Labor Conflict in the United States: An Encyclopedia.

Labor Conflict in the United States: An Encyclopedia. Edited by Ronald L. Filippelli * New York: Garland Publishing, 1990. xlviii + 609 pp. Selected bibliography, further reading, and index. $95.00.

There exists an inevitable tension between analytical and episodic history. The former, more respected by academic professionals, is less interested in the "events" of history than in the contexts and concepts whereby those events acquire their "real" significance. The latter, much closer to the lay person's (including the undergraduate's) understanding, concentrates more on the events themselves. Committed to a recounting no less factually accurate, that approach emphasizes the interest intrinsic to each episode.

A topical encyclopedia must embrace both approaches. If the format must necessarily come at the past as an item-by-item listing, it must also be able to incorporate broad themes that tie together the various entries and lend larger meaning to them. The great ambition of Labor Conflict in the United States is to do just that.

On one hand, it is a collection of 254 discrete episodes of "labor conflict" over more than three and one-half centuries of American history. Although most of the conflicts involve strikes and lockouts, they also include racial conflicts and political movements as these have reflected employer-employee controversies. Included are the standard elements familiar to every student of labor and business in America--the Homestead strike, the Chicago race riot, the Molly Maguires, and the like. Less famed events--cowboy strikes of 1883 and 1886 and a newsboy's strike of 1899--find their places, too. The selection process consciously stretches to include a broad range of trades, industries, regions, and times. Care also is taken to include episodes demonstrating sensitivity to the categories of race and gender.

Forty-nine contributors wrote the resulting narratives, ranging from such respected labor historians as Melvyn Dubofsky and Gary Fink to graduate students. Arranged alphabetically, the entries tend to be brief and straightforward narratives that typically run from one to four pages. Each carefully lays out the chief events that make up the episode, and all are enriched by brief bibliographies for "Further Reading." Separately, the entries well serve one of the encyclopedia's declared purposes: to ...