A Book For Consideration: 'There Is Power in a Union' - by Philip Dray

[WillyT]

There Is Power in a Union
The Epic Struggle of Labor in America
By Philip Dray
(Doubleday; 784 pages; $30)



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Fire up the barbecue. Break out the beer. It's Labor Day and time to say so long to summer. The national holiday devoted to backyard revelry began in 1882 as a day that brought factory workers and their families into the streets to flex their collective muscle and show the world the power of organized labor.

Traditional Labor Day celebrations had their day in the sun, along with May 1 - International Workers' Day - but in a nation in which citizens have long aspired to hold white-collar, not blue-collar jobs, laboring men and women have often been lost in the shuffle. Honor labor? You've got to be kidding! Workers have been trivialized and ridiculed, whether they're the Archie Bunkers of suburbia or Sarah Palin's stalking-horse, Joe Six Pack.

Philip Dray, the author of "There Is Power in a Union: The Epic Struggle of Labor in America," comes into the ring with fists flying, and he doesn't let up for a moment. If you love Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States," you'll probably love Dray's history, too, with its pageantry and its celebratory prose that shines a bright light of compassion and understanding on ordinary workingmen, women and children. Yes, even American children with white skins toiled 10 hours a day in factories long before corporations moved overseas and put Indian and Pakistani kids to work making shirts and sneakers.

Dispassionate historians might find Dray's narrative too often romanticized. They'd have a point. Indeed, his labor heroes tend to be "courageous," to speak "with all heart" and, when they're mowed down by the militia, the streets are awash in "carnage." Still, it's difficult if not impossible to omit colorful language from a book about American workers.

The story of unions in America is, as Dray points out, an epic struggle that seemed at times to be fought between good and evil. Nineteenth century labor activists called their initially underground organization the Knights of Labor as though they sprang from the court of King Arthur. As Dray shows, workers saw themselves engaged in an apocalyptic battle to give birth to a new world of economic justice. They could not help but speak as though they were the saviors of humanity from the perceived evils of capitalism.

Dray offers a vivid quotation from Albert Spies, for example, who said of himself and fellow Socialists, "We are the birds of the coming storm, the prophets of the revolution."

Throughout his epic tale, Dray allows the labor organizers to speak for themselves. In the eyes of earlier generations of Americans, men and women such as Spies; Emma Goldman; Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, better known as the Rebel Girl; and the Italian-born martyrs of the labor movement, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were as familiar as Lady Gaga and Jay-Z are to audiences today.

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More: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/03/RVFF1F5HHC.DTL

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[daleanime]

1. Bookmarked for later use.

nt

[Starry Messenger]

2. I'll put it on my list.

k & r

[nashville_brook]

3. on my list -- thanks for the recommendation!

[WillyT]

4. Anytime nb !!!

:bounce:

:hi:

[WillyT]

5. Kickin For Labor Day Weekend !!!

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[WillyT]

6. Kickin For Labor Day !!!

Happy Labor Day all !!!

:hi:

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[senseandsensibility]

7. Too late to rec

but Happy Labor Fay!

[WillyT]

8. Last Kick, At The End Of Labor Day !!!

:hi:

:kick:

[WillyT]

9. PDT Kick !!!

Thanks y'all !!!

:hi: