On the Make
, by Luskey, Brian P.Note: Supplemental materials are not guaranteed with Rental or Used book purchases.
- ISBN: 9780814753101 | 0814753108
- Cover: Paperback
- Copyright: 12/1/2011
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 menwhile making sense of a volatile capitalist economy and fluid urban societywas 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.