Jewish labor's second city: The formation of a Jewish working class in Chicago, 1886--1928

This dissertation examines the social and political conditions that shaped Chicago's immigrant Jewish working class during the period from the late 1880s to the late 1920s. Its principle argument is that due to the political climate of Chicago, shaped by both post-Haymarket political repression and by Chicago's Progressive movement, as well as the community's relatively small size and isolation from the New York "nerve center" of Jewish labor and radical activism, Chicago's Jewish labor movement had a late start and maintained a relatively pragmatic focus that emphasized organizing at the expense of radical activism. The result was that Chicago's Jewish working-class community created a strong labor movement that included the nucleus of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, while a radical socialist movement did not flourish until after World War I, by which time their influence was mainly as a (mostly) loyal opposition.;The history of the Jewish labor movement and Jewish working class in the United States has been largely confined to the study of the New York Jewish community, while the study of American Jewish history of the Midwest including Illinois has tended to focus on small towns and on individuals who were largely of German descent. Even the study of Eastern European Jewish immigration to the Midwest has downplayed the very real Jewish labor action that was in part influenced by Chicago's well-known socialist and anarchist movements, that survived the post-Haymarket repression by shifting their focuses to education and organizing. At the same time, studies of the Jewish labor movement have primarily dealt with the major "Jewish" trades, such as those in the garment industry, at the expense of others that reflect the genuine diversity of the Jewish working class, including those in meatpacking and education that raised questions of religious loyalty versus class loyalty. Drawing heavily on the Chicago Foreign Language Survey translations, this dissertation moves study of the Jewish working class spatially and occupationally beyond the familiar images and stereotypes to bring out the genuine diversity of an immigrant group whose working-class identification has resonated long after it ceased to be working class.