As machines displaced skilled labor, the ability of laborers to influence working conditions declined. If skilled, they either became employers and developed entrepreneurial and managerial skills, or they descended into the mass of wage earners. Simultaneously, the changing structure of production widened the gap between owners and workers and blurred the distinction between skilled and unskilled labor.
These trends might have been expected to generate hostility between workers and employers. To some extent they did. There were strikes for higher wages and to protest work speedups throughout the 1830s and again in the 1850s. (For more on “The Making of a Working Class,” see Mapping the Past, pp. 226-227.) Efforts to found unions and to create political organizations dedicated to advancing the interests ofworkers were also undertaken. But well into the 1850s Americans displayed less evidence ofthe class solidarity common among European workers.
Why America did not produce a self-conscious working class is a question that has long intrigued historians. As with most such large questions, no single
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World History
