History of the Carpenters Union
HALL, JOHN PHILIP
History of the Carpenters Union Empire in Wood. By Robert A. Christie. Cornell. 356 pp. $4.50. Reviewed by John Philip Hall Chairman, Department of History and Political Science, University of...
...Historians, trade unionists, and the reading public in general will all have reason to be grateful to Mr...
...in my opinion, outstanding among the achievements which make his book essential reading for anyone interested in the past, and therefore in the future, of American labor...
...Christie has not neglected his opportunities to bring both individuals (such as P. J. McGuire) and types (such as the local business agent) to life...
...It is a regrettably novel experience to find a labor history which, like this one, is a pleasure to read, moving as well as informative...
...Though Mr...
...As more of their work appears, we can expect that the unions will be more willing to cooperate...
...Christie has not had to resort to any journalistic stunts to accomplish this...
...Reviewed by John Philip Hall Chairman, Department of History and Political Science, University of Baltimore It would be hard to find a union which has contributed more to the pattern of traditional American unionism than the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners...
...Christie is far from being an uncritical admirer of everything connected with the Carpenters' union, he has given us the means to understand much which would be less comprehensible without this background...
...It is only in the last generation that business concerns have begun to make their records available, trusting to the objectivity of the scholar to produce histories which are useful to their subjects even when washing dirty linen...
...He has also provided clear insights into the internal power structure of the union, the function and genesis of the business agent, the curious relationship between 19thcentury socialism and business unionism, the use of the union label as a weapon in inter-union warfare, and the development of the multi-industrial-craft union which enabled the AFL to survive and grow fat on the challenge of the CIO...
...The Carpenters refused to give Mr...
...Christie's painstakingly lucid examination of the role of these claims in the history of the carpenters is...
...Christie for his work...
...The crucial importance of the jurisdictional claim, especially in the building trades, has long been a problem to academic observers of American labor...
...This is not a new problem for historians...
...This book does a service to anyone who wants to understand the hows and whys as well as the whens and wheres of labor history...
...Changes in the Carpenters' union have followed "changes in the organization of the industry, in the extent of the labor market, or in the tools of production...
...His book is the product of such thorough analysis and realistic sympathy with the movement that he has been able to bring both light and life to his subject...
...These three give a broad scale of reference for interpretation of the course of events...
...Labor historians today are less interested in supporting some economic theory or in providing helpful hints for management than in writing a fair and sympathetic record of a great social movement...
...While it is no doubt true that the opening of the union's archives would make available much material which he was denied, this would not necessarily add much to what he found in published materials...
...Even more important, from this reviewer's point of view, Mr...
...Christie access to their archives, but he was able to find enough material in the public domain and to use it with enough critical intelligence and understanding so that his work will not soon be superseded...
...Unions do not, as a rule, make much effort to preserve records of rank and file or opposition opinion, nor of the invaluable "ephemera," such as broadsides, which put flesh on the bones of history...
...Christie has written the story of this union from its origins in the 1380s under the leadership of the evangelical socialist, Peter J. McGuire, to its condition under the Hutcheson dynasty as a conservative job-conscious giant...
...The reluctance of unions to cooperate with the historian, either by preserving full, well-organized archives or by making what they have accessible, is caused by suspicion of the too often employer-minded academic historian and fear of giving documentation to criticisms of the unions or of giving away "secrets...
...In this connection, his modest disclaimer of definitiveness for his study requires comment...
Vol. 39 • August 1956 • No. 32
