Work and Community in the Jungle: Chicago's Packinghouse Workers, 1894-1922

The Working Class in American History

by James R. Barrett

Mythologized by Upton Sinclair as hopeless, Chicago's packinghouse workers were in fact active agents in the early twentieth century transformation that swept urban industrial America. James R. Barrett's award-winning study explores how the lives and neighborhoods of packinghouse workers convey the experience of mass production work, the quality of working class life, the process of class formation and fragmentation, the effects of unionization, and the changing character of class relations. Merging history and analysis with contemporary social surveys and a computer-assisted analysis of census data, Barrett delves into a wide range of social, economic, and cultural factors that resulted in class cohesion and fragmentation.

Genres: History, Labor, Nonfiction

328 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1987

About the author

James R. Barrett is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Illinois.

Reviews

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book maps two three decades of struggle between workers at Chicago's Union Stockyards and the owners of the five or six conglomerate meat-packing firms. I was particularly interested in this book because I live in the heart of what was once Packingtown, which is intimately covered in this book, only half a mile from the old stockyards.

Barrett attempts to craft a close-to-comprehensive framework of both work and life outside of work for the amalgamation of immigrant groups that staffed the slaughterhouses and unions; his picture is vivid, detailed, and compelling. This book would probably be less exciting if you didn't walk or drive these streets every day but remains a strong study of corporate conglomeration, scientific management, immigrant experiences, and labor struggles regardless.