In 1911 as progressivism moved toward its zenith, the state of California granted women the right to vote. However, women?s political involvement in California?s public life did not begin with suffrage, nor did it end there. ø Across the state, women had been deeply involved in politics long before suffrage, and?although their tactics and objectives changed?they remained deeply involved thereafter. California Women and Politics examines the wide array of women?s public activism from the 1850s to 1929?including the temperance movement, moral reform, conservation,øtrade unionism, settlement work, philanthropy, wartime volunteerism, and more?and reveals unexpected contours to women?s politics in California. The contributors consider not only white middle-class women?s organizing but also the politics of working-class women and women of color, emphasizing that there was not one monolithic ?women?s agenda,? but rather a multiplicity of women?s voices demanding recognition for a variety of causes.

In Making American Industry Safe for Democracy, a work of historical sociology, Jeffrey Haydu explores how basic political and economic relationships were restabilized in the aftermath of the war. Haydu compares U.S. efforts to reconstruct an open-shop regime that excluded trade unions with the reform of industrial relations in Britain and Germany. Then he compares industries within the United States and traces the extraordinarily complex manner in which prewar class relations and wartime crisis led the state to restructure employee representation. In this important study of new strategies for managing work and conflict that were emerging by the 1920s, the author also forces us to reassess the role of organization in shaping working-class mobilization and protest.

From the California Indians who labored in the Spanish missions to the immigrant workers on Silicon Valley's high-tech assembly lines, California's work force has had a complex and turbulent past, marked by some of the sharpest and most significant battles fought by America's working people. This anthology presents the work of scholars who are forging a new brand of social history—one that reflects the diversity of California's labor force by paying close attention to the multicultural and gendered aspects of the past. Readers will discover a refreshing chronological breadth to this volume, as well as a balanced examination of both rural and urban communities. Daniel Cornford's excellent general introduction provides essential historical background while his brief introductions to each chapter situate the essays in their larger contexts. A list of further readings appears at the end of each chapter. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1995.

From the depression of the 1890s through World War I, construction tradesman held an important place in San Francisco's economic, political, and social life. Michael Kazin's award-winning study delves into how the city’s Building Trades Council (BTC) created, accumulated, used, and lost their power. He traces the rise of the BTC into a force that helped govern San Francisco, controlled its potential progress, and articulated an ideology that made sense of the changes sweeping the West and the country. Believing themselves the equals of officeholders and corporate managers, these working and retired craftsmen pursued and protected their own power while challenging conservatives and urban elites for the right to govern. What emerges is a long-overdue look at building trades as a force in labor history within the dramatic story of how the city's 25,000 building workers exercised power on the job site and within the halls of government, until the forces of reaction all but destroyed the BTC.