THREE GENERATIONS OF POVERTY: A NOTE ON THE LIFE OF AN UNSKILLED WORKER'S FAMILY.

American Labor historians have until recently written labor history as a history of trade unions. Within the last few years, however, scholars have begun to look beyond the activities of particular unions and biographies of particular union leaders into the social, cultural and ethnic environments of American workers. This attempt is frustrated by the lack of written documents left behind by the ordinary worker. The trade-union newspapers and manuscripts, especially of the industrial workers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, although filling gaps in knowledge of union history, tell practically nothing about lives and informal activities of workers, either organized or unorganized. One knows little about their marriage habits, relationships with their parents, what they did during lay-offs, or how long they lived at home. Much of the material that historians have about the lives of the ordinary worker comes from the pens of middle-class investigators. Unfortunately, this material often tends to be sensational and of questionable reliability.