A foundational figure in modern labor history, David Montgomery both redefined and reoriented the field. This collection of Montgomery's most important published and unpublished articles and essays draws from the historian's entire five-decade career. Taken together, the writings trace the development of Montgomery's distinct voice and approach while providing a crucial window into an era that changed the ways scholars and the public understood working people's place in American history. Three overarching themes and methods emerge from these essays: that class provided a rich reservoir of ideas and strategies for workers to build movements aimed at claiming their democratic rights; that capital endured with the power to manage the contours of economic life and the capacities of the state but that workers repeatedly and creatively mounted challenges to the terms of life and work dictated by capital; and that Montgomery's method grounded his gritty empiricism and the conceptual richness of his analysis in the intimate social relations of production and of community, neighborhood, and family life.
David Montgomery (1927-2011) was the Farnam Professor of History at Yale University. His books include The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865-1925. Shelton Stromquist is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Iowa. He is the author of Claiming the City: A Global History of Workers' Fight for Municipal Socialism. James R. Barrett is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of History from the Bottom Up and the Inside Out: Ethnicity, Race, and Identity in Working-Class History.
Acknowledgments Biographical Sketch Introduction Part I. Writing the People's History The Great Northern Strike of 1894: When Gene Debs Beat Jim Hill Part II. Working-Class Formation The Working Classes of the Pre-Industrial American City, 1780-1830 Social Attitudes of American Workers in the 1840s The Shuttle and the Cross: Weavers and Artisans in the Kensington Riots of 1844 Wage Labor, Bondage, and Citizenship in Nineteenth-Century America Part III. Mutualism and Contention: Strikes, Immigrants, and Working-Class Consciousness in the Nineteenth Century Strikes in Nineteenth-Century America Labor and the Republic in Industrial America, 1860-1920 Racism, Immigrants, and Political Reform Part IV. Toward a History of Workers' Control Trade Union Practice and the Origins of Syndicalist Theory in the United States Workers' Control of Machine Production in the Nineteenth Century The "New Unionism" and the Transformation of Workers' Consciousness in America, 1909-22 Part V. After The Fall Thinking about American Workers in the 1920s Labor and the Political Leadership of New Deal America Working People's Response to Past Depressions Part VI. The Move to Global and Comparative Study Empire, Race, and Working-Class Mobilizations Workers' Movements in the United States Confront Imperialism: The Progressive Era Experience Part VII. Political Interventions What's Happening to the American Worker? Foreword to On Strike for Respect Yesterday's Wisdom: Changing Situations and New Initiatives in the American Labor Movement Challenges Facing Historians of the Working Class A David Montgomery Bibliography Index
"In this invaluable sample of nearly forty years of working-class social history, A David Montgomery Readerreminds us of the special gifts--the confidence of purpose, analytical range, and sheer breadth of knowledge--regularly exhibited by this master craftsman at work."--Leon Fink, Undoing the Liberal World Order: Progressive Ideals and Political Realities Since World War II
