American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears

by Farah Stockman

The preacher on television began giving a sermon about work, quoting Colossians 3:23. “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters,” the preacher said. “It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” Tony opened a Bible that lay nearby and read the passage for himself. That passage imbued work with a religious significance. It conferred an inherent dignity on work, no matter how lowly. Aimed at the slaves of ancient Rome, it assured them that God noticed their best efforts even if their ungrateful masters didn’t. It must have made life more bearable for American slaves as well. In the endless struggle between labor and capital, slaves were the lowliest of actors, hardly in the fight. It was not just that they lacked capital; they were capital, no better than a plow. Poor whites had only the meager wages they could earn, but slaves lacked even that.