Labor's Home Front

Labor's Home Front PDF Author: Andrew E. Kersten
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814748244
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
One of the oldest, strongest, and largest labor organizations in the U.S., the American Federation of Labor (AFL) had 4 million members in over 20,000 union locals during World War II. The AFL played a key role in wartime production and was a major actor in the contentious relationship between the state, organized labor, and the working class in the 1940s. The war years are pivotal in the history of American labor, but books on the AFL’s experiences are scant, with far more on the radical Congress of Industrial Unions (CIO). Andrew E. Kersten closes this gap with Labor’s Home Front, challenging us to reconsider the AFL and its influence on twentieth-century history. Kersten details the union's contributions to wartime labor relations, its opposition to the open shop movement, divided support for fair employment and equity for women and African American workers, its constant battles with the CIO, and its significant efforts to reshape American society, economics, and politics after the war. Throughout, Kersten frames his narrative with an original, central theme: that despite its conservative nature, the AFL was dramatically transformed during World War II, becoming a more powerful progressive force that pushed for liberal change.

Labor's Home Front

Labor's Home Front PDF Author: Andrew E. Kersten
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814748244
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Get Book

Book Description
One of the oldest, strongest, and largest labor organizations in the U.S., the American Federation of Labor (AFL) had 4 million members in over 20,000 union locals during World War II. The AFL played a key role in wartime production and was a major actor in the contentious relationship between the state, organized labor, and the working class in the 1940s. The war years are pivotal in the history of American labor, but books on the AFL’s experiences are scant, with far more on the radical Congress of Industrial Unions (CIO). Andrew E. Kersten closes this gap with Labor’s Home Front, challenging us to reconsider the AFL and its influence on twentieth-century history. Kersten details the union's contributions to wartime labor relations, its opposition to the open shop movement, divided support for fair employment and equity for women and African American workers, its constant battles with the CIO, and its significant efforts to reshape American society, economics, and politics after the war. Throughout, Kersten frames his narrative with an original, central theme: that despite its conservative nature, the AFL was dramatically transformed during World War II, becoming a more powerful progressive force that pushed for liberal change.

Home Front U.S.A.

Home Front U.S.A. PDF Author: Allan M. Winkler
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 111882265X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
New scholarship on World War II continues to broaden ourunderstanding. With each passing year we know more about thetriumphs and the tragedies of America’s involvement in themomentous conflict. Tapping into this greater awareness of theaccomplishments of both soldiers and civilians and a betterrecognition of the consequences of decisions made, Allan Winklerpresents the third edition of his highly popular series volume. Informed by the latest historical literature and featuring manynew thoughtfully chosen photographs, the third edition of HomeFront U.S.A. continues to ponder the question of "the good war,"the moral implications of the use of the atomic bomb, theimplications of expanding wartime roles for women, AfricanAmericans, American Jews, the imprisonment of Japanese Americans atthe hands of the federal government, and the experiences of themany other people who, though relegated to the fringe of mainstreamsociety, contributed in important ways to the nation's successfulprosecution of its greatest challenge.

Home Front Battles

Home Front Battles PDF Author: Charles C. Bolton
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197655610
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Home Front Battles examines the many effects of World War II economic and military mobilization on the Deep South. It also underscores one of the primary home front battles, which began with the passage of the Selective Training and Service Act in 1940 and the creation of the Fair Employment Practices Committee in 1941, banning discriminatory military training and employment practices and making it clear that the federal government would be promoting the ideal of nondiscrimination as part of its wartime mobilization efforts. In the Deep South, where race relations were already tense, these directives and southern tradition clashed.

Planning the Home Front

Planning the Home Front PDF Author: Sarah Jo Peterson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022602556X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
Before Franklin Roosevelt declared December 7 to be a “date which will live in infamy”; before American soldiers landed on D-Day; before the B-17s, B-24s, and B-29s roared over Europe and Asia, there was Willow Run. Located twenty-five miles west of Detroit, the bomber plant at Willow Run and the community that grew up around it attracted tens of thousands of workers from across the United States during World War II. Together, they helped build the nation’s “Arsenal of Democracy,” but Willow Run also became the site of repeated political conflicts over how to build suburbia while mobilizing for total war. In Planning the Home Front, Sarah Jo Peterson offers readers a portrait of the American people—industrialists and labor leaders, federal officials and municipal leaders, social reformers, industrial workers, and their families—that lays bare the foundations of community, the high costs of racism, and the tangled process of negotiation between New Deal visionaries and wartime planners. By tying the history of suburbanization to that of the home front, Peterson uncovers how the United States planned and built industrial regions in the pursuit of war, setting the stage for the suburban explosion that would change the American landscape when the war was won.

Hitler's Home Front

Hitler's Home Front PDF Author: Jill Stephenson
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9781852854423
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 548

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Book Description
This is a groundbreaking new study of an overlooked area of Second World War History.

Class Struggle on the Home Front

Class Struggle on the Home Front PDF Author: G. Cassano
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230246990
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
Home/Front examines the gendered exploitation of labor in the household from a postmodern Marxian perspective. The authors of this volume use the anti-foundationalist Marxian economic theories first formulated by Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff to explore power, domination, and exploitation in the modern household.

Design for Victory

Design for Victory PDF Author: William L. Bird
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
ISBN: 9781568981406
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
The poster - inexpensive, colorful, and immediate - was an ideal medium for delivering messages about Americans' duties on the home front during World War II. Design for Victory presents more than 150 of these stunning images - many never reproduced since their first issue - culled from the collections of the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. William L. Bird, Jr. and Harry R. Rubenstein delve beneath the surface of these colorful graphics, telling the stories behind their production and revealing how posters fulfilled the goals and needs of their creators. The authors describe the history of how specific posters were conceived and received, focusing on the workings of the wartime advertising profession and demonstrating how posters often reflected uneasy relations between labor and management.

The Home Front

The Home Front PDF Author: D W Hanneken
Publisher: Ten16 Press
ISBN: 9781645381273
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
Set in rural Wisconsin during 1944-1945, this story centers around Maggie Wentworth, a wife, mother and farmer who struggles to keep her life in balance after her physically abusive husband is shipped to Europe during WWII. She has to deal with the challenges of an aging father, a young son, and the temptation of an attractive German POW.

Waging War on the Home Front

Waging War on the Home Front PDF Author: Chauncey Del French
Publisher: Oregon State University Press
ISBN: 9780870710483
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The United States' entry into World War II necessitated rapid mobilization of the country's shipbuilding industry. A massive national effort was needed to build ships faster than they were being sunk by the enemy. This book recounts in intelligent and delightful detail how that need was met by the home-front workforce. Chauncey French and his wife, Jessie, were among the hundreds of thousands of workers recruited by Henry Kaiser for the nation's wartime emergency shipbuilding program. The memoir that French began while working as a pipe fitter in the Kaiser shipyard in Vancouver, Washington, is a compelling account of how the war changed the lives of those at home. His first-hand stories relate the sometimes tense and often humorous intermingling of people-including women and African Americans in unprecedented numbers-from different backgrounds who learned to work together for a common cause. The editors have selected and annotated more than 150 illustrations that capture the human drama, teamwork, and camaraderie that made the incredible level of production at the shipyards possible. Introductory essays, an appendix, notes, additional reading, and an index augment the author's lively narrative. Book jacket.

The Northern Home Front during the Civil War

The Northern Home Front during the Civil War PDF Author: Paul A. Cimbala
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 153150194X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
With a new preface and updated historiographical essay. Based on recent scholarship and deep research in primary sources, especially the letters and diaries of “ordinary people,” The Northern Home Front during the Civil War is the first full narrative history and analysis of the northern home front in almost a quarter-century. It examines the mobilization, recruitment, management, politics, costs, and experience of war from the perspective of the home front, with special attention to the ways the war affected the ideas, identities, interests, and issues shaping people’s lives, and vice versa. The book looks closely at people’s responses to war’s demands, whether in supporting the Union cause or opposing it, and it measures the ways the war transformed society and economy or simply reconfirmed ideas and reinforced practices already underway. As The Northern Home Front during the Civil War reveals, issues and concerns of emancipation, conscription, civil liberties, economic policies and practices, religion, party politics, war management, popular culture, and work were all part of what Lincoln rightly termed “a People’s Contest” and as much as the armies in the field determined the outcome of the nation’s ordeal by fire. As The Northern Home Front during the Civil War shows, understanding the experience of the women and men on the home front is essential to realizing Walt Whitman’s oft-quoted call to get “the real war” into the books.