On Eight Hours for What We Will

This is a really great monograph. Rosenzweig pushes back on labor historians’ emphasis on the very act of laborer, and instead seeks to zoom-out a bit and look at the lives of laborers outside of the workplace. Echoing a lot of other studies, one of the weaknesses—and strengths—of the American working class is that it has historically (and, I think, this is still true in the present) been divided on ethnic and racial lines. Irish laborers did not necessarily get along well with members of the Slavic or Scandinavian working class in the United States, less still African American laborers. Moreover, Rosenzweig looks at the case of one American city—Worcester, Massachusetts, which, in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, was one of the top 25 manufacturing centers in the nation (I didn’t know that Emma Goldman opened up an ice cream shop there to fund a trip to support the anarchist movement in Russia, and I found this really interesting).

According to Rosenzweig, working-class leisure activities were shared with people of the same ethnic community, not necessarily of the same class. As a result, ethnic communities largely remained discrete, even though individuals may well have spent time working alongside people of other ethnic groups. Working-class people often sought boisterous and rowdy entertainment—large activities for the Fourth of July, saloons, and other things that middle class WASP America sound reprehensible. In many ways, middle-class reformers sought to “domesticate” the working class by instilling the “virtues” of propriety and temperance. Although temperance wound up being legally enforced by the 18th Amendment, all of the other attempts to assimilate “ethnic” workers failed. For instance, the middle classes attempted to transform public parks into quiet, tranquil spaces to spend a quiet afternoon—workers were not having that. What did, perhaps, put a minor dent in pre-Prohibition recreation was the emergence of movie theaters (especially Nickelodeons). However, saloons remained a powerful source of leisure and community-building until they were forcibly shuttered in 1919-20.

I’m not sure exactly what my takeaway from this book should be. Perhaps it’s that working-class individuals preferred ethnic community over class. Perhaps it’s that the working-class, although divided, remained resilient in the face of middle class reform. Perhaps it’s the middle-class attempts to transform communities that they do not inhabit are bound for failure. Maybe it’s all three of these things, or something else still. Nevertheless, I pulled a lot out of the text, and it’s reshaped a lot of my thoughts on the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.