Listener Call

BRIAN: Hey, Peter, earlier you were talking about how the Puritan settlers of New England embodied the work ethic. Was that true for all settlers throughout the colonies?

PETER: Well, not really, Brian. It’s true that those first colonists had to work really hard just to stay alive. But that doesn’t mean that everyone who came over expected to work hard. Now take the settlers in Jamestown, Virginia, for instance.

NANCY ISENBERG: The early years of Jamestown are really disturbing.

PETER: This is historian Nancy Isenberg.

NANCY ISENBERG: The people who went there expected to find gold that would be lying around on the beaches and they would suddenly acquire wealth. And people sat around. They played cards. They didn’t actually want to work.

They came hoping to make quick riches. And I think that’s a more common theme in American behavior than the idea that everyone is committed to hard work and sees this as a particular virtue that across the board Americans share.

PETER: In her new book White Trash, Isenberg argues that class has always been much more important in determining social mobility than one’s work ethic. She says that was especially true during the Colonial period.

NANCY ISENBERG: Many of the colonists who were sent over, a lot of them weren’t even prepared. They hadn’t been farmers, so they didn’t even– this was true particularly in the settlement of Georgia. So you can’t expect suddenly for people to know how to farm. And farming is actually incredibly difficult, hard work.

PETER: So how did those first settlers plan to get rich so quick? Well, by getting other people to work for them.

NANCY ISENBERG: So the real goal is not essentially to do it all on your own. It’s actually to find someone beneath you.

[LAUGHTER]

PETER: Yeah.

NANCY ISENBERG: Most of the early people who came to the New World were children, young boys. And what were they going to do? Well, they were going to be servants. They were going to be apprentices. They were going to be the labor that was going to be exploited.

PETER: OK, so you don’t have to work, but just somebody does have to work if there’s going to be prosperity. If you’re even going to get food to eat. Who does the work? And why do they do it?

NANCY ISENBERG: Right, and that’s why when we think about class, the most important thing about class– and since we’re talking about the earliest English notions of class– is that for them the master needed servants. And eventually, as we know, in Virginia and the South and even in New England, they needed slaves. Or they relied on Indian captives to turn into a servant population.

And this is a really common 18th century theory that what gave you liberty was the ability to have power and exercise authority over other dependent classes. That was a mark of your independence. And that’s really what is sort of an old English idea that was easily translated into the New World and easily translated into the Colonial period.

PETER: Well, Nancy, you couldn’t translate the English social system to America. You couldn’t sustain all those distinctions. Some people were above others, but how did you get control over labor? How did you become a master? Seems to me you’re talking not about a work ethic, but about a mastery ethic.

NANCY ISENBERG: Yeah, I think part of what– I mean, if we look at Jamestown, for example, and what happened in Virginia, you were rewarded by– given more land if you brought over more indentured servants. And it didn’t matter whether they arrived alive or dead.

[LAUGHTER]

So you still got–

PETER: Hold it, hold it, hold it. You want dead servants?

NANCY ISENBERG: Yes, you want dead servants because even if they don’t make it, you know, traveling across the Atlantic, you’re still going to get land in the end.

PETER: Right. Right.

NANCY ISENBERG: But then you have the other idea that somehow that it still requires an individual motivation and initiative. And then if you just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, somehow you’ll magically be able to overcome what are really, really difficult obstacles, when you think about how horrible life really was in the 18th century.

PETER: Right. So how does it happen that we now have the myth that in a democracy it’s up to you and that that makes sense to a lot of people? Even people who are on the margins. Where did the work ethic come from? Because I think your book is a brilliant study of wealth, as you might say.

NANCY ISENBERG: No, I think that’s really important. I mean, when we went to give the positive spin, we talk about working hard and that this somehow leads to social mobility.

PETER: Mm-hm.

NANCY ISENBERG: But the one thing that Americans have to realize is that social mobility has never been guaranteed. And it isn’t even what Franklin and Jefferson guaranteed. They guaranteed horizontal mobility. You have the right to keep moving if you fail. Move westward, my son. Somehow that’s the solution.

PETER: Nancy, your interpretation hinges on the importance of class, or you might say the hidden history of class, or one that we’ve willfully overlooked. I’m guessing that you’d say that we have a notion of the work ethic because of the myth that we are all middle class. We’ve all risen to this level so that this may be in our history, as you’re describing it, that there were these social distinctions. But that’s not us, because we’re the land of the free.

NANCY ISENBERG: Right, I mean, I think, you know, people take it back to the time of the revolution. They take it back to, you know, the way in which revolutionaries tried to place less emphasis on class and say and we’re fighting this British tyranny that was attached to a class system. But we know, and this myth was recently celebrated by Charles Murray in his book about white people where he said that in America, we don’t have– we’ve never had a class system, you know, since we were founded. Or if we do– I love it when he says, or if we do– somehow we should pretend that we don’t.

[LAUGHTER]

PETER: Right.

NANCY ISENBERG: Which I think is really telling–

PETER: Yeah, yeah, it’s interesting.

NANCY ISENBERG: –where you’re not supposed to admit that we have a class system when in fact, as I also try to show, in numerous political instances class moves front and center. So we try to hide it. We try to pretend it’s not there. But then it eventually does end up playing a major role in defining political conflict and political controversies in United States history.

PETER: Nancy, I’ve had the pleasure of knowing for some time now, and I can say with a good authority that you’re a hard worker. What happened to you?

[LAUGHTER]

PETER: You bought into– did you buy into this thing? Did you drink the Kool-Aid? Or would you grant that that value, which you say is mythological, is one that actually has been internalized?

NANCY ISENBERG: I think that, yes, middle class people are told that you will be rewarded. That’s the whole theme of the meritocracy. But one of the themes I also highlight that is concealed in our system is that we don’t start in the same place.

So much of your opportunities are determined by the wealth and privilege that comes from your parents, and that’s been proven by sociologists. That’s the key to success. So it’s actually where you start that still carries a great deal of weight.

Today in the United States, middle class and upper middle class parents give over 50% of their wealth to their children. We are actually replicating the old world monarchies that Jefferson wanted to free us from because it’s all about the wealth of your parents, and they create opportunities. But what we’re not recognizing– we have to recognize privilege. And that’s something we have a really difficult time doing.

It’s better to say it’s a work ethic. That it’s something that’s part of your character, and you’ve earned it by spending hours and hours advancing your knowledge, advancing your expertise. When, in fact, not all doors are open to everyone equally.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

ED: Nancy Isenberg is a historian at Louisiana State University and author of White Trash– The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America.