JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Tue, In the midst of the catastrophic depression of the 1890s, American Federation of Labor (AFL) president Samuel Gompers griped that labor was tired of "Sympathy without relief, Mustard without beef." America's workers, he insisted, wanted "more".-"more leisure, more rest, more opportunity ... for going to the parks, of having better homes, of reading books, of creating more desires." "More" was the AFLs official answer to the labor question of the late nineteenth century: the question of how to reconcile a permanent class of wageworkers with a nominally republican society. Faced with proletarianization, drastic economic instability, worker unrest, and a volatile job market, the AFL leadership did not call for an end to wage labor. Instead, it demanded higher wages and shorter hours for workers, demands that were, in the lexicon of the AFL, self-consciously "practical."' Although those "pure and simple" demands were couched in economic terms, they moved past narrowly construed monetary concerns to larger questions of social welfare, personal liberty, and full participation in society.2 As Gompers explained to the North American Review's readers in 1892, "We tacitly declare that political liberty with[out] economic independence is illusory and deceptive, and that . .. only . .. as we gain eco-Rosanne Currarino is assistant professor of history at Queen's University.For comments and suggestions, I would like to thank
