This volume represents a search for the socioeconomic and legal origins of the employment relationship as it currently exists in the United States. Although the study was sparked by legal disputes in which farmers and other employers denied the existence of an employment relationship with migrant farmworkers, the scope of the controversy and the unresolved legal issues are not confined simply to unskilled and low-wage agricultural workers. Linder analyzes the evolution of an important legal doctrine through an examination of its origins and development in statute and case law in the political economies of both Britain and the United States.