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

Book Description

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.

Customer Reviews:

Great insights on the labor movement during the depression.......2005-01-20

Cohen presents a seemingly broad and well-supported thesis to explain the success of unionism in the 1930s. However, while all persuasive, some of her major arguments seem only tangentially relevant to either each other or her main thesis. While she provides a strong, coherent explanation as to why Chicago workers' political loyalties and attitudes shifted so dramatically during the depression, it is frankly nothing new. Yes, workers felt entitled to aid and came to favor a strong, interventionist federal government, but the connections she draws between this and the unionization of Chicago factories remain tenuous. Correlation, as they say, is not causation; but Cohen argues, both implicitly and explicitly, that workers' preference for government intervention was a major factor in the labor struggles of the 1930s. If Cohen had acknowledged that labor solidarity and preference for big-government welfare programs were but two symptoms of worker's frustration, and accordingly broadened and adjusted her thesis, her chapter about Chicagoans attitudes vis-à-vis big government could have provided excellent support for her final argument. In the context of her overarching thesis, however, the chapter seems almost like a square peg in a round hole. Instead of letting her explanations-albeit insightful-of the working class's political consciousness reflect back on the people who hold them, she advances the somewhat further-fetched notion that worker's political experiences led directly to the later growth of unionization. None of this, however, detracts from her excellent account of the organizations and institutions that were shared between the too. Cohen primarily fails by not supporting her argument that these interrelations were anything more than marriages of political expediency forged in desperate times. That the Communists dabbled in both the labor movement and various forms of political activism does not mean that both were one and the same. Cohen rejects the simple explanation that they were both separate outlets for the collective rage of the underemployed.

Ask many American historians for a short answer why the CIO was so successful in the 30s, and they may answer: because of the NLRA, hesitance of local, state, and federal governments to take the politically inexpedient step of supporting industry, and, most importantly, a mass of desperate workers imbued with a newfound distrust for the system that had betrayed them. This is essentially the answer Lizabeth Cohen arrives at; she simply takes a circuitous-if enjoyable-path to reach it. She provides a complex, nuanced answer in a place where a simple answer might do. Perhaps she's asking a different question than it appears she is. The title of her book, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939, implies that she's looking at a topic broader than the unionization of Chicago factories, but by bookending her many salient and though-provoking claims with the tales of 1919's failed strike and the CIO's ascendancy in the 1930s, she is limiting the scope of her book far too narrowly. Nonetheless, nothing is intrinsically wrong with any of Cohen's arguments and she provides a fascinating window into the mind of America's urban, industrial workforce during the depression.

In-depth Analysis of Chicago and Chicagoans.......2004-02-15

Cohen's work based on her Ph.D. Dissertation at UC-Berkeley proves to be a comprehensive, engaging, and insightful look into popular culture in 1920s and 1930s Chicago. She moves seamlessly from labor history to cultural history to ethnic history without losing the reader by including helpful charts, figures, and photographs. Her section on the nature of mass media and mass consumption undoubtedly provides evidence of her writing style in The American Pageant.

Cohen does not create a delineation between immigrants that came to the area and natives of the Chicago area, which goes a long way in terms of bias. She covers African-Americans, Polish, Italians, and Jews without being critical one way or the other. Each chapter seems to be able to live by itself, which gives the book a flavor of being a compendium of papers instead of a conjoined work. All in all, Cohen does a wonderful job examining Chicago and Chicagoans whatever their ethnicity may be.

Outstanding view of workers in Chicago between the wars.......2003-02-17

Making a New Deal is an absolutely incredible look at workers during the Interwar period in Chicago. Cohen has crafted a monumental work that not only covers workers political and union organization but also covers the changes in their lives resulting from societal changes such as the advent of radio and the chain store.
What's particularly appealing and interesting about this book is also what it says about modern times. Cohen discusses that due to the advent of radio and national networks, fewer workers got their local and world news from ethnic newspapers or other papers in Chicago. As can be seen from this, the current lement concerning the consolidation of newspapers, TV and radio stations isn't new, it began even in the 1930s. Also interesting is how many immigrant parents worried about their children becoming influenced by American culture that they did not understand, particularly clubs, dance halls and radio music.
Cohen's work is profoundly important and most of the book is a great read.

A superior book on labor, ethnicity, and politics.......2003-02-01

A well-researched and original book describing the shifting allegiances of Chicago workers from ethnic help societies to their welfare capitalist employers to finally the US government. In addition to the subject of the growing labor movement, the book is also a great survey of the various ethnic/racial groups of 1920s Chicago and their differing experiences with Americanization.

There is a book I would like to recommend as a virtual "sequel" to this one. The Origins of the Urban Crisis by Thomas Sugrue. While Cohen's book is about the creation of the New Deal coalition in the factory neighborhoods and towns of Chicago, Sugrue's book is about the disappearance of the factories and the departure from the Democratic coalition in the 1960s of the same groups who joined it in the 30s. Sugrue's book also won a Bancroft prize and if you like one you will surely like the other.

Making Sense of the Great Depression.......2001-04-21

Cohen's synopsis of Chicago through the 1920's and into the tough times of the 1930's is truly a remarkable account that makes sense of the Great Depression in a way that truly brings it to life for the reader. Though focused on Chicago, the story she tells really holds true for the whole US and delves deeply into the real world reality of the depression experience. Carefully outlining the change in America from an industrial capitalism to a welfare state society, the important changes in America are clearly explained and brought to life through understandable and vivid human stories. The fourth chapter discussing the actual alteration in the worker's mindset that created an atmosphere for not only the New Deal, but for the federal government activity we are used to today, is truly the highlight of the book. Just chapter alone earns this book my highest recommendation, as overall it is one of the better books of this era and topic with which I am familiar.

No One Is Illegal: Fighting Violence and State Repression on the U.S.-Mexico Border

Average customer rating:

Fair trade, working class solidarity, compassion, etc.
another book for school
Utter Trash Whose Only Redeeming Quality Is It's Potential Use As Toilet Paper, Or To Start A Nice Fire
Great Book
A scholarly, heavily researched yet harsh wake-up call to American immigration policy injustice.

No One Is Illegal: Fighting Violence and State Repression on the U.S.-Mexico Border
Justin Akers Chacon , and Mike Davis
Manufacturer: Haymarket Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Mexico | Americas | History | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 1931859353

Book Description

"A rare combination of an author, [Mike Davis is] Rachel Carson and Upton Sinclair all in one."-Susan Faludi

"[Davis' writing is] perceptive and rigorous."-David Montgomery, The Nation

"[Davis' work is] brilliant, provocative, and exhaustively researched."-The Village Voice

"[Davis' work is] eloquent and passionate."-Tariq Ali

No One Is Illegal debunks the leading ideas behind the often violent right-wing backlash against immigrants.

Countering the chorus of anti-immigrant voices, Mike Davis and Justin Akers Chacon expose the racism of anti-immigration vigilantes and put a human face on the immigrants who risk their lives to cross the border to work in the United States.

Davis and Akers Chacon challenge the racist politics of vigilante groups like the Minutemen, and argue for a pro-immigrant and pro-worker agenda that recognizes the urgent need for international solidarity and cross-border alliances in building a renewed labor movement.

Writer, historian, and activist Mike Davis is the author of many books, including City of Quartz, The Ecology of Fear, The Monster at Our Door, and Planet of Slums. Davis teaches in the Department of History at the University of California at Irvine, and lives in San Diego. Davis is the recipient of the 2001 Carey McWilliams Award and the World History Association Book Award.

Justin Akers Chacon is professor of U.S. History and Chicano Studies in San Diego, California. He has contributed to the International Socialist Review and the book Immigration: Opposing Viewpoints (Greenhaven Press).

Customer Reviews:

Fair trade, working class solidarity, compassion, etc........2007-06-14

This book dismantles the narratives we hear from the establishment media regarding undocumented workers. It covers the history of oppression migrant workers have faced, including beatings from the KKK and the Order of Caucasians, among other vigilantes organized by agribusiness interests.
It also covers the devastating impacts of NAFTA on Mexico's economy. Page 121 points out, "Over 1.3 million small farmers in Mexico were pushed into bankruptcy by cheap American grain imports between 1994 and 2004. Luis Tellez, former undersecretary for planning in Mexico's Ministry of Agriculture and Hydraulic Resources, estimates that as many as 15 million peasants will leave agriculture in the next few decades, many seeing migration north as the only option. . . Meanwhile, the deindustrialization of Mexico continues unabated. Mexico lost an unprecedented 515,000 jobs in the first three months of 2005 alone."
What industry there is, is now found in the sites of hyper-exploitation known as maquiladoras.

One negative review calls the book "Marxist." Well, the book is mostly just an honest analysis of the situation. Something that demagogues like Tom Tancredo avoid. Tancredo likes to whip up hysteria. His congressional district (one of the wealthiest in the country) has a large Lockheed Martin plant. Lockheed will be making a fortune on the further militarization of the border.
Anyway, the book does include one quotation from Karl Marx, and I think it's worth repeating. Justin Akers Chacon writes: "Marx illustrated the self-sabotaging nature of the conflict between 'native-born' workers and immigrant workers in his analysis of the relationship between the English and Irish working classes when he wrote, 'The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker, he feels himself a member of the ruling nation and so turns himself into a tool of the aristocrats and capitalists of his country against Ireland, thus stengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social and national prejudices against the Irish worker. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organization. It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power. And that class is fully aware of it.'
Inter-ethnic and international class solidarity, or lack thereof, has been a determinant of the progression, inertia, or regression of the American labor movement. When nationalist or chauvinist sentiments are strong, the working class is weak, demonstrating the deep penetration of ruling-class ideology into working-class consciousness."

This book also covers the conquest of Mexico, and the opportunities for organizing immigrants.
It's a sensational book that I have been quoting over various message boards. I'll be buying several copies of it.

[...]

another book for school.......2007-05-16

I bought this book for a class at college. I am really tired of this propoganda. I do not agree with the viewpoints.

Utter Trash Whose Only Redeeming Quality Is It's Potential Use As Toilet Paper, Or To Start A Nice Fire.......2007-04-15

I had a peek at this book at a snobby little bookstore in Seattle called "The Left Bank" - I spent a half hour reading several chapters, and the experience was not unlike listening to that pseudo-intellectual idiot you knew back in college. The one that thought the world would be great if we'd all embrace utopian Marxism. Imagine that person wrote a book so completely one sided that it utterly dismisses any dissenting opinion as Fascism or Right Wing Extremism. That's what you'd have here, a book that already has it's mind made up, which is great if you're an ILLEGAL alien or one of the dozens who might share the author's point of view. Anyone interested in an intelligent two-sided analysis of the immigration debate would do well to steer clear of this leftist propaganda.

Great Book.......2007-01-19

Read this book for a class, truly enjoyed the book and the class

A scholarly, heavily researched yet harsh wake-up call to American immigration policy injustice........2006-11-05

Written by Justin Akers Chacon (professor of US History and Chicano Studies in San Diego) and Mike Davis (teaches in the Department of History at the University of California at Irvine), No One Is Illegal: Fighting Racism and State Violence on the US-Mexico Border is a sharp rebuke against anti-immigration vigilantism, denouncing the often violent right-wing backlash against immigrants and striving to put a human face upon the men and women who cross America's borders. Chapters survey white, anti-immigrant violence in California history from the inception of the Ku Klux Klan, the "Yellow Peril", and anti-Filipino riots to modern times, with an especially critical eye turned toward the Minutemen. Also scrutinized is the history of how dominant corporate interests and the wealthiest members of America have used immigration policy to control labor - such as the bracero program, an individualized contract that subjects a guest worker to deportation at the employer's relative discretion; such "guest worker" programs actually give agribusiness employers more control over their workers than they would have over undocumented workers, who can migrate to construction other fields and thus place some pressure upon agribusiness to raise its poverty-level wages. A scholarly, heavily researched yet harsh wake-up call to American immigration policy injustice.

State of Working America 2006/07 (State of Working America)

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the hobo philosopher
Change Is Needed Now and Here's Why

State of Working America 2006/07 (State of Working America)
Lawrence Mishel , Jared Bernstein , and Sylvia Allegretto
Manufacturer: Cornell University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Labor Policy | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0801473551

Book Description

Praise for previous editions of The State of Working America "The State of Working America remains unrivaled as the most-trusted source for a comprehensive understanding of how working Americans and their families are faring in today's economy."-Robert B. Reich

"It is the inequality of wealth, argue the authors, rather than new technology (as some would have it), that is responsible for the failure of America's workplace to keep pace with the country's economic growth. The State of Working America is a well-written, soundly argued, and important reference book."-Library Journal

"If you want to know what happened to the economic well-being of the average American in the past decade or so, this is the book for you. It should be required reading for Americans of all political persuasions."-Richard Freeman, Harvard University "A truly comprehensive and useful book that provides a reality check on loose statements about U.S. labor markets. It should be cheered by all Americans who earn their living from work."-William Wolman, chief economist, CNBC's Business Week "The State of Working America provides very valuable factual and analytic material on the economic conditions of American workers. It is the very best source of information on this important subject."-Ray Marshall, University of Texas, former Secretary of Labor

"An indispensable work . . . on family income, wages, taxes, employment, and the distribution of wealth."-Simon Head, The New York Review of Books "No matter what political camp you're in, this is the single most valuable book I know of about the state of America, period. It is the most referenced, most influential resource book of its kind."-Jeff Madrick, author, The End of Affluence "This book is the single best yardstick for measuring whether or not our economic policies are doing enough to ensure that our economy can, once again, grow for everybody."-Richard A. Gephardt "The best place to review the latest developments in changes in the distribution of income and wealth."-Lester Thurow

The State of Working America, prepared biennially since 1988 by the Economic Policy Institute, includes a wide variety of data on family incomes, wages, taxes, unemployment, wealth, and poverty-data that enable the authors to closely examine the effect of the economy on the living standards of the American people.

Customer Reviews:

the hobo philosopher.......2007-06-27

This book is exactly what I wanted. I'm a part-time journalist writing for a small town newspaper and I like numbers. Nothing is better than a percentage or a statistic to support your story. This book has them all and an explanation to support their accuracy or inaccuracy. It is a great tool. It is a must for anyone who wants to know "The State of Working America" - which I do.

Change Is Needed Now and Here's Why.......2007-04-30

If you can wade your way through the statistics, this book is enlightening and edifying, often sad. The commentary and interpretation help clarify the wealth of information. It graphically illustrates that nothing has changed after all these years of hope and promises for change: the rich keep getting richer, the poor keep getting poorer, poverty is endemic to our tired, unimaginative economic system, etc., etc., etc.

This book caused me to re-read Kevin Phillips' book "The Politics of Rich and Poor," published in 1990. It provides statistical and anecdotal evidence of the negative effects of Reagan-omics on our social system, much as Bush-enomics has. I even went farther back and re-read Michael Harrington's "The Other America," the seminal, monumental book of its time in 1962 about poverty in America.

These books along with so many others make you ask, as we've asked so many times, "When will it ever change?" I guess making people aware of the problem, although it's readily apparent in everyday life, is the place to start. These books, representing 45 years of rhetoric, make you agonizingly aware that things have gone nowhere but down. So, read all of them.

Hard Work: Remaking the American Labor Movement

Average customer rating:

a great introduction to the American labor movement

Hard Work: Remaking the American Labor Movement
Rick Fantasia , and Kim Voss
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Labor & Industrial Relations | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

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Rebuilding Labor: Organizing and Organizers in the New Union Movement
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ASIN: 0520240901

Book Description

This concise overview of the labor movement in the United States focuses on why American workers have failed to develop the powerful unions that exist in other industrialized countries. Packed with valuable analysis and information, Hard Work explores historical perspectives, examines social and political policies, and brings us inside today's unions, providing an excellent introduction to labor in America.
Hard Work begins with a comparison of the very different conditions that prevail for labor in the United States and in Europe. What emerges is a picture of an American labor movement forced to operate on terrain shaped by powerful corporations, a weak state, and an inhospitable judicial system. What also emerges is a picture of an American worker that has virtually disappeared from the American social imagination. Recently, however, the authors find that a new kind of unionism--one that more closely resembles a social movement--has begun to develop from the shell of the old labor movement. Looking at the cities of Los Angeles and Las Vegas they point to new practices that are being developed by innovative unions to fight corporate domination, practices that may well signal a revival of unionism and the emergence of a new social imagination in the United States.

Customer Reviews:

a great introduction to the American labor movement.......2005-07-15

In this book, Fantasia and Voss--two long-time, respected labor scholars--provide a great overview of and introduction to the American labor movement. The book was actually originally written for a French audience, so they assume you know very little about the American labor movement, explaining things like the National Labor Relations Board and the Taft-Hartley Act, instead of assuming you know about them. They also at times contrast the American labor movement with those in Eruope, which is also frequently illuminating.

Building upon Voss' previous work, they address the question of the supposed exceptionalism of the American working class--the fact that, unlike European working classes, they never developed a militant labor movement that fought for the interests of all workers and embraced socialist or social-democratic politics; instead, the labor movement has fought primarily for benefits for its members and embraced mainstream politics. But, Fantasia and Viss argue, the American labor movement was not always like this--in the mid- to late nineteenth century, the American labor movement was as militant, broad-minded and radical as its European counterparts, if not more so. What was exceptional was not the American working class, but the American capitalist class, which was far more hostile to labor than their European counterparts. This hostile social environment, in which any major labor organziation that showed signs of a broad vision of social justice was brutally crushed, lead to the thoroughly domesticated politics of the AFL-CIO, in which they agreed to act as business' junior partner, gaining increased wages and benefits for their members, in return for abandonning any broader vision and supporting the Cold War agenda.

Even at its height, this bargain excluded most workers outside the core manufacturing industries. When the US and global economy began to undergo major changes in the 1970s (changes Fantasia and Voss don't explain well--this is one of the few weaknesses of the book), US business decided this bargain no longer suited its needs, rolling back the gains workers had made, a process that accelerated once the Reagan administration came to power. Traditional labor leaders were totally unprepared for this assult and it looked like organized American labor might go down the tubes.

Fortunately, the decentralized structure of some unions, while allowing for local corruption, had also allowed for progressives to survive in some localities. They have responded to the crisis of American labor with innovative new tactics and a new vision that embraces the interests of all workers, not just union members. They have begun working with other community groups and organizing groups unions had traditionally ignored--people of color, women and immigrants. (This is the other big weakness of the book--Fantasia and Voss don't pay enough attention to how deeply entrenched racism, sexism and nativism were entrenched in mainstream unions. They treat these matters casually instead of as central to understanding the crisis of American labor). With the election of Sweeney and the New Voices slate to the leadership of the AFL-CIO, these efforts began to get some official support. It is in this new, social movement unionism Fantasia and Voss see hope. However, it faces huge obstacles, both in the form of the entrenched leaders of many labor unions, leaders who are often conservative, corrupt or both; and the continuing hostility of American business and government to organized labor.

Despite the weaknesses I have mentioned, overall Fantasia and Voss do a great job of summarizing the history of the American labor movement, how it got into the mess it is today, and possible avenues out of the mess. The book is hopeful without being naive.

The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901

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The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901
Heather Cox Richardson
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0674006372

Book Description

Historians overwhelmingly have blamed the demise of Reconstruction on Southerners' persistent racism. Heather Cox Richardson argues instead that class, along with race, was critical to Reconstruction's end. Northern support for freed blacks and Reconstruction weakened in the wake of growing critiques of the economy and calls for a redistribution of wealth.

Using newspapers, public speeches, popular tracts, Congressional reports, and private correspondence, Richardson traces the changing Northern attitudes toward African-Americans from the Republicans' idealized image of black workers in 1861 through the 1901 publication of Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery. She examines such issues as black suffrage, disenfranchisement, taxation, westward migration, lynching, and civil rights to detect the trajectory of Northern disenchantment with Reconstruction. She reveals a growing backlash from Northerners against those who believed that inequalities should be addressed through working-class action, and the emergence of an American middle class that championed individual productivity and saw African-Americans as a threat to their prosperity.

Book Description

âIn her new chic outfit, she looks like anything but a stewardess working. But work she does. Hard, too. And you hardly know it.â So read the text of a 1969 newspaper advertisement for Delta Airlines featuring a picture of a brightly smiling blond stewardess striding confidently down the aisle of an airplane cabin to deliver a meal.

From the moment the first stewardesses took flight in 1930, flight attendants became glamorous icons of femininity. For decades, airlines hired only young, attractive, unmarried white women. They marketed passenger service aloft as an essentially feminine exercise in exuding charm, looking fabulous, and providing comfort. The actual work that flight attendants didâensuring passenger safety, assuaging fears, serving food and drinks, all while conforming to airlines’ strict rules about appearanceâwas supposed to appear effortless; the better that stewardesses performed by airline standards, the more hidden were their skills and labor. Yet today flight attendants are acknowledged safety experts; they have their own unions. Gone are the no-marriage rules, the mandates to retire by thirty-two. In Femininity in Flight, Kathleen M. Barry tells the history of flight attendants, tracing the evolution of their glamorized image as ideal women and their activism as trade unionists and feminists.

Barry argues that largely because their glamour obscured their labor, flight attendants unionized in the late 1940s and 1950s to demand recognition and respect as workers and self-styled professionals. In the 1960s and 1970s, flight attendants were one of the first groups to take advantage of new laws prohibiting sex discrimination. Their challenges to airlines’ restrictive employment policies and exploitive marketing practices (involving skimpy uniforms and provocative slogans such as âfly meâ) made them high-profile critics of the cultural mystification and economic devaluing of âwomen’s work.â Barry combines attention to the political economy and technology of the airline industry with perceptive readings of popular culture, newspapers, industry publications, and first-person accounts. In so doing, she provides a potent mix of social and cultural history and a major contribution to the history of women’s work and working women’s activism.

Customer Reviews:

First-class analysis of an underappreciated position.......2007-03-31

This gen-x feminist has certainly flown on more than my share of flights thanks to airline deregulation (1978), but having grown up after sex discrimination laws were passed, I also did not previously have the full understanding of all the historical nuances which went into achieving legislative battles making the skies sexism free.

It was interesting to read how the stewardess position (as it was then called) became so tightly controlled, ironically having originally developed in an era when there were few other 'interesting' employment opportunities available to women. By the 1950's, the airlines had codes of stewardess conduct which look a million times stricter than anything handed down at my workplaces.

Expected to retire at age 35, a woman had to meet certain mandatory height and weight requirements, and could not be married or have any children in order to successfully perform her duties to her customers at all times. Barry's research methodologies expressly delineate though that the airlines, reflective of the larger society's biases, only hired white unmarried girls for these 'jobs' but tellingly did not treat them in the appropriate manner an employer would treat their employees.

A stewardess was expected to thanklessly fulfill many tasks simultaneously, mother, sex-pot/kitten, nurse---but in the cruel twist of irony, she also was not welcomed in the union ranks as an equal after undergoing all of these horrific working conditions, the women were expected to continue letting male union leaders represent them as had been the previous tradition.

Rather than be docile, that ongoing disparate treatment inadvertently galvanized the women into taking action for each other. Sisterhood wasn't a `trendy slogan' each other was all they had.

In the 1970's. a organization called Stewardesses for Women's Rights protested the airline industry's increasingly sexist treatment of women employees and that organization also joined the national campaign for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. I'm certain that airline officials were not intending to create a crop of highly creative and very ticked off feminist activists!

American Business, 1920-2000: How It Worked (The American History Series)

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Excellent reference for academic use or personal enjoyment

American Business, 1920-2000: How It Worked (The American History Series)
Thomas K. McCraw
Manufacturer: Harlan Davidson
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Economic History | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0882959859

Book Description

Unique for its breadth of coverage and depth of analysis this uncommonly readable book is certain to become a classic. Five of the book's ten chapters provide in-depth analyses of representative companies and the remarkable people who led them. These firms include McDonald's, Procter & Gamble, Boeing, General Motors, and Ford-all of which began as entrepreneurial startups and grew to become big businesses. Their success stories are counterbalanced by a detailed dissection of the monumental failure of RCA, long the world leader in consumer electronics but today all but extinct.

Interspersed with the company-centered chapters are five brief "overview" chapters: one each on women and African Americans in business, and three on vital sectors of American business: first finance, then chemicals and pharmaceuticals, and, most recently, computers, Silicon Valley, and the Internet.

With 35 photographs and a comprehensive bibliographic essay, this compact, enjoyable work will be highly appreciated by anyone interested in how American business powered the twentieth century.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent reference for academic use or personal enjoyment.......2000-12-28

I read this book for business school and enjoyed it thoroughly enough to recommend it to friends and family who are interested in the recent history of business. This book documents the major events and themes in American Business during the past 80 years. The writing gives enough detail without being boring. In addition, I found it interesting to see how certain themes persist through time proving that history does repeat itself. The book is a very quick read and provides the reader with enough information on each era. After that, the reader can use the suggested reading list to learn more about the subjects, eras and people that might interest him/her. Overall, a great read.

Drawing the Line: The Untold Story of the Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson

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Great specialized info
Fills a Historic Gap
Essential Cornerstone of Animation History
-"IT'S OFF TO WORK WE GO"... illustrating not such a rosey picture of Toon Town!
Many important insights on how the business evolved and how it affects today's working animators.

Drawing the Line: The Untold Story of the Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson
Tom Sito
Manufacturer: University Press of Kentucky
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0813124077

Book Description

As cartoons and animated features became an increasingly important part of the entertainment business, the production of cartoons industrialized to meet growing demands for the new global media. Artists adopted traditional union models to protect their jobs and working conditions, and a unique set of unions was born.

Drawing the Line is the first labor history of an industry whose principle figures--Walt Disney, Chuck Jones, and Max Fleischer--helped define American entertainment. Author Tom Sito, Disney animator and former president of the Hollywood Animation Guild, draws on oral histories, archival information, and firsthand knowledge of the animation process to create an insider's history of a colorful set of labor unions.

Sito describes the history and the fiery personalities behind the formation of the Screen Cartoonists Union, the strikes and walk-outs, the effects of Hollywood blacklisting, and the battles at the bargaining tables. He closes with a look at the changing nature of animation and the way in which current giants Disney and Dreamworks are again reshaping the relationship between studios and animators. Well illustrated with never-before-seen images from the backstage of classic Hollywood, Drawing the Line will change basic assumptions about animation history and its place in the story of American labor.

Customer Reviews:

Great specialized info.......2007-07-28

I originally read about this book in a review from animation world network (www.awn.com) It is everything the review said. Great information about the start of the industry fighting for its rights. A great read if you are into animation history. All of the animation old masters are involved, and speaks of even though they were in competition, they all had the same goal.

Fills a Historic Gap.......2007-03-13

As a Disney enthusiast, I have found one of the most delicate and hard-to-research periods in Disney history was the 1941 studio strike. Tom Sito fills this gap by providing a comprehensive narration. But more important to others, he provides a complete history of labor developments in the animation profession. I had no idea there had been so much turmoil! His account is very up-to-date, too, covering the most recent developments, like computer animation. This is a key reference tool for anyone seriously interested in the business of animation.

Essential Cornerstone of Animation History.......2007-03-04

This text is a pure labor of love.

The fight for fair employment practices within animation history is a story that needed to be told. For far too long, the sacrifices of artists and animation production personnel was overshadowed by the personal stories of studio founders who resisted outside influences within their beloved cartoon factories.

Tom Sito should be commended for faithfully reconstructing the backstory behind the most famous animation studios in the world: Disney's, Fleischer, MGM, Terrytoons, UPA, et al.

Not only does the author's passion shine through for preserving this neglected corner of animation history, he remains focused on the future of the medium; regardless of the technological advances to come.

Remarkably, the author does not succumb to slamming labor vs. management (or vice versa). Somehow the emotion-filled histories are presented in a manner that respects both perspectives that were responsible for bringing animation to a world-wide audience over the past century.

Unfortunately, the sacrifices of depression-era / WWII animators are slipping from memory; leaving today's pragmatic artists unprepared to fight the overpowering influences of the entertainment giants that control the industry today.

Future animation historians will be grateful for this essential work: the first of its kind. A "must-have" for any Walt Disney library or animation archive.

-"IT'S OFF TO WORK WE GO"... illustrating not such a rosey picture of Toon Town!.......2007-01-02

Mickey Mouse, Popeye, Bugs Bunny, Tom & Jerry, Mr. Magoo, Fred Flintstone, the Pink Panther and Bart Simpson, are the biggest stars in the business. But they couldn't make the slightest move or even open their mouths, without the help of the animation worker. Meaning no disrespect, I say worker and not artist, because that's what Tom Sito's book "Drawing The Line" is all about. The eternal labor struggle of men and women in the animation industry and their right to be recognized and treated as artists. Of course Hollywood is not the kind of town where that is ever likely to happen any time soon. And for all those that scoff and think that anyone who gets paid to simply draw for a living, let alone getting to work in Hollywood at all should be forever grateful. Well -you're about to have your eyes opened as you turn the pages of this well written and lovingly researched history, that dares to speak the truth and document it in precise detail. Through first-hand accounts of the animators that struck the studios, were fired and blacklisted, Sito has chronicled their plight and shown the effect it has had on working conditions today.

As an animator himself and a former declared labor cynic. Sito learned from personal experience why their really was a need to be unionized. So much so that he later went on to become an active president of the screen cartoonists local in Hollywood. Yes, animation was and still is a labor intensive assembly-line that even in this digital computer age, still relies on the artistic and professional skill's of it's of workers. It's a "must read" not just for anyone with the least interest in animation, Hollywood or social and labor studies, but for anyone who's keen to know just how their favorite cartoon characters came into being in the first place. Believe me, you'll never see them as just simple drawings ever again!

Many important insights on how the business evolved and how it affects today's working animators........2006-12-14

DRAWING THE LINE: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE ANIMATION UNIONS FROM BOSKO TO BART SIMPSON provides the first comprehensive history of animators' unions in modern times, from silent cartoons through today's big movie hits. Any involved in cartooning will find the business and industry insights essential to a thorough knowledge of their career choice: history and cultural observations blend with a survey of the entertainment industry as a whole, making for many important insights on how the business evolved and how it affects today's working animators.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

State of the Union: A Century of American Labor (Politics and Society in Twentieth Century America)

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The Changing Face of Unions and Society
Do unions have a future?
A fine study of the crisis of American labor
solidarity forever

State of the Union: A Century of American Labor (Politics and Society in Twentieth Century America)
Nelson Lichtenstein
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0691057680

Amazon.com

Does anyone still look for the union label? Apparently not, to gauge historian Nelson Lichtenstein's history of the rise, heyday, and long decline of labor unions in America.

In the Progressive era, Lichtenstein writes, the "labor question" lay at the heart of a whole complex of political ideas governing the social betterment of working people and the development of a more equitable society. These ideas flourished through the course of the early twentieth century, as unions attained more and more influence and as Keynesian notions of organized labor being "essential to boost mass purchasing power and thereby sustain economic growth" became established. After World War II, however, unionism began a slow collapse, helped along by the rise of conservative, antilabor politics. Although ideas of workplace justice and the extension of civil rights into the private sector remain strong, organized labor has not--with the result, Lichtenstein argues, that many American workers are worse off today than they were a quarter of a century ago. Lichtenstein's narrative capably summarizes trends in modern labor history, and it provides much fuel for activists seeking renewed labor-based politics. --Gregory McNamee

Book Description

In a fresh and timely reinterpretation, Nelson Lichtenstein examines how trade unionism has waxed and waned in the nation's political and moral imagination, among both devoted partisans and intransigent foes. From the steel foundry to the burger-grill, from Woodrow Wilson to John Sweeney, from Homestead to Pittston, Lichtenstein weaves together a compelling matrix of ideas, stories, strikes, laws, and people in a streamlined narrative of work and labor in the twentieth century.

The "labor question" became a burning issue during the Progressive Era because its solution seemed essential to the survival of American democracy itself. Beginning there, Lichtenstein takes us all the way to the organizing fever of contemporary Los Angeles, where the labor movement stands at the center of the effort to transform millions of new immigrants into alert citizen unionists. He offers an expansive survey of labor's upsurge during the 1930s, when the New Deal put a white, male version of industrial democracy at the heart of U.S. political culture. He debunks the myth of a postwar "management-labor accord" by showing that there was (at most) a limited, unstable truce.

Lichtenstein argues that the ideas that had once sustained solidarity and citizenship in the world of work underwent a radical transformation when the rights-centered social movements of the 1960s and 1970s captured the nation's moral imagination. The labor movement was therefore tragically unprepared for the years of Reagan and Clinton: although technological change and a new era of global economics battered the unions, their real failure was one of ideas and political will. Throughout, Lichtenstein argues that labor's most important function, in theory if not always in practice, has been the vitalization of a democratic ethos, at work and in the larger society. To the extent that the unions fuse their purpose with that impulse, they can once again become central to the fate of the republic. State of the Union is an incisive history that tells the story of one of America's defining aspirations.

Customer Reviews:

The Changing Face of Unions and Society.......2004-11-10

Nelson Lichtenstein's work titled, State of The Union: A Century of American Labor, provides an historical overview of the laws, people, and times in the American labour movement. In producing his research, Lichtenstein contextualizes (with a few glaring omissions) his discussion of the rise and decline of labor unions in the psyche of the American worker and companies alike. By starting his discussion with the period from the Great Depression through World War I, Lichtenstein provides a frame within which to place events, and accompanying mindsets, that developed from both a legal/legislative and social-change perspective. Additionally, in moving through the waxing and waning moments between the end of WWII and the Civil Rights Movement to the current living wage initiative, he presents a respectable work as to the elements that facilitated the decline in significance of unions in post-deindustrialization America; an institution which he strongly and convincingly argues is in need of a rebirth.

I found chapter five particularly engaging due to his treatment of "rights consciousness" and two legal events that were supported by African Americans and the AFL-CIO: the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title VII. On rights consciousness, he asserts, "this chapter seeks to evaluate how and why a rights-conscious strategy became the most efficacious way to approach the labor question during the 1960's and 1970's. It tries to measure the success and failure of this approach, and suggests why the labor movement reaped so few dividends from what would otherwise have been a most nurturing social-cultural environment" (180). While such movements in other countries "strengthened social-democratic movements and increased trade-union numbers and power . . . in the United States, this was an area of relative union stagnation" (181). While this is a well-supported assertion and was a result, in part, of the period of deindustrialization (late 1970's and early 1980's) of America's cities/manufacturing centers, the legal maneuvering is nonetheless worth noting.

Upon reading of the legal positioning, I began wondering what happened to the levels of consciousness of the 1960's that led to the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Title VII? An energized movement that sought to address not only the rights of African Americans and their seemingly intractable marginalization due to their skin color and social stigmatization, but also the rights of poor Anglos/Whites as well, seems to not have served current drives for economic equality. Additionally, I began considering the implications for workers, both African American and American Anglo if the failed Poor People's Campaign scheduled for 19 April 1968 had actually taken place with Dr. King at the helm. I say failed, due to the assassination of Martin Luther King 4 April 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, and the lack of vigor displayed when the event took place.

The consciousness displayed during the sixties as detailed by Lichtenstein brought forth a new dynamic. He writes, "if a new set of work rights was to be won, the decisive battle would take place, not in the union hall or across the bargaining table, but in the courts and the legislative chambers." This observance is indeed revealing of strategies employed by not only Civil Rights attorneys, but Union officials as well. That notwithstanding, Lichtenstein reminds readers that "a legal/administrative template derived from WWII-era Fair Employment Practice Commission was rolled into the 1964 civil rights law as Title VII," which allowed EEOC to "champion demands for equitable hiring and promotion practices" (192). Later, as Lichtenstein details, Title VII, as backed by AFL-CIO officials, came with "unforeseen" consequences. One such development was the racialization, and later gendering of fair employment "idea." Note: on the question of gender, Lichtenstein says little to nothing as to the feminization of poverty and elects not to discuss current trends in this area, which leads me to a short iteration of the books shortcomings.

Surprisingly, his treatment of women's rights and gender discrimination was relegated to less than ten pages. While he does address the living wage initiative and mentions Wal-Mart, a greater degree of attention is needed, but lacking; given current levels of working poor as detailed in Ehrenreich's work Nickel and Dimed: On (Not, Getting By In America, a discussion of Wal-Mart's machinations for crushing unionization efforts would have been both timely and ideal.

Another irony is that Lichtenstein does not discuss the Vietnam War and its economic and social fallout for America in any significant detail. A few paragraphs regarding economic and life estimates would have further served to contextualize "postwar poverty" (195). On this point, he elected not to note that more than 2.12 million people died in the war with more than fifty-eight thousand Americans contributing to the number of the dead. Additionally, he makes no mention of the estimated $140 billion price tag for America's involvement (Source: April, 2002 BBC Series War and Protest). Such omissions as that of Wal-Mart caused me to wonder about Lichtenstein's lack of in-depth discussion on the need to sincerely discuss the plight of the working poor; as opposed to paying lip-service to their very real needs.

In reading Lichtenstein's work and thinking on themes that coincided with Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, which I recently read, I began wondering several things. First, how does one, in a climate less than friendly toward worker solidarity around a living wage, affordable childcare, quality medical care, and reasonable and safe housing, convince companies that the well-being of workers and their families is, and should be, tethered to their long-term economic viability as a socially responsible company and that these concerns are not mutually exclusive? Additionally, What are some methods that can be employed that allow for workers to be made aware of their rights, thus allowing them to press for reforms both in the workplace and society?

Admittedly, Lichtenstein's work is replete with legal and historical information on labor laws and practices. However, one concern this reviewer holds is the lack of discussion of these issues in an approachable form for general readers, not to mention the aforementioned omissions. While this work is excellent for gaining an understanding of labor laws and their affect both on people and companies, it too is realized that in some circles the discussion to be had will be not unlike verbal self-gratification: producing an outcome with no tangible manifestations.

Do unions have a future?.......2002-08-14

The backdrop for "State of the Union" is the "labor question" that the author finds Progressive Era reformers confronting. They regarded the disproportionate power that corporate capitalism wielded relative to citizens and workers as unjustifiable in a democratic society. Changes in workplaces were most troublesome. Skilled workers were bypassed by work-simplifying machinery, an autocratic foreman system enforced Taylorism, or speed-up, and wages hovered at subsistence levels. But American workers, drawing upon a republican legacy, seized upon the WWI rallying cry of making the world safe for democracy to insist that industrial democracy be established within workplaces. Even President Woodrow Wilson recognized "the right of those who work, in whatever rank, to participate in some organic way in every decision which directly affects their welfare." Interestingly, the author does not take note of the fact that Wilson's call for workers' participation did not mention unions. But it is the relationship of unions to this "labor question" and to the notion of industrial democracy that most concerns Lichtenstein.

The lack of a legal and institutional basis for industrial democracy virtually ensured that industrial democracy would fizzle in the post-WWI era. But the major slip-up of American capitalism in the 20th century, that is, the Great Depression, opened the door for a tremendous, pent-up surge of American worker activism. In the Wagner Act, the most significant piece of New Deal legislation, workers were given the right and even encouraged to self-organize or select a representative to bargain with employers. In unionized workplaces, vibrant shop-floor steward systems ensured that workers' concerns received an expeditious hearing. Many labor activists from the Progressive Era were in the forefront of this politicized offensive to push for legalized industrial democracy. In addition, some of the Progressive social-democratic platform such as unemployment insurance, social security, and fair labor standards were part of the New Deal package.

The backlash against this resurgence of worker empowerment began immediately. Conservative justices, hostile corporate managements, racist Southern oligarchs, and anti-statist AFL unions - all opposed state intervention in the private domain of workplaces. But with the onset of WWII, the labor movement was drawn even more tightly into the state web as a participant in peak-level bargaining with the War Labor Board and industry leaders for the purpose of stabilizing industrial relations. For example, to curtail the spontaneous and disruptive strikes that were a part of the self-help tradition on the shop floor, multi-level grievance arbitration systems became standard sections in most bargaining agreements. But that tripartite bargaining did not extend beyond WWII. Some of the agreed to provisions proved to be more debilitating than helpful to trade unions and workers in later years.

With the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, conservatives were finally able to accomplish the dilution of the Wagner Act. Unions suffered major setbacks in that legislation. Communists and radicals were purged from union rolls, "right to work" laws were enacted in some states; employers could now denounce unions in organizing drives; and secondary boycotts were mostly prohibited. The author refers to the exclusion of supervisors and the subsequent exclusion of tens of millions of professional and technical workers in today's workforce as the "ghettoization" of the union movement.

As the author indicates, Taft-Hartley guaranteed that collective bargaining would be both limited and firm-based. A variety of barriers and penalties now existed to derail broader, classwide mobilizations. Negotiated contracts did not venture outside "mandatory" subjects of wages, hours, and working conditions. The prerogative of management to make virtually all corporate decisions regardless of any impact on workforces was a privileged topic. Industrial democracy received scant consideration as the courts generally held that a grievance clause in a contract overrode the statutory right of workers to strike.

The author takes particular care to debunk the widely held notion that the post-Taft-Hartley industrial relations era through the 1970s was a time of labor-management accord. A companion idea was that collective bargaining represented "industrial pluralism" in action. But classes with opposed interests and distinct ideologies could no longer exist; society now was defined to consist of competing interest groups who engaged in "non-ideological conflict." It was a theory that eschewed the idea that "alert citizen-workers" were the basic political actors of society. Industrial pluralism required that "competing elites bargain, compromise, and govern." Labor unions were only fulfilling their legitimate role when led by unassailable officers of long tenure. In addition, capitalism was now a benign force; it had been transformed into a rational planner for industrial society.

Global economic forces beginning in the 1970s undermined this supposed labor-management accord. Increased global competition, OPEC, inflation, and reduced corporate profits triggered new assaults by businessmen, conservatives, and various pundits on unions, casting them as "self-aggrandizing interest groups." Meanwhile a new rights consciousness, fueled by the civil rights movement, coupled with a loss of credibility and trust for unions persuaded workers to look to state regulatory legislation for workplace protections. But it was a pursuit for protection of individual rights based on gender, race, age, etc and not collective rights to industrial democracy. It was a focus that left unchanged the basic power structures in workplaces. Worker solidarity and workplace democracy no longer resonated with workers.

The author clearly regards the collective bargaining regime of American industrial relations, as it has evolved, to be a "product of defeat, not victory." Obviously material gains were made by many through collective bargaining, but the trade union movement has mostly failed in facilitating the democratic voice for all of the American working class.

What does the author suggest? It is a simple list: militancy, internal union democracy, and politics. There really is no assessment of the feasibility of the labor movement solving the labor question and establishing industrial democracy. Unlike the 1930s, there is no pent-up demand for workplace democracy. Consumerism seems to be the operant ideology of the American working class. This is an important book that leaves little doubt as to the state of unions. One is left wondering about the future of trade unions in the U.S.

A fine study of the crisis of American labor.......2002-07-24

Nelson Lichtenstein's Sate of the Union is a superb study of the current crisis of American labor. If it is not as finely researched or as densely rewarding as his biography of Walter Reuther or Steve Fraser's biography of Sidney Hillman, it is an excellent introduction to the problem and to possible solutions. Lichtenstein demonstrates the vital necessity of trade unions. The average wage of American young families stands at only two-thirds of the their counterparts in 1973, "even though their total working hours were longer and the educational level of the head of th ehousehold higher than a generation before. In the first years of the new century median wages and family incomes were still below their 1989 level." In the decline of civic committment and political life, the untramelled sway of corporate hegemony, the failure to confront health insurance, public transportation, and childcare in the United States and basic civil liberties in much of our brave new globalized world, the decline of American trade unionism truly is an injury to all.

Lichtenstein, notwithstanding his title, starts with the thirties. He tells the story of how mass industrial unionism boomed during that decade. The story he tells is not particularly new, concentrating on the famous struggles, as well as the fatal limitations of the CIO on race and gender. But he also goes on to point out that the partial welfare state, far from creating the dreaded dependence of conservative rhetoric, actually gave millions of workers the opportunity to exert civil rights and real power that they did not under the mythology of a producer's republic. Although he is scathing abou the flaws of the AFL's short sighted and often openly racist stratgey he duly notes that their craft unionism did have some advantages in some places.

The next two-thirds of the book are much more interesting. Lichtenstein denies that there was ever a "Labor-Management Accord," the belief that labour problems were essentially solved held in the sixties by complacent liberals and confused leftists. Lichtenstein points out the exceptional qualities of American management that differed them from their European counterparts and made them less amenable to compromise. He points out the continent wide nature of their businesses, the absence of cartelization and self-regulation, the increased power of big businesses, who were not tained with collaborationism, and the increasing stress placed on smaller companies which made them blame the federal state. He points out the dead weight southern segregation had on trade unionism and other liberal hopes, He notes how Taft-Hartley legalized right to work laws, as well as banning supervisory unioism making the unionization of many service industries like insurance or engineering "virtually impossible."

Lichtenstein goes on to discuss the increasing complacency of the AFL-CIO, under its spectacularly unimaginative leader George Meaney, as well as the calcification of the grievance system, the dissipation of shop-floor pressure, and the strategic disaster of supporting a private welfare state via union contract. This would not stand the ruptures of the eighties and which dissipated efforts to create a national social wage for all. He also reminds us that Kennedy's Keynesianism was the most conservative form on tap, while LBJ's war on poverty failed to confront the structural roots of poverty and thought that if could be fought on the cheap with training programs.

Lichtenstein then goes on to discuss the decline of the union ideal among liberal and leftist thinkers, and notes how even the Warren Court hampered trade unions. Lichtenstein is most helpful in discussing the limits of "rights consciousness." He is unflinching on the complacency and bigotry of many trade unionists that made this necessary. But he quite properly notes that it cannot be a substitute for trade unionism. First off, the legal-regulatory system is not self-supporting and it needs a coherent voice from workers themselves--ie a strong trade union, to support them. Secondly, rights discourse puts the emphasis on regulators as opposed to the workers themsleves, an unhealthy sign. Thirdly, rights consciousness does nothing to change or alter managerial authority. Finally, rights discourse by itself cannot solve the structural crisis that confronts American society. Lichtenstein provides the example of the steel workers where African-Americans challenged and beat Jim Crow, only to end up with fewer steelworkers as the industry collapsed.

Lichtenstein's book is concise and well documented, if largely based on secondary sources, and it contains useful apercus about globalization, the disaster of concession bargaining, the fraud of "quality of life" initiatives, and about the folly of the construction workers. Tthey supported Nixon, beat up anti-war protesters, but were still shafted by him anyway). He also discusses the health insurance debacle, and notes some promising signs of renewal in the last few years, especailly among Hispanic Americans. One might feel he is trying too hard to end on a positive note, but one can only agree when he says that "At Stake is not just an effort to resolve America's labor question but the revitalization of democratic society itself."

solidarity forever.......2002-04-04

Nelson Lichtenstein's new book, "The State of the Union," gives a history of labor unions in the United States by way of arguing for the need to restrengthen them, and I think the case is very persuasive.

Lichtenstein weaves together a number of themes to explain the decline in union membership and power. One is increased reliance on individual rights and legal protections. Federal laws ban all sorts of discrimination, endangerment, and abuse, but the federal government does not do an effective job of protecting workers from retaliation for asserting their rights and almost nothing to maintain other important elements of the workplace, such as wage levels or the prevention of mass layoffs.

We have learned to think of ourselves as individuals protected by laws, rather than brotherhoods and sisterhoods protected by our strength in numbers. We have a long list of rights, including - most notoriously - the "right to work." So called Right to Work laws clearly hurt unions but are not too far afield from modes of thought that labor supporters have engaged in themselves.

Unions are now seen as ways to protect individual jobs and proper grievance procedures following individual wrongs, not as cross-company efforts to lift the wages and benefits of entire industries. If the purpose of a union is simply to protect me from specific injustices, surely I ought also to respect my coworker's right to not be coerced to join, right?

But if the purpose of a union is to change society and improve the lot of all workers, then clearly the "right" of my coworker to be a freeloader and drag us all down is not to be respected.

Book Description

Since its publication twenty-five years ago, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men has been recognized as a classic, an indispensable contribution to our understanding of the causes of the American Civil War. A key work in establishing political ideology as a major concern of modern American historians, it remains the only full-scale evaluation of the ideas of the early Republican party. Now with a new introduction, Eric Foner puts his argument into the context of contemporary scholarship, reassessing the concept of free labor in the light of the last twenty-five years of writing on such issues as work, gender, economic change, and political thought. A significant reevaluation of the causes of the Civil War, Foner's study looks beyond the North's opposition to slavery and its emphasis upon preserving the Union to determine the broader grounds of its willingness to undertake a war against the South in 1861. Its search is for those social concepts the North accepted as vital to its way of life, finding these concepts most clearly expressed in the ideology of the growing Republican party in the decade before the war's start. Through a careful analysis of the attitudes of leading factions in the party's formation (northern Whigs, former Democrats, and political abolitionists) Foner is able to show what each contributed to Republican ideology. He also shows how northern ideas of human rights--in particular a man's right to work where and how he wanted, and to accumulate property in his own name--and the goals of American society were implicit in that ideology. This was the ideology that permeated the North in the period directly before the Civil War, led to the election of Abraham Lincoln, and led, almost immediately, to the Civil War itself. At the heart of the controversy over the extension of slavery, he argues, is the issue of whether the northern or southern form of society would take root in the West, whose development would determine the nation's destiny. In his new introductory essay, Foner presents a greatly altered view of the subject. Only entrepreneurs and farmers were actually "free men" in the sense used in the ideology of the period. Actually, by the time the Civil War was initiated, half the workers in the North were wage-earners, not independent workers. And this did not account for women and blacks, who had little freedom in choosing what work they did. He goes onto show that even after the Civil War these guarantees for "free soil, free labor, free men" did not really apply for most Americans, and especially not for blacks. Demonstrating the profoundly successful fusion of value and interest within Republican ideology prior to the Civil War, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men remains a classic of modern American historical writing. Eloquent and influential, it shows how this ideology provided the moral consensus which allowed the North, for the first time in history, to mobilize an entire society in modern warfare.

Customer Reviews:

Oldie but Goodie.......2007-10-18

The roots of the Civil War reach back to the birth of the nation. The Founders agreed to disagree on the issue of slavery in order to form a `more perfect Union.' By the 1860s the nation was at war with itself. Why did the South secede, and why did the North take up arms to prevent its secession? (316) In Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War, the first of Eric Foner's many influential books, he examines the two decades running up to the 1860 presidential election by taking a close look at the ideology of the Republican Party. In a time of rancorous sectional division, during which the Democratic Party was sundered north and south, with each section nominating its own presidential candidate, the Republicans drew anti-slavery Whigs and Democrats together under one banner. The party members shared a resentment of Southern political power, a devotion to the Union, moral revulsion to the peculiar institution, and a commitment to the northern social order and its development and expansion. (310-314)

During the 1850s, respected historians agree, that the government of President Buchanan was under the complete control of the South which threatened the essence of the Republican view of democracy--which was majority rule. (100) "The domination of both the South and the federal government by the Slave Power violated this basic democratic belief." (101) Repeated attempts by the southern Slave Power to establish slavery in the western territories brought the sectional conflict to a crisis. The North and South represented two incompatible social systems, and expansion of the decadent South, as Seward warned, might lead to "entirely a slave-holding nation."

Several critical chapters of Foner's book delineate the radical, conservative and moderate elements within the newly-formed Republican party, and include the northern Democratic-Republicans who were alienated by the slaveocracy which by then controlled their party. The former Democrats found their party no longer a "champion of popular rights." (177) The radicals battle cry was, "Liberty and Union." This small but powerful minority was influential within the party, and brooked no compromise with the South, believing that the Founders intended that slavery would eventually cease to exist in the nation. (139-144) The conservatives wanted to preserve the Union at any cost, and were willing to make concessions to the South in order to do so. It was the moderates, including Lincoln, who "refused to abandon either of their twin goals--free soil and the Union," and drew the line at expansion of slavery into the new states. (219) It was not the moral imperative of the abolitionists which drew together the radicals and conservatives, the Whigs and Democrats, and the former Liberty, Free Soil and Know-Nothings. It was the political anti-slavery, Free Labor ideology which "blended personal and sectional interest with morality so perfectly that it became the most potent political force in the nation." (309)

Foner is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University whose interest in the antebellum period started in college in the 1960s. Foner has authored more than a dozen books on American political history and race relations, including his latest Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction; published in 2005. Free Soil began as his doctoral dissertation under Pulitzer prizewinner, Richard Hofstadter. This scholar's scholar assumes a substantial familiarity with 19th century American history, leaving the reader to fill in the essential details of the various acts, provisos, compromises and constitutions; likewise, biographical material on important players in the antebellum milieu, like Stephen A. Douglas and William H. Seward, is also given short shrift. An introductory essay written on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of Free Soil calls on recent historiography to explore the concept of "free labor" in the 19th century, a time when half of Northern Americans were wage-earners.

Free Soil is now nearly forty years old, yet remains a worthwhile read for anyone with a more than superficial interest in the Civil War and its causes. The reader comes away with a greater understanding of the role of the Republican Party in shaping the anti-slavery movement during the antebellum period.

Early Republican Revolution.......2007-09-22

IT IS HARD TO FIND A BETTER HISTORIAN OF THE 19TH CENTURY THAN ERIC FONER. THIS BOOK HIGHLIGHTS THE MOST INETERESTING EVENTS IN THE MOST INTERESTING PERIOD OF AMERICAN HISTORY. ERIC FONER BRINGS THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CONTAINMENT AND ABOLITION OF SLAVERY TO LIFE IN THIS WELL WRITTEN AND SUPERBLY RESEARCHED WORK. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN THE HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND ANTEBELLUM AMERICA YOU NEED THIS BOOK.

IN THE HEROIC AGE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.......2007-09-01

In the year 2007 it is quite easy to dismiss the American Republican Party of one George Bush and his cabal out of hand as a gang of yahoos and incompetents. And one, frankly, would be right in those characterizations. But the book under review tells a tale of a different Republican Party, a party forged among other things in the crucible of the battle against slavery in the immediate pre-Civil War period. That party of Lincoln (although he was ultimately merely the most famous of an outstanding group of men who forged that party) was one that modern leftists can proudly claim as our own. Karl Marx was not wrong in his appreciation of Lincoln and of the Republican Party in its struggle against slavery and for the unification of the country. Eric Foner tells the story of how all of the forces finally coalesced in 1956 to create that party and of its success in 1860.

A number of commentators, including this writer, have over the years argued that a political realignment and separation of the various political tendencies in this country is long, too long overdue. What others mean by that realignment I will leave to them. For myself, I make no bones that we need a workers party to directly represent the political interests of the working masses and their allies. On the other side some argue that America has always been, more or less, well served by the two-party system. And that is really my point. In the period from about 1840 to that decisive 1860 election there was the kind of turmoil that created the necessary realignment of that two- party system. The old two- party system just could not hold the forces that were splitting the country. In the end the formerly powerful Whig Party and vital parts of the Northern Democratic Party went down with barely a whimper. The Republican Party gathered together all those forces that were interested in ending slavery and creating a unified, efficient capitalist system. That in the end it all turned to dross in a fairly short time after the Civil War does not take away from the grandeur of the effort and its necessity.

I would point out to readers that Professor Foner does a very credible job of showing the numerous and sometimes counterposed strategies that the various anti-slavery forces from the Garrisonians to the Free Soil Party supporters put forth. He also pays attention to the various forces, including the little studied Liberty and Free Soil parties, the Barnburner Democrats, Conscience Whigs and others who coalesced in the Republican Party. He also details the strategies of the conservative elements that would latter dominate the post-war Republican party as well as the strain of nativism (exemplified by the explosive, if short-lived, development of the Know-Nothing party) that one can still see in that party today on the immigration question. In all, this is a well-researched and footnoted academic work that can serve a as jumping off point for making our arguments today for that desperately needed realignment of American politics.

The Significance of Republican Ideology.......2002-11-17

The Civil War era is surely one of the most complex, controversial, and tumultuous periods in our nation's history and one of the most difficult to capture. "Free Soil, Free Labor, ..." is a sterling effort to provide insight into the social philosophies of the time that almost inevitably led to the breakup of the Union. While ostensibly concerned with the ideology of the Republican Party leading up to the Civil War, the author clearly shows that the Republicans also both reflected and advanced the belief system that came to permeate much of the North.

A key component of Northern thinking emphasized a free labor and producer ethic, which extolled the virtues of free, independent, and propertied working men. Dependency was eschewed as evidence of personal shortcoming. But the institution of slavery violated that ethic in every way. Not only were slaves not free, but also Southern aristocratic society degraded free labor. To be a free laborer in the South was to be a member of a lower class. These diametrically opposed views of labor were the basis of an ongoing controversy dating from the Missouri Compromise over the issue of permitting slavery in newly obtained territories or newly admitted states. The Northern and Republican position was one of "free soil," for free laborers.

Though not emphasizing the chronological history of the Republican Party, the author traces the assimilation into the party of members or adherents of the Abolitionists, the Liberty Party, the Free Soil Party, anti-slavery Democrats and Whigs, the Know-Nothings, and the so-called radical Republicans. A good sampling of the pronouncements of the leading Northern political figures of the era as well as the positions of key newspaper publishers is quite illuminating. It is a mild criticism of the book that the author, in following the historical trail, at times provides insufficient background on historical events that he refers to such as the Wilmot Proviso, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Lecompton controversy, etc.

Certainly much of the rise of the Republican Party was due to a concern of Northern Whigs and Democrats that the political process in Washington was being dominated by a southern Slave Power. That Slave Power was seen as a force intent on expanding the geographical reach of slavery. Every attempt at expansion of slave territory drove more and more people to the ranks of the parties that became the Republican Party. The author is keen to point out that while anti-slavery was a moral crusade on the part of some Republicans, for most the prevention of the Slave Power in expanding its reach and the preservation and expansion of Northern society superceded any moral imperative to emancipate slaves.

It is not the author's intent to directly list the causes of the Civil War, yet it would be difficult to deny the relevance of this book in answering those questions. But the author does address some claims of causation. While not denying that protective tariffs were controversial issues, he downplays their overall significance. For one, many leading Republicans were free traders, not protectionists. Republicanism was not simply warmed over Whiggery intent on protecting industry. In fact, many Republicans had a distrust of emerging corporations. In addition, he gives little credence to suggestions that the Civil War represents either a failure of political compromise or political incompetence.

The author amply demonstrates that the election of President Lincoln in 1860 constituted a culminating point for both the North and the South. Clearly, the Republicans had emerged as a voice for a Northern society that was based on entrepreneuralism, free labor, progress, and expansion. For the South, the election of Republicans was seen as a dire threat to a way of life wholly different than that of the North. No longer the foremost power in Washington, Southerners had grave misgivings concerning the designs of Republicans on dismantling their society. And neither the Democrats who had stared down John Calhoun in the Nullification Crisis or the Republicans with a Whig background of Henry Clay's Americanism were about to simply let the South secede.

According to the author there was "the conviction that North and South represented two social systems whose values, interests, and future prospects were in sharp, perhaps mortal, conflict with one another." And for those who would downplay the essential role of slavery in the impending conflict, the author quotes another historian as indicating that "By 1860, slavery had become the symbol and carrier of all sectional differences and conflicts."

In an introduction twenty-five years after the original, the author acknowledges that the ideology of free labor was already fraying by 1860. In the first place, by that point more than half of all men were wage earners and not independent workers. Secondly, the Republican fiction that both capital and labor had similar interests was belied by the greater power of capital to make the employment relationship hardly free. But those realities rose to the front after the Civil War as industrialism really expanded.

For those who would have wanted a bigger and more comprehensive book, there is merit in that. The book is somewhat narrowly focused. That is not to deny that the capturing of Republican ideology is not a significant contribution. But Southern reactions as the Republican Party was growing would have been interesting. But this book should be on the list of anyone wanting to understand the Civil War era.

Scholarly Work.......2001-04-16

This was the second book I read on the Civil War, following James McPherson's excellent `Battle Cry of Freedom'. I was led to read it because of my interest in the strange reversal of fortune of the Republican Party amongst African Americans. Why did the party of Lincoln, and more importantly The Radicals, gain less than 10% of the Black vote in 2000? Actually this book doesn't really answer that question, what it does explore (in some detail) is the origins of the Republican Party. That is why I have referred to it as a `Scholarly Work', the quality of Foner's research is formidable and together with William Geinapp's similar book provide a indispensable guide, not just to the historical events, but as the title suggests - to the underlying ideology that tied some very diverse politicians together. Furthermore in a key chapter (`The Republican Critique of the South') Foner analyses the root of those beliefs.

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