History yielded no “typical” working-class experience for David Montgomery. It seemed vital to document the great diversity of this story in all aspects of life, and then to see how these diverse experiences related to broader narratives.

His determination to document the complexity of working-class life is displayed most dramatically in the first three chapters of his major work of US labor history, The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865–1925, where he analyzed the work life and mentalities of skilled workers, common laborers, and factory operatives. This detailed examination of the workplace and community lent to his approach the “gritty” quality that many readers have observed and the “pointillist” methodology that he affirmed.

The connections in his work between race, ethnicity, and other forms of social difference have not always been recognized, but they have been at the center of his scholarship from the outset. Such social differences could create divisions and even conflict, as they did in Philadelphia during early industrialization, and they certainly shaped the character of the labor movement in the United States throughout its history. Montgomery’s deep awareness of race and racism as fundamental realities of American life and working-class experience are embedded in his work, from his early investigations of working-class cultural conflicts in the antebellum period to his documentation of the limits of Reconstruction, the racialization of immigrants, and the imperial reshuffling of class and race identities within the enduring project of capitalist global expansion.