American Labour's Longue Durée

Recent work in united states labour history casts a curious shadow over the middle decades of the 19th century. Studies of New York, Philadel phia, and Lynn, to make the most prominent examples, indicate the forma tion of a working class and attendant class culture already by the 1830s. But at least two problems remain in characterizing and assigning significance to these developments in national (even national urban) terms. First, the con nections between local events seem muted and intrinsically weak. Secondly, a period of disintegration, at least in terms of organizational and political expression in the 1840s and 1850s, makes problematic the connections be tween the pioneering initiatives of the 1820s and 1830s and the post-war labour movement reaching out from the skilled trades to the factory working class. Implicitly acknowledging the problem, most studies have confined themselves to one side or other of the Civil War divide. But what works well for research purposes retards our explanatory pow ers. The connections?and contrasts?between workers under commercial capitalism and early and late factory industrialization are left unspoken. The distinctions in worker ideology and language?especially the changing mean ing of republican articles of faith?are likewise difficult to discern. Fi nally, and perhaps most importantly, the Civil War itself continues to stand outside of labour history, even as its significance to workers and their communities is reflexively acknowledged. No one work, and certainly no single community study, can make up all this ground in one swoop. Thankfully, however, the most impressive ef

Class (philosophy · Class conflict · Epistemology · Political science · Sociology · American History and Culture · Law · Philosophy