Workingmen's Democracy: The Knights Of Labor And American Politics (the Working Class In American History)

Focusing on the operation and influence of the Knights of Labor --- the leading labor organization of the nineteenth century --- Workingmen's Democracy explores the dreams, achievements, and failures of a movement that sought to renew the democratic potential of American institutions. "The pick of a growing crop of studies on the American working class." -- The Nation "An important work, the best of several recent volumes on the Knights." -- American Historical Review Contents 9 Preface 11 1 Working-Class Radicalism in the Gilded Age: Defining a Political Culture 21 2 The Uses of Political Power: The Knights of Labor and the State 36 3 When Cleon Comes to Rule: Popular Organization and Political Development. Part I: Rochester, New Hampshire 56 4 When Cleon Comes to Rule: Popular Organization and Political Development. Part II: Rutland, Vermont 84 5 City-Building and Social Reform: Urban Workers within the Two-Party System, Kansas City, Kansas 130 6 Together but Unequal: Southern Knights and the Dilemmas of Race and Politics, Richmond, Virginia 167 7 Bullets and Ballots: Worker Mobilization and the Path to Municipal Socialism, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 196 8 Labor, Party Politics, and American Exceptionalism 237 Selected Bibliography: Primary Sources 252 Index 257 "Focusing on the operation and influence of the Knights of Labor--- the leading labor organization of the nineteenth century--- Workingmen's Democracy explores the dreams, achievements, and failures of a movement that sought to renew the democratic potential of American institutions."--Back cover THE LABOR MOVEMENT of the Gilded Age, not unlike its nineteenth-century British counterpart, spoke a "language of class" that was "as much political as economic." Leon Fink. Includes Index. Bibliography: P. [234]-238.