harshly depicted white laborers as slaves to the industrialized wage system. (Roediger 347) However, while Roediger is focused on attempting to define the phrases \u201cwhite slavery,\u201d \u201cwage slavery,\u201d or \u201cslavery of wages,\u201d I believe Ashworth successfully shows that the issue of wage slavery was merely pinned onto the issue of, as Roediger calls it, chattel slavery and detracts from the abolitionist movement. <\/p>\n
As Roediger put it on page 346, \u201cThe advantages of the phrase white slavery over wage slavery or slavery of wages lay in the former term\u2019s vagueness and in its whiteness.\u201d Using these words, he says, allowed radical democrats to \u201ccast\u201d abolitionists, free blacks, bankers, factory owners and prison labor, \u201cas villains in a loose plot to enslave white workers.\u201d The idea being democrats could unite their supporters under the term \u201cwhite slavery,\u201d and use it to attack the wage system. However, this is inherently flawed because the issues of black slavery and the wage system\u2019s oppression are fundamentally different. Roediger admits this contradiction on page 347. He says, \u201cThe tendency to indict white slavery and to support Black slavery was especially strong [in New York].\u201d At its core, a white slave abolitionist may very well attack the wage system but not necessarily oppose black slavery, and I think Roediger becomes too focused on defining the different terms and misses this larger picture. As Will pointed out in his blog post<\/a>, the comparison of a white and a black slave, where the black man is protected, clothed, and fed by his slaver while the white man is alone and overburdened by his multiple \u201cmasters,\u201d is a biased and rationalized excuse. Roediger admits in his conclusion, \u201cChattel slavery was, in this view, better than white slavery, a point fraught with proslavery paternalist implications and not lost on the southern editors who reprinted articles carrying such opinions.\u201d<\/p>\n The problem with Roediger\u2019s essay, as I said before, is that he is misguided in his argument. The coupling of wage slavery with black slavery was detrimental to the abolitionist movement and even to white slavery-abolitionists. For example, because of the comparison of white and black slaves, white workers tried to avoid being associated with African-Americans and bigoted slurs started appearing in the American language. Suddenly, workers who were not preforming well were called \u201cwhite niggers,\u201d and described as \u201cworking like a nigger.\u201d(343) This shows, I think, how linking the wage system battle to slavery hurt the American society and the abolitionist movement in the long run; especially considering that these slurs were still used in America during the Jim-Crow years after the civil war.<\/p>\n In comparison, Ashworth does a better job at looking at the bigger picture. As he quotes Charles Sumner coining a phrase to refer to southern slavery as \u201clabor without wages,\u201d Ashworth shows us that some individuals were trying to point out the injustice in coupling both issues. Sumner was trying to illustrate to his readers that the slave system was more oppressive than the wage system and that the issues were not remotely on the same level. Ashworth asserts that Lincoln realized the underlying issues in both white and black slavery, and rather than trying to solve both together, \u201cLincoln emphasized social mobility.\u201d (354) Lincoln believed that the \u201cAmerican greatness\u201d could be attributed to the fact that \u201cevery man can make himself\u201d in the U.S.<\/p>\n Ashworth describes Lincoln as someone who fought for \u201cequal privileges in the race of life,\u201d and not someone who would fight against the apparent wage slave oppression. Lincoln believed this labor system was part of what made America great; that it contributed to the \u201cAmerican dream\u201d ideal. Ashworth concludes that Lincoln\u2019s fundamental change in American Politics was based on the idea of social mobility, the freedom of each individual to make a life for himself, and the \u201crelationship between the employer and employee.\u201d According to Ashworth, this relationship is \u201cnow hailed as a quintessential characteristic of a \u201cfree\u201d society. There it remains today.\u201d (357) Rather than attempting to define and solve the wage crisis as Roediger tries to, Ashworth proves to us with Lincoln\u2019s example that the issues were separate and should have been treated as such.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" David R. Roediger and John Ashworth discuss the implications and the debate over the term \u201cWhite Slavery\u201d and how it was used in mid-19th century America. This term, as Roediger says, sparked when the editor of The Plebeian, Levi Slamm, organized a protest referred to as the \u201ccoffin handbill protest\u201d using pamphlets that harshly depicted … <\/p>\n