The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California

Front Cover
University of California Press, 1995 - History - 293 pages
Winner, Silver Medal, California Book Awards—Commonwealth Club of California

With a foreword by William Deverell

The Indispensable Enemy examines the anti-Chinese confrontation on the Pacific Coast as it was experienced and rationalized by the white majority. Focusing on the Democratic party and the labor movement of California through the forty-year period after the Civil War, Alexander Saxton explores aspects of the Jacksonian background which proves crucial to an understanding of what occurred in California. The Indispensable Enemy looks beyond the turn of the 19th century to trace results of the sequence of events in the West for the labor movement as a whole, influencing events that led to the crystallization of an American concept of national identity.
 

Contents

IDEOLOGICAL BAGGAGE
19
MINES AND RAILROADS
46
REHABILITATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
67
Interconnections
75
THE ROAD TO REUNION
92
THE WORKINGMENS PARTY
113
WORKINGMEN AND THE SYSTEM
138
THE SOCIALIST ACADEMY
157
DEADLOCK OF LEADERSHIP
179
THE FEDERATED TRADES
201
THE PROGRESSIVE
229
A FORWARD GLANCE
258
INDEX
285
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About the author (1995)

Alexander Saxton (1919-2012) was the author of The Rise and Fall of the White Republic (1991), and the novels Bright Web in the Darkness (California reissue 1997) and Great Midland. He was Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Los Angeles.

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