Pub Date : 1975-05-01DOI: 10.1017/s0097852300015975
FULLER, Bernard (State University of New York, Binghamton) "Illinois and South Wales Coalminers, 188Os-192Os: A Comparative Study of Economic, Social, Political and Community Development." (Ph.D. dissertation; in progress; EDC-1976.) Study will be based on an analysis of the respective economic growth and development of the two coal fields; the reaction of the miners in trade union and political terms; the development of mining communities, including family structure; and the social and ethnic structure of the communities.
{"title":"Work in Progress and/or Recently Completed","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0097852300015975","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0097852300015975","url":null,"abstract":"FULLER, Bernard (State University of New York, Binghamton) \"Illinois and South Wales Coalminers, 188Os-192Os: A Comparative Study of Economic, Social, Political and Community Development.\" (Ph.D. dissertation; in progress; EDC-1976.) Study will be based on an analysis of the respective economic growth and development of the two coal fields; the reaction of the miners in trade union and political terms; the development of mining communities, including family structure; and the social and ethnic structure of the communities.","PeriodicalId":363865,"journal":{"name":"Newsletter, European Labor and Working Class History","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1975-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132125979","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1975-05-01DOI: 10.1017/S0147547900015866
P. Faler
what their collec-tive protest, and how did Jersey City differ from
他们的集体抗议是什么，泽西城与
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Pub Date : 1975-05-01DOI: 10.1017/S0097852300015902
J. Seigel
Richard N. Hunt's The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels the first of two promised volumes is an exhaustively researched and painstakingly argued brief for a position that is becoming increasingly popular: that Marx and Engels were democrats. Despite all appearances they favored neither dictatorship nor minority revolution, but limited themselves to tactics in which violence would be kept at a minimum, and in which the rule of the proletariat was always equated with the democratic rule of the majority. In this first volume Hunt aims his thesis against the view associated with Jacob Talmon, that Marxism was a form of "totalitarian democracy." Having separated Marx and Engels from this tradition (whose existence, apart from them, he does not question) in volume one, Hunt promises to distinguish them from later nineteenth century social democracy in volume two. Marx and Engels occupied a position between the elitism of the former and the reformism of the latter, making them in Hunt's phrase, "hard-headed democrats." Beginning with an account of "totalitarian democracy" in the form of Blanquist revolutionary theory, Hunt shows that neither Marx nor Engels passed through this position on their way to proletarian communism. Marx came to communism through Hegelian radical liberalism and "true democracy" while Engels came to communism directly from the revolutionary democracy of Borne and Heine. In the process the two men evolved differing theories of the state, Marx's emphasizing the domination exercised by a despotic bureaucracy over the whole of civil society, Engels' the class nature of all political rule. (The two conceptions reflected German and English conditions, respectively.) The political future envisioned in the two men's intellectual partnership hence emphasized both the integration of political functions into social life and the elimination of class society. Behind this vision lay a "profound commitment to humanist and egalitarian values" which was sometimes obscured by Marx and Engels' later "scientific" vocabulary but which never lost its hold on their action or thought. They gave their aiiegiance to oniy two possible revolutionary strategies, revolution by a developed proletarian majority in no need of dictatorial education to prepare them for political rule, or, in less advanced conditions, revolution by an alliance of proletarians with the other "majority classes" peasants and artisans to establish a democratic regime within which the proletarian majority would have time to emerge. Despite their willingness to ally with Blanquist revolutionaries during 1850, Marx and Engels never really embraced the Blanquist strategy of minority revolution and educational dictatorship. The famous "March Circular" of 1850, in which Marx and Engels called for resolute action "to make the revolution permanent" in case the "bourgeois democrats" gained power in the coming upheaval, Hunt discounts as the result of a momentary compromise between the two frie
{"title":"Richard N. Hunt, The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels. I: Marxism and Totalitarian Democracy, 1818–1850 (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1974), xiv + 363 pp.","authors":"J. Seigel","doi":"10.1017/S0097852300015902","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0097852300015902","url":null,"abstract":"Richard N. Hunt's The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels the first of two promised volumes is an exhaustively researched and painstakingly argued brief for a position that is becoming increasingly popular: that Marx and Engels were democrats. Despite all appearances they favored neither dictatorship nor minority revolution, but limited themselves to tactics in which violence would be kept at a minimum, and in which the rule of the proletariat was always equated with the democratic rule of the majority. In this first volume Hunt aims his thesis against the view associated with Jacob Talmon, that Marxism was a form of \"totalitarian democracy.\" Having separated Marx and Engels from this tradition (whose existence, apart from them, he does not question) in volume one, Hunt promises to distinguish them from later nineteenth century social democracy in volume two. Marx and Engels occupied a position between the elitism of the former and the reformism of the latter, making them in Hunt's phrase, \"hard-headed democrats.\" Beginning with an account of \"totalitarian democracy\" in the form of Blanquist revolutionary theory, Hunt shows that neither Marx nor Engels passed through this position on their way to proletarian communism. Marx came to communism through Hegelian radical liberalism and \"true democracy\" while Engels came to communism directly from the revolutionary democracy of Borne and Heine. In the process the two men evolved differing theories of the state, Marx's emphasizing the domination exercised by a despotic bureaucracy over the whole of civil society, Engels' the class nature of all political rule. (The two conceptions reflected German and English conditions, respectively.) The political future envisioned in the two men's intellectual partnership hence emphasized both the integration of political functions into social life and the elimination of class society. Behind this vision lay a \"profound commitment to humanist and egalitarian values\" which was sometimes obscured by Marx and Engels' later \"scientific\" vocabulary but which never lost its hold on their action or thought. They gave their aiiegiance to oniy two possible revolutionary strategies, revolution by a developed proletarian majority in no need of dictatorial education to prepare them for political rule, or, in less advanced conditions, revolution by an alliance of proletarians with the other \"majority classes\" peasants and artisans to establish a democratic regime within which the proletarian majority would have time to emerge. Despite their willingness to ally with Blanquist revolutionaries during 1850, Marx and Engels never really embraced the Blanquist strategy of minority revolution and educational dictatorship. The famous \"March Circular\" of 1850, in which Marx and Engels called for resolute action \"to make the revolution permanent\" in case the \"bourgeois democrats\" gained power in the coming upheaval, Hunt discounts as the result of a momentary compromise between the two frie","PeriodicalId":363865,"journal":{"name":"Newsletter, European Labor and Working Class History","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1975-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129556559","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1975-05-01DOI: 10.1017/S0147547900015891
Robert J. Bezucha, Adelheid Popp, R. Michels, Cecilia Trunz, Richard W. Reichard
Mass., 1972), 272-276. 3. Also see Ursula Munchow, "Das Bild des Arbeiters in der proletarischen Selbstdarstellung. Zur Bedeutung der friihen Arbeiterautobiografie," Weimarer Beitrage, 19 (1973), 1 10-135. 4. Popp's is one of the few full-length worker autobiographies by a woman and is available in English translation. Adelheid Popp, The Autobiography of a Working Woman (London: Fischer Unwin, 1912). 5. Robert Michels, "Psychologie der antikapitalistischen Massenbewegungen," in Grundriss der Sozial'dkonomik (Tubingen, 1926), vol. 9, pt. 1, 271-274; Cecilia Trunz, Der Autobiographien von deutschen Industriearbeitern (Freiburg i. Breisgau, 1934); Wolfram Fischer, Quellen zur Geschichte des deutschen Handwerks. Selbstzeugnisse seit der Reformationszeit (Gottingen, 1957); Richard Reichard, Crippled from Birth. German Social Democracy 1844-1870 (Ames, Iowa, 1969); Oron Hale, The Great Illusion 1900-1914 (New York, 1971), 43-46; Peter Stearns, "National Character and European Labor History," Journal of Social History, 3 (1970), 95-124; Neuman, "Industrialization and Sexual Behavior." 6. See John Burnett, ed., Useful Toil. Autobiographies of Working People from the 1820s to the 1920s (London: Penguin, 1974). Published in the United States as The Annals of Labour. Autobiographies of British Working Class People 1820-1920 (Bloomington: Indiana U.P., 1974).
Mass .)编号2723. 恩苏拉蒙州，"…现今无产阶级自画像的女性形象"根据最新的工人自传4. 流行歌手在一个情况下由一个女人产生的自传传中阿德尔海德·流行普，《女性工作的汽车生物工程》(伦敦:费希尔·乌温，1912)5. 罗伯特·米歇尔，《反资本主义大规模运动心理学》载于社会社会商学(图宾根，1926)，第9篇，公元271—274塞西莉亚·康茨，德国工业工人的汽车传记1934年弗莱堡·布莱斯高沃尔夫拉姆，德国工业历史的渊源自宗教改革时期以来的自制证言(1957年哥廷);是理查·莱克德牧师1870年《德国社会》四十三、四十三彼得·史宾斯。诺曼的《工业和性行为》6. 湖畔John Burnett艾德犹他州分部1820年工作人员的自传》到20世纪20年代。(伦敦:美国工党的宣传<英国同事工作简介> 1820至1920年>
{"title":"Recent Literature on the IWW","authors":"Robert J. Bezucha, Adelheid Popp, R. Michels, Cecilia Trunz, Richard W. Reichard","doi":"10.1017/S0147547900015891","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0147547900015891","url":null,"abstract":"Mass., 1972), 272-276. 3. Also see Ursula Munchow, \"Das Bild des Arbeiters in der proletarischen Selbstdarstellung. Zur Bedeutung der friihen Arbeiterautobiografie,\" Weimarer Beitrage, 19 (1973), 1 10-135. 4. Popp's is one of the few full-length worker autobiographies by a woman and is available in English translation. Adelheid Popp, The Autobiography of a Working Woman (London: Fischer Unwin, 1912). 5. Robert Michels, \"Psychologie der antikapitalistischen Massenbewegungen,\" in Grundriss der Sozial'dkonomik (Tubingen, 1926), vol. 9, pt. 1, 271-274; Cecilia Trunz, Der Autobiographien von deutschen Industriearbeitern (Freiburg i. Breisgau, 1934); Wolfram Fischer, Quellen zur Geschichte des deutschen Handwerks. Selbstzeugnisse seit der Reformationszeit (Gottingen, 1957); Richard Reichard, Crippled from Birth. German Social Democracy 1844-1870 (Ames, Iowa, 1969); Oron Hale, The Great Illusion 1900-1914 (New York, 1971), 43-46; Peter Stearns, \"National Character and European Labor History,\" Journal of Social History, 3 (1970), 95-124; Neuman, \"Industrialization and Sexual Behavior.\" 6. See John Burnett, ed., Useful Toil. Autobiographies of Working People from the 1820s to the 1920s (London: Penguin, 1974). Published in the United States as The Annals of Labour. Autobiographies of British Working Class People 1820-1920 (Bloomington: Indiana U.P., 1974).","PeriodicalId":363865,"journal":{"name":"Newsletter, European Labor and Working Class History","volume":"71 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1975-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131704568","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1975-05-01DOI: 10.1017/S0097852300015811
Judith R. Walkowitz, Daniel J. Walkowitz
Of the three AHA sessions on working-class history we have been asked to report on, two were remarkably more successful than the third. One of those two, the session on "Working Class Political Culture" containing the especially important essay coauthored by Alan Dawley and Paul Faler, is discussed at length elsewhere.* Of the remaining two sessions, Paul and Thea Thompson's (Essex University, England) presentation of their oral history project on late Victorian and Edwardian England excelled. The panel on "Work and Industrial Discipline in Britain and America" did not. David Montgomery (Pittsburgh) chaired the session on Work-Time-Discipline and ably attempted to focus the panel on the ways Edward Thompson, in his influential article "Time, Work, and Industrial Capitalism," has suggested industrial capitalism transformed pre-industrial work rhythms. The panel would, then, try to view this process in three different settings: Puerto Rico in the Great Depression: changing time-schedules and work patterns of American women in recent United States' history; leisure activities in the late Victorian working class outside London. However, not only did these papers' analysis fall short of Thompson's rigorous theoretical example, but the extended presentations did not leave time for comparative discussion. Montgomery summarized Thompson, tried to give a brief introduction to the other papers, and then discussed the methods adopted by American industrial workers to assert control over their working life. "Industrial time had created not spontaneous, universal obedience to the employers' values . . . :" rather "the stint" and the eight-hour day reflected the workers' concept of a rational, modern distribution of work and time. While Montgomery provided an overview, the rest of the papers failed to address themselves successfully to the theoretical implications of work and timediscipline. Blanca Silvestrini (University of Puerto Rico) spoke on "Work Patterns of Puerto Rican Women in the Rural Industries." Silvestrini presented some interesting material on the family economy of Puerto Rican workers in the 1930s and women's efforts to unionize and assert a public presence in their community, but she neglected to connect her argument with the larger historical debate on the relationship among women's work, their public role, and their power within the family. Similarly, Joanne Vanek (Queens College) in her discussion of "Time Schedules and Work Patterns of Married [American] Women," attacked the conventional assumption that labor-saving devices freed women to enter the workforce. The shift from women's paid labor inside the household (ie. piecework, boarders), she argued, to paid labor outside the household was achieved at the cost of less
{"title":"Anglo-American Labor History at the AHA","authors":"Judith R. Walkowitz, Daniel J. Walkowitz","doi":"10.1017/S0097852300015811","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0097852300015811","url":null,"abstract":"Of the three AHA sessions on working-class history we have been asked to report on, two were remarkably more successful than the third. One of those two, the session on \"Working Class Political Culture\" containing the especially important essay coauthored by Alan Dawley and Paul Faler, is discussed at length elsewhere.* Of the remaining two sessions, Paul and Thea Thompson's (Essex University, England) presentation of their oral history project on late Victorian and Edwardian England excelled. The panel on \"Work and Industrial Discipline in Britain and America\" did not. David Montgomery (Pittsburgh) chaired the session on Work-Time-Discipline and ably attempted to focus the panel on the ways Edward Thompson, in his influential article \"Time, Work, and Industrial Capitalism,\" has suggested industrial capitalism transformed pre-industrial work rhythms. The panel would, then, try to view this process in three different settings: Puerto Rico in the Great Depression: changing time-schedules and work patterns of American women in recent United States' history; leisure activities in the late Victorian working class outside London. However, not only did these papers' analysis fall short of Thompson's rigorous theoretical example, but the extended presentations did not leave time for comparative discussion. Montgomery summarized Thompson, tried to give a brief introduction to the other papers, and then discussed the methods adopted by American industrial workers to assert control over their working life. \"Industrial time had created not spontaneous, universal obedience to the employers' values . . . :\" rather \"the stint\" and the eight-hour day reflected the workers' concept of a rational, modern distribution of work and time. While Montgomery provided an overview, the rest of the papers failed to address themselves successfully to the theoretical implications of work and timediscipline. Blanca Silvestrini (University of Puerto Rico) spoke on \"Work Patterns of Puerto Rican Women in the Rural Industries.\" Silvestrini presented some interesting material on the family economy of Puerto Rican workers in the 1930s and women's efforts to unionize and assert a public presence in their community, but she neglected to connect her argument with the larger historical debate on the relationship among women's work, their public role, and their power within the family. Similarly, Joanne Vanek (Queens College) in her discussion of \"Time Schedules and Work Patterns of Married [American] Women,\" attacked the conventional assumption that labor-saving devices freed women to enter the workforce. The shift from women's paid labor inside the household (ie. piecework, boarders), she argued, to paid labor outside the household was achieved at the cost of less","PeriodicalId":363865,"journal":{"name":"Newsletter, European Labor and Working Class History","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1975-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115276675","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1975-05-01DOI: 10.1017/s0147547900015854
B. Moss
factory, did not present an acute problem. In sum, the slow yet steady pace of change appears to have made it possible to avoid the polarization and social conflict that characterized other industrializing villages closer to Paris, such as Axgenteuil, Bezons, or Saint-Denis. The session commentator raised the intriguing question of whether the price of social peace in Bonnieres was the ostracism of the Bretons and, later, the Belgians.
{"title":"Bebel and Socialism","authors":"B. Moss","doi":"10.1017/s0147547900015854","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0147547900015854","url":null,"abstract":"factory, did not present an acute problem. In sum, the slow yet steady pace of change appears to have made it possible to avoid the polarization and social conflict that characterized other industrializing villages closer to Paris, such as Axgenteuil, Bezons, or Saint-Denis. The session commentator raised the intriguing question of whether the price of social peace in Bonnieres was the ostracism of the Bretons and, later, the Belgians.","PeriodicalId":363865,"journal":{"name":"Newsletter, European Labor and Working Class History","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1975-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133476640","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1975-05-01DOI: 10.1017/S0097852300015914
Myrna Chase
and thus de facto to represent the petty bourgeoisie and not the proletariat." (249). It is true of course that Marx took a dim view of Schapper's brand of revolutionary violence, but Marx identified Schapper, not himself, with the democrats (whose "terrorist phrases" he had referred to in the March Circular), whereas Hunt does the opposite. 14. See Writings of the Young Marx, ed. Easton and Guddat, 368. 15. Minutes of Sept. 15th meeting, Nicolaevsky, 251.
{"title":"Steven Marcus, Engels, Manchester and the Working Class (New York, Random House, 1974)","authors":"Myrna Chase","doi":"10.1017/S0097852300015914","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0097852300015914","url":null,"abstract":"and thus de facto to represent the petty bourgeoisie and not the proletariat.\" (249). It is true of course that Marx took a dim view of Schapper's brand of revolutionary violence, but Marx identified Schapper, not himself, with the democrats (whose \"terrorist phrases\" he had referred to in the March Circular), whereas Hunt does the opposite. 14. See Writings of the Young Marx, ed. Easton and Guddat, 368. 15. Minutes of Sept. 15th meeting, Nicolaevsky, 251.","PeriodicalId":363865,"journal":{"name":"Newsletter, European Labor and Working Class History","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1975-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134108834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1975-05-01DOI: 10.1017/S0097852300015823
Frederick B. Chary
{"title":"The Russian Masses in the October Revolution 1917","authors":"Frederick B. Chary","doi":"10.1017/S0097852300015823","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0097852300015823","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":363865,"journal":{"name":"Newsletter, European Labor and Working Class History","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1975-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114957663","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1975-05-01DOI: 10.1017/S0097852300015884
R. Neuman
In the summer of 1905, Moritz Bromme, a tubercular factory worker and devoted Social Democrat, closed his autobiography by writing that he did not regard himself "as a martyr of a special kind. I know very well that 1 have hundreds of thousands of suffering comrades who have things just as bad as 1, and that there are many hundred thousands more who have an even worse and harder struggle for existence than I." Bromme was only one of several hundred German workers who left behind autobiographical materials of various kinds during the last two centuries. They are invaluable sources of information on German working class history, and are particularly useful for the study of working class consciousness (or the lack of it). Quantitative studies can reveal a great deal about the lives of workers in the past, but autobiographies are one of the very few sources which present the workers' own perceptions of their lives, and their consciousness of themselves within society. In the following pages I will discuss briefly some of the problems of using these autobiographies, examine two recent collections of workers' life histories, and finally suggest some new uses to which they might be put by social historians. Depending upon the definition of the term, "autobiographies" of German artisans, factory, and farm laborers published since about 1750 number between 150 and 300, about fifty of which are book-length memoirs. Most of these have appeared during the last seventy-five years, and many of them were written or edited by socialists, and published under the auspices of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). Only a few were written by working women. Obviously most of the authors were literate and quite articulate. All of which raises the question of how representative of the working class as a whole the authors of workers' autobiographies are. Clearly writing and publishing an autobiography was something very few German workers did, and this sets the authors apart from most of their fellows. However, worker autobiographers devote much attention to their childhood, education, religious training, descriptions of work life, pay, housing,-travel, the customs and routine of everyday life. Surely these were common concerns for most working people, and we can learn much about them from the workers' memoirs. It should be emphasized that the autobiographies can best be regarded as useful additions to, rather than substitutes for, demographic and other statistical studies of working class life.
{"title":"German Workers' Autobiographies as Social Historical Sources","authors":"R. Neuman","doi":"10.1017/S0097852300015884","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0097852300015884","url":null,"abstract":"In the summer of 1905, Moritz Bromme, a tubercular factory worker and devoted Social Democrat, closed his autobiography by writing that he did not regard himself \"as a martyr of a special kind. I know very well that 1 have hundreds of thousands of suffering comrades who have things just as bad as 1, and that there are many hundred thousands more who have an even worse and harder struggle for existence than I.\" Bromme was only one of several hundred German workers who left behind autobiographical materials of various kinds during the last two centuries. They are invaluable sources of information on German working class history, and are particularly useful for the study of working class consciousness (or the lack of it). Quantitative studies can reveal a great deal about the lives of workers in the past, but autobiographies are one of the very few sources which present the workers' own perceptions of their lives, and their consciousness of themselves within society. In the following pages I will discuss briefly some of the problems of using these autobiographies, examine two recent collections of workers' life histories, and finally suggest some new uses to which they might be put by social historians. Depending upon the definition of the term, \"autobiographies\" of German artisans, factory, and farm laborers published since about 1750 number between 150 and 300, about fifty of which are book-length memoirs. Most of these have appeared during the last seventy-five years, and many of them were written or edited by socialists, and published under the auspices of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). Only a few were written by working women. Obviously most of the authors were literate and quite articulate. All of which raises the question of how representative of the working class as a whole the authors of workers' autobiographies are. Clearly writing and publishing an autobiography was something very few German workers did, and this sets the authors apart from most of their fellows. However, worker autobiographers devote much attention to their childhood, education, religious training, descriptions of work life, pay, housing,-travel, the customs and routine of everyday life. Surely these were common concerns for most working people, and we can learn much about them from the workers' memoirs. It should be emphasized that the autobiographies can best be regarded as useful additions to, rather than substitutes for, demographic and other statistical studies of working class life.","PeriodicalId":363865,"journal":{"name":"Newsletter, European Labor and Working Class History","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1975-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121217821","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1975-05-01DOI: 10.1017/S0147547900015817
B. Moss
Of the three AHA sessions on working-class history we have been asked to report on, two were remarkably more successful than the third. One of those two, the session on "Working Class Political Culture" containing the especially important essay coauthored by Alan Dawley and Paul Faler, is discussed at length elsewhere.* Of the remaining two sessions, Paul and Thea Thompson's (Essex University, England) presentation of their oral history project on late Victorian and Edwardian England excelled. The panel on "Work and Industrial Discipline in Britain and America" did not. David Montgomery (Pittsburgh) chaired the session on Work-Time-Discipline and ably attempted to focus the panel on the ways Edward Thompson, in his influential article "Time, Work, and Industrial Capitalism," has suggested industrial capitalism transformed pre-industrial work rhythms. The panel would, then, try to view this process in three different settings: Puerto Rico in the Great Depression: changing time-schedules and work patterns of American women in recent United States' history; leisure activities in the late Victorian working class outside London. However, not only did these papers' analysis fall short of Thompson's rigorous theoretical example, but the extended presentations did not leave time for comparative discussion. Montgomery summarized Thompson, tried to give a brief introduction to the other papers, and then discussed the methods adopted by American industrial workers to assert control over their working life. "Industrial time had created not spontaneous, universal obedience to the employers' values . . . :" rather "the stint" and the eight-hour day reflected the workers' concept of a rational, modern distribution of work and time. While Montgomery provided an overview, the rest of the papers failed to address themselves successfully to the theoretical implications of work and timediscipline. Blanca Silvestrini (University of Puerto Rico) spoke on "Work Patterns of Puerto Rican Women in the Rural Industries." Silvestrini presented some interesting material on the family economy of Puerto Rican workers in the 1930s and women's efforts to unionize and assert a public presence in their community, but she neglected to connect her argument with the larger historical debate on the relationship among women's work, their public role, and their power within the family. Similarly, Joanne Vanek (Queens College) in her discussion of "Time Schedules and Work Patterns of Married [American] Women," attacked the conventional assumption that labor-saving devices freed women to enter the workforce. The shift from women's paid labor inside the household (ie. piecework, boarders), she argued, to paid labor outside the household was achieved at the cost of less
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