Fall of the House of Labor, The: The Workplace, the State and American Labor Activism, 1865-1925

8vo, xii, 494p., first edition, The changing ways in which American industrial workers mobilised for concerted action in their own interests. Sustained class conflict between 1916 and 1922 reshaped governmental and business policies, but left labour largely unorganised and in retreat. When labour activism was reinvigorated after 1933, the movement split in two. Between the abolition of slavery and the end of open immigration from Europe and Asia the House of Labor, so arduously erected by working-class activists during the preceeding generation, did not collapse, but ossified, so that when labour activism was reinvigorated after 1933, the movement split. These developments are analysed in ways which stress the links between migration, neighbourhood life, racial subjugation, business reform, the state, and the daily experience of work itself. Acknowledgments; Abbreviations used in text and notes; Introduction; 1. The manager's brain under the workman's cap; 2. The common laborer; 3. The operative; 4. The art of cutting metals; 5. White shirts and superior intelligence; 6. 'Our time . beliefs in change'; 7. Patriots or paupers; 8. 'This great struggle for democracy'; 9. 'A maximum of publicity with a minimum of interference'; Index.