
The Fall of the House of Labor
The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865-1925
David Montgomery(Author)
Cambridge University Press
Published on 28. August 1987
Book
Hardback
508 pages
978-0-521-22579-3 (ISBN)
Description
This book studies the changing ways in which American industrial workers mobilised concerted action in their own interests between the abolition of slavery and the end of open immigration from Europe and Asia. Sustained class conflict between 1916 and 1922 reshaped governmental and business policies, but left labour largely unorganised and in retreat. The House of Labor, so arduously erected by working-class activists during the preceeding generation, did not collapse, but ossified, so that when labour activism was reinvigorated after 1933, the movement split in two. These developments are analysed here in ways which stress the links between migration, neighbourhood life, racial subjugation, business reform, the state, and the daily experience of work itself.
Reviews / Votes
"David Montgomery...both exemplifies and transcends the recent trend toward painstakingly detailed social history...he has undertaken a far vaster project than most contemporary labor historians would attempt: American labor activism of all varieties and locales, from the time when American workers organized the first tentative but recognizable trade unions, in the mid-nineteenth century, to the emergence of the working class as an insurrectionary force during the first two decades of the twentieth century, to its humiliating defeat in the years following the First World War...the closest thing we have...to E.P. Thompson's monumental book, The Making of the English Working Class." Barbara Ehrenreich, in The Atlantic "...the most sweeping portrait of working-class life to emerge from the new labor history...a subtle, complex, often brilliant study..." Alan Brinkley in the New RepublicMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Illustrations
3 Tables, unspecified; 1 Line drawings, unspecified
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 34 mm
Weight
968 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-521-22579-3 (9780521225793)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

David Montgomery
The Fall of the House of Labor
The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865-1925
E-Book
01/2011
1st Edition
Cambridge University Press
€30.99
Available for download

David Montgomery
Fall of the House of Labor
The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865-1925
E-Book
08/1987
Cambridge University Press
€25.99
Available for download
Person
Content
Acknowledgments; Abbreviations used in text and notes; Introduction; 1. The manager's brain under the workman's cap; 2. The common laborer; 3. The operative; 4. The art of cutting metals; 5. White shirts and superior intelligence; 6. 'Our time ... belives in change'; 7. Patriots or paupers; 8. 'This great struggle for democracy'; 9. 'A maximum of publicity with a minimum of interference'; Index.