Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story

by Wilfred M. McClay

But American workers were historically reluctant to join unions, for many reasons. The strong sense of individualism that prevails in American culture militated against it; so too did a lack of working-class identity among American workers, who tended to see their “hireling” status as temporary and hoped to rise eventually into the middle and upper classes, thus fulfilling the aspiration to be self-made men. Racial and ethnic tensions within the workforce also made unification difficult, particularly as the industrial workforce became more and more dominated by immigrants, whose cultural differences from native-born Americans and from one another often overshadowed their economic commonalities. The most successful unions were the craft unions associated with the American Federation of Labor, led by the feisty and tireless Samuel Gompers. But they had the advantage of being skilled workers, such as typographers or (like Gompers) cigar makers, and of being narrowly focused on higher wages, shorter hours, improved working conditions, and the like. For the large numbers of unskilled workers, who felt the need for more dramatic changes, there was no similarly effective organization or voice.