Working Class Ids

Indentures -- is a labourer under contract of the employer in exchange for an extension to the period of their indenture, which could thereby continue indefinitely (normally it would be for seven years). In other cases, indentured servants were subject to violence at the hands of their employers in the homes or fields in which they worked.

The labour-intensive cash crop of tobacco was farmed in the American South by indentured labourers in the 17th and 18th centuries.[1] Indentured servitude was not the same as the apprenticeship system by which skilled trades were taught, but similarities do exist between the two mechanisms, in that both require a set period of work.

Middle Passage -- refers to the forced transportation of African people from Africa to the New World as part of the Atlantic slave trade[1] and was the middle portion of the triangular trade voyage. Ships left Europe for African markets, where their goods were sold or traded for prisoners and kidnapped victims on the African coast. Traders then sailed to the Americas and Caribbean, where the Africans were sold or traded for goods for European markets, which were then returned to Europe. The European powers Spain, Portugal, France, England, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Brandenburg, as well as traders from Brazil and North America, all took part in this trade.

Mercantilism -- an economic theory that holds the prosperity of a nation dependable upon its supply of capital, and that the global volume of trade is "unchangeable." Economic assets, or capital, are represented by bullion (gold, silver, and trade value) held by the state, which is best increased through a positive balance of trade with other nations (exports minus imports). Mercantilism suggests that the ruling government should advance these goals by playing a protectionist role in the economy, by encouraging exports and discouraging imports, especially through the use of tariffs. The economic policy based upon these ideas is often called the mercantile system.

Patriarchy describes the structuring of society on the basis of family units, in which fathers have primary responsibility for the welfare of these units. In some cultures slaves were included as part of such households. The concept of patriarchy is often used, by extension, to refer to the expectation that men take primary responsibility for the welfare of the community as a whole, acting as representatives via public office (in anthropology and feminism, for example).

The Slave Power (sometimes referred to as the "Slaveocracy") was a term used in the Northern United States (primarily in the period 1840-1875) to characterize the political power of the slaveholding class in the South.

An internal improvement is some constructible object that augments a nation's economic infrastructure; examples include airports, canals, dams, dikes, pipelines, railroads, roads, tunnels, and artificial harbours.

Wage slavery is a term used to refer to a condition in which a person chooses a job but only within a coerced set of choices (e.g. work for a boss or starve) which usually excludes democratic worker's control of the workplace and the economy as a whole and unconditional access to food, shelter and health care. It is used to express disapproval of a condition where persons are effectively compelled to work in return for payment of a wage, and are therefore barred from having a say over economic decisions in proportion to the degree they are affected by them--reducing control over their destinies. [1] In terms used by critics of capitalism, statism and various authoritarian systems, wage slavery is the condition where a person must sell his or her labor power, submitting to the authority of an employer merely to subsist.

Commonwealth v. Hunt (1842) was a landmark legal decision issued by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on the subject of labor unions.

The Court established that trade unions were not necessarily criminal or conspiring organizations if they did not advocate violence or illegal activities in their attempts to gain recognition through striking. This legalized the existence of non-socialist or non-violent trade organizations, though trade unions would continue to be harassed legally through anti-trust suits and injunctions.

The Militia Act of 1862 was legislation enacted by the United States Congress in 1862 during the American Civil War to enable African Americans to join the Union Army to free up frontline troops for combat.

The act created controversy on several fronts. While praised by many abolitionists and black-rights activists as a first step toward equality, it stipulated