American Exceptionalism?: US Working-Class Formation in an International Context PDF
Preview American Exceptionalism?: US Working-Class Formation in an International Context
AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM? AlsobyRick Halpern DOWNONTIlEKILLING FLOOR:Black and White Workers in Chicago's Packing Houses Also byJonathan Morris THE POLITICALECONOMYOFSHOPKEEPING INMILAN American Exceptionalism? US Working-Class Formation in an International Context Edited by Rick Halpem LecturerinAmericanHistory University College London and Jonathan Morris LecturerinModern European History UniversityCollegeLondon First publishedinGreatBritain1997by MACMILLANPRESSLTD Houndmills,Basingstoke,HampshireRG21 6XS and London Companiesandrepresentativesthroughouttheworld Acataloguerecordforthis bookisavailablefrom theBritishLibrary. ISBN 978-1-349-25586-3 ISBN 978-1-349-25584-9 (eBook) DOI10.1007/978-1-349-25584-9 First publishedinthe UnitedStatesofAmerica 1997by ST.MARTIN'S PRESS,INC., ScholarlyandReferenceDivision, 175FifthAvenue,New York, N.Y.10010 ISBN978-0-312-17470-5 LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Americanexceptionalism? :USworking-classformation inan internationalcontext/editedbyRick HalpernandJonathanMorris. p. cm. "Thisbookarisesoutofthe 1995CommonwealthFundConference held atUniversityCollegeLondonandtheseriesofroundtable discussionsheldbytheseminaronComparativeLabourand Working Class History atLondon'sInstituteofHistoricalResearch"-P. Includesindex. ISBN978-0-312-17470-5(cloth) I.Workingclass-UnitedStates-History-Congresses. I.Halpern,Rick. II.Morris,Jonathan, 1961 HD8066.A727 1997 305.5'62'0973---dc21 97-5320 CIP Selection,editorialmatterand Chapter1©Rick HalpernandJonathanMorris 1997 Chapters2-12©MacmillanPressLtd 1997 Softcoverreprintofthehardcover1stedition 1997 All rightsreserved.Noreproduction,copyortransmissionofthis publicationmay bemade withoutwrittenpermission, No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions ofthe Copyright, Designs and PatentsAct 1988, or underthe terms ofany licence permitting limitedcopying issuedby theCopyrightLicensingAgency,90TottenhamCourtRoad.LondonWIP9HE. Anypersonwho does any unauthorisedact inrelation to this publicationmay be liable to criminalprosecutionandcivilclaimsfordamages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors ofthis work in accordancewiththeCopyright,Designsand PatentsAct 1988. This book is printed on paper suitable forrecycling and made from fully managed and sustainedforest sources. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 Contents Acknowledgements vii Notes on the Contributors viii The Persistence of Exceptionalism: Class Formation and the Comparative Method Rick Halpern and Jonathan Morris 2 The Dodo and the Phoenix: A Fable of American Exceptionalism 14 Michael Zuckerman 3 Working-Class Formation and American Exceptionalism, Yet Again 36 Ira Katznelson 4 Why Is There No Labour Party? Class and Race in the United States and Australia 56 Robin Archer 5 It Is 'the Working Class Who Fight All the Battles': Military Service, Patriotism, and the Study of American Workers 76 Roger Horowitz 6 The Limits of Liberalism: Working-Class Formation in Britain and the United States 101 Neville Kirk 7 Present at the Creation: Working-Class Catholics in the United States 134 Leslie Woodcock Tentler 8 Religion and the Formation of the Italian Working Class 158 John Pollard 9 Inbetween Peoples: Race, Nationality and the New Immigrant Working Class 181 James R. Barrett and David Roediger 10 'Amiable Peasantry' or 'Social Burden': Constructing a Place for Black Southerners 221 James R. Grossman v VI Contents 11 South African and US Labour in the Era of the Second World War: Similar Trends and Underlying Differences 244 Peter Alexander 12 Apropos Exceptionalism: Imperial Location and Comparative Histories of South Africa and the United States 270 Robert Gregg Index 307 Acknowledgements This book arises out of the 1995 Commonwealth Fund Conference held at University College London and the series of roundtable discussions held by the seminar on Comparative Labour and Working Class History at London's Institute of Historical Research. We would like to thank all those who attended and contributed to those sessions. Special thanks are extended to the University College London Graduate School for its sup port of both endeavours.The conference also received financialassistance from the British Academy,the David Bruce Centre for American Studies at the University of Keele, the History Faculty of Cambridge University, the Journal ofAmerican Studies and the Institute of United States Studies at the University of London. We also would like to thank the various members oftheCommonwealth FundCommittee, Nazneen Razwi, Rachel Aucott and Simon Renton for their advice and assistance. vii Notes on the Contributors Peter Alexander received his PhD from the University of London and was a postgraduate fellow at London's Institute of Commonwealth Stud ies. Currently, he is a Research Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford, where he is working on a comparative study of miners in Alabama and the Transvaal. Robin Archer isFellow in Politics atCorpus Christi College, Oxford. He is the author of Economic Democracy: The Politics ofFeasible Socialism (1995) and currently is working on a book about the failure of the Amer ican union movement to establish a labour party. James Barrett teaches American and comparative labour history at the University of illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His earlier works include Steve Nelson, American Radical (1981) and Work and Community in the Jungle: Chicago's Packinghouse Workers (1987).He is completing abio graphy ofthe American communist William Z. Foster and working on a bookof essays dealing with the identities and personal lives ofimmigrant workers in the United States during the twentieth century. Robert Gregg teaches American History at the RichardStockton College ofNew Jersey. He is the author of Sparks From theAnvil ofOppression: Philadelphia's African Methodists and Southern Migrants (1993) and numerous articles on African-American history. James Grossman is Director of the Dr William M. Scholl Center for Family and Community History at the Newberry Library, Chicago. He is the author of Land ofHope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (1989) and, most recently, 'A Chance to Make Good': African Americans, 1900-1930 (1997). Currently he is working with Kathleen Neils Conzen on a project entitled 'Race and Citizenship: The Life and Death ofRobert Cromwell'. Rick Halpern is Lecturer in American History at University College London.He is the authorofDown on the Killing Floor:Black and White Workers in Chicago's Packinghouses (1997) and co-author (with Roger Horowitz) ofMeatpackers:AnOralHistoryofBlackPackinghouseWorkers viii Notes on the Contributors ix and TheirStrugglefor RacialandEconomic Equality (1996).Currently he is working on a study of racialised labour in the sugar industry. Roger Horowitz is Associate Director of the Center for the History of Business,Technology,and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware. He is the author of 'Negro and White, Unite and Fight!' A Social History ofIndustrial Unionism in Meatpacking (1997), and co-author (with Rick Halpern) of Meatpackers: An Oral History of Black Packinghouse Workersand TheirStrugglefor Racial andEconomic Equality (1996). His current research concerns the effect of military ser vice on working-class formation. Ira Katznelson is Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History at ColumbiaUniversity.HismostrecentbooksincludeLiberalism's Crooked Circle: Letters to Adam Michnik (1996), and (co-edited with Pierre Birnbaum) Paths ofEmancipation: Jews, States, and Citizenship (1995). He is finishing a book about the making and character of post-New Deal American liberalism. Neville Kirk is Reader in Economic and Social History at Manchester MetropolitanUniversity. Heistheauthor ofTheGrowthofWorking Class Reformism in Mid-Victorian England (1985) and Labour and Society in Britain and the USA (1994). He is currently writing a book on labour in modem Britian, and developing his comparative research focus upon labourandsociety inBritain, theUnitedStates, andAustralia, 1880-1940. Jonathan Morris is Lecturer in Modem European History at University College London. His publications include ThePolitical Economy ofShop keeping inMilan (1993) and various articles on Italian and European his tory. He has co-edited (with Robert Lumley) a collection of essays on Liberal Italy and the 'Mezzogiomo' (1997). Currently he is working on a comparative study ofthe politics of theEuropean petite bourgeoisieinthe twentieth century. John Pollard is Professor of History at Anglia Polytechnic University. He is the author of The Vatican and Italian Fascism, 1929-32:A Study inConflict(1985).HeiscurrentlyworkingonabiographyofPopeBenedict XV (1914-22). David Roediger teaches working-class history and chairs the American Studies Program atthe University of Minnesota.His recent books include
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