The "Lower Sort": Philadelphia's Laboring People, 1750–1800

by Billy Gordon Smith

This book recreates the daily lives of laboring men and women in America's premier urban center during the second half of the eighteenth century. Billy G. Smith demonstrates how the "lower sort" (as they were called by their contemporaries) struggled to carve out meaningful lives during an era of vast change stretching from the Seven Years' War, through the turbulent events surrounding the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution, into the first decade of the new nation.

Genres: History

272 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1990

Reviews

[Andrew Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smith is an excellent scholar, who applies a great amount of quantitative data to construct an amazing historical narrative of what life was like for the urban poor in the late eighteenth century. A must read for anyone interested in class, labor, and early American urban history.

[Raven Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

who up n wanting to talk about the eternality of wealth disparity & common misconceptions of the workers’ lot?