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The Labor Question in America
Economic Democracy in the Gilded Age
A nuanced assessment of citizenship and labor in the Gilded Age
In The Labor Question in America: Economic Democracy in the Gilded Age, Rosanne Currarino traces the struggle to define the nature of democratic life in an era of industrial strife. As Americans confronted the glaring disparity between democracy's promises of independence and prosperity and the grim realities of economic want and wage labor, they asked, "What should constitute full participation in American society? What standard of living should citizens expect and demand?" Currarino traces the diverse efforts to answer these questions, from the fledgling trade union movement to contests over immigration, from economic theory to popular literature, from legal debates to social reform. The contradictory answers that emerged--one stressing economic participation in a consumer society, the other emphasizing property ownership and self-reliance--remain pressing today as contemporary scholars, journalists, and social critics grapple with the meaning of democracy in postindustrial America.
"Recommended."--Choice
"Rosanne Currarino has provided a nuanced, deeply informed reading of the complex intellectual and cultural currents that shaped the labor question in the late nineteenth century. This is quite simply a marvelously informative book."--The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
"This splendidly researched cultural and intellectual history of the 'labor question' during the Gilded Age offers a masterful explanation of the move from a producerist to a consumerist understanding of citizenship and labor. The Labor Question in America will be widely read by students and scholars of the labor movement, the development of twentieth-century liberalism, and the history of the Gilded Age."--Lawrence M. Lipin, author of Workers and the Wild: Conservation, Consumerism, and Labor in Oregon, 1910-30
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