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.

"California's working people have at last found the historians they deserve. Individually, the essays in this rich collection are first-rate and, together, they show to fine advantage the scope and power of the new California labor history. Readers couldn't hope for a better introduction to the subject."—David Brody, Emeritus, University of California, Davis

"A wonderful addition to both California social history and U.S. labor history. Not only is it invaluable as a classroom text, but it serves as a pathbreaking model for the conceptualization of a multiethnic working-class history of the United States."—Dana Frank, University of California, Santa Cruz