The Practical Utopians: American Workers and the Cooperative Movement in the Gilded Age by Steve Leikin (review)

180 Michigan Historical Review activities of local deputies, professional strikebreakers from theWaddell Security Company, and the Citizens Alliance, an American vigilance committee comprised of citizens opposed to the immigrants' unionization attempts. Between July and December, Waddell security officers and Citizens Alliance members murdered two Croatian immigrants, wounded a young girl, shot the strike leader, Charles Moyer, and possibly murdered two other Cornish miners. According to Lehto, McNaughton's influence over the region's legal system prevented indictments against most of the perpetrators, resulting in only four manslaughter convictions for the security guards involved inmurdering the Croatian miners. The author asserts that the unchecked violence and racist attitudes of the American pubhc against the immigrants contributed to a Citizens Alliance member shouting "fire" as part of an organized campaign to harass immigrants. After the deaths, McNaughton closed down the local Finnish newspaper, thereby ensuring that only company-approved versions of events appeared in print. Studying the subsequent coroner's inquest, Lehto found an investigation flawed by a lack of testimony, inept questioning, and the omission of key pieces of evidence that pointed to the guilt of the Citizens Alliance. The inquest concluded that the immigrants in the hall had caused the "accident," a finding that Lehto refutes throughout the book. Death's Door follows in the tradition of classic works such as Frank L. Palmer's Spies in Steel:An Expos? of Industrial War, or Philip S. Foner's The Case of Joe Hill, which examined corporate-sponsored labor repression. As a result, critics predisposed to discount immigrants' views of the Italian Hall deaths may not agree with Lehto's conclusions. However, the book provides a cogent argument that is supported by a variety of sources. It is a useful study of Copper Country history, regional interethnic relations, and labor conflicts inmining communities. Paul A. Lubotina, Adjunct Professor Northern Michigan University Steve Leikin. The Practical Utopians: American Workers and the Cooperative Movement in theGilded Age. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005. Pp. 233. Bibliography. IUustrations. Index. Notes. Cloth, $44.95. The nineteenth-century cooperative movement, in spite of its enormous appeal to American workers, has received httle scholarly attention. Steve Leikin's readable analysis of Gilded Age cooperation Book Reviews 181 addresses this lacuna. The first three chapters take a broad national view of the subject, with analyses of the origins of cooperation in the aftermath of the Civil War, the ideological struggle over its form and aims, and the cooperative movement's promising but troubled relationship with the Knights of Labor. The final two chapters? colorful case studies of producers' cooperatives among shoemakers in Stoneham, Massachusetts, and coopers in Minneapolis?are the book's strongest. Leikin convincingly shows that the labor cooperators were "practical" inasmuch as they sought to carve spaces as producers and consumers within capitahsm as it then existed. They were "Utopians" inasmuch as they imagined a producers' commonwealth in which cooperation would overwhelm and replace competition. Leikin illustrates how the cooperative project was tied to the labor movement and nurtured by an ideology based on American republicanism and the labor theory of value. He suggests?but does not consistendy demonstrate?the weaknesses of this ideological framework, what made it unable to withstand the vicissitudes of the marketplace, social polarization, changes to the productive process, and workforce differences in gender, race, and skill. In The Practical Utopians, Leikin illustrates a number of the internal tensions and contradictions that arose within producers' cooperatives: between the defense of craft and technological innovation; between centralization and local democracy; between producers' cooperatives and wage earners; between the capitalist marketplace and the cooperative product; and between the necessity for capital accumulation and labor's lack of resources. In short, Leikin's evidence seems to demonstrate that cooperatives could not extract themselves from, and thus eventually fell victim to, the very market forces cooperation was meant to defeat. Leikin seems to contradict his own evidence, however, when he argues that cooperatives "could be, in many cases, viable economic alternatives to individually operated business concerns" and that failures "have asmuch to do with the ideology of cooperation" (pp. 7,150) aswith market forces. Absent is any discussion of the role played by the state in...