Working-Class Americanism: The Politics of Labor in a Textile City, 1914-1960 (Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Modern History) [Hardcover]

Gary Gerstle (Author)

Book Description

Series: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Modern History | Publication Date: September 29, 1989

In this interpretation of the 1930s rise of industrial unionism, the author 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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The transformation of ethnically insular workers into passionate American activists is an important story, which Gerstle recounts with unusual subtlety. . . . No one has explored the meaning of Americanism to workers with more intelligence and insight. -- Alan Brinkley, New York Review of Books



Scintillating. . . . [Gerstle] uses the method [of social history] with striking originality to tackle the thorny questions of Americanism. -- Alan Dawley, The Nation



[A] fascinating new book. . . . One of the great feats of this book is Gerstle's ability to show that intellectual history is not some ethereal, separable history of abstract 'ideas' but is rather a product of class relations born at the workplace. -- Dana Frank, In These Times



The most provocative account of working-class politics in the 1930s and 1940s. -- John Bodnar, Journal of American History



[A] pathbreaking, impeccably researched history. . . . The sheer scope of this study . . . is breathtaking. -- Richard M. Vallely, International Labor and Working Class History



A remarkably rich and thoroughly rewarding study of life, labor, and politics in a 20th century industrial community. -- Stuart M. Blumin, Labor History



Important. . . . To read Gerstle . . . is to think a little more freely of this country's possibilities. . . . [T]he sobriety and sheer depth of Gerstle's engagement with real Americans' struggles spells relief from tributes to 'forgotten warriors' that read like old placards in a May Day parade. Study 'the people' here first. -- Jim Sleeper, Los Angeles Times Book Review
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

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 American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (see page 7 in this catalog). --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; First Edition edition (September 29, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521361311
• ISBN-13: 978-0521361316
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,111,340 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Americanism as a fluid language, February 10, 2004

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This review is from: Working-Class Americanism: The Politics of Labor in a Textile City, 1914-1960 (Paperback)

Working-Class Americanism, written by Gary Gerstle, is a truly fascinating and inspiring book. He focuses on the early-twentieth-century Woonsocket, Rhode Island, a city of textile industry and habitated mainly by French-Canadian immigrants from Quebec, Canada. Most of residents in the city were French Canadian, but there were other residents, especially Franco-Belgians. The culture of French Canadian workers was community-centered, devoted to Catholicism, and French language. On the other hands, workers from France or Belgium were radical, or socialistic, social democrats. Gerstle analyzes the process hoe these two working-class groups of diffenent culture and ideology made (and broke later) tenuous alliance under the Independent Textile Union (ITU), an CIO-affiliated labor union.
The author's innovative approach to the labor history of Woonsocket is his usage of the concept of Americanism. He treats Americanism as not as a consistent and monolithic ideology but as a fluid language which is open to appropriation by various social groups and individuals. In his view the language of Americanism consists of several dimensions---nationalistic, democratic, progressive, and traditional. He argues that in the severe economic condition of the Great Depression two different working-class groups succeeded in establishing the strong labor movement of the ITU by using the nationalistic, democratic, and progressive dimensions of Americanism in order to articulate their rights as workers.
Gerstle's treatment of the labor Americanism is very subtle and sensitive. He does not insist that the discourse of Americanism could have assimilated French Canadians and Franco-Belgians into one monolithic Americanized group of citizen-workers. He points out that whereas Franco-Belgian radical labor leaders embraced a dream of remolding America thoroughly in terms of social democracy, French Canadian workers accepted Franco-Belgian leadership in the ITU as an instrument to reinvigorate their ethnic community and family (Gerstle points out the patriarchal nature of French Canadian working-class culture). French Canadians and Franco-Belgians allied without a common vision of American society. As a result, he suggests, they abandoned the alliance based on the ITU when local Republicans, after defeated by Democrats in the late 1930s, solicited French Canadian workers by giving favor to their ethnic culture. The author's unique approach to Americanism makes Working-Class Americanism interesting both as social history of labor and political history at the same time.
Gerstle has succeeded in discovering multi-faceted and complicated experiences of Woonsocket textile workers and their politics of language by wide and intensive research including interviews. The interviews make his book highly vivid. For example, he proves the ITU's commitment to democratic delibaration by description of an interview with a old-aged ex-labor activist, who showed the author his "highly polished gavel" and "dog-eared paperback copy of Robert's Rules of Order" which had been used for debates among union members. The reviewer felt spellbound to an imagination inspired by this episode.
I should remark, in the recent advance of studies on ethnicity and race, especially so-called "whiteness studies," that Woonsocket was the city of white people, native or immigrants, therefore the author makes almost no mention to problems of race or color-line (relations of French Canadian or Franco-Belgian workers with non-white people). It mean that his analysis might not be applicable to other regions where we could find deep-rooted racial confrontations. It, however, does not undermine the value of Gerstle's excellent analysis made in this book.