The practical utopians : American workers and the cooperative movement in the Gilded Age / Steve Leikin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Leikin, Steven Bernard.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cooperation--United States--History--19th century.

Cooperation.

Labor--United States--History--19th century.

Labor.

Working class--United States--Economic conditions--19th century.

Working class.

Labor movement--United States--History--19th century.

Labor movement.

History.

Economic conditions.

United States.

Physical Description:

xxi, 233 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Other Title:

American workers and the cooperative movement in the Gilded Age

Place of Publication:

Detroit : Wayne State University Press, [2005]

Summary:

Between 1865 and 1890, in the aftermath of the Civil War, virtually every important American labor reform organization was advocating "cooperation" over "competitive" capitalism and several thousand cooperatives opened for business during this era. The men and women who built cooperatives were practical reformers who established businesses to stabilize their work lives, families, and communities. Yet they were also utopians-envisioning a world free from conflict where workers would receive the full value of their labor and freely exercise democratic citizenship in the political and economic realms. Their visions of cooperation, though, were riddled with hierarchical notions of race, gender, and skill that gave little specific guidance for running a cooperative.

The Practical Utopians closely examines the experiences of working men and women as they built their cooperatives, contested the meanings of cooperation, and reconciled the realities of the marketplace with their various and often conflicting conceptions of democratic participation. Steve Leikin provides new theories and examples of the failures and successes of the cooperative movement, including the collapse of the Gilded Age's most powerful labor organization, the Knights of Labor, in the face of the expanding industrial economy. Dealing with a critically important yet largely ignored aspect of working-class life during the late nineteenth century, The Practical Utopians brings crucial aspects of the cooperative movement to light and is a necessary study for all scholars of American history, labor history, and political science.

Contents:

The practical utopians

To substitute peace for war and love for hate: the cooperative ideology of American Workers

Cooperation and the Knights of Labor

Cooperation and community: the shoe workers of Stoneham

Cooperation and community: the coopers of Minneapolis.

Notes:

Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)--University of California, Berkeley, 1992.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 207-223) and index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0814331289

OCLC:

53962275