Introduction: free wage labor in the history of the West; Part I. American Contract Labor and English Wage Labor: The Use of Pecuniary and Nonpecuniary Pressure: 1. 'Free' contract labor in the United States: an anti-essentialist view of labor types I; 2. 'Unfree' wage labor in nineteenth-century England: an anti-essentialist view of labor types II; 3. Explaining the legal content of English wage labor; 4. Struggles over the rules: the Common Law Courts, parliament, the people, and the master and servant acts; 5. Struggles under the rules: strategic behavior and historical change in legal context; 6. Struggles to change the rules; 7. Freedom of contract and freedom of person; Part II. 'Free' and 'Unfree' Labor in the United States: 8. 'Involuntary servitude' in American fundamental law; 9. Labor contract enforcement in the American north; Conclusion.