Stone cutters' petitions on wages 1798

In 1793, the commissioners boasted that hiring slaves "proved a very useful check and kept our affairs cool." They clearly meant that hiring slaves cowed free workers into accepting the wages and working conditions offered. In the spring of 1798 slave labor was clearly no longer a check even though the commissioners hired almost 100, around three times the number hired in 1792.

None of the six men who served as commissioners during this period had any prior experience in building. They included two doctors, three lawyers and a planter/politician. One of the doctors, William Thornton, described himself as an architect but at the same prided himself on knowing nothing about building. So their boast that slave labor checked the demands for free workers was really more a hopeful projection than a proven fact.

In my book, I suggest that the use of slaves made it easier for the commissioners to shift more of the work from day wages to wages by the piece, by the perch for masons. Then the Capitol walls built by the piece collapsed and the piece-work regime ended and with it what leverage the use of slaves gave the commissioners ended. Commissioner Thornton suggested buying slaves and training them to be stone masons, but his colleagues did not take the idea seriously. All the commissioners agreed on trying to get indentured stone cutters from Europe, but all efforts to that end proved in vain.

Because the commissioners needed money from congress, then sitting in Philadelphia, one commissioner was often in that city while congress was in session. Commissioner Alexander White's reports on the wages of skilled workers in Philadelphia became the stick with which the commissioners tried to beat back the demands of their workers. In the spring of 1798 they told their supervisor of the stone work, George Blagden, to tell the stone cutters that they were no longer getting an increase in their wage during the summer which made working in the heat and humidity of Washington easier to bear.

Working closely with slaves who worked for no more than three meals and a place to sleep didn't prevent the free stone cutters working on the Capitol and White House from threatening to quit if their summer wages were cut. As I explain in Through a Fiery Trial, page 479, the commissioners refused to give them 13 shillings a day during the summer and told them they were lucky to get the 10 shilling winter wage because stone cutters in Philadelphia only made 9 shillings.

Unfortunately, the petitions scanned below are in poor shape and I made some notes on the copies I made from the microfilm. There are two petitions. One from the stone cutters at the Capitol and one for those at the President's house. The commissioners fired the petitioners and ordered stone cutters from Philadelphia. But they wanted a written guarantee. Meanwhile the stone for the buildings wasn't being prepared for setting. Blagden negotiated a compromise giving all stone cutters a base pay of 10 shillings a day and increasing that to 12 shillings 6 pence a day for those with greater skill.