Industrious in their stations

by Sharon Braslaw Sundue

"Industrious in Their Stations is the first comparative study of child labor in eighteenth-century America. Focusing on Philadelphia, Boston, and Charleston. Sharon Braslaw Sundue examines the work experiences of children and analyzes regional differences in child labor according to gender, race, and class." "During the eighteenth century, work was central to the lives of most young people. Work skills, learned young, were regarded as the crux of a useful education, heralded as a preventative against idleness and sin and as representing a vital contribution to the economy. By century's end, however, that viewpoint was in transition, as many political thinkers now touted more-formal education as being critical for securing the new republic. But the expansion of educational opportunities did not affect all groups of children equally. Sundue argues that controlling access to education was an essential mechanism for controlling the potentially unruly poor. Her analysis of local economic co