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Looking for Work, Searching for Workers: U.S. Labor Markets after the Civil War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Joshua L. Rosenbloom
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Between the Civil War and World War I the American economy was reshaped by the forces of industrialization. In 1870 the United States was still a predominantly rural and agricultural society concentrated in the area east of the Mississippi River. By the early twentieth century it had become a largely urban and industrial society of continental proportions. The growth of railroads, cities, mines, and factories, along with shifts in the sectoral and geographic patterns of economic activity, required the mobilization of vast quantities of capital and labor (Perloff et al. 1965: chap. 14). The formation of efficient factor markets capable of responding to these demands was an important ingredient in the rapid economic growth of the postbellum United States. The evolution of financial market institutions in response to the demands of late-nineteenth-century industrialization has been studied in some detail (Davis 1965; Sylla 1969; James 1978; Snowden 1987, 1988), but relatively little is known about the history of labor market institutions after the Civil War.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , Fall 1994 , pp. 377 - 403
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1994 

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