Included bibliographical references and index.

Introduction / Julie Greene, Bruce Laurie and Eric Arnesen -- Pt. 1. Politics and the State. 1. Land and Freedom: The New York Anti-Rent Wars and the Construction of Free Labor in the Antebellum North / Reeve Huston. 2. The "Fair Field" of the "Middle Ground": Abolitionism, Labor Reform, and the Making of an Antislavery Bloc in Antebellum Massachusetts / Bruce Laurie. 3. Dinner-Pail Politics: Employers, Workers, and Partisan Culture in the Progressive Era / Julie Greene. 4. Class Wars: Frank Walsh, the Reformers, and the Crisis of Progressivism / Shelton Stromquist. 5. The Workers' State: Municipal Policy, Class, and Taxes in the Early Depression / Cecelia F. Bucki -- Pt. 2. Class and Culture. 6. "Work That Body": African-American Women, Work, and Leisure in Atlanta and the New South / Tera W. Hunter. 7. Mobilizing Community: Migrant Workers and the Politics of Labor Mobility in the North American West, 1900-1920 / Gunther Peck. 8. Popular Narrative and Working-Class Identity: Alexander Irvine's Early Twentieth-Century Literary Adventures / Kathryn J. Oberdeck. 9. Making a Church Home: African-American Migrants, Religion, and Working-Class Activism / Kimberley L. Phillips -- Pt. 3. Labor Activism and Workers' Organizations. 10. "To Sit among Men": Skill, Gender, and Craft Unionism in the Early American Federation of Labor / Ileen A. DeVault. 11. Charting an Independent Course: African-American Railroad Workers in the World War I Era / Eric Arnesen. 12. Boring from Within and Without: William Z. Foster, the Trade Union Educational League, and American Communism in the 1920s / James R. Barrett. 13. The Dynamics of "Americanization": The Croatian Fraternal Union between the Wars, 1920s-30s / Peter Rachleff.