Culture, Gender, Race, and U.S. Labor History.

• Author: Whaples, Robert

The eleven studies contained in this volume are typical of current American labor history, demonstrating "both a regard for the 'old' school of labor history, with its focus on working-class institutions, as well as . . . the 'new' tendencies of labor history that have reflected since the 1960s diverse concerns about culture, race, ethnicity, gender, community, and rank-and-file empowerment and experience". "What unifies the essays . . . is their recollection of dissident historical moments, when individuals and collectives attempted to change perceived reality, to confront injustices in the general polity, and to seek alternative paths to a shared future".

Many of the essays are informative and interesting, but collectively they have two disappointing shortcomings. First, many of the essays lack ambition. They deal with peripheral topics (e.g., the tiny Proletarian Party or the Union Women's Alliance to Gain Equality, whose membership never reached one thousand) but fail to expand adequately upon their subject's broader significance.

More importantly the essays are parochial. There is great potential for labor historians to inform economic historians, labor economists, and economists in general, but most of the labor historians in this volume are content to talk among themselves, ignoring the works of economic historians, and avoiding the basic tools of economic analysis and quantification.

This parochialism is perhaps best exemplified in the "selected bibliography" of suggested readings which contains about 225 sources. I could count only five sources written by scholars with training in economics. For example, the work of Claudia Goldin is missing from the "gender" list. This is sad. Labor history can only thrive if it is interdisciplinary. Economic historians who study labor markets now routinely read and learn from labor historians. The best of the new labor historians, such as Walter Licht, are reading economic history and applying the tools of microeconomics. Rank-and-file labor historians, including those showcased here, must adopt this method. Unless ideas flow in both directions, labor history threatens to become a stagnant backwater.

The chapter that may worst exemplify these traits is Horst Ihde's essay on Richard Henry Dana's novel Two Years before the Mast [1]. Ihde argues that the success of the American merchant marine in the 1830s and 1840s "could be achieved only by intensified exploitation of the workers at sea". This...