Working-Class Culture and Modern Mass Culture before World War I

- The article focuses on the relationship between tramway networks and urban structure in Spain during the period 1900-1936. It states that this relationship should be studied after considering the use of transport and the mobility patterns of different classes, specially the working class. Once these factors have been studied it is possible to assert the impact of the tramway netmark on urban growth. The impact of the tramways on major Spanish cities did not take the form of a transport revolution that would radically changed the urban pattern. Tramways did not direct urban growth until use of tramway lines by the working class became general. This did not happen until World War I. Since then, skilled and some unskilled workers did change their mobility patterns and tramway use experienced a cycle of growth that continued until the late 1950s.

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The Limits of Economic Restructuring

Recasting Bourgeois Europe ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691169798.003.0004 ◽

2015 ◽

Author(s):

Charles S. Maier

Keyword(s):

World War I ◽

Working Class ◽

Economic Restructuring ◽

Coal Industry ◽

Red Scare ◽

World War ◽

Middle Classes

This chapter examines the problems encountered by France, Germany, and Italy as they each embarked on economic restructuring after World War I. A new bourgeois equilibrium seemed attainable in each country during the period; it rested on a consensus that united elites and middle classes against militant working-class claims. Capitalism and bourgeois hierarchies proved more resilient than either defenders or attackers had assumed. Furthermore, the movement of restoration was wider than the three societies. Across the Atlantic, “red scare” and recession were ushering in the era of normalcy. The chapter considers the evolution of leftist objectives in France, Germany, and Italy that accompanied the transition from the turmoil of 1918–1919 to the bourgeois recovery of 1920–1921. It also discusses the strategies of bourgeois defense and the failure of socialization in the German coal industry.

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Red-Blooded, Rugged Individuals

Poor Man's Fortune ◽

10.5149/northcarolina/9781469656298.003.0007 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 165-199

Author(s):

Jarod Roll

Keyword(s):

World War I ◽

Working Class ◽

Risk Taking ◽

Health And Safety ◽

Organized Labor ◽

World War ◽

White American ◽

Piece Rate ◽

Mining Companies ◽

Lead And Zinc

World War I made the Tri-State district more productive and profitable than ever before. War industry demand for lead and zinc raised prices and wages, and led to the dramatic expansion of mines in the Oklahoma part of the district. Wartime nationalism also supercharged the risk-taking masculinity of the district’s miners who asserted their racist claims to the piece rate with new fervor that further undermined the appeals of union organizers and government health and safety reformers. But in the 1920s miners found their employers, who had grown bigger and stronger during the war, newly reluctant to pay them high wages. This stand-off created new opportunities for union organizers in the district, but Tri-State miners ultimately rejected solidarity in favor of the economic advantages they believed loyal, white American men deserved. By the 1920s, their working-class communities were organized around a faith in capitalism, violent masculinity, and white racism now transformed during the war into a staunch white nationalism. Having abandoned organized labor, Tri-State miners found themselves without allies as mining companies moved in the late 1920s to constrain their risk-taking behavior through new health controls aimed to eliminate silicosis and damaged men from the district.

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