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Solidarity and Fragmentation: Working People and Class Consciousness in Detroit, 1875-1900

by Richard Jules Oestreicher

University of Illinois Press, 1985
eISBN: 978-0-252-05466-2 | Paper: 978-0-252-06120-2 | Cloth: 978-0-252-01225-9
Library of Congress Classification HD8085.D6O38 1986
Dewey Decimal Classification 305.5620977434

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC

ABOUT THIS BOOK
How did the interplay between class and ethnicity play out within the working class during the Gilded Age? Richard Jules Oestreicher illuminates the immigrant communities, radical politics, worker-employer relationships, and the multiple meanings of workers' affiliations in Detroit at the end of the nineteenth century.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Richard Jules Oestreicher is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Pittsburgh.

REVIEWS

"Radical history at its best, speaking directly to the descendants of radicals and social visionaries about the lessons of their past."--Monthly Review

"This is a first-rate study of the interplay between class and ethnicity in a late nineteenth-century industrial city. . . . an important book that should be read not only by students of labor and immigration history but by all those interested in the evolution of American culture and values."--American Studies

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cover

Title

Contents

List of Tables and Figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Living and Working in Detroit

Varying Industrial Experiences

Table 2. Firm Size and Distribution of Factory Employees in Detroit, 1896

Table 3. Class Composition of Detroit Work Force, 1890

Table 4. Detroit Women Wage Workers, 1892: Age at which They Began Work

Table 5. Age of Women Workers in Detroit, 1892

Table 6. Daily Wages of Detroit Workers, 1884

What Did Workers Have in Common?

2. Class Solidarity and Competing Cultural Systems

Detroit's Workers: Who Were They?

Table 7. Occupational Composition of Detroit Ethnic Groups, 1880-1900

Competing Cultural Systems

The Working Class Subculture of Opposition

Craft Unions in the Late 1870's

Labadie, Grenell, and American Socialism

Socialist Activities

Beyond the SLP: The Knights of Labor

Unions

Knights of Labor

Political Action

Table 8. Independent Labor Vote, State Representative Candidates, 1882-1886

The Subculture of Opposition

5. A Summer of Possibilities: May Day of Labor Day, 1886

Factional Divisions within the Labor Movement

The Collapse of the Independent Labor Party

Widening the Breach: The Knights, The Cigarmakers, and the Trade Unions

Powderly, Haymarket, and the Destruction of the Knights of Labor

"Will the butter come?"

Class Solidarity and Working-Class Culture

Political Alliances

Detroit's Labor Movement in the 1890's: The Triumph of Pure and Simple Unionism

Figure 1: Union Membership in Detroit, 1800-1906

Figure 2. Union Membership as Percentage of Work Force, Detroit, 1880-1906

Conclusion

Figure 3. Percentage of Unionization of Nonagricultural Employees, 1886-1929

Note on Source

Index

Back cover

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