Based on the most recent local research, this revisionist work surveys the history of workers in the heartland of German industry before World War I and reassesses the origins, development, and problems of the German labor movement. The study focuses on the experience of Ruhr miners between the 1880s and 1914, when a booming demand for coal sent a huge influx of workers to the district. Contrasting the militance and solidarity of the workers with their relative inability to turn it into an effective industrial or political took, Hickey calls into question recent assumptions about the strength of the German working class and raises important issues for the history of 20th-century Germany.