Old Labor and New Immigrants in American Political Development

Union, Party, and State, 1875-1920

Bibliographic Data

ID19905321
AuthorsGwendolyn Mink (corresponding author)
Year2019
Pages304
Publication date2019-12-31
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
Reviewed byOld Labor and New Immigrants in American Political Development: Union, Party, and State, 1875-1920, Howard Kimeldorf, 1987
VenueOld Labor and New Immigrants in American Political Development (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherCornell University Press (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.7591/9781501742699
OpenAlexW2095926017
Open LibraryOL33759315M
ISBN9781501742699
LanguageEN
Citations received66

Why have American politics developed differently from politics in Europe? Generations of scholars and commentators have wondered why organized labor in the United States did not acquire a broad-based constituency or form an autonomous labor party. In this innovative and insightful book, Gwendolyn Mink finds new answers by approaching this question from a different angle: she asks what determined union labor's political interests and how those interests influenced the political role forged by the American Federation of Labor. At bottom, Mink argues, the demographic dynamics of industrialization produced a profound racial response to economic change among organized labor. This response shaped the AFL's political strategy and political choices.In her account of the unique role played by labor in politics prior to the New Deal, Mink focuses on the ways in which the organizational and political interests of the AFL were mediated by the national issue of immigration and links the AFL's response to immigration to its conservative stance in and toward politics. She investigates the political impact of a labor market split between union and nonunion, old and new immigrant workers; of dramatic demographic change; and of nativism and racism. Mink then elucidates the development of trade-union political interests, ideology, and strategy; the movement of the AFL into established state and party structures; and the consequent separation of the AFL from labor's social base

Demographic economics · Economics · Immigration · Labor union · Labour economics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Soviet union · Computer Science · Labor Movements and Unions · Law · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Race, History, and American Society · American Federation of Labor · Democratic party (u.s.) · emigration and immigration · History · Political activity · Trade-unions · united states

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