Labor's Mind - 9780252042263

Labor's MindA History of Working-Class Intellectual Life\nAuthor(s): Tobias Higbie\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: University of Illinois Press, United States\nImprint: University of Illinois Press\nISBN-13: 9780252042263, 978-0252042263\nSynopsis\nBusiness leaders, conservative ideologues, and even some radicals of the early twentieth century dismissed working people's intellect as stunted, twisted, or altogether missing. They compared workers toiling in America's sprawling factories to animals, children, and robots. Working people regularly defied these expectations, cultivating the knowledge of experience and embracing a vibrant subculture of self-education and reading. Labor's Mind uses diaries and personal correspondence, labor college records, and a range of print and visual media to recover this social history of the working-class mind. As Higbie shows, networks of working-class learners and their middle-class allies formed nothing less than a shadow labor movement. Dispersed ac.