num_pages: 544
description: This book examines how it was possible and what it meant for ordinary factory workers to become effective unionists and national political participants by the mid-1930s. We follow Chicago workers as they make choices about whether to attend ethnic benefit society meetings or to go to the movies, whether to shop in local neighborhood stores or patronize the new A &amp; P. Although workers may not have been political in traditional terms during the '20s, as they made daily decisions like these, they declared their loyalty in ways that would ultimately have political significance. As the depression worsened in the 1930s, not only did workers find their pay and working hours cut or eliminated, but the survival strategies they had developed during the 1920s were undermined. Looking elsewhere for help, workers adopted new ideological perspectives and overcame longstanding divisions among themselves to mount new kinds of collective action. Chicago workers' experiences as citizens, ethnics and blacks, wage earners and consumers all converged to make them into New Deal Democrats and CIO unionists.
language: English
title: Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939
titlecomplete: Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939
genres: 20th Century, History, School, Economics, United States, American History, Labor, Grad School, Politics, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 1057
places: Chicago, Illinois
awards: awardedAt: 662716800000
name: Pulitzer Prize
category: History, awardedAt: 662716800000
name: Bancroft Prize, awardedAt: 631180800000
name: Philip Taft Labor History Book Award
publisher: Cambridge University Press