Book Reviews: AMERICAN POLITICS

Victoria Hattam has written a fascinating book of great importance to all who are interested in the broader questions about the nature and peculiarity of American politics. Carefully researched and closely argued, the book sets out to explain why U.S. labor, in contrast to its European counterparts, adopted narrow business unions rather than broad class organizations. The answer to this question is central for Hattam to understanding what is distinctive about American politics since "The particular path of working class formation in the United States has set the broad contours of American politics" (p. 3). Building on the insights of other students of American political development and political history, Hattam identifies the unusual power and dominance of the judiciary in the United States. This situation is in contrast to that in England and Western Europe. Hattam presents an especially rich analysis of the evolution of conspiracy law and judicial interpretations of it in the 19th century in this country. She shows that unions in the late 19th century were quite successful in getting some state legislatures, and even at times the federal government, to exempt them and guarantee their rights. State and federal courts, on the other hand, repeatedly undermined and "reinterpreted" these laws, often going against legislative intent, to the great detriment of unions. It was this experience, underscoring for labor unions the fruitlessness of electoral and lobbying activity—even when successful—that turned the American Federation of Labor, according to Hattam, away from politics and towards business unionism. Hattam's argument, however, is not an account of autonomous state structures. Rather, it was the transformation of the labor movement in the post-Civil War period, and its interaction with the judiciary that led it to change its orientation. Economic development undermined the autonomy of crafts leading to a more proletarian workforce. Labor organizations began to organize on an employee basis, rejecting the earlier producerism which included workers, tradesmen, small businessmen, and farmers as part of the same grouping. Hattam's criticisms of labor historians Sean Wilentz and David Montgomery, who do not recognize the social basis within the 19th century producer-labor movement for the many middle class social reformers is on the mark. Her research on the conflicts within the labor movement between the producer/reformer types and the trade unionist/proletarian forces is informative. While Labor Visions provides important insights on how labor unions became transformed in the late 19th century, its attempt to provide a complete account raises a number of questions. The book overplays the split between the trade unionist organizations and the producer organizations in a way that is unconvincing. Hattam regards the AFL and its predecessors as more Marxist, more class oriented. She sees the AFL rejecting non-workers, while the producer organizations are uniting with small businessmen and rejecting important elements of their class. The producers "generally did not welcome women, blacks, day laborers, and the very poor into their ranks . " (p. 18). While this characterization may have some saliency in the period immediately after the Civil War, it does not fit the critical late 19th century period that Hattam wants to highlight. In fact, the late 19th century craft unions were becoming virulently racist (towards Blacks and Chinese especially) and exclusionary, and the Knights of Labor (Hattam's prototype producer organization) was successfully organizing female workers and racially integrating organizations even in the Deep South. Some of this activity of the Knights is documented graphically in works cited in the book (including Peter Rachleff's Black Labor in Richmond [1984] and Leon Fink's Workingmen's Democracy [1983]). This misleading characterization of the Knights of Labor points to an even deeper problem with this important work. The rejection of alternative theories is much too glib. Hattam rejects arguments that identify questions of race and ethnicity and the structure of American politics (e.g., two party system, winner take all, lack of proportional representation). She argues that "Neither theory provides a convincing account of the nature and timing of the shift in AFL strategy at the turn of the century" (p. 26). Such an argument, especially with respect to race and ethnicity, is inaccurate. The end of the century was precisely such a turning point for race in American politics, a turning point that had important consequences in law, social organization, politics, and ideology. For labor and other social movements it was critical. The 1890s marked the defeat and destruction of both the integrated Populist movement in the South and the important beachheads of integrated labor organization in that region of the country. According to E. E. Schattschneider, Northern Republicans, themselves fearful of both agrarian radicalism and northern labor militancy, made a Faustian bargain with Southern Democrats, establishing the System of '96, which held sway stably and unchallenged in American politics for over thirty years. As Schattschneider argues: