Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850

An American "middling" working class would be more accurate. Sean Wilentz' study is about "mechanics," that is, skilled workmen who had been through an apprenticeship and could, at the beginning of the study period, aspire to become independent masters and producers. The beginning of the study period was also the beginning of the end for that sort of industrial organization. Rationalization of steps of production allowed entrepreneurs to divide methods that had formerly required an extensive skill set into a series of easily teachable components. They then were able to dispense with skilled workers, either driving journeymen down to wage levels of common laborers or (in the most optimistic view) giving new kinds of work to formerly marginalized workers -- illiterate country boys, women, Irish. Naturally, the journeymen who ended up in these "sweated" trades felt a grievance, Whether their grievances amounted to a "rise" of a working class seems debatable. The inarticulate common laborers may already have felt themselves a wronged class. If they did, that is beyond the reach of the historian. What Wilentz can do, and does thoroughly, is document the emerging self-consciousness rise of an articulate working class with a more or less coherent ideology and, by the mid-1820s, a political program. "Chants Democratic" is anything but light reading, but it has its exciting episodes. These are somewhat repetitive: Inchoate working class reformers create novel structures (unions, benefit societies, cooperatives), attempt to use them to change the relations of production and get co-opted by mere political parties -- usually but not always Tammany Democrats. The story is exceedingly complex, playing out as it does against a similar change in working conditions in non-republican Europe. Wilentz emphasizes the republican ideology of the "artisan republic." They were not the only faction in New York City that claimed republican virtue, but their approach made a difference. Socialism, which is where much of this was heading, has always a different character in America. Wilentz, who wrote this as a dissertation, had to document his assertions with sociological methods, which he did by comparing names to tax and voting rolls etc. to help quantify the changes. "Chants Democratic" is now considered a classic of American labor history, no doubt because it is not impressionistic. Nevertheless, it is not all by the numbers, Wilentz occasionally stops to paint with a broad brush. In describing the impoverishment of formerly solid citizens, he claims that New York (that is, Manhattan) "ranked second to none as a disaster of laissez-faire urban development." Both up to 1850 and for much longer, the New York working class failed in most of its economic and political goals. However, Wilentz judges that during these decades "the burdens of necessity (forced) men and women, in the span of a single lifetime, to some of the most creative popular engagements in this

This book functions well as an adjunct to the "age of jackson" by arthury schlesinger jr. it basicaly handles the development of the "working class" in new york city between the end of the american revolution to the period before the civil war. During this period the economy of new york city industrialized, and that impacted the development of the "american" or more accurately given the subject of this book "new york" working class. This book might also have a cross over audience with gangs of new york. mike walsh, the oft drunken "shirtless democrat" leader of the 1840s and 1850s comes across similar to the character played by daniel day lewis in scorcese's adaptation of gangs of new york. i was suprised to read of the linkage of the working class movement to nativist sentiment expounded by the whigs as early as the 1830s, but i suppose i shouldn't have been suprised at all....

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Labor history, and the history of working people more generally when it is written honestly, is not the most exciting reading in the world. When historians treat the history of working men as women as a series of strikes and militant confrontations with the forces of their legal masters, you often get very interesting reading, but not a great deal of light shed upon what put the strikers in a confrontational mood. Sean Wilentz is all about explaining what the working people of New York City thought and felt in the years just after the revolution to the eve of the civil war. His discussion of the varied attitudes of workers towards American and City politics in this period and is very precise and specific. The book is certainly a kind of dual specialists text--geared more towards the use of the scholar or the New York State and City history buff. After seeing the connections that Wilentz makes between work, republicanism, capitalism, and politics it becomes obvious why the book has become so indispensible to scholars over the last twenty years. Before anyone reads this book, they should bone up on their history of New York City and State, and probably should also read some early nineteenth century labor history monographs.

The other contributor must not be very serious about the study of history. You will find this book on every 19th-Century U.S. PhD reading list from Columbia to Okla. State U. If you want to understand Am. labor history, antebellum history, class stratification, free v. slave labor, this is one of the most valuable books you can read. It's not for casual reading, but if you're SERIOUS about understanding American history it's for you.