Land and Labour

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Land and labour provides the first full-length history of the Potters' Emigration Society, the controversial trade union scheme designed to solve the problems of surplus labour by changing workers into farmers on land acquired on the Wisconsin frontier. The brainchild of a Welsh-born trade unionist and editor, William Evans, the Potters' Emigration Society was the most widely discussed project of its kind in the era of mass migration. This book examines the industrial background to the emigration scheme, and the establishment of the first settlement in America, the duly named Pottersville. Short of funds and facing competition from Feargus O'Connor's Chartist Land Plan, in 1848 it widened its membership to other trades and regions, opening branches in Lancashire, Scotland, and London and other industrial communities. Over-ambition, relentless criticism and the inherent difficulties of long-distance colonisation brought about its collapse at the beginning of 1851. While many emigrant families remained and prospered, others found less success, with an undetermined number returning to Britain. Despite its failure, the potters' emigration scheme was not an unrealistic response to the anxieties and displacements wrought by industrialisation. Its history offers unique insight into working-class dreams of landed independence in the American West and significantly contributes to understanding of the complex and contingent character of transatlantic emigration in the nineteenth century.