<Articles>A World of Immigrant Workers in the Gilded Age ： Irish Workers in Chicago

個人情報保護のため削除部分あり一九世紀後半のアメリカの労働者の多くは、ヨーロッパの多様な国からの移民であった。そのため、当時のアメリカ社会を考える場合、階級と民族集団のかかわりを視野に入れなければならない。本稿では、これまでの移民史と労働史の諸成果を総合して、移民労働者の意識と行動における階級と民族的紐帯とのかかわりを考察した。ギルデッド・エイジのシカゴのアイルランド系労働者は、民族集団のコミュニティの中で、彼等の伝統や文化の維持を第一に考えていたわけではなかった。しかし、民族的紐帯が階級意識を高めたと結論することもできない。民族集団のコミュニティの階層分化と労働運動の進展の中で、コミュニティの自助努力には限界があり、職場では労働者としての意識を育てていた。しかし、政治に参加する際は、ボス政治家をとうして、労働の問題をも民族集団のコミェニティを基盤として要求する道を多くのアイルランド系労働者が選択したのである。Recently labor historians argue that ethnic subcultures are one of the major components of "working-class culture", for the majority of workers in nineteenth-century America were immigrants or children of foreign-born parents. The world of immigrant workers depicted by labor historians, however, is often considerably different from that studied by ethnic historians. Labor historians only emphasize class-related elements in each ethnic culture, while ethnic historians lay stress on the coherence and continuity of each ethnic community rather than on class divisions within each community or the class consciousness over ethnic boundaries. In other words, the perspective of ethnic historians is incompatible with that of labor historians concerning relations of "class" and "ethnicity" in American history. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to synthesize studies of labor history and ethnic history, and to rebuild the world of immigrant workers in the Gilded Age, focusing on Irish workers in Chicago. In Gilded-Age Chicago, Irish workers depended on the self-help of the Irish community. However, this had limits, as both the Irish community and their workplace experienced a dynamic change at that time. In the Irish community, a "new" middle class emerged. As a result, various views on the way of dealing with their daily problems and of reacting towards American society conflicted with each other within the com- munity. On the other hand, at their workplace, Irish workers developed a working-class consciousness through hard struggles for better working conditions in the 1870s and 1880s. In this process, some Irish workers related their ethnic loyalty to their class consciousness. For instance, some of those who organized movements for Irish nationalism became local leaders of the Knights of Labor and labor politics. Yet the majority of Irish workers did not follow them. They participated in urban politics not as workers but as members of the ethnic community, though they took part in strikes and demonstrations at their workplace as workers. This does not necessarily mean that they were conservative in nature. Rather, it is assumed that they found a more realistic way of dealing with their urgent problems in American society