On the Make

Clerks and the Quest for Capital in Nineteenth-Century America

By: Brian P. Luskey

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eText | 1 January 2010

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"This fascinating portrait of American striving . . . locates the origins of white-collar culture in the precarious world of the antebellum clerk" (Timothy B. Spears, author of Chicago Dreaming).

In the mid-nineteenth-century, ambitious young men found a path to wealth and respect by working as clerks in the bustling cities of the American Northeast. At stores and commercial offices, these strivers and "counter jumpers" also found opportunities for self-gratification in their new identities as independent men. But being "on the make" in 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.