Description
Book SynopsisTalks about the middle-class reformers who, at the turn of the twentieth century, joined hands with the Chicago Federation of Labor, a conglomerate of diverse unions, to advocate municipal control of the city's streetcars. Streetcars encompassed many Progressive concerns: control of service enterprises, the crusade against corruption, and more.
Trade ReviewPioneering and well-researched. Leidenberger argues persuasively that Chicago workers, far from being more apolitical than their British or European counterparts, were at the heart of municipal reform politics during the Progressive era.
* urban history *
This is a very compelling story of Chicago labor and progressive politics. Leidenberger uses the struggle over urban transit to highlight shifting currents in the city's urban politics. Commendably, he gives Chicago's turn-of-the-century labor movement the central role it deserves in this drama.
-- H. Shelton Stromquist, University of Iowa
Concise and clearly articulated, this argument successfully defends the notion that labor organizations had both power and public support, albeit briefly, for a broader vision of public policy.
* AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW *
Table of ContentsTable of Contents
Introduction: A Streetcar Named Democracy—Labor and the Search for the Common Good
Chapter 1: Service Workers and the New Metropolitan Unionism
Chapter 2: Private Streetcars, Public Utopias, and the Construction of the Modern City
Chapter 3: The Movement for Municipal Ownership
Chapter 4: The 1905 Teamsters Strike
Chapter 5: The Politics of Streetcar Regulation
Chapter 6: The Eclipse of Reform in a Fragmented City
Conclusion: Class, Reform, and Democracy in Early Twentieth-Century America
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
