Preface and Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Ch. 1 Labor, Ideology, and the State: Working-Class Formation in the United States 3
Ch. 2 Judicial Regulation of Labor: The Common Law Doctrine of Criminal Conspiracy, 1806-1896 30
Ch. 3 The Producers' Vision: A Republican Political Economy 76
Ch. 4 Disintegration of the Producers' Alliance and Politicization of Judicial Regulation, 1865-1896 112
Ch. 5 The United States in Comparative Perspective: English Labor and the Courts 180
Ch. 6 Conclusion: Ideas, Interests, and the Concept of Class 204
Appendix A: American Labor Conspiracy Cases 217
Appendix B: Additional Cases 219
Bibliography 221
Index 257

Why has labor played a more limited role in national politics in the United States than it has in other advanced industrial societies? Victoria Hattam demonstrates that voluntarism, as American labor's policy was known, was the American Federation of Labor's strategic response to the structure of the American state, particularly to the influence of American courts. The AFL's strategic calculation was not universal, however. This book reveals the competing ideologies and acts of interpretation that produced these variations in state-labor relations.
Originally published in 1993.
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