Workers on the Waterfront

Workers on the Waterfront PDF Author: Bruce Nelson
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252061448
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
With working lives characterized by exploitation and rootlessness, merchant seamen were isolated from mainstream life. Yet their contacts with workers in port cities around the world imbued them with a sense of internationalism. These factors contributed to a subculture that encouraged militancy, spontaneous radicalism, and a syndicalist mood. Bruce Nelson's award-winning book examines the insurgent activity and consciousness of maritime workers during the 1930s. As he shows, merchant seamen and longshoremen on the Pacific Coast made major institutional gains, sustained a lengthy period of activity, and expanded their working-class consciousness. Nelson examines the two major strikes that convulsed the region and caused observers to state that day-to-day labor relations resembled guerilla warfare. He also looks at related activity, from increasing political activism to stoppages to defend laborers from penalties, refusals to load cargos for Mussolini's war in Ethiopia, and forced boardings of German vessels to tear down the swastika.

Workers on the Waterfront

Workers on the Waterfront PDF Author: Bruce Nelson
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252061448
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 386

Get Book Here

Book Description
With working lives characterized by exploitation and rootlessness, merchant seamen were isolated from mainstream life. Yet their contacts with workers in port cities around the world imbued them with a sense of internationalism. These factors contributed to a subculture that encouraged militancy, spontaneous radicalism, and a syndicalist mood. Bruce Nelson's award-winning book examines the insurgent activity and consciousness of maritime workers during the 1930s. As he shows, merchant seamen and longshoremen on the Pacific Coast made major institutional gains, sustained a lengthy period of activity, and expanded their working-class consciousness. Nelson examines the two major strikes that convulsed the region and caused observers to state that day-to-day labor relations resembled guerilla warfare. He also looks at related activity, from increasing political activism to stoppages to defend laborers from penalties, refusals to load cargos for Mussolini's war in Ethiopia, and forced boardings of German vessels to tear down the swastika.

Wobblies on the Waterfront

Wobblies on the Waterfront PDF Author: Peter Cole
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252090853
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
The rise and fall of America's first truly interracial labor union For almost a decade during the 1910s and 1920s, the Philadelphia waterfront was home to the most durable interracial, multiethnic union seen in the United States prior to the CIO era. For much of its time, Local 8 was majority black, always with a cadre of black leaders. The union also claimed immigrants from Eastern Europe, as well as many Irish Americans, who had a notorious reputation for racism. This important study is the first book-length examination of how Local 8, affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World, accomplished what no other did at the time. Peter Cole outlines the factors that were instrumental in Local 8's success, both ideological (the IWW's commitment to working-class solidarity) and pragmatic (racial divisions helped solidify employer dominance). He also shows how race was central not only to the rise but also to the decline of Local 8, as increasing racial tensions were manipulated by employers and federal agents bent on the union's destruction.

I Cover the Waterfront

I Cover the Waterfront PDF Author: Max Miller
Publisher: Skyhorse
ISBN: 1632200023
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 135

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Book Description
“Distinctive, original, fresh in in tone and manner, with a quaint whimsicality of feeling and expression.”—The New York Times Life on the Western waterfront has always fascinated Max Miller, a special reporter for the San Diego Sun. Embraced by all the waterfront folk, he has joined them on their cruises, has learned the mystery of their crafts, and knows them like brothers. Max himself has become a part of the waterfront. Not a fishing boat ties up to the wharf without Max Miller getting the story. Not a submarine comes in nor an airplane soars out over the water without Max Miller’s being invited to go. He is one of the first men to climb up the ladder of the Pacific lines, especially when celebrities are aboard. A combination of newspaper reporter, philosopher, and poet, the author writes his charming sketches in his “studio” upstairs in the tugboat office, where he can look out over his domain. But reporting is not simply a job with Max Miller; it is the greatest pleasure of his life. He delights in setting down his impressions of the Western shore, where life is a constant flux and reflux, seasonal, immutable, and yet ever exciting—the departure of the sardine fleet, the hunt for elephant seals for the zoo, the sailing of the California fruit liners. I Cover the Waterfront was first published in the early 1930s and has since gone on to become a classic. It is as memorable for its unique stories as it is for its individual style—so keenly sensitive to the personalities of men and to the romantic environment of the harbor and deep-sea life.

On the Waterfront

On the Waterfront PDF Author: Malcolm Malone Johnson
Publisher: Chamberlain Brothers
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Until the mid-20th century, organised crime ruled New York's waterfront. Then Malcolm Johnson's groundbreaking series, Crime on the Waterfront, appeared in The New York Sun, revealing a violent underworld that influenced all levels of New York's politics, society and industry. Johnson's extensive investigation finally forced the government to take action and led to changes in law that affected the whole country. Collected for the first time, these Pulitzer Prize-winning articles tell the riveting story of mobsters, murder faith and the ultimate victory of fair play.

Liberty on the Waterfront

Liberty on the Waterfront PDF Author: Paul A. Gilje
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812202023
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
Through careful research and colorful accounts, historian Paul A. Gilje discovers what liberty meant to an important group of common men in American society, those who lived and worked on the waterfront and aboard ships. In the process he reveals that the idealized vision of liberty associated with the Founding Fathers had a much more immediate and complex meaning than previously thought. In Liberty on the Waterfront: American Maritime Culture in the Age of Revolution, life aboard warships, merchantmen, and whalers, as well as the interactions of mariners and others on shore, is recreated in absorbing detail. Describing the important contributions of sailors to the resistance movement against Great Britain and their experiences during the Revolutionary War, Gilje demonstrates that, while sailors recognized the ideals of the Revolution, their idea of liberty was far more individual in nature—often expressed through hard drinking and womanizing or joining a ship of their choice. Gilje continues the story into the post-Revolutionary world highlighted by the Quasi War with France, the confrontation with the Barbary Pirates, and the War of 1812.

On the Irish Waterfront

On the Irish Waterfront PDF Author: James T. Fisher
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801458587
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 391

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Book Description
Site of the world's busiest and most lucrative harbor throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the Port of New York was also the historic preserve of Irish American gangsters, politicians, longshoremen's union leaders, and powerful Roman Catholic pastors. This is the demimonde depicted to stunning effect in Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954) and into which James T. Fisher takes readers in this remarkable and engaging historical account of the classic film's backstory. Fisher introduces readers to the real "Father Pete Barry" featured in On the Waterfront, John M. "Pete" Corridan, a crusading priest committed to winning union democracy and social justice for the port's dockworkers and their families. A Jesuit labor school instructor, not a parish priest, Corridan was on but not of Manhattan's West Side Irish waterfront. His ferocious advocacy was resisted by the very men he sought to rescue from the violence and criminality that rendered the port "a jungle, an outlaw frontier," in the words of investigative reporter Malcolm Johnson. Driven off the waterfront, Corridan forged creative and spiritual alliances with men like Johnson and Budd Schulberg, the screenwriter who worked with Corridan for five years to turn Johnson's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1948 newspaper exposé into a movie. Fisher's detailed account of the waterfront priest's central role in the film's creation challenges standard views of the film as a post facto justification for Kazan and Schulberg's testimony as ex-communists before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. On the Irish Waterfront is also a detailed social history of the New York/New Jersey waterfront, from the rise of Irish American entrepreneurs and political bosses during the World War I era to the mid-1950s, when the emergence of a revolutionary new mode of cargo-shipping signaled a radical reorganization of the port. This book explores the conflicts experienced and accommodations made by an insular Irish-Catholic community forced to adapt its economic, political, and religious lives to powerful forces of change both local and global in scope.

Beyond the Edge

Beyond the Edge PDF Author: Raymond Gastil
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
ISBN: 9781568983271
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
Through an insightful look at projects from around the world and at the current design proposals for New York itself, the author paints a portrait of redevelopment that is both pragmatic and visionary, one that holds the promise of reconnecting New Yorkers to their waterfront as a vital place of work and of public life."--BOOK JACKET.

Work on the Waterfront

Work on the Waterfront PDF Author: William Finlay
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780877225232
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
In this ethnographic account of longshoremen in California, William Finlay examines how they have been affected by recent technological changes in this industry. Focusing on the workers in Local 13 (Los Angeles-Long Beach) of the ILWU, he finds that despite the profound impact of new technologies, in particular of containerization, these workers have retained much of their influence over production, their autonomy at work, and their skill on the job. Using data collected from interviews and participant observation, Finlay provides a first-hand view of a union, the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, about which there has been considerable speculation and discussion but which has been quite difficult for outsiders to penetrate. During his research, Finlay worked as a longshoreman, accompanied crane operators loading and unloading ships, observed union business agents on their waterfront rounds, and attended negotiation meetings. Contrary to many contemporary arguments concerning the negative impact of technological innovation at the workplace, Finlay finds that in longshoring the new technologies have resulted in the increased demand for skilled workers and in fresh opportunities for workers to assert their control of production.Work on the Waterfrontexamines local unionism in action and discusses the factors that produce on-the-job bargaining in longshoring and other lines of work. Author note: William Finlay is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Iowa.

Working and Thinking on the Waterfront

Working and Thinking on the Waterfront PDF Author: Eric Hoffer
Publisher: Hopewell Publications
ISBN: 9781933435299
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
Working and thinking on the waterfront is a glimpse into, not only Hoffer's personal life, but his process while postulating his great future works.

Man of the Waterfront

Man of the Waterfront PDF Author: Ralph Harvey
Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub
ISBN: 9781475083033
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 505

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Book Description
Growing up during the Great Depression, Kaye Williams began his lifelong fascination with ships and the waterfront. The ships were passing tugboats, freighters and lumber schooners, and the waterfront was in Bridgeport, Connecticut − a gritty industrial city on the shores of Long Island Sound, and once the home of P. T. Barnum. After marrying his teenage sweetheart Vivian, Kaye pursued careers as an ironworker, boat dealer and lobsterboat captain. But it was his fourth career that attracted international attention − the creation of Captain's Cove Seaport, and the restoration of the Rose, the replica of an eighteenth century British frigate. Captain's Cove Seaport began an urban revival in a crime ridden, backwater corner of Bridgeport. By restoring the Rose, Kaye created an internationally renowned sailing training vessel that became Connecticut's official state ship. And he didn't stop there. Building a replica of an early aircraft led to a friendship with retired-Chief Justice Warren Burger, a wedding that was moved from the North Pole to a Baltimore courthouse, and the involvement of Russian sailors on a Bill of Rights bicentennial tour aboard the Rose. Man of the Waterfront is both a compelling human drama and a look at the social impact of efforts to revive a mid-sized, industrial city.Honorable Mention for General Non-Fiction at the 2012 New England Book Festival, and Honorable Mention for Biographies at the 2013 Great Northwest Book festival.