On the Make

Clerks and the Quest for Capital in Nineteenth-Century America

By: Brian P. Luskey

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Hardcover | 31 January 2010

At a Glance

Hardcover
287 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
23.5 x 15.24 x 2.54

Hardcover

RRP $193.00

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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.

Industry Reviews

"In this fascinating portrait of American striving, Luskey locates the origins of white-collar culture in the precarious world of the antebellum clerk. Broadly interdisciplinary in scope and eloquent in the telling, On the Make is a valuable addition to the growing list of books that illuminate the cultural and social history of American business." Timothy Spears, author of Chicago Dreaming

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