How to buy the book

You can order at History Press as well as Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other on-line retailers. I will send you a signed copy for $23, a little extra to cover shipping. I will send you both Slave Labor in the Capital and Through a Fiery Trial for $40. Send a check to me at PO Box 63, Wellesley Island, NY 13640-0063.

My lectures at Sotterley Plantation in St. Mary's County, Maryland, on September 23, 2015, and the DAR Library on December 5 are now blog posts below listed under book talks. The talk I gave
at the Politics and Prose Bookstore on February 28, 2015, along with Heather Butts, author African American Medicine in Washington, was taped by the bookstore. Take a listen.

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Stone masons quit and a lecture on employee relations

"Plus, the easier way to build the workforce was not by advertising for slaves but by using the network of friends and relations that free workers had."

Quote from Slave Labor in the Capital, page 71

"Observers were impressed by the 'spirit' with which the masons worked. Since one story of a stone building had  to sit at least a year before the second story was added, the masons expected to begin work at the Capitol. They didn't expect to be told by the commissioners that they had to work under McDermott Roe and that those whose wages were due to be renegotiated had to work by the piece."

Quote from Slave Labor in the Capital, page 89-90

Letters written by the commissioners, President Washington, and Secretary of State Jefferson can give the impression that there was a shortage of workers in Washington and that workers from Europe had to be recruited. In reality there was no shortage of workers. The press to recruit emigrants arose because since they could be legally bound to pay off their passage money, they would be cheaper than free workers already in the country or emigrants who paid their own passage.

When the commissioners changed the way of paying mason, many of them quit and left the city. Benjamin Stoddert, the Georgetown merchant and speculator, wrote to the commissioners chiding them for spreading disaffection that would stop the flow of workers to the city: "The report of such men will have more affect upon the minds of mechanics than everything that can be said in contradiction from authority the most respectable."


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