James Wolfinger. Running the Rails

The U.S. presidential election of 2016 saw widespread debates about what happens to workers when manufacturers ship industrial jobs overseas. Implicit in these discussions was the belief that if the mobility of capital is constrained, the lot of labor will improve. This is a complex problem, however. As James Wolfinger’s impressive book Running the Rails: Capital and Labor in the Philadelphia Transit Industry shows, even in an industry tied to one city and its metropolitan area, bosses used violence, welfare capitalism with stock purchase plans, race-baiting, and public relations campaigns to control workers and protect profits. For labor, Wolfinger argues, gains came from hard-fought union actions. Placing these battles in the contexts of politics, economics, and urban space, he usefully affirms labor history’s enduring concern with power and inequality, even as he carries his story forward into a modern world of media strategies. Wolfinger’s narrative stretches from nineteenth-century horsecars and electric trolleys to twentieth-century subways, buses, and commuter railways. With careful research and in dense but clear prose, he suggests three related arguments about the Philadelphia transit industry.

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