When a substitute labor broker during the Civil War told his business partners, “Men are cheap here today,” he revealed a disturbing contradiction at the heart of the Union's war effort.
Despite northerners' adherence to the principles of self-employment, the war led to rampant speculation and coercive labor arrangements that many Americans described as fraudulent. Discussions about this discrepancy centered on recruitment agencies called “intelligence bureaus,” suspicious institutions that nevertheless served the military and domestic needs of the Union Army.and Northern families. Northerners condemned labor agents for charging fees that exceeded the wages of contracts between employers and workers.
However, the transactions brokered by these intermediaries with vulnerable Irish immigrants, Union soldiers and veterans, former slaves, and Confederate dissidents, set the limits of independence in the wage labor economy, and made clear who could thrive in it.The book \ "Men are Cheap" \ shows that in the midst of winning the war, the Northerners had to face the scam of self-employment. Labor brokers, by helping to provide labor for the federal army and northern families, provided indispensable work that contributed to the triumph of the northern states and northern employers. They also contributed to the emergence of an economic and political system that enriched the administrative class at the expense of workers, a reality that still resonates to this day.
