Summary Of Scraping By Seth Rockman

In the novel, Scraping By, Seth Rockman illustrates the creation of Baltimore’s delicate economic system. Baltimore, at this time, is the third most populated city. The number of jobs available is very low and if a person managed to find a job in such a competitive city it is often plagued with such low wages that there was no possible way a laborer could be self-sufficient. Wages are determined by the employers. If the workers are abundant, wages would drop as a result. Workers had little to no rights, so they had no way of combatting this threat to their sustainability. Rockman portrays Baltimore’s developing economic system by telling the story of American opportunity through how wage labor was assembled, deployed, and exploited. Baltimore …show more content…
To make up for lost wages, households were created. They “combined the labor of adults and children (p. 160).” In these households they combined resources to survive. For those families who could not achieve a steady income, the almshouse was their only option. The almshouse was the “guarantee of a warm meal and a warm bed (p. 201)” Slavery and free labor were deeply ingrained into Baltimore’s labor society. One might assume that slavery was dying off as slave population in had decreased to 3 percent by 1830s. This was not the case. The end of the slave trade made the value of slaves increase and as time passed slavery and labor became treated as a commodity that helped make the market stronger. Seth Rockman uses the plight of the common laborer to actively show how labor was assembled, deployed, and exploited. The accumulation of labor was indispensable to the development of early Baltimore. With a rising population, employers found they had more power over the working man. Workers were forced to bend to their will. Men would have to “know where to line up for construction labor, which newspaper published the most help wanted ads (p. 45)”, and what jobs hired …show more content…
Wages, at a point, sunk so low that workers had finally had enough exploitation. In the 1833 strike of seamstresses, women “sought economic justice as exploited laborers in a competitive market (p. 132).” Their plight proved there was a relationship between wage labor and economic dependence. The strike did succeed in helping resist the lowering of wages but, did not help in raising them. While exploitation hurt the common laborer, it’s one of the main reasons early capitalism was able to exist. The free market thrived due to low wages and due to the extensive labor pool readily available for the employer. Throughout Scraping By, Seth Rockman uses dynamic language and heart wrecking stories to further his main argument, of how wage labor was assembled, deployed, and most importantly exploited. Detailed accounts of Baltimore citizens show the varying qualities of life. Aaron Buton’s story tell one of the common white laborer. Aaron could find work on the docks unloading cargo from ships or could work construction. He did not have enough money to escape the never-ending cycle of wage labor. As a poor white man in Baltimore he could “neither opt out of wage labor nor marshal the political clout to monetize it