American Labor A Documentary History

by Dubofsky, Melvyn; McCartin, Joseph A.

• ISBN13: 9780312295646
• ISBN10: 0312295642
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-11-05
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This comprehensive compilation of documents integrates institutional labor history (movements and trade unions) with aspects of social and cultural history. It charts changes in trade union and managerial practices and integrates the economics and politics of labor history. An impressive array of documents details household as well as industrial relations; women as domestic workers, unpaid household labor, and factory workers; African American, Hispanic American (especially Mexican and Mexican American), Asian and white workers. It offers readers insight into the full historical spectrum of workers, their daily lives, and the movements that they created.

Author Biography

Melvyn Dubofsky is Bartle Distinguished Professor of History & Sociology, Binghamton University, SUNY. He is recipient of Fellowships from the ACLS, American Philosophical Society, and NEH and author of numerous books and essays in history, including: When Workers Organize: New York City in the Progressive Era; We Shall Be All: A History of the IWW; Industrialism and the American Worker, 1865-1920 (Three Editions, 1975-1996); John L. Lewis: A biography; "Big Bill" Haywood; The State and Labor in Modern America; Hard Work: The Making of Labor History.

Joseph McCartin is Associate Professor of History, Georgetown University. He is author of Labor's Great War: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy and the Origins of Modern American Labor Relations, 1912-21, which won the 1999 Taft Prize for Outstanding Book in U.S. Labor History.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction	1	(6)
Labor in the Colonial and Early National Periods, to 1828	7	(36)
New World Encounters	11	(4)
Indenture	15	(3)
Slavery	18	(7)
Women and Work	25	(4)
Work, Welfare, and Community Values	29	(3)
Artisan Labor	32	(2)
Workers' Grievances and Early Union Organization Debates	34	(9)
The Rise of Free Labor, the Factory System, and Trades Organization, 1828--1877	43	(46)
The Artisans' World	47	(4)
The World of Slave Labor	51	(2)
Early Factory Labor	53	(7)
Women's Work: Servants and Millgirls	60	(4)
Immigrants	64	(3)
Organizing Trade Unions	67	(8)
A Broader Reform Agenda	75	(5)
From Slavery to Freedom	80	(4)
Postwar Hopes for the Emancipation of Free Labor	84	(5)
Workers in a Maturing Industrial Society, 1877--1914	89	(50)
Immigrants to Industrial Society	95	(9)
Working Women and Children	104	(6)
Immigrants, Tenements, and Sweated Labor	110	(5)
Knights of Labor	115	(4)
American Federation of Labor	119	(10)
Black Workers and Unions	129	(5)
Radical Alternatives	134	(5)
Wars, Depression, and the Struggle for Industrial Democracy, 1914--1947	139	(68)
Workers in the Era of the Great War	143	(6)
Post-War Backlash	149	(5)
Workers and Unions in the 1920s	154	(13)
Immigrants from Mexico	167	(7)
The Great Migration	174	(2)
Depression	176	(11)
Industrial Union Upsurge	187	(7)
World War II	194	(13)
The Era of the Postwar Social Contract, 1947--1973	207	(50)
Labor's Cold War	213	(4)
Embourgeoisement in the 1950s?	217	(5)
AFL-CIO	222	(6)
Working Women	228	(3)
Race and Civil Rights	231	(9)
Vietnam War and Counterculture	240	(5)
New Militancy	245	(6)
Public Employee Unionism	251	(6)
Era of Economic Change and Union Decline, Since 1973	257	(56)
Feeling the Economic Crunch	263	(2)
Globalization and De-Industrialization	265	(5)
Declining Support for the Welfare State	270	(4)
Discontents of Factory Life	274	(5)
Working Women's Struggles	279	(5)
New Immigrants	284	(5)
The Persistence of Dangerous Work	289	(1)
Brave New Workplaces	290	(2)
The New Anti-Unionism	292	(7)
Efforts at Union Reform and Revival	299	(4)
Facing the Future	303	(10)
Index	313