BLACKSMITHS AND WELDERS: IDENTITY AND PHENOMENAL CHANGE.

This article focuses on the history of metalworking industries and unions in the United States. In 1904, blacksmiths held a charter from the American Federation of Labor and had jurisdiction over heavy-metal forging and welding work, except for that claimed by the Carriage and Wagon Workers. The cultural change from industrialization affected workers' ideas about their place in the social order and their relation to other workers, as well as their strategies for adjusting to new conditions. The International Brotherhood of Blacksmiths and Helpers' reaction to new acetylene welding apparatus illustrates workers' shifting viewpoint and the change in American society in terms of it being a real system and a phenomenal system.