A foundational figure in modern labor history, David Montgomery both redefined and reoriented the field. This collection of Montgomerys most important published and unpublished articles and essays draws from the historians entire five-decade career.
Taken together, the writings trace the development of Montgomerys distinct voice and approach while providing a crucial window into an era that changed the ways scholars and the public understood working peoples place in American history. Three overarching themes and methods emerge from these essays: that class provided a rich reservoir of ideas and strategies for workers to build movements aimed at claiming their democratic rights; that capital endured with the power to manage the contours of economic life and the capacities of the state but that workers repeatedly and creatively mounted challenges to the terms of life and work dictated by capital; and that Montgomerys method grounded his gritty empiricism and the conceptual richness of his analysis in the intimate social relations of production and of community, neighborhood, and family life.
Recenzijas
In this invaluable sample of nearly forty years of working-class social history, A David Montgomery Readerreminds us of the special gifts--the confidence of purpose, analytical range, and sheer breadth of knowledge--regularly exhibited by this master craftsman at work.--Leon Fink, Undoing the Liberal World Order: Progressive Ideals and Political Realities Since World War II
Acknowledgments
Biographical Sketch
Introduction
Part I. Writing the Peoples History
The Great Northern Strike of 1894: When Gene Debs Beat Jim Hill
Part II. Working-Class Formation
The Working Classes of the Pre-Industrial American City, 1780-1830
Social Attitudes of American Workers in the 1840s
The Shuttle and the Cross: Weavers and Artisans in the Kensington Riots of
1844
Wage Labor, Bondage, and Citizenship in Nineteenth-Century America
Part III. Mutualism and Contention: Strikes, Immigrants, and Working-Class
Consciousness in the Nineteenth Century
Strikes in Nineteenth-Century America
Labor and the Republic in Industrial America, 1860-1920
Racism, Immigrants, and Political Reform
Part IV. Toward a History of Workers Control
Trade Union Practice and the Origins of Syndicalist Theory in the United
States
Workers Control of Machine Production in the Nineteenth Century
The New Unionism and the Transformation of Workers Consciousness in
America, 1909-22
Part V. After The Fall
Thinking about American Workers in the 1920s
Labor and the Political Leadership of New Deal America
Working Peoples Response to Past Depressions
Part VI. The Move to Global and Comparative Study
Empire, Race, and Working-Class Mobilizations
Workers Movements in the United States Confront Imperialism: The
Progressive Era Experience
Part VII. Political Interventions
Whats Happening to the American Worker?
Foreword to On Strike for Respect
Yesterdays Wisdom: Changing Situations and New Initiatives in the American
Labor Movement
Challenges Facing Historians of the Working Class
A David Montgomery Bibliography
Index
David Montgomery (19272011) was the Farnam Professor of History at Yale University. His books include The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 18651925. Shelton Stromquist is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Iowa. He is the author of Claiming the City: A Global History of Workers Fight for Municipal Socialism. James R. Barrett is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of History from the Bottom Up and the Inside Out: Ethnicity, Race, and Identity in Working-Class History.
