Editor's Introduction

Editor’s Introduction

Leon Fink

The Haymarket story continues to be revisited in a myriad of new ways by authors in our journal.1 In Sam Mitrani’s insightful piece on the Chicago police

prior to Haymarket, the 1886 tragedy does not open the author’s narrative—it closes

it. Extending Richard Schneirov’s penetrating exploration of the city’s Gilded Age

labor politics, Mitrani zeroes in on Mayor Carter Harrison’s critical police department

reforms. The mayor, it seems, precariously balanced an appeal to ethnic working-

class and trade union votes with a commitment to social order as defined by business

elites such as the Citizens’ Association. To please the latter, he professionalized the

force, cracking down on a previously inept structure rife with corruption and inter-

nal lack of discipline. In the process, however, he created a tool that he himself could

no longer moderate at a crucial moment, especially against the backdrop of extreme

personal as well as political polarity between senior police administrators and the

Chicago anarchists. Implicitly, Mitrani’s essay raises a serious new question about the

1. For example, Timothy Messer-Kruse, James Eckert, Jeffrey G. Dunn, and Pannee Mukdeeprom Burkel, “The Haymarket Bomb,” Labor 2, no. 2 (2005): 39 – 53; James Green, “Globalization of a Memory,” Labor 2, no. 4 (2005): 11–25; Lara Kelland, “Putting Haymarket to Rest,” Labor 2, no. 24 (2005): 31–39; and Bryan D. Palmer, “Haymarket and the Forensics of Forgetting,” Labor 3, no. 1 (2006): 25–37.

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elements in the police force?

In a thematically related essay, “Premature Anti-Communists?,” Kenyon

Zimmer attempts to rescue the latter-day history of anarchism from the taint of both

McCarthyism and irrelevance. Retracing with great care (including the Yiddish and

Italian-language press) the anarchist infatuation and then deep disillusionment with

the Soviet Union, Zimmer examines the difficulties the anarchists faced in staking

out an anti-Communist position without forfeiting their overall radical perspectives.

Ultimately left outside the emerging Cold War dichotomy of Stalinist “Left” versus

anti-Stalinist “Right,” the anarchists rejected what they called the “suicidal theory

of the lesser Evil.” This move, argues Zimmer, “was in itself suicidal, but it was also

ethically uncompromising.”

Meanwhile, thanks to Eric Arnesen’s assiduous husbandry, we are also treated

to another engaging Up for Debate exchange. The subject for discussion here is histo-

rian Melvin Patrick Ely’s award-winning book Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern

Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s through the Civil War (2004). Bringing

uncommonly thick description to bear on a corner of southwestern Virginia, Ely

literally reconstructs a world of free blacks along with neighboring whites and slaves.

There is much to appreciate and surprise us here, but, as a distinguished panel of

commentators also makes clear, a fair amount to quarrel over. The themes of argu-

ment are at once broad and narrowly specific: they concern both the details that Ely

presents and the larger sociopolitical context into which he places those details. In the

end, the exchange over the text provokes one of the livelier discussions of southern

antebellum history that we have seen in years. Rather than try to summarize the con-

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tributors’ positions, however, we invite you to please dig in and consider the original

angles that historians Michael Perman, Jane Dailey, Corey Capers, Amy Dru Stanley,

Julie Saville, and James Schmidt adopt by way of critique, and then enjoy Professor

Ely’s elegant response.

The new books under review testify to the extended range of chronology,

geography, and theme within Labor’s current compass. A few new works touch on

venerable topics such as the nexus of craft, manhood, and industrialization of the

early nineteenth century, lack of a labor party in the United States, intra-union Cold

War politics, and the economic side of the civil rights struggle. Others reflect the

overlap between immigration and labor history—including treatments of Ukrainians

in Canada and Jewish socialists in New York as well as recent-day subjects such

as the “transborder” lives of indigenous Oaxacans and the immigrant rights’ fight.

There are even works, such as Timothy Gilfoyle’s A Pickpocket’s Tale, that fit no obvi-

ous historiographic rubric and are all the more enticing for that very reason.

Finally, readers will note one further transition within our editorial team.

James Green, who has served us so wisely and imaginatively as Contemporary

Affairs editor, has decided to take a breather. In his place, we are pleased to welcome

Jennifer Luff. Jennifer is a visiting assistant professor at University of California,

Irvine, and has an impressive background both as a scholar and as a union activist.

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