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“Exceptional book . . . not just for scholars or even for students, A
but for the working class. Such books are rare.” S
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—Labor Notes
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Noting that standard accounts of U.S. history often pay little attention to the working class, i
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labor historian Paul Le Blanc presents a colorful, fact-filled history that concentrates on the t
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struggles and achievements of that often-neglected laboring majority. Employing a blend of r
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economic, social, and political history, Le Blanc shows how important labor issues have been
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and continue to be in the forging of our nation’s history. Within a broad analytical frame-
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work he highlights issues of class, gender, race, and ethnicity, and includes the views of key t
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figures of U.S. labor, including Cesar Chavez, Eugene V. Debs, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn,
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Samuel Gompers, Woody Guthrie, “Big Bill” Haywood, Langston Hughes, Mary “Mother”
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Jones, Martin Luther King Jr., George Meany, A. Philip Randolph, and Carl Sandburg.
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In addition to the main narrative, a bibliographical essay directs readers to classic works and
C cutting-edge scholarship in the field of U.S. labor history as well as to relevant fiction, o
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M poetry, and films for further exploration or study. The book’s substantial glossary offers clear k
Y definitions and thought-provoking mini-essays for almost two hundred terms, from the in
most basic to the most complex and technical. g
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“Although most books that consider the ‘working class’ are usually devoted to studying or s
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portraying the poor, Le Blanc’s book takes a much broader view. For Le Blanc, working class
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and labor are synonymous. His aim is to make the history of labor in the U.S. more accessible
to students and the general reader. He succeeds by outlining major events in the history of
the U.S., then showing the role of labor in shaping them or describing their impact on labor. P
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Le Blanc’s primer not only informs but should also prove to be a helpful resource.”
—Booklist u
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Paul Le Blanc is a professor of history at La Roche College, has written on and participated B
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in the U.S. labor, radical, and civil rights movements, and is author of such books as Marx, a
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Lenin, and the Revolutionary Experience and Lenin and the Revolutionary Party.
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Labor History
A Short History of the U.S. Working Class
ISBN: 978-1-60846-625-2 $17
5 1 7 0 0
From Colonial Times to the Twenty-First Century
haymarketbooks.org
9 781608 466252 Paul Le Blanc
A Short History
of the
U.S. WORKING CLASS
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A Short History
of the
U.S. WORKING CLASS
From Colonial Times
to the Twenty-First Century
PAUL LE BLANC
Illustrations by
MIKE ALEWITZ
Haymarket Books
Chicago, Illinois
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Excerpt from The People, Yes by Carl Sandburg, copyright © 1936 by Harcourt,
Inc., and renewed 1964 by Carl Sandburg, reprinted by permission of the publisher.
© 1999 Paul Le Blanc
First published 1999 by Humanity Books, an imprint of Prometheus Books
This edition published in 2016 by
Haymarket Books
P.O. Box 180165
Chicago, IL 60618
773-583-7884
[email protected]
www.haymarketbooks.org
ISBN: 978-1-60846-625-2
Trade distribution:
In the US, Consortium Book Sales and Distribution, www.cbsd.com
In Canada, Publishers Group Canada, www.pgcbooks.ca
In the UK, Turnaround Publisher Services, www.turnaround-uk.com
All other countries, Publishers Group Worldwide, www.pgw.com
This book was published with the generous support of the Wallace Action Fund
and Lannan Foundation.
Cover design by Rachel Cohen.
Printed in Canada by union labor.
Library of Congress CIP data is available.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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This book is dedicated to
FRANK LOVELL
(1913–1998)
one of many who has taught and inspired me.
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Contents
Preface to the 2016 Edition ix
Preface 1
Carl Sandburg, The People, Yes (excerpt) 5
Introduction: Explaining the Title of This Book 7
Chapter 1 Origins 11
Chapter 2 The First American Revolution 17
Chapter 3 Industrial Revolution 25
Chapter 4 Slave Labor, Free Labor 31
Chapter 5 The Second American Revolution 35
Chapter 6 “Gilded Age” 41
Chapter 7 Rainbow Working Class 55
Chapter 8 Progressive Era 63
Chapter 9 Corruption 77
Chapter 10 Hardship and Resurgence 85
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Chapter 11 The Second World War and Its Aftermath 103
Chapter 12 Cold War and Social Compact 109
Chapter 13 American Dream 119
Chapter 14 Unfinished Business 125
Chapter 15 Rude Awakenings 135
Chapter 16 Where To, What Next? 143
Bibliographical Essay 153
Glossary 161
Timeline of the History of the United States 187
U.S. Labor History Chronology 189
Index 205
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Preface to the 2016 Edition
It is a pleasure to see a new edition of this short history of the U.S. work-
ing class made available by Haymarket Books—particularly with a new
cover that highlights the diversity of those whose lives and labor have
always kept our country running. In the book’s introduction, I define what
I mean by working class (a term I much prefer to the fuzziness of mid-
dle class)—it is consistent with the recent Occupy movement’s notion of
“the 99%,” which means it refers to most of us, regardless of precise per-
centages. The richness in composition of today’s working-class majority is
matched by the richness of our history, which this book seeks to convey.
At the present moment, a majority of the people in the United States
seem to face—in some important ways—nastier realities than was the
case when I was growing up. What has been made of our country and
of our world, by those whose power and policies have been dominant, is
shameful and outrageous and horrific. Growing numbers of people are
becoming fearful, angry, and restive over this state of affairs, with a sense
that things should be better than they are. This book helps to show how
laboring people in the past faced similar hard times, and through soli-
darity and struggle they brought about many positive changes in their
lives. Some of these changes are still of benefit to us today.
There is much that has happened since the first appearance of this
book. Rather than attempting a fifteen-year update, we can put it quite
simply: The situation of the broadly defined U.S. working class is worse
in 2016 than it was in 1999. Yet there are also new strengths coming to
the fore. Surveying the rich diversity of race and ethnicity that makes
up our working-class majority, Martin Luther King Jr. commented back
in the 1960s: “We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the
same boat now.” This elemental understanding is shared more widely
ix
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