"A valuable portrait of the craftsmen, journeymen, factory hands, and laborers in a major industrial city during the antebellum period. Focuses well on working conditions and on the workingman's religious and community life." --The New Leader "A fresh and generally persuasive analysis of the dynamics of the American working class in a formative period of American industrialization, an analysis that transcends the boundaries of labor organizations toward a broader social and economic perspective. It deserves close attention." --Winterthur Portfolio "Bruce Laurie's illumination of the contours of working class culture in antebellum Philadelphia is a tour de force in the rapidly maturing literature of the 'new' social history..." --Pennsylvania History
