These nine essays by a prominent scholar in American labor history self-consciously evoke the tensions between the worker as historical subject and the historian as outside observer. Encompassing studies of labor culture, strategy, and movement building from the late nineteenth century to the present, In Search of the Working Class also connects the trials of the early labor economists to the conceptual challenges facing today's academic practitioners."Fink places American labor history in the broader context of American political historiography better than any other historian I can think of." -- James R. Barrett , author of Work and Community in the Chicago's Packinghouse Workers, 1894-1922 Fink (history, Univ. of North Carolina) evaluates American labor history in the broader context of 19th- and 20th-century political and social developments from the vantage point of the generation of labor historians who came of age in the 1960s. These nine essays are mostly extended studies of the political, legal, economic, and social foundations of the struggles of American workers and their labor unions for power; the centrality of class conflict in American labor history; and the tensions between workers as historical subjects and historians as outside observers. The writing is dense and often turgid. Suitable for academic libraries with large labor collections. Harry Frumerman, formerly with Hunter Coll. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.