Research Catalog

Title

Major problems in the history of American workers : documents and essays / edited by Eileen Boris, Nelson Lichtenstein.

Publication

Boston : Houghton Mifflin, c2003.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Boris, Eileen, 1948-
• Lichtenstein, Nelson

Description

xiv, 562 p. : ill.; 24 cm.

Series Statement

Major problems in American history series

Uniform Title

Major problems in American history series

Subject

• Labor > United States > History
• Working class > United States > History

Genre/Form

History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

• 1. The meaning of work and the history of labor -- 2. The labor systems of early America -- 3. From the artisan's republic to the factory system -- 4. Slavery and the transition to free labor -- 5. The age of industrial conflict -- 6. From peasant to proletarian -- 7. Cultures of the workplace -- Photograph essay : Americans at work in the industrial era -- 8. Labor in the Progressive Era -- 9. Industrial unionism during the Great Depression -- 10. Race, gender, and industrial unionism in World War II and its aftermath -- 11. Trade unions in the postwar years -- 12. New unionists of the 1960s -- 13. White collars, pink collars, and hard hats -- 14. Mobile capital, migrating workers -- 15. New labor, new century.
• 1. The meaning of work and the history of labor. The myth of the happy worker / Harvey Swados ; Working poor blues / Barbara Ehrenreich -- 2. The labor systems of early America. An indentured servant writes home, 1623 ; "The trappan'd maiden: or the distressed damsel," (popular song, mid- 1600s) ; Traveler Peter Kalm on unfree labor in Pennsylvania, 1753 ; African prince Olaudah Equiano survives the middle passage, 1791 ; Ruth Belknap, a country parson's wife, on "the pleasures of a country life," c. 1782 ; Eulalia Perez remembers early California, 1823 ; Report on the Indian villages of San Diego county, 1873 ; Servants and slaves in the East / Richard S. Dunn ; Bonded and contract labor in the Southwest / Howard Lamar --^
• 3. From the artisan's republic to the factory system. David Johnson remembers apprenticeship life in the artisan shoe shop, 1830 ; Jessie Hutchinson, "Cordwainer's rallying song," 1844 ; A reporter's account of Lynn women's mass meeting during the great strike, 1860 ; Amelia, a woman worker, protests Lowell wage slavery, 1845 ; Journeymen tailors protest wage slavery, 1836 ; Frederick Douglass confronts working-class racism, 1836 ; Lynn shoemakers and the solidarity of class / Alan Dawley ; White artisans and the solidarity of race / David R. Roediger --^
• 4. Slavery and the transition to free labor. Slave production at Pleasant Hill Plantation, 1850 ; Slave Solomon Northup's view of cotton planting and harvesting, 1854 ; A planter on child rearing, 1836 ; A Northern unionist lectures ex-slaves on the work ethic, 1865 ; "We demand land": petition by Southern freedmen, 1865 ; African-American washerwomen demand higher wages, 1866 ; "Colored" vs. Chinese in Galveston, 1877 ; Sharecropper Nate Shaw makes his crop, 1913 ; The plantation work ethic / Eugene Genovese ; Emancipation and the reconstruction of Southern labor / Eric Foner --^
• 5. The age of industrial conflict. Haymarket anarchist Michael Schwab fights for freedom, 1886 ; "Freedom," poem by Haymarket anarchist Albert R. Parsons, 1886 ; "Labor's great army," 1889 ; Samuel Gompers defends the strike, 1899 ; Preamble of the industrial workers of the world, 1905 ; Fitz John Porter explains how to quell mobs, 1885 ; George Pullman defends managerial paternalism, 1894 ; The great upheaval / Jeremy Brecher ; Remembering Haymarket: Chicago's labor martyrs and their legacy / James Green --^
• 6. From peasant to proletarian. Economist John R. Commons denounces the "sweating system," 1901 ; Investigator John Fitch describes steel's long shift, 1912 ; Photographer Lewis Hine depicts child laborers in the New York city tenements, 1911 ; African Americans seek work in the North, 1917 ; Helen B. Sayre praises the progress of Negro women in industry, 1924 ; California employers evaluate foreign beet workers, 1911 ; "Chinaman, laundryman" poet H.T. Tsiang defends Chinese immigrants, 1929 ; The cultures of first-generation industrial workers / Herbert Gutman ; Asian immigrants raising cane: the world of plantation Hawaii / Ronald Takaki --^
• 7. Cultures of the workplace. Miner John Brophy learns his trade, 1907 ; A student's view of "soldiering," 1931 ; Frederick Winslow Taylor explains the principles of scientific management, 1916 ; An A.F.L. view of women workers in industry, 1897 ; The Shirtwaist strikers win, 1910 ; Unionist Alice Henry outlines why women need their own local unions, 1915 ; Work rules and manliness in the world of the nineteenth-century craftsman / David Montgomery ; French heels and ladyhood in the world of early-twentieth-century garment strikers / Nan Enstad -- Photograph essay : Americans at work in the industrial era --^
• 8. Labor in the Progressive Era. In re Debs, 1895 ; Muller v. Oregon, 1908 ; Atkins v. Children's Hospital, 1923 ; The American Federation of Labor embraces equal pay for equal work, 1917 ; Industrial democracy needed for the war effort, 1917 ; President Woodrow Wilson on the labor question, 1919 ; Law and free labor / Alice Kessler-Harris ; Fighting for industrial democracy in World War I / Joseph A. McCartin --^
• 9. Industrial unionism during the Great Depression. Preamble of the National Labor Relations Act, 1935 ; Communist John Steuben organizes steel, 1936 ; Mrs. Violet Baggett joins the union, 1937 ; White collar workers organize, 1938 ; A union man gets his job back, 1938 ; Stanley Nowak organizes a slowdown strike, 1937 ; For UAW shop stewards: "how to win for the union," 1941 ; Union leaders oppose shop-floor agitators, 1941 ; Not so radical years: another look at the 1930s / Melvyn Dubofsky ; Radical years: working-class consciousness on the waterfront in the 1930s / Bruce Nelson --^
• 10. Race, gender, and industrial unionism in World War II and its aftermath. President Franklin Roosevelt establishes a committee on fair employment practice, 1941 ; Mildred Keith protests discrimination, 1942 ; The War Labor Board assails workplace racism, 1943 ; The War Labor Board orders equal pay for equal work, 1944 ; The Crisis predicts a surge in NAACP membership, 1943 ; Women's work in a California warplane factory, 1941-1945 ; How organized black workers brought civil rights to the South / Robert Korstad and Nelson Lichtenstein ; Racialized bodies on the homefront / Eileen Boris -- 11. Trade unions in the postwar years. The CIO attacks a Communist-led union, 1949 ; Betty Friedan agues for trade union feminism, 1952 ; Arbitrator Harry Shulman upholds the authority of Ford supervision, 1944 ; Fortune magazine applauds the U.S. labor movement, 1951 ; Labor encounters the anticommunist crusade / Ellen Schrecker ; The unions' retreat in the postwar era / Nelson Lichtenstein --^
• 12. New unionists of the 1960s. The American Federation of Teachers on the rights of teachers, 1951 ; The march on Washington demands jobs and freedom, 1963 ; Union leader Taylor Rogers relives the Memphis sanitation strike (1968), 2000 ; Cesar E. Chavez, Good Friday message, 1969 ; Collective bargaining: the coming of age of teacher unionism / Marjorie Murphy ; Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Memphis sanitation strike / Michael Honey -- 13. White collars, pink collars, and hard hats. Sociologist Daniel Bell's "post-industrial" vision, 1973 ; Fred Roman on the life of an accountant, 1972 ; Lee Radler Archacki explains why she chose the night shift, 1979 ; Computerized order taking at McDonald's, 1988 ; Sex discrimination in the skies, 1967 ; The scandal behind soaring construction costs, 1972 ; Construction workers defend their manhood / Joshua Freedman ; Feminism transforms women service workers / Dorothy Sue Cobble --^
• 14. Mobile capital, migrating workers. Management's weapon: scab labor, 1990 ; A unionist blasts overseas office work, 1987 ; Temp blues, 1994 ; Sweatshop workers speak out, 1998 ; The AFT-CIO defends immigrant workers, 2000 ; The battle in Seattle, 1999 ; Senseless in Seattle, 1999 ; A certain kind of globalization / Kim Moody ; Sweated labor in cyberspace / Andrew Ross ; The nanny visa / Grace Chang -- 15. New labor, new century. John Sweeney's victory speech before the AFL-CIO, 1995 ; Harvard Union Clerical and Technical Workers state their principles, 1988 ; Queremos justicia! We want justice! 1996 ; Big win at UPS! 1997 ; Republican Kellyanne Fitzpatrick promotes California's Proposition 226 as "paycheck protection," 1998 ; A new AFL-CIO / Harold Meyerson ; How the new working class can transform urban America / Robin D.G. Kelley ; Graduate student unions fight the corporate university / Gordon Lafer.

ISBN

0618042547 (pbk.)

LCCN

^^2000133896

OCLC

• 50739810
• SCSB-10539484

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library