Immigrants, not native-born whites, composed most of the American industrial workforce.

Evidence

One central fact about the American working class in this period, and during subsequent decades, too, must be remembered: it was largely composed of immigrants. The working force in the steel mills, the coal mines, the textile factories, the clothing shop was overwhelmingly foreign-born, and that part of it that was not was concentrated in supervisory jobs and in the more highly paid skilled occupations. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 988

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• SHARE: Nate Silver-type data point for a labor-history friend who studies American union composition.

Related

• Early American industrial labor was overwhelmingly foreign-born (similarity 0.92)
• Black agrarian labor funded America’s industrialization; European immigrants carried labor traditions with them. (similarity 0.82)
• Immigrants founded and dominated America’s socialist movement from its first convention. (similarity 0.81)
• Migratory labor has always been central to European economies (similarity 0.79)
• American immigrant workers aspired to become capitalists rather than a laboring class (similarity 0.79)
• Marxist categories presumed a white American working class. (similarity 0.79)
• Irish were strong presence in skilled mechanic trades, not just laboring jobs (similarity 0.78)
• The 1919 American Communist movement was overwhelmingly immigrant and non-English-speaking (similarity 0.78)