Labor's Great War - by Joseph a McCartin (Paperback)

About the Book

A pathbreaking revisionist study of American workers in the Progressive Era. In his comprehensive look at labor issues during the decade of World War I, historian Joseph McCartin explores the political, economic, and social forces that gave rise to the Great War. He shows how labor militancy and the erosion of managerial control in wartime workplaces combined to create an industrial crisis. 16 illustrations.

Book Synopsis

Since World War I, says Joseph McCartin, the central problem of American labor relations has been the struggle among workers, managers, and state officials to reconcile democracy and authority in the workplace. In his comprehensive look at labor issues during the decade of the Great War, McCartin explores the political, economic, and social forces that gave rise to this conflict and shows how rising labor militancy and the sudden erosion of managerial control in wartime workplaces combined to create an industrial crisis. The search for a resolution to this crisis led to the formation of an influential coalition of labor Democrats, AFL unionists, and Progressive activists on the eve of U.S. entry into the war. Though the coalition's efforts in pursuit of industrial democracy were eventually frustrated by powerful forces in business and government and by internal rifts within the movement itself, McCartin shows how the shared quest helped cement the ties between unionists and the Democratic Party that would subsequently shape much New Deal legislation and would continue to influence the course of American political and labor history to the present day.

Review Quotes

Labor's Great War is an important book that aims to reshape our understanding of labor relations in the United States in the early twentieth century. . . . Superb."Industrial and Labor Relations Review

A book well worthy of the attentions of any serious student of twentieth-century labour and industrial relations history. . . . It certainly demands a reconsideration of the nature and importance of the transformation of the social relations of work in the second vital decade of the 'American century' and, in particular, of the role of the Wilsonian wartime state in these developments."--Journal of Industrial Relations

A fascinating study."--Michigan Historical Review

An outstanding book that should should stimulate a great deal of discussion among historians as well as current industrial relations practitioners."--American Historical Review

Highlights the war years as a cauldron in which a new labor relations arrangement in America was forged. . . . A superb historical narrative."--Business History Review

Strikingly, McCartin successfully integrates business, labor, economic, political, and social history. Chapters are tightly organized, artfully written, logically developed, and coherently united as part of the broader interpretation. . . . This historically nuanced study-the new standard work on the subject-should serve as a model for future work by scholars of wartime America."--Journal of Economic History

With subtlety and insight, McCartin traces how the elastic notion of industrial democracy came to define, and quicken, the seismic labor conflicts of the World War I era."--H-SHGAPE

About the Author

Joseph A. McCartin is associate professor of history at Georgetown University.