ABSTRACT
Labor historians are only beginning to appreciate the cultural dimensions of working-class life. Progress has been slow principally because students of working people find it difficult to transcend the legacy left by John R. Commons and his associates. Most working people resided in the county’s industrial suburbs, which formed a semi-circular ring around the old port city. They clustered according to occupation, ethnicity, or both, and lived in close proximity to their place of employment. Most artisans did their drinking in pubs, and pubs probably assumed greater importance in their life after some employers began to prohibit drinking in the shop. Working-class pubs had a style all their own. Signs with piquant inscriptions hung above entranceways and stood in bold contrast to the sedate placards which graced the vestibules of middle-class establishments. Cockfighting, a popular spectator sport in colonial times but eschewed by people of social standing thereafter, prospered in the working-class pubs of antebellum Philadelphia.
