As Goes Bethlehem

As Goes Bethlehem PDF Author: Jill A. Schennum
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
ISBN: 0826505902
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
The steel industry played a central role in building post–World War II economic success in the US and in defining the parameters of the post–World War II social contract. As these long-term processes both preceded and contributed to the Great Recession, a new capitalism—one in which banks and the credit system took precedence over industrial production—changed the lives of many American workers, including steelworkers. As Goes Bethlehem raises important questions about why workers and their unions were not able to successfully contest this attack on industrial labor, instead settling for best navigating a long downward trajectory. Through the experiences and reflections of steelworkers, Jill A. Schennum demonstrates the significance of work, and particularly of industrial work, in giving meaning to people’s lives, identities, and sense of worth. She uses workers’ narratives and voices to show the importance of work space, time, and social relations, rejecting dominant interpretations of blue-collar workers as alienated from their work but well-paid and co-opted by a middle-class standard of living. Schennum covers thirty-five years of investment and disinvestment, managerial initiatives, transfer decisions, layoffs and downsizings, external transfers, the eventual bankruptcy of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, and movement into retirement, unemployment, and new postindustrial jobs. The very solidarities, rights of citizenship, and rule of law forged in the mill and built on by the union were constructed, in part, through exclusions based on race, ethnicity, gender, and region. These lines of fracture were mobilized to undermine working-class strength in the postindustrial period. Through the experiences of African American, Puerto Rican, coal country, and women workers in the steel mills, this book explores these issues of fracture and solidarity.

As Goes Bethlehem

As Goes Bethlehem PDF Author: Jill A. Schennum
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
ISBN: 0826505902
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 418

Get Book

Book Description
The steel industry played a central role in building post–World War II economic success in the US and in defining the parameters of the post–World War II social contract. As these long-term processes both preceded and contributed to the Great Recession, a new capitalism—one in which banks and the credit system took precedence over industrial production—changed the lives of many American workers, including steelworkers. As Goes Bethlehem raises important questions about why workers and their unions were not able to successfully contest this attack on industrial labor, instead settling for best navigating a long downward trajectory. Through the experiences and reflections of steelworkers, Jill A. Schennum demonstrates the significance of work, and particularly of industrial work, in giving meaning to people’s lives, identities, and sense of worth. She uses workers’ narratives and voices to show the importance of work space, time, and social relations, rejecting dominant interpretations of blue-collar workers as alienated from their work but well-paid and co-opted by a middle-class standard of living. Schennum covers thirty-five years of investment and disinvestment, managerial initiatives, transfer decisions, layoffs and downsizings, external transfers, the eventual bankruptcy of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, and movement into retirement, unemployment, and new postindustrial jobs. The very solidarities, rights of citizenship, and rule of law forged in the mill and built on by the union were constructed, in part, through exclusions based on race, ethnicity, gender, and region. These lines of fracture were mobilized to undermine working-class strength in the postindustrial period. Through the experiences of African American, Puerto Rican, coal country, and women workers in the steel mills, this book explores these issues of fracture and solidarity.

Bethlehem Steel

Bethlehem Steel PDF Author: Kenneth Warren
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822973766
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
In the late 19th century, rails from Bethlehem Steel helped build the United States into the world's foremost economy. During the 1890s, Bethlehem became America's leading supplier of heavy armaments, and by 1914, it had pioneered new methods of structural steel manufacture that transformed urban skylines. Demand for its war materials during World War I provided the finance for Bethlehem to become the world's second-largest steel maker. As late as 1974, the company achieved record earnings of $342 million. But in the 1980s and 1990s, through wildly fluctuating times, losses outweighed gains, and Bethlehem struggled to downsize and reinvest in newer technologies. By 2001, in financial collapse, it reluctantly filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Two years later, International Steel Group acquired the company for $1.5 billion.In Bethlehem Steel, Kenneth Warren presents an original and compelling history of a leading American company, examining the numerous factors contributing to the growth of this titan and those that eventually felled it—along with many of its competitors in the U.S. steel industry.Warren considers the investment failures, indecision and slowness to abandon or restructure outdated "integrated" plants plaguing what had become an insular, inward-looking management group. Meanwhile competition increased from more economical "mini mills" at home and from new, technologically superior plants overseas, which drove world prices down, causing huge flows of imported steel into the United States.Bethlehem Steel provides a fascinating case study in the transformation of a major industry from one of American dominance to one where America struggled to survive.

Augustine Came to Kent

Augustine Came to Kent PDF Author: Barbara Willard
Publisher: Bethlehem Books
ISBN: 1883937213
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 122

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Book Description
It is the year 597 and Pope Gregory is sending a select number of his monks, led by Fr. Augustine, to re-evangelize England. Young Wolf, born in that land but raised in Rome, accompanies his father, Wolfstan, who goes as a guide and interpreter. Though the King of Kent's wife is a Christian, the missionaries from Rome do not know whether they will be welcomed, tolerated or martyred. In a story full of adventure, Wolf meets Fritha, a Saxon girl whose life and destiny are soon closely bound up with his own. Events, significant in the history of Christianity, are vividly brought to life by this veteran writer of historical fiction. Illustrated by Mary Beth Owens.

30 Years Under the Beam

30 Years Under the Beam PDF Author: Frank Behum
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780982258378
Category : Iron and steel workers
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"A history of the last years of Bethlehem Steel, the world's second largest steel company, told by steelworkers in interviews with laborers and management. Public perception was that the union employees were responsible for its downfall, with inflated wages and benefits. Here they make their case to the contrary"--Provided by publisher.

Bethlehem

Bethlehem PDF Author: Karen Kelly
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250201500
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
With the writing chops of Ian McEwan and the story-craft of Lisa Wingate, Karen Kelly weaves a shattering debut about two intertwined families and the secrets that they buried during the gilded, glory days of Bethlehem, PA. “A haunting debut.” —Georgia Hunter, New York Times bestselling author of We Were the Lucky Ones “Karen Kelly is the real deal.” —Mark Sullivan, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Beneath a Scarlet Sky A young woman arrives at the grand ancestral home of her husband’s family, hoping to fortify her cracking marriage. But what she finds is not what she expected: tragedy haunts the hallways, whispering of heartache and a past she never knew existed. Inspired by the true titans of the steel-boom era, Bethlehem is a story of temptation and regret, a story of secrets and the cost of keeping them, a story of forgiveness. It is the story of two complex women—thrown together in the name of family—who, in coming to understand each other, come finally to understand themselves.

Five Bushel Farm

Five Bushel Farm PDF Author: Elizabeth Coatsworth
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Away Goes Sally

Away Goes Sally PDF Author: Elizabeth Coatsworth
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781883937836
Category : Aunts
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In late eighteenth-century Massachusetts, Sally, an orphan living on a farm with her three aunts and two uncles, is excited when, after deciding to relocate in Maine, the family sets out on the long and adventurous winter journey taking with them a little house on runners so that her oldest aunt may never have to leave her own fireside behind.

Downright Dencey

Downright Dencey PDF Author: Caroline Dale Snedeker
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
How an impulsive little Quaker girl threw a stone at a friendless boy and the troubles she had before she was fully forgiven. Told in the spirit of the time and place--Nantucket, over a hundred years ago.

Bethlehem

Bethlehem PDF Author: Nicholas Blincoe
Publisher: Bold Type Books
ISBN: 1568585845
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
"[Bethlehem] brings within reach 11,000 years of history, centering on the beloved town's unique place in the world. Blincoe's love of Bethlehem is compelling, even as he does not shy away from the complexities of its chronicle." -- President Jimmy Carter Bethlehem is so suffused with history and myth that it feels like an unreal city even to those who call it home. For many, Bethlehem remains the little town at the edge of the desert described in Biblical accounts. Today, the city is hemmed in by a wall and surrounded by forty-one Israeli settlements and hostile settlers and soldiers. Nicholas Blincoe tells the town's history through the visceral experience of living there, taking readers through its stone streets and desert wadis, its monasteries, aqueducts, and orchards to show the city from every angle and era. His portrait of Bethlehem sheds light on one of the world's most intractable political problems, and he maintains that if the long thread winding back to the city's ancient past is severed, the chances of an end to the Palestine-Israel conflict will be lost with it.

The Fair American

The Fair American PDF Author: Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth
Publisher: Bethlehem Books
ISBN: 9781883937850
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
Pierre, sole survivor of an aristocratic family in the French Revolution, escapes to America aboard the Fair American with the aid of Sally, Andrew, and Andrew's father.