On the Make
：Clerks and the Quest for Capital in Nineteenth-Century America
( American History and Culture )
Publication subTitle ：Clerks and the Quest for Capital in Nineteenth-Century America
Publication series ：American History and Culture
Author： Luskey Brian P.
Publisher： NYU Press
Publication year： 2010
E-ISBN: 9780814753484
P-ISBN(Paperback): 9780814753101
Subject： C91 Sociology;C913 Social Life and Social Problems;K15 contemporary history (1917 ~);K7 Americas History
Keyword： 美洲史,现代史（1917年~）,社会学,社会生活与社会问题
Language： ENG
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Description
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.
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