Author: Michael Kazin
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 025205461X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 328
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Book Description
From the depression of the 1890s through World War I, construction tradesman held an important place in San Francisco's economic, political, and social life. Michael Kazin's award-winning study delves into how the city’s Building Trades Council (BTC) created, accumulated, used, and lost their power. He traces the rise of the BTC into a force that helped govern San Francisco, controlled its potential progress, and articulated an ideology that made sense of the changes sweeping the West and the country. Believing themselves the equals of officeholders and corporate managers, these working and retired craftsmen pursued and protected their own power while challenging conservatives and urban elites for the right to govern. What emerges is a long-overdue look at building trades as a force in labor history within the dramatic story of how the city's 25,000 building workers exercised power on the job site and within the halls of government, until the forces of reaction all but destroyed the BTC.
Author: Michael Kazin
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252060755
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 328
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Book Description
"Kazin's book is about far more than the construction industry: it also illuminates the social and political history of San Francisco. . . . Gracefully written and adorned with evocative portraits of local political and labor leaders, Barons of Labor is absorbing reading as well as a fine piece of history."-- The Nation "A bold and pioneering work that revises our understanding of skilled craftsmen and the politics of class in the Progressive Era."-- Journal of American History "Barons of Labor, is superb work, carefully researched and written with clarity, vitality, and wit, a pleasure as well as an education to read." -- Labor History
Author: Jack Kelly
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250128862
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
"Timely and urgent...The core of The Edge of Anarchy is a thrilling description of the boycott of Pullman cars and equipment by Eugene Debs’s fledgling American Railway Union..." —The New York Times "During the summer of 1894, the stubborn and irascible Pullman became a central player in what the New York Times called “the greatest battle between labor and capital [ever] inaugurated in the United States.” Jack Kelly tells the fascinating tale of that terrible struggle." —The Wall Street Journal "Pay attention, because The Edge of Anarchy not only captures the flickering Kinetoscopic spirit of one of the great Labor-Capital showdowns in American history, it helps focus today’s great debates over the power of economic concentration and the rights and futures of American workers." —Brian Alexander, author of Glass House "In gripping detail, The Edge of Anarchy reminds us of what a pivotal figure Eugene V. Debs was in the history of American labor... a tale of courage and the steadfast pursuit of principles at great personal risk." —Tom Clavin, New York Times bestselling author of Dodge City The dramatic story of the explosive 1894 clash of industry, labor, and government that shook the nation and marked a turning point for America. The Edge of Anarchy by Jack Kelly offers a vivid account of the greatest uprising of working people in American history. At the pinnacle of the Gilded Age, a boycott of Pullman sleeping cars by hundreds of thousands of railroad employees brought commerce to a standstill across much of the country. Famine threatened, riots broke out along the rail lines. Soon the U.S. Army was on the march and gunfire rang from the streets of major cities. This epochal tale offers fascinating portraits of two iconic characters of the age. George Pullman, who amassed a fortune by making train travel a pleasure, thought the model town that he built for his workers would erase urban squalor. Eugene Debs, founder of the nation’s first industrial union, was determined to wrench power away from the reigning plutocrats. The clash between the two men’s conflicting ideals pushed the country to what the U.S. Attorney General called “the ragged edge of anarchy.” Many of the themes of The Edge of Anarchy could be taken from today’s headlines—upheaval in America’s industrial heartland, wage stagnation, breakneck technological change, and festering conflict over race, immigration, and inequality. With the country now in a New Gilded Age, this look back at the violent conflict of an earlier era offers illuminating perspectives along with a breathtaking story of a nation on the edge.
Author: Eric Arnesen
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252067105
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 406
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Book Description
Is class outmoded as a basis for understanding labor history? This significant new collection emphatically says "No " Touching on such subjects as migrant labor, religion, ethnicity, agricultural history, and gender, these thirteen essays by former students of David Montgomery--a preeminent leader in labor circles as well as in academia--demonstrate the sheer diversity of the field today.
Author: Robert F. Zeidel
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501748327
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420
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Book Description
Robber Barons and Wretched Refuse explores the connection between the so-called robber barons who led American big businesses during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era and the immigrants who composed many of their workforces. As Robert F. Zeidel argues, attribution of industrial-era class conflict to an "alien" presence supplements nativism—a sociocultural negativity toward foreign-born residents—as a reason for Americans' dislike and distrust of immigrants. And in the era of American industrialization, employers both relied on immigrants to meet their growing labor needs and blamed them for the frequently violent workplace contentions of the time. Through a sweeping narrative, Zeidel uncovers the connection of immigrants to radical "isms" that gave rise to widespread notions of alien subversives whose presence threatened America's domestic tranquility and the well-being of its residents. Employers, rather than looking at their own practices for causes of workplace conflict, wontedly attributed strikes and other unrest to aliens who either spread pernicious "foreign" doctrines or fell victim to their siren messages. These characterizations transcended nationality or ethnic group, applying at different times to all foreign-born workers. Zeidel concludes that, ironically, stigmatizing immigrants as subversives contributed to the passage of the Quota Acts, which effectively stemmed the flow of wanted foreign workers. Post-war employers argued for preserving America's traditional open door, but the negativity that they had assigned to foreign workers contributed to its closing.
Author: Thomas G. Andrews
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674736680
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 414
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Book Description
On a spring morning in 1914, in the stark foothills of southern Colorado, members of the United Mine Workers of America clashed with guards employed by the Rockefeller family, and a state militia beholden to Colorado’s industrial barons. When the dust settled, nineteen men, women, and children among the miners’ families lay dead. The strikers had killed at least thirty men, destroyed six mines, and laid waste to two company towns. Killing for Coal offers a bold and original perspective on the 1914 Ludlow Massacre and the “Great Coalfield War.” In a sweeping story of transformation that begins in the coal beds and culminates with the deadliest strike in American history, Thomas Andrews illuminates the causes and consequences of the militancy that erupted in colliers’ strikes over the course of nearly half a century. He reveals a complex world shaped by the connected forces of land, labor, corporate industrialization, and workers’ resistance. Brilliantly conceived and written, this book takes the organic world as its starting point. The resulting elucidation of the coalfield wars goes far beyond traditional labor history. Considering issues of social and environmental justice in the context of an economy dependent on fossil fuel, Andrews makes a powerful case for rethinking the relationships that unite and divide workers, consumers, capitalists, and the natural world.
Author: Matthew Josephson
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780156767903
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 496
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Book Description
Includes material on John D. Rockefeller, J. Pierpoint Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, William H. Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, E.H. Harriman, Jay Gould, Jim Fisk, Jay Cooke, Daniel Drew, Henry C. Frick, James J. Hill, Charles M. Schwab, Henry Villard, Standard Oil Company, trusts.
Author: Howard Zinn
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 9780060528423
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 764
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Book Description
Since its original landmark publication in 1980, A People's History of the United States has been chronicling American history from the bottom up, throwing out the official version of history taught in schools -- with its emphasis on great men in high places -- to focus on the street, the home, and the, workplace. Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, A People's History is the only volume to tell America's story from the point of view of -- and in the words of -- America's women, factory workers, African-Americans, Native Americans, the working poor, and immigrant laborers. As historian Howard Zinn shows, many of our country's greatest battles -- the fights for a fair wage, an eight-hour workday, child-labor laws, health and safety standards, universal suffrage, women's rights, racial equality -- were carried out at the grassroots level, against bloody resistance. Covering Christopher Columbus's arrival through President Clinton's first term, A People's History of the United States, which was nominated for the American Book Award in 1981, features insightful analysis of the most important events in our history. Revised, updated, and featuring a new after, word by the author, this special twentieth anniversary edition continues Zinn's important contribution to a complete and balanced understanding of American history.
Author: Richard Owen Boyer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Author: George C. Leef
Publisher: Jameson Books (IL)
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 328
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Book Description
This is a captivating chronicle of the fifty-year "David-Goliath" struggle between the bosses of Big Labor and Americans opposed to their coercive power.Few Americans realize their freedom to say "no" to compulsory unionism is largely the result of the valiant efforts of the National Right to Work Committee and its Legal Defense Foundation. Big business and the Republican Party have usually avoided the battle, leaving only Right to Work and its hundreds of thousands of grass roots supporters to defend employee freedom to get or keep their jobs without being forced to pay dues or join a union.Leef's narrative covers the New Deal legislation that gave Big Labor its initial monopoly power, and then the inspiring, decades-long struggle in Washington and the states to reduce the abusive power of labor bosses.The book also teaches a crucial lesson for those involved in public policy wars, regardless of their political philosophy -- that principled and dedicated idealists can prevail against strong special interest groups if they fight for a just cause.
