Author Description

"In Making Houses, Crafting Capitalism, Donna J. Rilling follows the work of entrepreneurial builders, from the procurement of bricks and mortar to the eventual marketing and sale of a finished house. By tracing these activities, Rilling demonstrates the diverse ways capital markets, worksites, raw materials, and the real estate business changed over six decades. She opens the world of artisans to reveal their creative impact on the Philadelphia economy and the ways they exploited the shifting organization of work and capital to secure their financial independence. The practices of the aggressive craftsmen profiled in Making Houses, Crafting Capitalism will enrich and complicate how historians think about small producers and their role in the nineteenth-century economy."--BOOK JACKET.