Men Is Cheap: Exposing the Frauds of Free Labor in Civil War America

When a Civil War substitute broker told business associates that "Men is
cheep here to Day," he exposed an unsettling contradiction at the heart
of the Union's war effort. Despite Northerners' devotion to the
principles of free labor, the war produced rampant speculation and
coercive labor arrangements that many Americans labeled fraudulent.
Debates about this contradiction focused on employment agencies called
"intelligence offices," institutions of dubious character that
nevertheless served the military and domestic necessities of the Union
army and Northern households. Northerners condemned labor agents for
pocketing fees above and beyond contracts for wages between employers
and employees. Yet the transactions these middlemen brokered with
vulnerable Irish immigrants, Union soldiers and veterans, former slaves,
and Confederate deserters defined the limits of independence in the
wage labor economy and clarified who could prosper in it.

Men Is Cheap
shows that in the process of winning the war, Northerners were forced
to grapple with the frauds of free labor. Labor brokers, by helping to
staff the Union military and Yankee households, did indispensable work
that helped the Northern state and Northern employers emerge victorious.
They also gave rise to an economic and political system that enriched
the managerial class at the expense of laborers--a reality that
resonates to this day.