Capital’s Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen, and Employers in the Long Nineteenth Century by Chad E. Pearson (review)

Reviewed by: Capital’s Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen, and Employers in the Long Nineteenth Century by Chad E. Pearson Katherine J. Lennard (bio) Capital’s Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen, and Employers in the Long Nineteenth Century. By Chad E. Pearson. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2022. Pp. 324. Paper, 34. 95. ) Chad E. Pearson’s new book is a history of antilabor activism in the United States during the long nineteenth century, but it is, perhaps more crucially, a series of categorical provocations. Pearson invites readers to reconsider the definition of such terms as “terrorist” and to think about “labor-management conflicts” in a more expansive way. In order to do this, the author provides a series of case studies that illuminate the self- conscious ways that elite white men developed oppositional organizations to challenge the collective power of workers nationwide. Scholars working outside the subfield of labor history may find the way Pearson is able to get beyond the limitations of such a term as “violence” to be one of the most useful dimensions of this book. In our current moment, “violence” is an increasingly baggy term, one that encompasses not only intentional acts of physical force, but also the slower-moving operations of a state, or even seemingly benign interpersonal exchanges that could have outsized effects on one participant. Pearson pulls readers out of this stew by calling attention to “the ways that numerous powerful individuals and employers. . . used violence against ordinary people to achieve their managerial and societal goals” (2). These ways, Pearson argues, should be characterized as “repression, ” an active, intentional process that he further divides into three subcategories of behaviors: “hard forms of repression, ” such as physical attacks; “soft methods of punishment, ” or workplace disciplinary tactics that could have lasting consequences on victims; and “hybrid techniques, ” which include organized intimidation campaigns (2–3). Pearson deploys this framework to show how a broad cohort of white American men used these tactics to maintain social, cultural, and economic power in the face of an increasingly empowered and culturally diverse workforce. What quickly becomes clear is that localized instances of labor End Page 148 repression reflected broader cultural currents mobilized by networks of elites working in their own interest, abetted by circles of white men with aspirations of belonging to this elusive class. Whether practicing extralegal vigilantism or what Pearson calls “managerial tyranny, ” these men terrorized workers and profoundly shaped the conditions of their everyday labor and lives. Each chapter focuses on a case study that provides a different view into the constitution of a social order guided by elite capitalists. Readers encounter actions against formerly enslaved sharecroppers across the South, unionizing typesetters in Missouri, miners in Idaho, cigar factory workers in Florida, and increasingly national antilabor campaigns coordinated through mass media outlets. Unlike most labor histories, the central actors in these narratives are the antilabor activists—the bosses, financiers, business and property owners— he categorizes as “private sector terrorists. ” This study argues that these elites not only directed but also participated in hard forms of repression against workers. Still, these men did not work alone. Throughout the case studies, Pearson provides examples of elite collusion with the category of sympathetic governmental authorities he calls “enablers” and the media professionals he calls “narrative creators. ” In doing so, Pearson pushes against the common refrain that organized labor was propelled by “outside agitators. ” Instead, Pearson argues, these elite activists were themselves working to promote and naturalize a perspective that was profoundly “outside” that of the workers they sought to control. He defines these perspectives as those developed in “highly exclusive spaces completely inaccessible to ordinary people” (187). While this model is particularly pronounced in the early twentieth century, Pearson argues throughout that elites subjected working people to their own visions of social order through their conception and direction of organizations—such as Citizens’ Councils— that brutally enforced their worldview. While Pearson wants readers to think expansively about the tactics of elite terrorism, he also traces a change over time in the ways that these historical actors publicly characterized their work. The men he profiles in the first chapters of the book embrace a muscular vigilantism, as Law and Order. . .