Chicago in the Age of Capital: Class, Politics, and Democracy during the Civil War and Reconstruction (Working Class in American History) - Tapa dura

"This is a superbly researched, well-conceived, and boldly argued interpretation of the rise of a permanent working class, the formation of an industrial bourgeoisie, and the relations between these social classes in Chicago from the antebellum years through the 1870s. Anyone who continues to question the salience of class analysis for understanding nineteenth-century social history, and, of course, those who are already convinced of this approach, will want to read this study."--James R. Barrett, author of William Z. Foster and the Tragedy of American Radicalism "A well-written and much-needed labor history of Chicago during Civil War and Reconstruction. Labor historians of the Civil War era and/or nineteenth-century America will welcome this book into the historical conversation."--H-Net Reviews / H-War "Scholars seeking to understand the intricacies of Chicago's political history in the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction should start here. Those with broader interests in the relationship between capitalism and democracy in the late nineteenth century will find in this book a provocative alternative to the dominant historiographical perspective."--Reviews in American History "This first-rate study of an important city offers a careful, nuanced take on the relationship between modern capitalism and democracy."--The Journal of American History "A tour-de-force example of local narrative used to illuminate historical theory." --Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era "Excellent work."--Choice "An indispensable study for anyone interested in the labor history of Chicago in the nineteenth century. . . . this book also provides a useful context to some of the most dramatic events in that history."--American Historical Review "A masterful case for the power of intensive local studies."--Journal of Illinois History "Chicago in the Age of Capitalwill be useful to other historians for its extensive use of newspaper records and its solid grounding in the quantitative analysis of population and manufacturing trends. Its blend of social, political, and intellectual history contextualizes and deepens our understanding of the relationship between capital, labor and politics." The Historian

In this sweeping interpretive history of mid-nineteenth-century Chicago, historians John B. Jentz and Richard Schneirov boldly trace the evolution of a modern social order. Combining a mastery of historical and political detail with a sophisticated theoretical frame, Jentz and Schneirov examine the dramatic capitalist transition in Chicago during the critical decades from the 1850s through the 1870s, a period that saw the rise of a permanent wage worker class and the formation of an industrial upper class. Jentz and Schneirov demonstrate how a new political economy, based on wage labor and capital accumulation in manufacturing, superseded an older mercantile economy that relied on speculative trading and artisan production. The city's leading business interests were unable to stabilize their new system without the participation of the new working class, a German and Irish ethnic mix that included radical ideas transplanted from Europe. Jentz and Schneirov examine how debates over slave labor were transformed into debates over free labor as the city's wage-earning working class developed a distinctive culture and politics. The new social movements that arose in this era--labor, socialism, urban populism, businessmen's municipal reform, Protestant revivalism, and women's activism--constituted the substance of a new post-bellum democratic politics that took shape in the 1860s and '70s. When the Depression of 1873 brought increased crime and financial panic, Chicago's new upper class developed municipal reform in an attempt to reassert its leadership. Setting local detail against a national canvas of partisan ideology and the seismic structural shifts of Reconstruction, Chicago in the Age of Capital vividly depicts the upheavals integral to building capitalism.