| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Clete Daniel. Culture of Misfortune: An Interpretive History of Textile Unionism in the United States. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 2001. Pp. x, 327. $49.95.

Was industrial unionism the panacea that the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and those historians who praise it claim? Maybe not, suggests Clete Daniel. Textile unionism, he argues, has been a "culture of misfortune" earmarked by substandard wages, miserable working conditions, regional animosity, ineffective labor organizations, and ruthless corporate might. His "interpretive history" is short on glory and long on failure. 1

Daniel persuasively argues that textile unionism was moribund from its inception. Textile manufacturers pioneered in employing a deskilled labor force of marginalized workers. This made unity elusive, with nineteenth-century workers joining unions as much out of "bandwagon" mentality as solidarity (p. 16). By the twentieth century, the culture of misfortune was solidly in place, frustrating efforts of unionists, regardless of their political ideology or organizing principles. The largest union, the United Textile Workers (UTW) held little sway in the craft-dominated American Federation of Labor (AFL). Daniel sees famed strikes like those in Lawrence (1912), New Bedford (1928), and Gastonia (1929) as high drama but organizational nightmares that the UTW mostly made worse through ineptitude, internal squabbling, and a lack of resources. . . .

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