Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870–1920

by Roy Rosenzweig

• ISBN13: 9780521313971
• ISBN10: 052131397X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1985-10-31
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

In the first comprehensive study of American working-class recreation, Professor Rosenzweig takes us to the saloons, the ethnic and church picnics, the parks and playgrounds, the amusement parks, and the movie houses where industrial workers spent their leisure hours. Focusing on the city of Worcester, Massachusetts, he describes the profound changes that popular leisure underwent. Explaining what these pastimes and amusements tell us about the nature of working-class culture and class relations in this era, he demonstrates that in order fully to understand the working class experience it is necessary to explore the realm of leisure. For what workers did in the corner saloon, the neighbourhood park, the fraternal lodge hall, the amusement park, and the nickelodeon had a good deal of bearing on what happened inside the factories, the union halls, and the voting booths of America's industrial communities.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I. Context: 1. Workers in an industrial city, 1870-1920

Part II. Culture: The Working-Class World of the Late Nineteenth-Century: 2. The rise of the saloon

3. Immigrant workers and the fourth of july

Part III. Conflict: Struggles Over Working-Class Leisure in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries: 4. The struggle over the saloon, 1870-1910

5. The struggle over recreational space: the development of parks and playgrounds

6. The struggle over the fourth: the safe and sane july fourth movement and the immigrant working class

Part IV. Culture, Conflict, and Change: The Working-Class World of the Early Twentieth Century: 7. The commercialization of leisure: the rise of a leisure market and the persistence of the saloon

8. From rum shop to Rialto: workers and movies

Conclusion

Abbreviations used in notes

Notes

A note on sources

Index.