Bloomington’s C&A Shops: Our Lives Remembered ed. by Michael G. Matejka, Greg Koos

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 321 Worklime and Industrialization is essentially a political history. The authors are well versed in their respective subjects, but they often leave the impression that they have covered the fundamentals when in fact they have not addressed the economic history of their subject at all. The reduction in working hours between the early 19th and the early 20th centuries was partly due to the activities featured in these essays, but it was also partly due to the evolution of the economy and the development of techniques for managing increasingly complex machinery. The Soviets made a joke of shorter hours because they lacked the machinery and the managerial resources that made shorter hours and higher living standards compatible in Western Europe and the United States. Another volume on this part of the story, together with an explicit effort to measure the effects of shorter hours, would be welcome. Daniel Nelson Dr. Nelson is professor of hislorv at tile University of Akron and author ofAmenmtt Rubber Workers and Organized Labor, 1900-1941 (Princeton, 1988). Bloomington’s C&A Shops: Our Lives Remembered. Edited by Michael G. Matejka and Greg Koos. Champaign: University of Illinois Press for McLean County Historical Society, 1987. Pp. xxvii+161; illustra­ tions, index. $11.95 (paper). The editors of this volume have chosen to remember Bloomington, Illinois’s, Chicago & Alton railroad shops through the recollections of twenty-four individuals who worked in the shops or depended on them for economic prosperity. Interviews are arranged chronologi­ cally from 1900 to 1972, and each interview is accompanied by photos of life in the C&A shops. Interview content ranges from observations on local industrial history and culture (e.g., union activity, strikes, and ethnic group associations) to occasional reflections on the broader changes in the railroad industry as they affected life in the local shops—especially as they forced declining employment in the post­ steam era. Personal observations of everyday life that help clarify the differ­ ence between past and present are most compelling. One worker describes in some detail the special “touch” needed to use machine tools with calipers rather than micrometers and adds that his mentors, “big, heavy-set German boys . . . drank a lot of booze, too, but they still had that touch” (p. 43). These and other memories offer glimpses of a skilled-craft-based industrial culture that flourished during the hrst half of this century. But such compelling memories are few and far between. Not every informant is either an expressive interpreter 322 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE of personal and social experience or a good storyteller, and this poses at least one problem concerning work of this kind. In their introductory material, Michael Matejka and Greg Koos touch on a number of themes they feel are representative of life in the C&A shops. But these themes are not always clearly supported by the interview transcripts that follow. In an industry marked by repeated layoffs, can one really conclude that there were “overall good relations with management” because “foreman and bosses were referred to in familiar terms by most” (p. xxii)? On the basis of my own research among former workers at the Lima Locomotive Works, the understanding of shopworker/management relationships is com­ plicated by the historical experience of ethnicity, family, piece-rate production, and interpersonal skills, and the tendency of former workers to remember the past in rosy terms. Such complex and fascinating issues cannot be addressed through the collection of oral history transcripts alone. The memories of everyday life are interesting so far as they go, but I found myself wanting more, namely, the interpretive dimension of a thoughtful social history that combines oral history with a more extensive and critical exploration of the topic. Hans Houshower Mr. Houshower is folklorist and historian for American House, Inc., in Lima, Ohio. 60 Years withMen andMachines. By Fred H. Colvin. Bradley, Ill.: Lindsay Publications (P.O. Box 12, 60915), 1988. Pp. ix + 297; illustrations, index. $24.95 (cloth); $14.95 (paper). Originally published in 1947, this book contains the professional rec­ ollections of a central figure in the American machine tool industry. Perhaps best known to historians of technology for his series of articles on the...