Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939

by Lizabeth Cohen

• ISBN13: 9780521428385
• ISBN10: 0521428386
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1991-10-25
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book examines how it was possible and what it meant for ordinary factory workers to become effective unionists and national political participants by the mid-1930s. We follow Chicago workers as they make choices about whether to attend ethnic benefit society meetings or to go to the movies, whether to shop in local neighborhood stores or patronize the new A & P. Although workers may not have been political in traditional terms during the '20s, as they made daily decisions like these, they declared their loyalty in ways that would ultimately have political significance. As the depression worsened in the 1930s, not only did workers find their pay and working hours cut or eliminated, but the survival strategies they had developed during the 1920s were undermined. Looking elsewhere for help, workers adopted new ideological perspectives and overcame longstanding divisions among themselves to mount new kinds of collective action. Chicago workers' experiences as citizens, ethnics and blacks, wage earners and consumers all converged to make them into New Deal Democrats and CIO unionists.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
List of Tables	xiii
Acknowledgments	xv
Introduction	1	(10)
Living and Working in Chicago in 1919	11	(42)
Ethnicity in the New Era	53	(46)
Encountering Mass Culture	99	(60)
Contested Loyalty at the Workplace	159	(54)
Adrift in the Great Depression	213	(38)
Workers Make a New Deal	251	(40)
Becoming a Union Rank and File	291	(32)
Workers' Common Ground	323	(38)
Conclusion	361	(8)
Notes	369	(142)
Index	511