A B S T R A C T
From a single case – when stonecutters and pavers attacked strikebreakers in Porto Alegre – and comparing the workers in several cities (with several kinds of sources, from several archives, from several places), The author argues that similar life conditions and permanent migration created a labor market and a labor network, whose central point was the closed shop. But the workers’ illiteracy was a problem on managing the labor network, and even political concepts. The illiterates’ feelings of being participants in trade unions were clear, if they manfully beat those who tried to defeat the closed shop.
