Editor’s Introduction

Three articles offer new twists to venerable themes of labor and social history. As historian Gregory Wood discovers, the famous “control” strikes that erupted in World War II factory settings (often pitting rank-and-file workers against union leaders tied to a no-strike pledge as well as against their bosses) were about more than pay or even the pace of the assembly line. One little-studied issue, for example, that catalyzed workplace demands for autonomy and self-respect in the Detroit-area auto industry was the right to smoke. Fighting against what appeared to be irrational limits on their personal space and time—and undoubtedly influenced as well by a commercial culture extolling the pleasures of tobacco—unionized workers protested and even struck in numerous instances to pursue their smoking habit, even as their unions struggled to accommodate and defend such demands “from below.”

The early 1970s witnessed two great if perhaps “last” hurrahs from within the ranks of the fabled United Mineworkers of America (UMWA). First was the belated triumph of the Miners for Democracy insurgency with the election of reformer Arnold Miller as union president in 1973. Second, the same year saw women, protected by Title VII’s enforcement, enter the mines as laborers in record numbers. With a focus on the union’s pivotal Pittsburgh-centered District 5, historian Trish Kahle here explores the political ins and outs of that second accomplishment. Women miners proved ardent champions of democratic process within the union even as they struggled to hold onto entry-level jobs in a rapidly declining industry. At their height of influence, the women-centered Coal Employment Project—linking feminists and socialist activists—in 1979 forced even the once hidebound UMWA to move its national convention away from an anti-ERA state.

In a local study that challenges our assumptions about national trends, Peter Hinks tracks the simultaneous rise of racism and economic development in New Haven, Connecticut, in the 1820s. His history pivots around an exceptional African-American businessman, William Lanson, who, beginning in 1807, helped develop an interracial, “mercantile” and maritime-centered neighborhood known as New Guinea. Yet by 1825, the rougher (and nonwhite) population of the district was pushed out to make way for a new “manufacturing”-centered and all-white economy governed by a new elite. Hinks contrasts the details of local transformation here, which seem to emphasize contingency and multiple pathways to development, with a larger historiography on race and capitalism that all too quickly takes the end point of this story for granted.

An expanded reviews section in this issue affords a preview of some exceptional works as well as larger trends in the field. First, a few marquee must-reads: Joseph A. McCartin on the latest from Stanley Aronowitz and Thomas Geoghegan; Kim Phillips-Fein on David Montgomery’s last essay in the new Workers in Hard Times anthology; Michael Merrill on Cal Winslow’s collection of E. P. Thompson’s early New Left essays; and Alice Kessler-Harris on Miriam Frank’s pathbreaking “Labor History of Queer America.” Studies of intellectuals and/or the professional representation of workers include Mark Pittenger’s treatment of undercover investigators, Carol Quirke on photography, and Lara Vapnek on women reformers. Among leading themes, Karin Shapiro and Talitha LeFlouria tout new studies of Texas and California prison life and Florida chain gangs. In addition, two works each tackle African American history, masculinity, and Mexican railroad workers north and south of the border, while Ann Norton Greene calls our attention to perhaps the first “elephant-centered” social history, and Emma Christopher celebrates the arrival of Marcus Rediker’s Outlaws of the Atlantic.