Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Kelt, and Slav Flying the Old World’s poverty and scorn; These bring with them unknown gods and rites, Those, tiger passions, here to stretch their claws. In street and alley what strange tongues are loud … T. D. Aldrich, “Unguarded Gates,” Railroad Trainmen’s Journal, 1902.
Abstract
Within the railroad industry, the most powerful labor unions were exclusive craft organizations that concentrated on defending the privileges of a few skilled workers. Data from archaeological work conducted by Sonoma State University during the Cypress Freeway Replacement Project is used in an historical materialist exploration of class-consciousness among railroad workers in a late-19th-century working-class neighborhood in West Oakland, California. Comparing aspects of diet and dining, this study focuses on divisions among the railroad workers along the lines of craft-skill and nativity, examining the ways skilled craft unionists used the assumptions of Victorian ideology to organize against both their employers and other groups of workers, especially immigrants.
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Walker, M. Aristocracies of Labor: Craft Unionism, Immigration, and Working-Class Households in West Oakland, California. Hist Arch 42, 108–132 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03377067
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03377067