On the Make: Clerks and the Quest for Capital in Nineteenth-Century AmericaIn the bustling cities of the mid nineteenth century Northeast, young male clerks working in commercial offices and stores were on the make, persistently seeking wealth, respect, and self gratification. Yet these strivers and counter jumpers discovered that claiming the identities of independent men while making sense of a volatile capitalist economy and fluid urban society was fraught with uncertainty. In On the Make, Brian P. Luskey illuminates at