Book Reviews
| Published date | 01 June 1986 |
| Date | 01 June 1986 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2435.1986.tb00801.x |
Book
Reviews
KEIL,
H.,
J.B.
JENTZ.
German Workers in
Industrial Chicago,
1850-1910;
A
Comparative
Perspective.
Dekalb Illinois, Northern Illinois
University Press, 1983.
252
pp.
ISBN
0-8780-089-0
This book grew out of the Chicago Project
(1
977-
1981), based at the University of Munich
(F.R.G.). The research was focused
on
the social
history of German immigrant workers in Chica-
go
from
1850
to 1914.
In
conjunction with other
institutes and scholars, the Project organized a
conference in Chicago (October 198
I),
at which
earlier versions of the essay published here were
presented.
Why has Chicago been preferred rather than
Milwaukee, known as the most typical German
city? Chicago not only had a very large German
population, but made an early transition to an
advanced industrial economy and became one
of the most unionized cities of the U.S.A. The
social history of German immigrant workers is
seen as a comprehensive one. It has to take into
account four large areas of investigation
:
the
demographic evolution of the German popula-
tion and chiefly the workers in American urban
society
-
with 3 essays; the process ofindustria-
lization and the transforming of work
-
with
3
items; the neighbourhoods where the German
workers lived and their every day life there
-
with
2
items; and finally, the politics and culture
roo-
ted in all these facets of their lives as the mee-
ting-point of all thematic areas
-
with
5
essays.
Three of the thirteen essays allow one to see the
Chicago findings in comparative perspective.
Immigration was a repetitive process. It intro-
duced successive waves of preindustrial and
agrarian workers into the alien world of Ameri-
can industrializing society. The waves of Ger-
man immigration were very different.
In
the
second half of the nineteenth century, two major
waves emigrated
to
America
:
one in the 1850's
and the new amvals of the 1880's. Occupatio-
nally, socially and culturally the generation of
the
1850's
and their offspring were often worlds
apart from the second wave amvals.
A few things should be said in order to clarify
the basic differences between the two waves,
before dealing with their relationship and their
fundamental transformation.
Nearly
50%
of the immigrants
of
the
first
wave were artisans, coming from the Rhenish
provinces of the Southwest, as well as Bavarian
Jews. They arrived in a medium-sized town that
grew quickly: with a modest
30,000
inhabitants
in the fifties, 100,000 in the sixties
-
20%
were
German
-
and
300,000
a decade later. Most had
emigrated after the failure of the 1848 revolu-
tion. The social and political life
of
these newly
amved Chicagoans were shaped both by their
recent radical experience in Europe and the
conditions encountered in America, mainly the
anti-slavery movement, the Civil War and the
beginning ofindustrialization. Workers and arti-
sans lived
in
ethnic coherent neighbourhoods,
functioning as catalysts to the formation of com-
munity identity for work, leisure, political and
labour movements.
In
short, the growing class
solidarity was based on common ethnic tradi-
tion.
In the eighties the old German population was
quickly outnumbered by a massive immigration
of agrarian unskilled workers from the North
and the Northeast German areas. Chicago beca-
me in 1900 the sixth largest centre in the world
with
1,700,000
inhabitants;
25%
were of Ger-
man origin:
70%
first generation and
30%
se-
cond generation. The coming of the second wave
coincided with the growth of the large factory.
The rapid succession of immigrant groups and
the explosive growth of the city led
to
geographi-
cal dispersion, the old centres of settlement and
neighbourhoods turned down and ultimately
after a long-lasting process, new labour organi-
zations grew out of interethnic solidarity.
The new solidarity included co-operation bet-
ween old and new German immigrants; between
German, Irish and English workers and the new
519
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