Making the Amalgamated: Gender, Ethnicity, and Class in the Baltimore Clothing Industry, 1899-1939 (review)

Making the Amalgamated: Gender, Ethnicity, and Class in the Baltimore Clothing Industry, 1899-1939. By Jo Ann E. Argersinger (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) 229 pp. $39.95

Making the Amalgamated is a rich case study of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers' efforts to organize and exercise a measure of control within the men's clothing industry in Baltimore during the first four decades of the twentieth century. Argersinger combines an interest in institutional history with an appreciation of the complexities that gender and ethnicity made for work life and labor organizing in the industry.

Organized chronologically, successive chapters examine the rise of the men's clothing industry in Baltimore, the emergence of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, the maturation of the union in Baltimore, the place of women workers in the union's activities, the changing fortunes of the Amalgamated during the recession of the Baltimore garment industry in the 1920s, and the remaking of the union during the Depression. An epilogue briefly chronicles the decline of the men's clothing industry and the union in Baltimore since 1940.

Making the Amalgamated weaves numerous connections to larger economic and social processes at work in the garment industry across urban American during the early twentieth century. Many of them are reminiscent of contemporary developments in New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston. Competition between progressive loft manufactories and contract sweatshops and the conflict between would-be industrial unionists among garment workers and the old-guard leadership of the United Garment Workers, which was extremely powerful in New York City and Chicago, are evident in Baltimore before 1920. A move toward the establishment of permanent arbitration was strikingly parallel to the "Protocol of Peace" adopted slightly earlier in New York City. The need to deal with Baltimore's runaway shops in the 1930s resonates with accounts of Amalgamated campaigns in rural Pennsylvania during the same period. Thus, analysis of the Baltimore experience offers parallels and insights that should prove useful to scholars interested in wider national patterns affecting the garment industry in these years.

Argersinger provides a healthy blend of institutional trade-union history and the new social history. She offers detailed discussions of union conventions, programs, and publications, but also examines ethnic and gender conflict and cooperation within the union. She draws no sweeping generalizations from the analysis, but acknowledges both the unequal treatment accorded to women within the union and the willingness on the part of many women leaders within the organization to place class interests above women's interests in their union work. She also thoughtfully treats the ethnic divisions and conflicts within the union. Hers is a balanced account that presents the conflicts and contradictions in the Amalgamated without judging the participants or taking sides.

Thomas Dublin
State University of New York, Binghamton

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