Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939

by Lizabeth Cohen

Overview

This book examines how it was possible and what it meant for ordinary factory workers to become effective unionists and national political participants by the mid-1930s. We follow Chicago workers as they make choices about whether to attend ethnic benefit society meetings or to go to the movies, whether to shop in local neighborhood stores or patronize the new A&P. As they made daily decisions like these, they declared their loyalty in ways that would ultimately have political significance. When the depression worsened in the 1930s, workers adopted new ideological perspectives and overcame longstanding divisions among themselves to mount new kinds of collective action. Chicago workers' experiences all converged to make them into New Deal Democrats and CIO unionists. First printed in 1990, Making a New Deal has become an established classic in American history. The second edition includes a new preface by Lizabeth Cohen.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107702394
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	01/07/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	10 MB

About the Author

Lizabeth Cohen is the Howard Mumford Jones Professor of American Studies in the History Department of Harvard University. She is also the author of A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (2003) and co-author with David M. Kennedy of The American Pageant, a college-level US history textbook.

Table of Contents

Preface; Introduction; 1. Living and working in Chicago in 1919; 2. Ethnicity in the New Era; 3. Encountering mass culture; 4. Contested loyalty at the workplace; 5. Adrift in the Great Depression; 6. Workers make a New Deal; 7. Becoming a union rank and file; 8. Workers' common ground; Conclusion.

Editorial Reviews

Most chapters in this ambitious study of Chicago's ethnic workers between the wars could themselves be the basis for a book: workers' encounter with mass culture; their response to 1920s welfare capitalism; the Depression's effects; the turn toward Democratic politics; and the embrace of organized labor. Cohen has used a vast range of sources to show that these episodes are interrelated and to make the overall point that far from bobbing upon history's tides, workers were agents of their own fortune during a period opening with labor in disarray and ending in strength. If on some points her arguments are strained, the richness of Cohen's book makes it an essential purchase for research libraries, and a useful item in many other academic collections.-- Robert F. Nardini, N. Chichester, N.H.

Library Journal

Review of previous edition:
"At every step the argument is developed in a sophisticated way … Making a New Deal constitutes a major achievement."
Julia Greene, Journal of American History

From the Publisher