On the Make : : Clerks and the Quest for Capital in Nineteenth-Century America / / Brian P. Luskey.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter New York University Press Backlist eBook-Package 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Luskey, Brian P.,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : New York University Press, , [2010]; ©2010
• Year of Publication: 2010
• Language: English
• Series: American History and Culture ; 1
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

In the bustling cities of the mid-nineteenth-century Northeast, young male clerks working in commercial offices and stores were on the make, persistently seeking wealth, respect, and self-gratification. Yet these strivers and "counter jumpers" discovered that claiming the identities of independent men-while making sense of a volatile capitalist economy and fluid urban society-was fraught with uncertainty. In On the Make, Brian P. Luskey illuminates at once the power of the ideology of self-making and the important contests over the meanings of respectability, manhood, and citizenship that helped to determine who clerks were and who they would become. Drawing from a rich array of archival materials, including clerks’ diaries, newspapers, credit reports, census data, advice literature, and fiction, Luskey argues that a better understanding of clerks and clerking helps make sense of the culture of capitalism and the society it shaped in this pivotal era.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1 What Is My Prospects? -- 2 The Humble Laborer in the White Collar -- 3 Homo Counter-Jumperii -- 4 Striving for Citizenship -- 5 The Republic of Broadcloth -- 6 The Swedish Nightingale and the Peeping Tom -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Index -- About the Author