Laurie, professor and chair of the department of history at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, is the
author of Working People of Philadelphia: 1800-1850.
Review
"Virtually the only text on labor history which gracefully and properly makes slavery a major part of the
story. It is at its best, however, in its interpretation of the rise of the American Federation of Labor."
-- David Montgomery, author of Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862-1872
"An interpretive work of great sophistication, the book provides a nuanced appreciation for the complexity
of the transition to factory work."
-- James R. Barrett, author of Work and Community in the Jungle: Chicago's Packinghouse Workers, 1894-1922
"The first serious attempt to integrate the findings of the 'new' labor history into the established framework
of nineteenth-century American labor history."
-- David Brody, author of Labor in Crisis: The Steel Strike of 1919
"Provides a vast array of data in a compact and easily comprehended manner."
--William S. Pretzer, Choice
University of Illinois Press Web Site, March, 2000
Summary
In the only modern study synthesizing nineteenth-century American labor history, Bruce Laurie examines the character
of working-class factionalism, plebian expectations of government, and relations between the organized few and
the unorganized many. Laurie also examines the republican tradition and the movements that drew on it, from the
General Trades Unions in the age of Jackson to the Knights of Labor later in the century.
