Introduction: free wage labor in the history of the West; Part I. American
Contract Labor and English Wage Labor: The Use of Pecuniary and
Nonpecuniary Pressure: 1. 'Free' contract labor in the United States: an
anti-essentialist view of labor types I; 2. 'Unfree' wage labor in
nineteenth-century England: an anti-essentialist view of labor types II; 3.
Explaining the legal content of English wage labor; 4. Struggles over the
rules: the Common Law Courts, parliament, the people, and the master and
servant acts; 5. Struggles under the rules: strategic behavior and
historical change in legal context; 6. Struggles to change the rules; 7.
Freedom of contract and freedom of person; Part II. 'Free' and 'Unfree'
Labor in the United States: 8. 'Involuntary servitude' in American
fundamental law; 9. Labor contract enforcement in the American north;
Conclusion.

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