The Work of Class in American History

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 11-28
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Sklansky
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
American History ◽  
Labor History ◽  
Book Series ◽  
Property Relations ◽  
History Book

In recent decades, the working class as it was once conceived has lost its paradigmatic place in labor history along with the nineteenth-century struggles from which it emerged. This essay surveys what the Working Class in American History book series has taught us about class in the age of cotton, coal, and steel, reviews the major criticisms of the concept of the working class on which it was founded, and reconsiders what its nineteenth-century subjects still have to say. The essay concludes with a call to reclaim a more capacious conception of class as a political formation based on property relations, describing at once a prospect, a project, and a perspective with labor at its core.

Writing Working-Class History from the Bottom Up and Beyond

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 29-34
Author(s):  
Talitha L. LeFlouria
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Women Workers ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Labor History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Book Series ◽  
Working Class History ◽  
History Book ◽  
Made In

This essay recognizes the important role the Working Class in American History book series has played in shaping our understanding of the historical experiences of African American and women workers in the United States. It outlines the advancements historians have made in the field of working-class labor history and challenges scholars to incorporate the stories of informal, enslaved, and incarcerated workers.

The Politics of Proletarianization: A Review Article

1979 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-230
Author(s):  
Michael Hanagan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Labor History ◽  
Review Article ◽  
The Political ◽  
Regional Studies ◽  
Trade Unionism ◽  
Working Class History ◽  
Political Conditions

The process of proletarianization and its role in the shaping of working class consciousness has captured the attention of French social historians over the last ten years. Until recently, works on French labor history generally neglected the formation of the working class to concentrate on the origins of national working-class parties or trade unions; thus, general histories of the political ‘workers’ movement' abound, to the detriment of occupational or regional studies. As early as 1971, Rolande Trempé's thèse asserted that the transition from godfearing peasant to socialistic proletarian had only just begun when a man put down his hoe and took up a pickaxe. In Les mineurs de Carmaux, Trempé showed the evolving social and political conditions which led coalminers in southwestern France to espouse trade unionism and socialism. The recently published thése of Yves Lequin, Les ouvriers de la region lyonnaise, provides another benchmark in the study of nineteenth-century working class history. Lequin reveals that, for the pre-1914 period in the Lyonnais region of France, the dynamics of proletarianization were more important in promoting worker militancy than its end result, the appearance of an industrial proletariat.

scholarly journals Employer, Industrial Housing and the Evolution of Company Welfare Policies in Britain's Heavy Industry: West Scotland, 1870–1920

1981 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Melling
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Heavy Industry ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
Iron And Steel ◽  
Property Relations ◽  
History Of ◽  
Building Activities

The history of working-class housing has become an imporatnt area of urban studies in recent years, as detailed investigations of building activities and property relations uncover the origins of housing initiatives. The growth of cities in the industrial North of England created their own peculiar building styles and housing problems, whilst the great metropolis of London continued to attract thousands of families into its eternal slums. There were also the new boom towns of manufacturing Britain, specialising in particular products as a regional division of productive expertise emerged. Swindon and Crewe flourished in the railway age of the nineteenth century, whilst Barrow and Jarrow belonged to a later period of iron and steel shipbuilding. The latter settlements were dominated not only by a few vital products, but by a handful of large companies with massive resources, which enabled them to undertake the housing of their first workers. These accounts may be complemented by the evidence of working-class dwellings in the early textile villages and larger industrial colonies of Lancashire and West Riding, or by the scattered documentation on the colliery villages which persisted through the major coal fields well into the twentieth century.

Placing and Preserving Labor History

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-83
Author(s):  
Rachel Donaldson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Working Class ◽  
American History ◽  
Public History ◽  
Labor History ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Narrative ◽  
Labor Activism ◽  
Working Class History

This article focuses on the significance of sites and landscapes of labor history in public history, particularly in the fields of preservation and interpretation. Through the preservation of labor history sites, public historians can educate various audiences about the diversity of the working-class experience in the United States. Although sites of work have long been identified as historically significant, all too often the workers have been excluded from these narratives. By understanding which sites are important in working-class history and by bringing workers’ voices into the act of protecting, commemorating, and interpreting sites of labor, we can achieve a more inclusive view of labor history—one that connects these stories to the national narrative and illustrates the centrality of labor and labor activism to American history.

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