Labor Histories

by Arnesen, Eric

• ISBN13: 9780252067105
• ISBN10: 025206710X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-07-01
• Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr

Summary

Is class outmoded as a basis for understanding labor history? This significant new collection emphatically says "No!" Touching on such subjects as migrant labor, religion, ethnicity, agricultural history, and gender, these thirteen essays by former students of David Montgomery -- a preeminent leader in labor circles as well as in academia -- demonstrate the sheer diversity of the field today.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction	p. 1
Politics and the State
Land and Freedom: The New York Anti-Rent Wars and the Construction of Free Labor in the Antebellum North	p. 19
The "Fair Field" of the "Middle Ground": Abolitionism, Labor Reform, and the Making of an Antislavery Bloc in Antebellum Massachusetts	p. 45
Dinner-Pail Politics: Employers, Workers, and Partisan Culture in the Progressive Era	p. 71
Class Wars: Frank Walsh, the Reformers, and the Crisis of Progressivism	p. 97
The Workers' State: Municipal Policy, Class, and Taxes in the Early Depression	p. 125
Class and Culture
"Work That Body": African-American Women, Work, and Leisure in Atlanta and the New South	p. 153
Mobilizing Community: Migrant Workers and the Politics of Labor Mobility in the North American West, 1900-1920	p. 175
Popular Narrative and Working-Class Identity: Alexander Irvine's Early Twentieth-Century Literary Adventures	p. 201
Making a Church Home: African-American Migrants, Religion, and Working-Class Activism	p. 230
Labor Activism and Workers' Organizations
"To Sit among Men": Skill, Gender, and Craft Unionism in the Early American Federation of Labor	p. 259
Charting an Independent Course: African-American Railroad Workers in the World War I Era	p. 284
Boring from Within and Without: William Z. Foster, the Trade Union Educational League, and American Communism in the 1920s	p. 309
The Dynamics of "Americanization": The Croatian Fraternal Union between the Wars, 1920s-30s	p. 340
Contributors	p. 363
Index	p. 367
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.