Work and the Lodge: Working-Class Sociability in Meriden and New Britain, Connecticut, 1850-1940.

Abstract

This study investigates the links between changing forms of work and changing sociability. The initial hypothesis is that craft workers tended to socialize more with each other than did other workers and that this sociability reinforced their ability to organize on the job. It hypothesizes further that class consciousness may vary, in part, with forms of sociability. The particular form of sociability studied is the working-class fraternal society--the most extensive formal working-class organization at the end of the nineteenth century. The method used is a case study of two New Engl and industrial cities. The first, Meriden, had a highly skilled, craft-oriented work force. The second, New Britain, had a relatively unskilled work force composed, after 1890, in large part, of new immigrants. The study concludes that in late-nineteenth-century Meriden the lodge and the union formed part of a network of craft culture and that each helped sustain the other. In New Britain, where most of the features that helped create this culture were absent, both unionism and fraternalism were relatively weak. In the early twentieth century, however, Meriden's craft culture was smashed by an employers' offensive, and neither unionism nor fraternalism recovered. In the 1920s and 1930s, New Britain experienced the growth of a new class formation which tended to unify the working class socially and which culminated in the explosion of CIO organizing in the 1930s. This new formation did not depend, however, on fraternalism for sociability or for reinforcement of union solidarity. The conclusion is that Meriden's working-class of the 1890s and New Britain's of the 1930s were radically different. While each nurtured a strong unionism, Meriden's craft-oriented working-class formation was essentially defensive--it sought to protect past gains and a status already held. New Britain's working-class formation of the 1930s was essentially aggressive--it sought to win gains for workers beyond what they already held, and initially, at least, it seemed headed toward aggressive dem and s in the political sphere. It seems likely that this defensive/offensive dichotomy found its reflection in the area of consciousness.