This book's catchy title expresses the ruthlessness and extremes of the economic divide established during the Gilded Age. “Wretched refuse” suggests the way capitalists sought to deploy the world's poor as exploitable labor for profit, with an ironic nod to Emma Lazarus's poem. Zeidel chronicles capitalists’ constant search for workers who would take the lowest-paid and most dangerous work in the age of industrialization. They both needed and often reviled the immigrants they hired. When these recruits participated in strikes or were rebellious, the elite labeled them tools of foreign ideas and un-American radicals. Capitalists’ overt efforts to undermine labor campaigns and deny labor rights through a divide-and-conquer strategy in key industries contributed to a dynamic that led to political repression and immigration restriction, Zeidel argues. The media and influential commentators of the era might criticize the rich, but they strategically targeted the labor radicals and immigrants in ways that...
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