Author note: Bruce Laurie is Professor and Director of the History Institute, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

A valuable portrait of the craftsmen, journeymen, factory hands, and laborers in a major industrial city during the antebellum period. Focuses well on working conditions and on the workingman's religious and community life. --The New Leader A fresh and generally persuasive analysis of the dynamics of the American working class in a formative period of American industrialization, an analysis that transcends the boundaries of labor organizations toward a broader social and economic perspective. It deserves close attention. --Winterthur Portfolio Bruce Laurie's illumination of the contours of working class culture in antebellum Philadelphia is a tour de force in the rapidly maturing literature of the 'new' social history... --Pennsylvania History

Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: The Work Setting, 1800-1850 1. The Sources of Industrial Diversity Part II: The Forging of Working-Class Cultures, 1820-1837 2. Revivalists: The Militias of Christ 3. Traditionalists: The Boys of Pleasure 4. Radicals: Thomas Paine's Progeny 5. We Are All Day Laborers: The General Trades' Union of the City and County of Philadelphia, 1833-1837 Part III: Hard Times, 1837-1844 6. The Uses of Adversity Part IV: Years of Discord, 1845-1850 7. Workers at Bay 8. Varieties of Radicalism Part V: Epilogue 9. Radicalism United and Divided Notes Bibliography Index