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Solidarity Forever?

Solidarity Forever? 756 / RADICAL HISTORY REVIEW “heroic age” of the American artisan, an era beginning with the Philadephia days of Tom Paine and lasting through the young adulthood of Eugene Victor Debs. Possessing indispensable skills in hat manufacturing, laboring in small workshops under autonomous and egalitarian conditions largely of their own choosing, these craftsmen developed a mutualistic workplace ethos stressing loyalty and generosity-in Bensman’s words, solidarity-toward each other. Hat finishers differed from other artisanal groups in some respects, especially in their aloofness from the working-class political battles of the second and third quarters of the nineteenth century. Bensman does not adequately explain this aloofness-an awkward silence in a book so focused on the artisanal sources of political culture-but this lapse turns out not to matter so much. Beginning in the 1870s and 188Os, these hat finishers were f drawn into the world o working-class politics they had so long disdained, exchanging their conservative brand of republicanism for a more radical variety and losing their exceptional character in the process. The moment of their integration into an emerging American working class marks the beginning of the compelling part of Bensman’s book. A potentially dry, institutional history of workers centralizing their http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Radical History Review Duke University Press

Solidarity Forever?

Radical History Review , Volume 1988 (41) – Apr 1, 1988

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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 1988 by MARHO: The Radical Historians' Organization, Inc.
ISSN
0163-6545
eISSN
1534-1453
DOI
10.1215/01636545-1988-41-155
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

756 / RADICAL HISTORY REVIEW “heroic age” of the American artisan, an era beginning with the Philadephia days of Tom Paine and lasting through the young adulthood of Eugene Victor Debs. Possessing indispensable skills in hat manufacturing, laboring in small workshops under autonomous and egalitarian conditions largely of their own choosing, these craftsmen developed a mutualistic workplace ethos stressing loyalty and generosity-in Bensman’s words, solidarity-toward each other. Hat finishers differed from other artisanal groups in some respects, especially in their aloofness from the working-class political battles of the second and third quarters of the nineteenth century. Bensman does not adequately explain this aloofness-an awkward silence in a book so focused on the artisanal sources of political culture-but this lapse turns out not to matter so much. Beginning in the 1870s and 188Os, these hat finishers were f drawn into the world o working-class politics they had so long disdained, exchanging their conservative brand of republicanism for a more radical variety and losing their exceptional character in the process. The moment of their integration into an emerging American working class marks the beginning of the compelling part of Bensman’s book. A potentially dry, institutional history of workers centralizing their

Journal

Radical History ReviewDuke University Press

Published: Apr 1, 1988

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