Working-Class Americanism : : The Politics of Labor in a Textile City, 1914-1960 / / Gary Gerstle.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Gerstle, Gary,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2022]; ©2002
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (373 p.)

In this classic interpretation of the 1930s rise of industrial unionism, Gary Gerstle challenges the popular historical notion that American workers' embrace of "Americanism" and other patriotic sentiments in the post-World War I years indicated their fundamental political conservatism. He argues that Americanism was a complex, even contradictory, language of nationalism that lent itself to a wide variety of ideological constructions in the years between World War I and the onset of the Cold War. Using the rich and textured material left behind by New England's most powerful textile union--the Independent Textile Union of Woonsocket, Rhode Island--Gerstle uncovers for the first time a more varied and more radical working-class discourse.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations and tables -- Preface to the Princeton edition -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part I. Ethnictown, 1875-1929 -- 1 The French Canadians -- 2 The Franco-Belgians -- Part II The emergence of an industrial union, 1929-1936 -- 3 Beginnings, 1929-1934 -- 4 City wide mobilization, 1934-1936 -- Part III Working-class heyday, 1936-1941 -- 5 "A new, progressive Americanism" -- 6 Ethnic-style unionism -- 7 Ethnic renaissance -- Part IV The crucial decade - and after, 1941-1960 -- 8 The struggle for union power, 1941-1946 -- 9 "Be American!": refashioning a political language, 1944-1946 -- 10 The failure of two dreams, 1946-1960 -- Conclusion -- Appendix A: Locals organized by ITU, 1932-1955 -- Appendix B: A note on union sources and a list of interviewees -- Index