Working-Class Americanism
The Politics of Labor in a Textile City, 1914-1960
1st Edition
Published on 5. April 2022
373 pages
978-0-691-22823-5 (ISBN)
Description
In this classic interpretation of the 1930s rise of industrial unionism, Gary Gerstle challenges the popular historical notion that American workers' embrace of "Americanism" and other patriotic sentiments in the post-World War I years indicated their fundamental political conservatism. He argues that Americanism was a complex, even contradictory, language of nationalism that lent itself to a wide variety of ideological constructions in the years between World War I and the onset of the Cold War. Using the rich and textured material left behind by New England's most powerful textile union--the Independent Textile Union of Woonsocket, Rhode Island--Gerstle uncovers for the first time a more varied and more radical working-class discourse.
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03/2002
Princeton University Press
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Person
Gary Gerstle is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Historical Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of the forthcoming book American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Princeton).
Content
- Cover Page
- Half-title Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication Page
- Contents
- List of illustrations and tables page
- Preface to the Princeton edition
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I. Ethnictown, 1875-1929
- 1. The French Canadians
- La ville la plus frangaise aux Etats Unis, 1875-1914
- The prewar world of the French-Canadian worker
- The crisis of an ethnic order, 1914-1929
- Working-class stirrings, 1922-1929
- 2. The Franco-Belgians
- The aristocrats
- Brave ouvrier et vaillant proletaire
- The Americanization of Joseph Schmetz
- Part II. The emergence of an industrial union, 1929-1936
- 3. Beginnings, 1929-1934
- The peculiarities of an industry
- The birth of a union
- Divided employers
- A network of mulespinners
- 4. Citywide mobilization, 1934-1936
- The strike of 1934
- The union experience
- Part III. Working-class heyday, 1936-1941
- 5. "A new, progressive Americanism
- Unveiling a radical dream
- The arrival of Lawrence Spitz, Popular Front radical
- The nationalist dimension
- The progressive dimension
- The democratic dimension
- The (missing) traditionalist dimension
- 6. Ethnic-style unionism
- Belgian unionism, French-Canadian style
- The transformation ofshopfloor life
- Americanism on parade
- The limits of industrial democracy
- 7. Ethnic renaissance
- Republican reformation
- A New Deal in municipal affairs
- Christian democracy
- Part IV. The crucial decade - and after, 1941-1960
- 8. The struggle for union power, 1941 -1946
- Spitz's bid for power, 1941 -1943
- The ethnic corporatists' triumph, 1944-1946
- 9. Be American!"": refashioning a political language," 1944_1946
- Catholic corporatism
- Anticommunism
- Cultural pluralism
- Resistance and capitulation to national authority
- 10. The failure of two dreams, 1946-1960
- From industrial democracy to industrial pluralism
- Economic decline, union collapse, 1949-1960
- Conclusion
- Appendix A: Locals organized by ITU, 1932-1955
- Appendix B: A note on union sources and a list of interviewees
- Index
