The Clothing Workers of Chicago, 1910-1922

The Clothing Workers of Chicago, 1910-1922 PDF Author: Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. Research Department
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Arbitration, Industrial
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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Book Description

The Clothing Workers of Chicago, 1910-1922

The Clothing Workers of Chicago, 1910-1922 PDF Author: Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. Research Department
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Arbitration, Industrial
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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Book Description


Threads

Threads PDF Author: Jane L. Collins
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226113708
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Americans have been shocked by media reports of the dismal working conditions in factories that make clothing for U.S. companies. But while well intentioned, many of these reports about child labor and sweatshop practices rely on stereotypes of how Third World factories operate, ignoring the complex economic dynamics driving the global apparel industry. To dispel these misunderstandings, Jane L. Collins visited two very different apparel firms and their factories in the United States and Mexico. Moving from corporate headquarters to factory floors, her study traces the diverse ties that link First and Third World workers and managers, producers and consumers. Collins examines how the transnational economics of the apparel industry allow firms to relocate or subcontract their work anywhere in the world, making it much harder for garment workers in the United States or any other country to demand fair pay and humane working conditions. Putting a human face on globalization, Threads shows not only how international trade affects local communities but also how workers can organize in this new environment to more effectively demand better treatment from their distant corporate employers.

Making a New Deal

Making a New Deal PDF Author: Lizabeth Cohen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107431794
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 569

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Book Description
Examines how ordinary factory workers became unionists and national political participants by the mid-1930s.

Red Chicago

Red Chicago PDF Author: Randi Storch
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252032063
Category : Communism
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Realities of the street-level American Communist experience during the worst years of the Depression "Red Chicago" is a social history of American Communism set within the context of Chicago's neighborhoods, industries, and radical traditions. Using local party records, oral histories, union records, party newspapers, and government documents, Randi Storch fills the gap between Leninist principles and the day-to-day activities of Chicago's rank-and-file Communists. Uncovering rich new evidence from Moscow's former party archive, Storch argues that although the American Communist Party was an international organization strongly influenced by the Soviet Union, at the city level it was a more vibrant and flexible organization responsible to local needs and concerns. Thus, while working for a better welfare system, fairer unions, and racial equality, Chicago's Communists created a movement that at times departed from international party leaders' intentions. By focusing on the experience of Chicago's Communists, who included a large working-class, African American, and ethnic population, this study reexamines party members' actions as an integral part of the communities in which they lived and the industries where they worked. "A volume in the series The Working Class in American History, edited by David Brody, Alice Kessler-Harris, David Montgomery, and Sean Wilentz"

The Jewish Unions in America

The Jewish Unions in America PDF Author: Bernard Weinstein
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1783743565
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
Newly arrived in New York in 1882 from Tsarist Russia, the sixteen-year-old Bernard Weinstein discovered an America in which unionism, socialism, and anarchism were very much in the air. He found a home in the tenements of New York and for the next fifty years he devoted his life to the struggles of fellow Jewish workers. The Jewish Unions in America blends memoir and history to chronicle this time. It describes how Weinstein led countless strikes, held the unions together in the face of retaliation from the bosses, investigated sweatshops and factories with the aid of reformers, and faced down schisms by various factions, including Anarchists and Communists. He co-founded the United Hebrew Trades and wrote speeches, articles and books advancing the cause of the labor movement. From the pages of this book emerges a vivid picture of workers’ organizations at the beginning of the twentieth century and a capitalist system that bred exploitation, poverty, and inequality. Although workers’ rights have made great progress in the decades since, Weinstein’s descriptions of workers with jobs pitted against those without, and American workers against workers abroad, still carry echoes today. The Jewish Unions in America is a testament to the struggles of working people a hundred years ago. But it is also a reminder that workers must still battle to live decent lives in the free market. For the first time, Maurice Wolfthal’s readable translation makes Weinstein’s Yiddish text available to English readers. It is essential reading for students and scholars of labor history, Jewish history, and the history of American immigration.

The Workers' Union

The Workers' Union PDF Author: Flora Tristan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780252075292
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 159

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Book Description
A nineteenth-century social reform proposal, available again

Death in the Haymarket

Death in the Haymarket PDF Author: James Green
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307425479
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
On May 4, 1886, a bomb exploded at a Chicago labor rally, wounding dozens of policemen, seven of whom eventually died. A wave of mass hysteria swept the country, leading to a sensational trial, that culminated in four controversial executions, and dealt a blow to the labor movement from which it would take decades to recover. Historian James Green recounts the rise of the first great labor movement in the wake of the Civil War and brings to life an epic twenty-year struggle for the eight-hour workday. Blending a gripping narrative, outsized characters and a panoramic portrait of a major social movement, Death in the Haymarket is an important addition to the history of American capitalism and a moving story about the class tensions at the heart of Gilded Age America.

The Women's Garment Workers

The Women's Garment Workers PDF Author: Lewis Levitzki Lorwin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Clothing workers
Languages : en
Pages : 680

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Book Description
This book tells the story of the half-million workers who make the clothes which the American woman wears. The scene is a changing one, shifting from the shops where the clothes are made ot the arena of the public forum and of the national life. The theme is the struggle of an industrial group, once economically weka and neglected, for the recognition of its right and for the humanization of the conditions under whihc it works and lives. It is one of the most poignant and dramatic chapters in the general story of the movement of American Labor for a higher life.

Murder in the Garment District

Murder in the Garment District PDF Author: David Witwer
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620974649
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
The thrilling and true account of racketeering and union corruption in mid-century New York, when unions and the mob were locked in a power struggle that reverberates to this day In 1949, in New York City's crowded Garment District, a union organizer named William Lurye was stabbed to death by a mob assassin. Through the lens of this murder case, prize-winning authors David Witwer and Catherine Rios explore American labor history at its critical turning point, drawing on FBI case files and the private papers of investigative journalists who first broke the story. A narrative that originates in the garment industry of mid-century New York, which produced over 80 percent of the nation's dresses at the time, Murder in the Garment District quickly moves to a national stage, where congressional anti-corruption hearings gripped the nation and forever tainted the reputation of American unions. Replete with elements of a true-crime thriller, Murder in the Garment District includes a riveting cast of characters, from wheeling and dealing union president David Dubinsky to the notorious gangster Abe Chait and the crusading Robert F. Kennedy, whose public duel with Jimmy Hoffa became front-page news. Deeply researched and grounded in the street-level events that put people's lives and livelihoods at stake, Murder in the Garment District is destined to become a classic work of history—one that also explains the current troubled state of unions in America.

Ready-Made Democracy

Ready-Made Democracy PDF Author: Michael Zakim
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226977951
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Ready-Made Democracy explores the history of men's dress in America to consider how capitalism and democracy emerged at the center of American life during the century between the Revolution and the Civil War. Michael Zakim demonstrates how clothing initially attained a significant place in the American political imagination on the eve of Independence. At a time when household production was a popular expression of civic virtue, homespun clothing was widely regarded as a reflection of America's most cherished republican values: simplicity, industriousness, frugality, and independence. By the early nineteenth century, homespun began to disappear from the American material landscape. Exhortations of industry and modesty, however, remained a common fixture of public life. In fact, they found expression in the form of the business suit. Here, Zakim traces the evolution of homespun clothing into its ostensible opposite—the woolen coats, vests, and pantaloons that were "ready-made" for sale and wear across the country. In doing so, he demonstrates how traditional notions of work and property actually helped give birth to the modern industrial order. For Zakim, the history of men's dress in America mirrored this transformation of the nation's social and material landscape: profit-seeking in newly expanded markets, organizing a waged labor system in the city, shopping at "single-prices," and standardizing a business persona. In illuminating the critical links between politics, economics, and fashion in antebellum America, Ready-Made Democracy will prove essential to anyone interested in the history of the United States and in the creation of modern culture in general.