Reviews and Comments

Kimeldorf's main argument is that the American working class is not conservative nor bereft of class consciousness and that these supposed traits do not explain how the AFL became the dominant union structure in the first quarter of the 20th century. Despite different ideologies, he argues that the AFL and IWW were both "syndicalist" (a claim that rests on his misunderstanding of the meaning of that term, reducing it to just direct action at the point of production), and most rank-and-file workers were more concerned about bettering their conditions in the here and now than any far-off dream, whether that of AFL or IWW. He doesn't really succeed in his argument – sure, workers were not conservative, but that's not because they embraced his false definition of syndicalism.

He discusses the IWW at length on the docks in Philadelphia, and then uses their brief attempt at organizing restaurant and hotel food employees in New York to examine successive organizations and their tactics. He looks at the influence of the direct action tactics of the IWW on both workers and rival unions, and suggests that the IWW has a more enduring presence in the U.S. labor movement than assumed, and that it forced the AFL to be more direct-action oriented.