SS 214 Laurie Nisonoff
Fall 2003 FPH 209 X5397
This course will explore the history of the
Requirements:
Participation in class discussion, reading assignments, two short papers, and one research project/presentation. Study questions will be distributed in class for the short papers. A set of instructions regarding the research project and group presentation will also be distributed in class early in the semester.
Suggested Book Purchases:
The following books are available at the Amherst Books
bookstore downtown on
Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital, Monthly Review Press
Alan Dawley, Class and Community, Harvard
Thomas Dublin, Women and Work,
James Green, The World of the Worker, Hill and Wang
Alice Kessler-Harris, Our to Work,
Ruth Milkman, Women, Work and Protest, Routledge & Kegan Paul
Meredith Tax, The Rising of the Women, Monthly Review Press
The Nature of Capitalist Production
1. September 4 Introduction
2. September 9 What is Capitalist Production? Adam Smith and the Pin Factory
3. September 11 Time/Work Discipline; Cottage Industry; Enclosure Laws; the
Origin and Role of Management
The Early Factory System and the Beginnings of Industrial Capitalism
4. September 16 Company Towns:
Managerial Responses
5. September 18 Early Unions in Textiles
6. September 23
Responses
7. September 25 Proletarianization and Competition between Men and Women
Workers
September 30 Exam/Advising Day – no class
8. October 2
and Labor Support
Industrial Capitalism and National Markets
9. October 7 Chicago and the Nation: Beginnings of National Efforts, 1877,
1886: Eight-Hour Day, Haymarket; The Knights of Labor, the AFL or Socialism?
10. October 9
October 14 October Break – no class
11. October 16 Mining and Miners’ Unions
12. October 21 Settlement of the West
Monopoly Capitalism
13. October 23 Management Responses: Scientific Management
14. October 28 Steel and Automobiles: Early Unions, the
Founding of
Indiana, the Five-Dollar Day
15. October 30 Garments: The Uprisings and the ILGWU
16. November 4 The IWW:
17. November 6 Services: The Department Store and Domestic Service
18. November 11 World War I and the 1920s: A Lull with Portent; Textiles Move
South
19. November 13 The Depression: Rank and File Efforts
Movie: Union Maids
20. November 18 The Depression: Men, Women, Black, White
21. November 20 The CIO: Sit-downs in Automobiles, Blood in Steel
Movie: With Babies and Banners
The War and the Post-War Accord
22. November 25 World War II – Men, Women; Post-War Accord, Labor Markets
Movie: The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter
November 27 Thanksgiving – no class
23. December 2 Current Issues: Segmentation and Bureaucratic Control
24. December 4 Current Issues: Labor and the Global Factory
25. December 9 Current Issues: The “new” Labor Movement
Presentations
Final Paper/Project due; also submit all previous papers and
self-evaluation in stamped self-addressed envelope.
Reading Assignments R=Required r=Recommended
1. September 4 Introduction; No Assignment
2. September 9 Smith, Adam, Wealth of Nations, Book I, chps. 1,2,10 R
Marx, Karl, Capital, Vol. 1, Read chps. 6-8, skim chps. 9-11, read chp. 12 R
3. September 11 Thompson, E. P., “Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial
Capitalism” R
Marx, Karl, Capital, Vol. 1, chps. 26-30 R
Marglin, Stephen, “What Do Bosses Do? The Origins and Functions in Capitalist Production” R in RRPE Special Issue on History 6:2
4. September 16
Nisonoff, Laurie, “Bread and
Roses: The Proletarianization of Women Workers in
Kessler-Harris, Out to Work, chp. 1 R
5. September 18
Kessler-Harris, chp. 2 R
6. September 23 Dawley, Alan Class and Community, chps. 1-3, 5, 7 and
conclusion R
Blewett, Mary, “The Sexual
Division of Labor and the Artisan Tradition in Early Industrial Capitalism: The
Case of
Kessler-Harris, chp. 3 R
7. September 25 Finish Dawley if necessary
Baron, Ava, “Women and the Making of the American Working Class: A Study of the Proletarianization of Printers” R
Kessler-Harris, chp. 4 R
September 30 Exam/Advising Day – no class
8. October 2 Turbin, Carole, “Reconceptualizing Family, Work and Labor
Organizing: Working Women in
Special Issue on Women 16:1 R
Walkowitz,
Daniel,
Reading Assignments R=Required r=Recommended
9. October 7 Brecher, Jeremy, Strike!, chps. 1 and 2 R
Foner, Philip, Organized Labor and the Black Worker, chp. 4, “The Knights of Labor and the Black Workers” R
Tax, Meredith, The Rising of the Women, chps. 1-4, skim R
10. October 9 Buder,
Brecher, chp. 3 r
Foner, chp. 7 r
October 14 October Break – no class
11. October 16 Dubofsky, Melvin, “The Origins of Western Working-Class
Radicalism” R
Jameson,
Gutman, Herbert G., “The Negro and the United Mine Workers of America” r
Takaki, Ronald T., Iron Cages, chp. 10, “The ‘Heathen Chinee’ and American Technology” r
12. October 21 Robbins, William G., Colony and Empire:
The Capitalist
Transformation of the American West, chp. 2, “The U.S.-Mexico Borderlands: Tradition versus Modernization”, and chp. 5, “The Industrialized West: The Paradox of the Machine in the Garden” R
Rohe, Randall E., “Chinese Miners in the Far West”, in Clyde A. Milner II, Major Problems in the History of the American West R
Porter, Kenneth W., “The Labor of Negro Cowboys”, in Milner r
Wessel, Thomas R., “Farming on the Northern Plains Reservations”, in Milner r
Hargreaves, Mary W. M., “Women Homesteaders on the Northern Plains”, in Milner r
13. October 23 Braverman, Harry, Labor and Monopoly Capital, chps. 4-6,
Skim 7-11, read 12-14 R
Edwards, Richard, Contested Terrain, chps. 2, 3, and 4 R
14. October 28 Green, James, The World of the Worker, chps. 1 and 2 R
Stone, Katherine, “The Origins of Job Structures in the Steel Industry” in RRPE Special Issue on History, 6:2 R
Greer, Edward, Big Steel, chps. 2-3 R
Brody, David, Steelworkers in
America: The Non-Union Era, skim chps. 1-10, Read
11-13 R
Reading Assignments R=Required r=Recommended
October 28 continued
May, Martha, “The Historical Problem of the Family Wage: The Ford Motor Company and the Five Dollar Day” R
Meyer, Stephen III, The Five Dollar Day, Skim r
15. October 30 Tax, chps. 5-8 R
Waldinger, Roger, “Another Look at the ILGWU: Women, Industry Structure and Collective Action” in Milkman, pp. 86-109 R
Green, chp. 3 through page 77 R
16. November 4 Renshaw, Patrick, The Wobblies, chps. 1, 2, and 5 R
Cameron, Ardis, “Bread and Roses Revisited: Women’s Culture and Working Class Activism in the Lawrence Strike of 1912” in Milkman, pp. 42-61 R
Tax, chp. 9 R
Green, chp. 3, pp. 77-99 R
Golin, Steve, “The Paterson Pageant: Success or Failure?” r
17. November 6 Kessler-Harris, chps. 5 and 6 R
Benson,
Susan, “
The American Department Stores, 1880-1940” R
Benson, Susan, “The Clerking Sisterhood: Rationalization and the Work Culture of Saleswomen in American Department Stores, 1890-1960” R
Terborg-Penn, Rosalyn, “Survival Strategies Among African-American Women Workers: A Continuing Process” in Milkman, pp. 139-155 R
Glenn, Evelyn Nakano, “Racial Ethnic Women’s Labor: The Intersection of Race, Gender and Class Oppression”, in RRPE Special Issue on Race and Class 17:3 R
Berch, Bettina, “’The Sphinx in the Household’: A New Look at the Household Workers”, in RRPE 5th Special Issue on Women 16:1 r
Boydston, Jeanne, “To Earn Her Daily Bread: Housework and Antebellum Working Class Subsistence” r
18. November 11 Green, chp. 4 R
Kesssler-Harris, chps.7 and 8 R
Frederickson, Mary, “’I Know Which Side I’m On’: Southern Women in the Labor Movement in the Twentieth Century” in Milkman, pp. 156-180 R
Jones, Jacqueline, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow, chp. 5, R
Reading Assignments R=Required r=Recommended
November 11 continued Foner, chps. 10 - 12 r
19. November 13 Movie: Union Maids
Green, chp. 5 R
Lynd, Alice and Staughton, (eds.), Rank and File read Christine Ellis, John W. Anderson, Stella Nowicki, Sylvia Woods R
Rosenzwieg, Roy, “Organizing the Unemployed: The Early Years of the Great Depression, 1929-1933” R
Janiewski, Dolores, “Seeking ‘a New Day and a New Way’: Black Women and Unions in the Southern Tobacco Industry” R
Lasky, Marjorie Penn, “’Where I Was a Person’: The Ladies’ Auxiliary in the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters’ Strike” in Milkman, pp. 187-205 r
Foner, chp. 13 R and 14-16 r
Terkel, Studs, Hard Times, Skim r
20. November 18 Kessler-Harris, chp. 9 R
Strom, Sharon Hartman, “Challenging ‘Women’s Place’: Feminism, the Left, and Industrial Unionism in the 1930s” R
Helmbold, Lois Rita, “Beyond the Family Economy: The Impact of the Great Depression on Black and White Working Class Women’s Lives and Relations” R
Strom, Sharon Hartman, “’We’re no Kitty Foyles’: Organizing Office Workers for the CIO, 1937-1950” in Milkman, pp. 206-234
21. November 20 Movie: With Babies and Banners
Lynds (eds.), Read memoirs of Patterson, Reese, Sargent R
Meyerowitz, Ruth, “Organizing the UAW: Women Workers at the
Ternstedt General Motors Plant” in Milkman, pp. 235-258 R
Lynd, Staughton, “The Possibility of Radicalism in the Early
1930s: The Case of Steel” r
Wartenberg, Thomas, “Beyond Babies and Banners” r
22. November 25 Movie: The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter
Green, chp. 6 R
Kessler-Harris, chp. 10 R
Foner, chp. 17, r
Milkman, Ruth, “Redefining ‘Women’s Work’: The Sexual Division of Labor in the Auto Industry During World War II” R
Honey, Maureen, “The Working-class Woman and Recruitment Propaganda during World War II: Class Differences in Portrayal of War Work” r Readings continued
Reading Assignments R=Required r=Recommended
November 25 continued
Gabin, Nancy, “’They Have Placed a Penalty on Womanhood’:
The Protest Actions of Women Auto Workers in Detroit Area UAW Locals, 1945-1947” in Milkman, pp. 259-279 r
URPE Women’s Work Project, Separated and Unequal: Discrimination Against Women Workers After World War II (The UAW, 1944-1954 r
November 27 Thanksgiving
23. December 2 Green, chp. 7 R
Braverman, chps. 15 and 16 R
Edwards, chps. 8-10 r
Ladd-Taylor, Molly, “Women Workers and the Yale Strike” R
Feldberg, Roslyn L., “Comparable Worth: Toward Theory and Practice in the U.S.” r
24. December 4 Safa, Helen I., “Runaway Shops and Female Employment: The
Search for Cheap Labor” R
Elson, Diane and Ruth Pearson, “The Subordination of Women and the Internationalisation of Factory Production” R
Fernandez-Kelly, Maria Patricia, “Maquiladoras: The View From Inside” R
25. December 9 No additional readings
United States Labor
History Fall
2003
General Instructions:
1. Be critical in your discussion of the readings.
2. Type all three assignments. Double space.
3. Footnote all thoughts that are not originally yours and place quotations around any material not originally yours – especially if you use five words or more consecutively from a book or article. Indent and single space quotations longer than two lines. You may either use the scientific method (Braverman 1974: page number) or the traditional method at the bottom of the page or end of essay 1. Author, title, date, publisher, page #. Be sure to include a complete bibliography in either case.
4. Limit length of the first two papers to between 5-7 pages. Number the pages, by hand if necessary, so that I can be specific in my end of paper suggestions.
The working class did not rise like the sun at an appointed time. It was present at its own making.
By class I understand an historical phenomenon, unifying a number of disparate and seemingly unconnected events, both in the raw material of experience and in consciousness. I emphasize that it is an historical phenomenon. I do not see class as a “structure” nor even as a “category” but as something which in fact happens (and can be shown to have happened) in human relationships.
More than this, the notion of class entails the notion of historical relationship. Like any other relationship it is a fluency which evades analysis if we attempt to stop it dead at any given moment and anatomize its structure…. The relationship must always be embodied in real people and in a real context. Moreover, we cannot have two distinct classes, each with an independent being, and then bring them into relationship with each other. We cannot have love without lovers, nor deference without squires and laborers. And class happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared) feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs…. Class-consciousness is the way in which these experiences are handled in cultural terms: embodied in traditions, value-systems, ideas, and institutional forms….
If we stop history at a given point, then there are not classes but simply a multitude of individuals with a multitude of experiences. But if we watch these men over an adequate period of social change, we observe patterns in their relationships, their ideas, and their institutions. Class is defined by men as they live their own history, and, in the end, this is its only definition.”
E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1963) pp. 9-11, passim.
Choose one of the communities discussed in class and in the readings (Pullman, Illinois, Lowell, Massachusetts, Lynn, Massachusetts, Troy, New York, etc.) and analyze the experience of workers and owners in light of E. P. Thompson’s conceptual categories. You may find his description of class relations applicable to the workers and/or owners in these places or not. Are his categories complete? If not, why not? In either case, present evidence (quotations, actions, etc.) to support your argument. You may supplement the assigned readings with additional reading on your community or in E. P. Thompson (on reserve in the library).
Werner Sombart posited that the United States was an exception to the Euro-American tradition because there was neither a working class revolution nor a working class political party formed. Subsequent historians have identified three major reasons why there was no working class revolution in the United States: (1) there were too many divisions in the working class, (2) the working class falsely believed that capitalism was good, and (3) labor was severely repressed. From your reading and class discussion, which of these factors, if any, do you think was most important and why? Present evidence to support your argument.
This final research paper will be longer (12-16 pages), on a topic to be negotiated from either historical or contemporary labor issues. If appropriate, this could be an independent project for first year distributional purposes. Division II students should negotiate a topic that advances their portfolio aims. This can often provide an opportunity to address the multiple cultural expectation. Students completing their concentrations this semester or beginning Division III may have a different second and third assignment. Five College students should negotiate a topic that is consistent with your major’s goals. You need to choose this topic by approximately November 13.