Militants and Migrants: Immigrant Workers in the United States, 1880–1920

Abstract

Even this long after the centennial of her birthday, it is difficult these days to avoid the Statue of Liberty. Continuing immigration reminds us that for all of its problems the United States is still a magnet for poor and oppressed people throughout the world. The symbolic importance of the statue has seldom been more poignantly displayed than in Tiananmin Square in the spring of 1989. The Chinese students' Liberty was more an amalgam of images than an exact replica, but its likeness to the lady in New York Harbor was clear. America's image in the eyes of immigrant workers has certainly changed over the years, however, while the reality of immigrant working-class life has confronted the newcomers with both problems and opportunities. In October 1986 a group of American and European scholars gathered in Paris for a conference to commemorate the centennial of the Statue of Liberty. AI 'Ombre de la Statue de la Libert? is a collection of the conference papers grouped around four broad themes: the changing image of America among European workers; the immigrants' actual experience of America, with an emphasis on the trans-Atlantic dimension of social movements and intellectual influences; immigrant radicalism; and, of course, republicanism. One persistent theme in the essays concerned with America's image is its transformation from a sort of republican utopia in the mid-nineteenth century to a grotesque capitalist giant by the 1880s. This metaphorical evolution is hardly