| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Coercion, Contract, and Free Labor in the Nineteenth Century. By Robert J. Steinfeld. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. xii, 329 pp. $59.95, ISBN 0-521-77360-1.)

In this sequel to his 1991 The Invention of Free Labor: The Employment Relation in English and American Law and Culture, 1350–1870, Robert J. Steinfeld, a law professor at the State University of New York–Buffalo, continues to explore the emergence of the modern conception of "free labor." His primary argument here is that the general belief that labor in the past (or, for that matter, in the present) was/is either "unfree" (as in slavery or serfdom, because workers could not leave their "employment") or "free" (that is, employment at will) obscures the reality that there is often a continuum of intermediate positions within this supposed dichotomy. 1

In a general philosophical vein, Steinfeld notes that this is so because most workers are to varying degrees, even today, essentially coerced into laboring for others (or themselves) because, even in a "free" labor market, the alternative prospect of starvation is just as motivating as or more motivating than a fear of being beaten or jailed. Thus, he argues that our conception of "free" in reality reflects a socially constructed definition that 2

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