A Living Wage: American Workers and the Making of Consumer Society

by Lawrence B. Glickman

Overview

The fight for a "living wage" has a long and revealing history as documented here by Lawrence B. Glickman. The labor 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 that continue to haunt the labor movement today.Nineteenth-century workers 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 that would reward workers commensurate with their needs as consumers. This consumerist turn in labor 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 labor 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501702211
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	11/23/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	6 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Rethinking Wage LaborPart I. From Wage Slavery to the Living WageChapter 1. That Curse of Modern CivilizationChapter 2. Idle Men and Fallen WomenPart II. The Social EconomyChapter 3. Defining the Living WageChapter 4. Inventing the American Standard of LivingPart III. Workers of the World, ConsumeChapter 5. Merchants of TimeChapter 6. Producers as ConsumersPart IV The Living Wage in the Twentieth CenturyChapter 7. Subsistence or Consumption?Chapter 8. The Living Wage IncorporatedCoda: Interpreting the Living Wage and ConsumptionNotes
Index

What People are Saying About This

Susan Porter Benson

This is a work of enormous range and brilliance that maps one of the great sea changes in recent history: the accommodation to wage labor and the reorientation of the discussion of citizenship, rights, race, and gender to the new realities it imposed. This is the kind of book that will have an enduring life because of the way in which it so fundamentally shifts the terms of the debates into which it enters, and those who read it will thereafter look at the worlds of work and consumption in a new way.

From the Publisher

If history is to instruct, if history is to motivate, then Lawrence B. Glickman's interpretative study on the nexus between the worker as employee and the worker as consumer, from the late nineteenth century to the New Deal, fulfills the promise. Active workers, unions and writers in those turbulent decades asked bigger questions about their political economy and challenged the illegitimacy of corporate control far beyond the horizons of their successors today. All who are part of today's growing movement for a living family wage, in an America of predominately declining real wages and rising fraud on consumers, can benefit vigorously from this living labor history.

Editorial Reviews

If history is to instruct, if history is to motivate, then Lawrence Glickman's interpretative study on the nexus between the worker as employee and the worker as consumer, from the late nineteenth century to the New Deal, fulfills the promise. Active workers, unions and writers in those turbulent decades asked bigger questions about their political economy and challenged the illegitimacy of corporate control far beyond the horizons of their successors today. -- Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader

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 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'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

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 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"

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 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"

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"

From the Publisher