Culture, Gender, Race, and U.S. Labor History.
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 analysis is
fundamentally flawed. Like many other labor historians, Ihde makes the
erroneous conclusion that the existence of what we consider to be
"abysmal working conditions" proves that workers were being
"exploited." Ihde implicitly assumes that these workers were
at the mercy of a coercive monopolist employer. Fortunately, for the
sailors, this market had all the markings of a competitive one, with
many employers hiring labor in each major port. Dana thought twice about
depicting sailors as exploited. In his original manuscript he wrote that
sailors were "living harder, faring harder, and being paid worse
than any men on earth." On reflection he removed this passage,
since it was simply not true [1, 19]. Data from the period show that
Dana's shipmates were paid somewhat above the going wage for manual
labor.
Dana documents coercion used aboard ship, but he also documents
worker mobility and information. Ihde recounts a case of unjust whipping
on board Dana's ship, but fails to explain how rare this was, and
that the whipping was a failure, as it was followed by decreased
productivity from a disgruntled crew, a desertion, the necessity of
offering replacement workers twenty-five percent higher wages, and the
reassignment of the captain. Finally, in building his case, Ihde quotes
Dana out of context: "On board the U.S. merchant ships there
existed relations of domination and cruelty." Dana underscores this
situation by quoting a shipmate who lamented the years of manhood thrown
away, "that there, in the forecastle, at the foot of the steps--a
chest of old clothes--was the result of twenty-two years of hard labor and exposure--worked like a horse, and treated like a dog" [1,
170-71]. The quote is genuine, but the reason for the sailor's
predicament is grossly misrepresented. Preceding the quote Dana
explains: "Twenty years of vice! Every sin that a sailor knows, he
had gone to the bottom of. Several times . . . he had been promoted to
the office of chief mate, and as often, his conduct when in port,
especially his drunkenness . . . put him back into the forecastle"
[1, 194].
Another example of the collection's shortcomings is Elizabeth
Ann Sharpe's "The History and Legacy of Mississippi Plantation
Labor." Her general thesis, that freedmen would have been much
better off if given land upon emancipation, seems irrefutable. However,
her understanding of the formation of the postbellum plantation labor
market would have gained much, and she could have told a much more
historically accurate story, if she knew more about the work of Joseph
Reid, Stephen DeCanio, Robert Higgs, Gavin Wright, Roger Ransom and
Richard Sutch. She would know, for example, that postbellum black
workers were not "tied to the land" but had high turnover
rates among employers. Income, wealth, and debt statistics from Robert
Higgs, Robert Margo, or Price Fishback which document the steady
economic progress among blacks after the Civil War would cause her to
rethink, or at least qualify, her statement that black workers were
"often poorer after a year's labor than they were at the
beginning".
Two of the most interesting chapters serve as cautionary tales. The
Socialist Party gained its greatest popularity in our nation's
history in the early decades of the twentieth century, as it campaigned
for broad governmental control over the economy. Ironically, as John
Sherman recounts in his chapter on the crusade to win amnesty for
socialist leader Eugene Debs, it was the actions of the nationalized
postal system that crippled socialist and radical movements in the
period around World War I. Likewise, Nathan Godfried shows that
governmentally imposed barriers to entry made it nearly impossible for
socialists of establish a successful radio voice during the 1920s and
30s. Unfortunately, Godfried ignores the demand side in his analysis.
Thus, this chapter too cries out for better economic reasoning.
Reference
1. Dana, Richard Henry, edited by John Kembell. Two Years Before the
Mast. Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie Press, 1964.
Robert Whaples Wake Forest University