Working Americans, 1880-1999 Book

Voss argues, and very effectively too, that America's weak working-class institutions and conservative unions are NOT due to an absence of class struggle in the US. If you look historically, there was in fact a class struggle on par with and broadly similar to that of Britain and France. The explanation lies not in ethnic diversity, lack of class consciousness or etc, it lies in the fact that the employers won the class struggle between 1886 (Haymarket anyone?) and 1887, and that has shaped all future organizing. The fall of the Knights of Labor was a critical moment, and so this book explores their rise and fall using the normal qualitative data, but also quantitative data in a very rich and interesting way. I would have given this 5 stars but the material was so brilliant and fascinating and yet it was still so dry to read! Still, her finding that the presence of organized capital in the form of employers associations as one of the principal factors in labour's losses is a good thing to think about. And if you want further reading on anything, the footnotes are the best I've ever seen.