Volume 14, Number 7 · April 9, 1970
Sticking to the Union
By Murray Kempton
UE Guide to Automation and the New Technology
United Electrical Workers
60 pp., $.75
Union Man: The Life of A Labor Statesman
by David J. McDonald
Dutton, 352 pp., $7.95
Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker 1933-1941
by Irving Bernstein
Houghton Mifflin, 873 pp., $14.00
American Labor: The Twentieth Century
edited by Jerold S. Auerbach
Bobbs-Merrill, 474 pp., $7.50
Bread and Roses Too: Studies of the Wobblies
by Joseph Robert Conlin
Greenwood, 165 pp., $8.50
American Labor and United States Foreign Policy
by Ronald Radosh
Random House, 484 pp., $10.00
It is a long time since many of us burdened the trade union movement with our hopes or complimented it with our curiosity. There is some surprise then at finding so much to learn and even to enjoy in these studies of an institution so much out of fashion. But what is the most surprising thing in the lot is that the book among them which manages not merely to hold but to compel the attention turns out to be the one with the fewest contrivances of narrative or argument, and with the smallest concern for beguiling the stranger. Is it possible that how men work and how they try to make their work more tolerable are subjects not dull, but so full of life that no art is needed to involve us in thinking about them?
Review, 8362 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |