ABSTRACT
Much of the literature on immigrant history has made two characteristic mistakes with regard to the class positions of migrants in this period. First, it has tended to assume that all new immigrants were members of the unskilled working class who were relegated to working with their bodies under miserable conditions and for low pay. These things were true for many immigrants, but not all, and not for all groups equally. Second, the literature on immigration has treated men as immigrants and women as incidental baggage. As a result of the first mistake, some immigration historians have tended to focus on the history of the union movement as if it were the central part of the history of immigrants.1 It is true that the majority of immigrants in this period became industrial workers in the United States, even when they came from rural backgrounds in Europe, Asia, or Latin America. For them, and for nativeborn industrial workers, the union movement was a godsend, a much needed way to fight the degradation of their lives thrust on them by industrial capitalism. But many immigrants, including a majority of some ethnic groups such as English, Jews, Scandinavians, and Japanese, brought with them considerable social capital that made their entry into the U.S. economy considerably easier. Even when they began their lives in America doing body work, quite quickly they were able to enter the ranks of the petty middle class.
