Against Exceptionalism: Class Consciousness and the American Labor Movement, 1790–1920

International Labor and Working-Class History

Volumn 26, Issue , 1984, Pages 1-24

  Wilentz, Sean ^a  

^a PRINCETON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 84972192044     PISSN: 01475479     EISSN: 14716445     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0147547900008401     Document Type: Article

References (71)

1. Stanley Aronowitz, False Promises: The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness (New York, 1973); Seymour Martin Upset “Why No Socialism in the United States.” in Seweryn Bilaer and Sophia Sluzar. eds. Sources of Contemporary Radicalism (New York 1977). 31-149 John H. M. Laslett and Seymour Martin Upset, Failure of a Dream? Essays in the History of American Socialism (Garden City, 1974); Stephan Thernstrom, Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth Century City (Cambridge, Mass., 1964); Thernstrom, The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis (Cambridge, Mass., 1973). Jerome Karabel. “The Failure of American Socialism Reconsidered,” Socialist Register, (1979), 204-27. Among the recent works in labor history that take up the question of American exceptionalismone form or another, are Alan Dawley, Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn (Cambridge, Mass., 1976); Daniel J. Walkowitz, Worker City, Company Town: Iron and Cotton- Worker Protest in Troy and Cohoes, New York, 1855-84 (Urbana, 1978); Susan E. Hirsch, Roots of the American Working Class: The Industrialization of Crafts in Newark, 1800-1860 (Philadelphia, 1978); Bruce G. Laurie, Working People of Philadelphia, 1800-1850 (Philadelphia, 1980); Mike Davis, “Why the U.S. Working Class is Different,” New Left Review, 123 (1980), 3-46; John H. M. Laslett, Reluctant Proletarians: A Short Comparative History of American Socialism (Westport, Ct., 1984). On the twentieth century, see also Jeremy Brecher, Strike! (San Francisco, 1972); Carlos A. Schwantes, Radical Heritage: Labor, Socialism, and Reform in Washington and British Columbia, 1885-1917 (Seattle, 1979)
2. I am forced to oversimplify. My point is not that all work on the United States has been addressed directly to the exceptionalism question, only that the interpretations described here have formed important conceptual boundaries to most of that work. Some of the most interesting and path-breaking recent work in American social history�above all on the history of women and the family�has tended to fall outside those boundaries, largely because it has usually not concerned itself with some of the more conventional questions asked by political, social, and intellectual historians
3. Richard Hofstadter The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It (New York, 1948); Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York, 1955)
4. For a discussion of some of the philosophical and political points at issue in the late 1940s and early 1950s see Richard Reinitz Irony and Consciousness: American Historiography and Reinhold Niebuhr's Vision (Lewisburg, Pa., 1980). See also the concluding chapter of Richard Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians: Turner. Beard, Parrington (New York 1968), as well as Christopher Lasch's introduction to the 1973 reprint of American Political Tradition
5. The most elaborate attempt to interpret the history of the labor movement in counter-Progressive terms is Gerald N. Grob. Workers and Utopia: A Study of Ideological Conflict in the American Labor Movement, 1865-1900 (Evanston, III. 1961)
6. The shift is particularly noticeable in Hofstadter's work. See his The Age of Reform: Bryan to FDR (New York 1955); Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York, 1963); The Paranoid Style in American Politics (New York, 1965). For an incisive critique of the broader intellectual trend of which this was a part, see Michael Paul Rogin, The Intellectuals and McCarthy: The Radical Specter (Cambridge, Mass. 1967)
7. Hofstadter, Progressive Historians 461
8. These explanations are taken, more or less at random, from the “new” labor history works cited above fn. 1, as well as from David Gordon Michael Reich, and Richard Edwards Segmented Labor, Divided Workers (Cambridge, 1982); John H. M. Laslett, [Mhor and the Left: A Study of Socialist and Radical Influences in the American Labor Movement. 1881-1924 (New York 1970): and Aronowitz, False Promises 137-213
9. Dawley Class and Community 10
10. Daniel J.Boorstin The Genius of American Politics (Chicago, 1953); Christopher Lasch, preface to The Radical Will: Randolph Bourne. Selected Writings 1911-1918, ed. Olaf Hansen (New York, 1977), 13 An extreme case of such condemnation is Aileen Kraditor's The Radical Persuasion: Aspects of Intellectual History and the Historiography of Three American Radical Organizations (Baton Rouge. 1981)
11. For a clear exposition of the logical flaws of such negative questions, see David Hackett Fischer, Historians' Fallacies: 7Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (New York 1970). 8-12
12. Gareth Stedman Jones “The Language of Chartism” in The Chartist Experience: Studies in Working-Class Radicalism, ed. James Epstein and Dorothy Thompson (London 1982). 3-58: Iorwerth Prothero. Artisans and Politics in Early Nineteenth Century London: John Gast and His Times (Folkestone. 1979); Dorothy Thompson, The Chartists (New York, 1984)
13. Craig J. Calhoun The Question of Class Struggle: Social Foundations of Popular Radicalism during the Industrial Revolution (Chicago, 1982); Alastair Reid. “Politics and Economics in the Formation of the British Working Class: A Response to H. F. Moorehouse.” Social History, 3 (1978). 347-62
14. Bernard Moss, Origins of the French Labor Movement: The Socialism of Skilled Workers (Berkeley, 1978); William H. Sewell, Jr., Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (Cambridge, 1980); Joan W. Scott, “Social History and the History of Socialism: French Socialist Municipalities in the 1890s,” Ije Mouvement Social, 111 (1980). 145-53 It should also be noted that some recent and current research on British and European labor and social history retains essentialist formulations to explain the failure of various movements. For one example (an extreme example, to be sure), see John Foster, Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution (London, 1974)
15. And even then, the SPD should not be analyzed in essentialist terms. See Mary Nolan's excellent study Social Democracy and Society: Working-Class Radicalism in Dusseldorf 1890-1920 (New York 1981)
16. See Michael Harrington. Socialism (New York. 1972). As early as the 1940s some European leftists came to regard the existence of a sharply-delineated “working-class” party not as a sign of incipient revolution but of isolation and weakness See Adolph Sturmthal, The Tragedy of European Labor, 1919-1939 (New York 1943)
17. See. in addition to the labor history works cited in fn. 1�especially Brecher�David Montgomery “Labor and the Republic in Industrial America, 1860-1920,” Le Mouvement Social 111 (1980), 201-15
18. Among recent studies, see Mari Jo Buhle Women and American Socialism 1870-1920 (Urbana 111., 1979); James R. Green, Grass-Roots Socialism: Radical Movements in the Southwest 1895-1943 (Baton Rouge, 1978); Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist (Urbana, 1982); Bruce Stave, ed., Socialism and the Cities (Port Washington, NY., 1975)
19. See Dawley Class: Paul G. Faler, Mechanics and Manufacturers in the Earlv Industrial Revolution (Albany 1981); Leon Fink, Workingmen's Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics (Urbana, 1983); Herbert G. Gutman, Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America (New York, 1976), chapter two; Salvatore, Debs
20. For a comprehensive comparative study that directly confronts the Sombart-Seligman view, see James Holt “Trade Unionism in the British and U.S. Steel Industries, 1885-1912: A Comparative Study,” Labor History 18 (1977), 5-35. The issues of race, ethnicity and class are taken up in Gutman, Work: on these and other related matters, see Victor Greene. The Slavic Community on Strike (Notre Dame, 1968); Buhle, Women: Josh Freeman, “Catholics, Communists, and Republicans: Irish Workers and the Organization of the Transport Workers Union.” in Michael H. Frisch and Daniel J. Walkowitz. Working-Class America (Urbana. 1983), 256-283. For a full treatment of the inadequacies of the exceptionalism question to explain the facts of U.S. workingclass history, see Eric Foner, “Why Is There No Socialism in America?” History Workshop Journal, 17 (Spring. 1984)
21. William Manning “Some proposals for Makeing Restitution to the Original Credtors of Government…” (1790). MS. Houghton Library. Harvard University For details of Manning's life, see Samuel Eliot Morison, ed., “William Manning's The Key of Liberty,” William and Mary Quarterly. 3rd series 13 (1956), 202-08
22. For the subsequent history of these ideas in rural America, see Lawrence Goodwyn. Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America (New York. 1976); Bruce Palmer, “Man O\er Money” The Southern Populist Critique of American Capita/ism (Chapel Hill, 1980)
23. Hofstadter Age of Reform, 47. Hofstadter probably would have agreed with this statement. He admitted that what he called the “agrarian myth” corresponded to many of the realities of eighteenth-century American rural lifecontrast (as he saw it) to the 1890s. Unfortunately. Hofstadter never analyzed what the reality of the “myth” might have implied for the social and political history of the early republic
24. On Manning's concern for urban producers, see Morison, Key, 210-54, passim
25. On the countryside, see Michael Merrill,” 'Cash Is Good To Eat': Self-Sufficiency and Exchange in the Rural United States, 1750-1850,” Radical History Review 15 (1977), 42-71; James Henretta, “Families and Farms: Mentalit'e in Pre-Industrial America,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 35 (1978), 3-32, Christopher Clark, “The Household Economy, Market Exchange, and the Rise of Capitalism in the Connecticut Valley, 1800-1860,” Journal of Social History, 13 (1979), 169-90; Jonathan Prude, The Coming of Industrial Order: Town and Factory Life in Rural Massachusetts, 1810-1860 (New York, 1983), 3-33. See also Steven Hahn, The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850-1890 (New York, 1983), chapters 1 and 2. On the cities, see Billy G. Smith, “The Material Lives of Laboring Philadelphians, 1750 to 1800,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 38 (1981), 163-202; Sharon V. Salinger, “Artisans, Journeymen, and the Transformation of Labor in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 40 (1983), 62-84; Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City & the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 (New York, 1984), 23-60
26. Report of Abraham Quick Census of Manufacturers 1820, New York County, MS., microfilm. National Archives
27. E.g., Kenneth Lockridge A New England Town: The First Hundred Years (New York, 1970); Daniel Scott Smith, “Population, Family, and Society in Hingham, Massachusetts, 1635-1880” (Ph.D., University of California, 1973)
28. The connections between rural and urban small production and popular conceptions of republicanism�and particularly republican ideals of virtue, independence, commonwealth, citizenship, and equality�are too complex to explain in detail here I have tried to specify them in the urban context in Chants Democratic, 87-97
29. The best recent treatment of this transformation concentrates on the changes in contract, insurance, and tort law Morton J.Horwitz The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860 (Cambridge, Mass., 1977). See also David Szatmary, Shays' Rebellion: The Making of an Agrarian Insurrection (Amherst, 1980)
30. American Daily Advertiser [Philadelphia] July 10, 1795, quoted in Philip S. Foner, The Democratic-Republican Societies, 1790-1800 (Westport, CT., 1976), 233
31. Howard B.Rock Artisans of the New Republic The Tradesmen of New York City in the Age of Jefferson (New York, 1979), 189-95
32. See Laurie, Working People. 75-79; Wilentz, Chants Democratic 157-68
33. Mechanics' Free Press [Philadelphia], October 25, 1828; Louis H.Arky “The Mechanics' Union of Trade Associations and the Formation of the Philadelphia Working-men's Movement,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 76 (1952), 142-76
34. Wilentz Chants Democratic 190-201
35. Fink Workingmen's Democracy, 7
36. E. H. Phelps Brown Sheila Hopkins, quoted in Christopher Hill, “Pottage for Freeborn Englishmen: Attitudes to Wage Labour in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in C. H. Feinstein, ed. Socialism, Capitalism, and Economic Growth (Cambridge, 1969), 338
37. Hill, “Pottage” Edmund S.Morgan American Slavery. American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York, 1976). A full-scale treatment of attitudes toward wage labor in colonial America remains to be written, but there are some important clues in Marcus Rediker. “Society and Culture Among Anglo-American Deep Sea Sailors, 1700-1750” (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1982); and Daniel F. Vickars, “Maritime Labor in Colonial Massachusetts: A Case Study of the Essex County Cod Fishery and the Whaling Industry of Nantucket” (Ph.D., Princeton University, 1982
38. See Richard B.Morris Government and Labor in Early America (New York, 1946) Gary B. Nash, The Urban Crucible: Social Change. Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1979); Douglas Lamar Jones, “The Strolling Poor: Transiency in Eighteenth-Century Massachusetts.” Journal of Social History 8 (1975), 28-54
39. Harriet Weed, ed. Autobiography of Thurlow Weed (Boston, 1885), 58 On the transformation of the artisan crafts, see the works by Dawley, Faler, Hirsch, Laurie, Rock, and Wilentz already cited; see also Prude, Coming, 34-132; Thomas Dublin, Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell Mass., 1826-1860 (New York. 1979); Gary Kulik, “Pawtucket Village and the Strike of 1824: The Origins of Class Conflict in Rhode Island,” Radical History Review, 17 (1978), 5-37; Anthony F. C. Wallace, Rockdale: The Growth of an American Industrial Revolution (New York, 1978
40. American Citizen [New York], May 3, 23, 31, 1810 See works cited in fn. 36, as well as Morris, Government and Labor, 193-207 Nash, Urban Crucible, 324; Salinger, “Artisans” Sean Wilentz, “Power, Conspiracy, and the Early Labor Movement: The People v. James Melvin et a]., 1811,” Labor History, 24 (1983), 572-79
41. Dawley Class, 61-62; Hirsch, Roots 110-12
42. Dublin. Women, 86-107 Mary H.Blewett “Work. Gender, and the Artisan Tradition in New England Shoemaking, “Journal of Social History, 17, 221-48; Philip S. Foner, Women and the American Labor Movement (New York 1979), 38-54
43. Laurie, Working People 85-104 Wilentz, Chants Democratic. 219-54
44. National Trades' Union [New York], April 4, 1835; Working Man's Advocate [New York], September 19. 1835
45. National Laborer [Philadelphia] July 9, 1836 cited in Sullivan, Industrial Worker, 86
46. Public Ledger [Philadelphia] October 11, 1837
47. Courier and Enquirer [New York] March 26, 1836
48. New York Transcript, April 2, 1836
49. Laurie Working People 102-03
50. The Union [New York], June 23, 1836
51. L'Echo de la Fabrique, March 3, 1833, quoted in Robert J. Bezucha. The Lyon Uprising of 1834 Social and Political Conflict in the Early July Monarchy (Cambridge, Mass., 1974). 105
52. See Prothero. Artisans and Politics: G. D. H. Cole. Attempts at General Union (London. 1953); Sewell, Work and Revolution, 194-218; Alain Faure and Jacques Ranciere, La parole ouvriere (Paris, 1974), 159-68. In the 1830s and latere there were also some similarities in the American workers' understandings of republicanism and those evident abroad, although the political implications were obviously different. The literature on France is the strongest on working-class republicanism. See the works cited in fn. 15. as well as Heinz-Gerhard Haupt. “Frankreich: Industrialisierung und republikanische Tradition,” in Jurgen Kocka. ed. Europaische Arbeilerbewegung im 19. Jahrhundert (Gottingen, 1983), 39-76
53. Laurie Working People 90-92 98; Wilentz. Chants Democratic, 286-94
54. Dawley, Class. 73-78; Hirsch, Roots. 37-51; Laurie, Working People 107-33. 147-48: Wilentz, Chants Democratic, 299-359; Amy Bridges, A City in the Republic: New York and the Origins of the Political Machine (New York, 1984)
55. Working Man's Advocate, August 31. 1844. On land reform as a middle-class, “intellectual” reform, see Norman Ware, The Industrial Worker, 1840-1860 (Boston 1924
56. New York Daily Tribune, May 22, 1850. See also John R. Commons, et al. Documentary History of American Industrial Society (Cleveland. 1910). VIII. 130
57. Constitution and By-Laws of the City of New- York Bricklayers' Benevolent and Protective Association (New York, 1851), Beekman Papers, New York Historical Society
58. New York Times, May 24, 1854, cited in Carl N.Degler, “Labor in the Economy and Politics of New York City, 1850-1860” (Ph.D., Columbia University 1952), 264
59. New York Herald February 18, 1855. cited in Degler. 263
60. Wilentz Chants Democratic 267-68
61. Dawley Class 238-39
62. David Montgomery, Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862-1872(New York 1967), 425-47
63. Edward Everett Hale to Edward H. Rogers December 20, 1866, quoted in Montgomery. Beyond Equality, 246
64. Fink Workingmen's Democracy. 3-37 and passim
65. George McNeill. The Labor Movement: The Problem of Today (Boston 1887), 459, cited in 4
66. John Bodnar Workers' World: Kinship, Community, and Protest in an Industrial Society, 1900-1940 (Baltimore, 1982); Montgomery, “Labor and the Republic,” 210-14
67. Holt “Trade Unionism”
68. Montgomery, “Labor and the Republic,” 208-09. For an encyclopedic narrative of the emergence of the A F of L, see Philip Taft, The A FofLin the Time ofGompers (New York, 1957); but see also J. F. Finn. “A. F. of L. Leaders and the Question of Politics in the Early 1890s.” American Studies. 14(1973), 243-65
69. David Montgomery, Workers' Control in America: Studies in the History of Work. Technology, and Labor Struggles (Cambridge 1979), 48-112
70. Montgomery “Labor and the Republic,” 215
71. Harold Livesay Samuel Gompers and Organized Labor in America (Boston 1978). 125-26