Difference between revisions of "325--Week 3 Questions/Comments"
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The part of this essay that I found most interesting was McGaw's description of the relationships between male employers and employees. So often we associate this area of history with the "us vs. them" mentality and this seems to have become the dominant historical narrative. Yet Smith gives numerous examples of how male employers and employees bonded with one another over notions of manhood, through pranking, and establishing personal "man to man" contracts with one another. While it's undeniable that employers exploited their employees in numerous ways, it would be a mistake to assume that, despite increasing alienation in the factories, men did not value their "skilled" labor that they held in common with one another and that their employers needed in order to maintain factory production. -Bryan Lees | The part of this essay that I found most interesting was McGaw's description of the relationships between male employers and employees. So often we associate this area of history with the "us vs. them" mentality and this seems to have become the dominant historical narrative. Yet Smith gives numerous examples of how male employers and employees bonded with one another over notions of manhood, through pranking, and establishing personal "man to man" contracts with one another. While it's undeniable that employers exploited their employees in numerous ways, it would be a mistake to assume that, despite increasing alienation in the factories, men did not value their "skilled" labor that they held in common with one another and that their employers needed in order to maintain factory production. -Bryan Lees | ||
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| + | I think the concept of equality based on shared masculinity is interesting. A sense of equality was reached and was not like other boss/worker relationships in which the boss is in a clear position of power and lords it over the employees. It also made protests more individualized. Workers were more likely to have control over their circumstances and to have their issues addressed because of their relative equality, which kept large-scale protests down. - Karen Siegmund | ||
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== Merritt Roe Smith, “The Political Economy of Pacing” == | == Merritt Roe Smith, “The Political Economy of Pacing” == | ||
