-Could you expand on that? Unions were regulaly opposed by armed force in -the 19th century, so belonging to one seems like it had to be pretty -engaging. And workers in general -- i.e., people in general -- voted at -higher rates then than they do now, even in the late 19th century, when -national politics were even more venal and empty of content than they are -now. So it's not clear at first sight what you're referring to. Do you -mean that their horizons were more local?
Except for a few brief periods, workers and unions were often disengaged from politics, even when they were very engaged in fighting the state which repressed their strikes. Most political formations were based around religious and post-Civil War veteran identities more often than as labor identities.
As for workers voting in greater numbers than today, that's patently false. Female workers could not vote at all in any but a handful of states and black workers in the South were increasingly barred from voting. And to the extent that white workers voted, it was often as part of a reward for machine participation, not as a higher form of political mobilization.
Nathan