Overview

This volume documents the history of ""a living wage"", the rallying cry of activists. The labour movement's response to wages shows how American workers negotiated the transition from artisan to consumer, opening up new political possibilities for organized workers and creating contradictions which continue to haunt the labour movement. Workers in the 19th century hoped to become self-employed artisans, rather than permanent ""wage-slaves"". After the Civil War however, unions redefined working-class identity in consumerist terms and demanded a wage which would reward workers commensurate with their needs as consumers. This consumerist turn in labour ideology also led workers to struggle for shorter hours and union labels. First articulated in the 1870s, the demand for a living wage was voiced increasingly by labour leaders and reformers at the turn of the century. Glickman explores the racial, ethnic and gender implications as white male workers defined themselves in contrast to African-Americans, women, Asians and recent European immigrants. He shows how a historical perspective on the concept of a living wage can inform our understanding of current controversies.

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9780801433573

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Reviews

A very fine, well-written study of changes in rhetoric and ideology, as well as a lucid discussion of what these changes tell us about the goals of working-class leaders, thinkers, and reformers. Glickman's study is less about wage labor and consumption than about changing notions of and perspectives on these issues. As such, A Living Wage is a valuable contribution to the history of working-class culture, rhetoric, and ideology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. --Industrial and Labor Relations Review Glickman's lively and thoughtful intellectual history of the concept of a living wage speaks both to historians of American working people and to historians of Amercan culture.... His primary method is discourse analysis, and he does it very well.... He writes clearly and evocatively, with sensitivity to gender and race, as well as class. --Journal of Social History Glickman provides an entirely new way of understanding working-class material demands. --Reviews in American History A Living Wage is an important book that challenges the view of pure and simple unionism as apolitical. It also calls into question where, when, and why Americans first embraced a consumer identity.... A fascinating study of the rise of a consumer-oriented working-class ideology. --Journal of American History Glickman makes a bold contribution to the wider task of rethinking the late nineteenth-century labour movement, and his findings deserve wide notice. --Labour History Review

A very fine, well-written study of changes in rhetoric and ideology, as well as a lucid discussion of what these changes tell us about the goals of working-class leaders, thinkers, and reformers. Glickman's study is less about wage labor and consumption than about changing notions of and perspectives on these issues. As such, A Living Wage is a valuable contribution to the history of working-class culture, rhetoric, and ideology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. --Industrial and Labor Relations Review Glickman's lively and thoughtful intellectual history of the concept of a living wage speaks both to historians of American working people and to historians of Amercan culture.... His primary method is discourse analysis, and he does it very well.... He writes clearly and evocatively, with sensitivity to gender and race, as well as class. --Journal of Social History Glickman makes a bold contribution to the wider task of rethinking the late nineteenth-century labour movement, and his findings deserve wide notice. --Labour History Review Glickman provides an entirely new way of understanding working-class material demands. --Reviews in American History A Living Wage is an important book that challenges the view of pure and simple unionism as apolitical. It also calls into question where, when, and why Americans first embraced a consumer identity.... A fascinating study of the rise of a consumer-oriented working-class ideology. --Journal of American History

Author Information

Lawrence B. Glickman is Professor of History at Cornell University. He is the author of A Living Wage: American Workers and the Making of Consumer Society and the editor of Consumer Society in American History: A Reader, both published by Cornell. His other books are Buying Power: A History of Consumer Activism in America and The Cultural Turn in U.S. History: Past, Present and Future.

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