As some of the world’s first white industrial proletarians searched for a language to voice their grievances, they found traction in analogies to chattel slavery. Mill hands worked hours similar to those imposed on enslaved field hands, from dawn to dusk, and were dependent on factory owners for sustenance. In 1845, a labor newspaper referred to mill workers as “white slaves of capital.” An immigrant from Germany, a shoemaker, put it this way: “We are free, but not free enough.”76 At inception, the American labor movement defined itself as a movement of and for white workers, a bulwark against
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