Union Busting in the Tri-State

Union Busting in the Tri-State PDF

Author: George Graham Suggs (Jr.)

Publisher:

Published: 1986

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13:

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"Union Busting in the Tri-State District is an example of labor history at its finest."--THE HISTORIAN.

Poor Man's Fortune

Poor Man's Fortune PDF

Author: Jarod Roll

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2020-04-08

Total Pages: 357

ISBN-13: 1469656302

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White working-class conservatives have played a decisive role in American history, particularly in their opposition to social justice movements, radical critiques of capitalism, and government help for the poor and sick. While this pattern is largely seen as a post-1960s development, Poor Man's Fortune tells a different story, excavating the long history of white working-class conservatism in the century from the Civil War to World War II. With a close study of metal miners in the Tri-State district of Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma, Jarod Roll reveals why successive generations of white, native-born men willingly and repeatedly opposed labor unions and government-led health and safety reforms, even during the New Deal. With painstaking research, Roll shows how the miners' choices reflected a deep-seated, durable belief that hard-working American white men could prosper under capitalism, and exposes the grim costs of this view for these men and their communities, for organized labor, and for political movements seeking a more just and secure society. Roll's story shows how American inequalities are in part the result of a white working-class conservative tradition driven by grassroots assertions of racial, gendered, and national privilege.

Hard As the Rock Itself

Hard As the Rock Itself PDF

Author: David Robertson

Publisher: University Press of Colorado

Published: 2011-05-18

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1457109646

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The first intensive analysis of sense of place in American mining towns, Hard as the Rock Itself: Place and Identity in the American Mining Town provides rare insight into the struggles and rewards of life in these communities. David Robertson contends that these communities - often characterized in scholarly and literary works as derelict, as sources of debasing moral influence, and as scenes of environmental decay - have a strong and enduring sense of place and have even embraced some of the signs of so-called dereliction. Robertson documents the history of Toluca, Illinois; Cokedale, Colorado; and Picher, Oklahoma, from the mineral discovery phase through mine closure, telling for the first time how these century-old mining towns have survived and how sense of place has played a vital role. Acknowledging the hardships that mining's social, environmental, and economic legacies have created for current residents, Robertson argues that the industry's influences also have contributed to the creation of strong, cohesive communities in which residents have always identified with the severe landscape and challenging, but rewarding way of life. Robertson contends that the tough, unpretentious appearance of mining landscapes mirrors qualities that residents value in themselves, confirming that a strong sense of place in mining regions, as elsewhere, is not necessarily wedded to an attractive aesthetic or even to a thriving economy.

Deadly Dust

Deadly Dust PDF

Author: David Rosner

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 9780691037714

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During the Depression, silicosis, an industrial lung disease, emerged as a national social crisis. Experts estimated that hundreds of thousands of workers were at risk of disease, disability, and death by inhaling silica in mines, foundries, and quarries. By the 1950s, however, silicosis was nearly forgotten by the media and health professionals. Asking what makes a health threat a public issue, David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz examine how a culture defines disease and how disease itself is understood at different moments in history. They also consider who should assume responsibility for occupational disease.

Eagle-Picher Industries

Eagle-Picher Industries PDF

Author: Douglas Knerr

Publisher: Ohio State University Press

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 0814205577

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This comprehensive history traces the evolution of Eagle-Picher Industries, a manufacturing firm based in Cincinnati, Ohio, for almost 150 years. Focusing on events prior to the company's involvement in toxic tort litigation, which forced it to file bankruptcy, this work examines Eagle-Picher's development as a diversified industrial manufacturer. From a closely held, regional producer of white lead and other paint pigments, Eagle-Picher became an important miner and processor of non-ferrous metals by investing in zinc-lead fields in Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma during the early twentieth century. Once ore reserves in these areas were depleted, the company turned to manufacturing industrial goods and pursued an aggressive and unique expansion and diversification program during the post-World War II era. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, Eagle-Picher acquired over twenty-five firms, all manufacturers of industrial goods, and assembled a broadly based specialized productive capacity. Eagle-Picher's history illustrates a number of important trends and concepts. First, its experiences in the late nineteenth century provide a valuable look at how smaller firms adapted to the forces of consolidation in the economy. Further, Eagle-Picher's experience as an industrial manufacturer demonstrates the ways in which mid-sized firms grew by focusing on market niches overlooked by larger firms. Finally, Eagle-Picher's approach to acquisition and diversification is unique in today's competitive marketplace. Eagle-Picher's commitment to limited diversification built around historical strengths, its acquisition of successful firms, and its efforts to establish strong lines of communication andeffective controls between the central office and the divisions stand in stark contrast to the efforts of many acquisitive firms during recent mergers.

The CIO, 1935-1955

The CIO, 1935-1955 PDF

Author: Robert H. Zieger

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2000-11-09

Total Pages: 504

ISBN-13: 080786644X

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The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) encompassed the largest sustained surge of worker organization in American history. Robert Zieger charts the rise of this industrial union movement, from the founding of the CIO by John L. Lewis in 1935 to its merger under Walter Reuther with the American Federation of Labor in 1955. Exploring themes of race and gender, Zieger combines the institutional history of the CIO with vivid depictions of working-class life in this critical period. Zieger details the ideological conflicts that racked the CIO even as its leaders strove to establish a labor presence at the heart of the U.S. economic system. Stressing the efforts of industrial unionists such as Sidney Hillman and Philip Murray to forge potent instruments of political action, he assesses the CIO's vital role in shaping the postwar political and international order. Zieger's analysis also contributes to current debates over labor law reform, the collective bargaining system, and the role of organized labor in a changing economy.

Anaconda

Anaconda PDF

Author: Laurie Mercier

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780252069888

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Mercier depicts the vibrant life of the smelter city at full steam, incorporating the candid, sometimes wry commentary of the locals ("the company furnished three pair of leather gloves . . . and all the arsenic dust] you could eat"). She documents the early history of the town and the distinctive culture of cooperation and activism that residents fostered in the 1930s and 1940s. Ultimately, their solidarity and discontent with the company converged in the successful 1934 strike and sustained five decades of devoted unionism. During the cold war years, Anacondans held to their communal values and to unions in the face of antilabor and anticommunist pressures, embracing an "alternative Americanism" that championed improved living standards for working people, rather than unlimited corporate power, as the best defense against communism. Mercier chronicles the bitter struggle between two rival unions--the anticommunist United Steelworkers of America and the red-tainted International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers--that undercut the town's labor solidarity in the postwar years. She also explores how gender definitions--especially the male breadwinner ideology and the limits placed on women's political, economic, and social roles--shaped the nature and outcome of labor struggles. Mercier carries her investigation through the closing of the smelter in 1980, covering debates over the environment and the community's transformation into a deindustrialized, nonunion town. Underscoring the role of the community in molding working-class consciousness, Anaconda offers important insights about the changing nature of working-class culture and the real potential for collective action under the midday sun of American industrial capitalism.

Farmers Vs. Wage Earners

Farmers Vs. Wage Earners PDF

Author: R. Alton Lee

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2005-01-01

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 9780803229648

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While predominantly agrarian, Kansas has a surprisingly rich heritage of labor history and played an active role in the major labor strife of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Farmers vs. Wage Earners is a survey of the organized labor movement in the Sunflower State, which reflected in a microcosm the evolution of attitudes toward labor in the United States. ø R. Alton Lee emphasizes the social and political developments of labor in Kansas and what it was like to work in the mines, the oil fields, and the factories that created the modern industrial world. He vividly describes the stories of working people: how they and their families lived and worked, their dreams and aspirations, their reasons for joining a union and how it served their interests, how they fought to achieve their goals through the political process, and how employment changed over the decades in terms of race, gender, and working conditions. ø The general public supported labor after the Civil War, but increasing urbanization and the farmer-dominated legislatures helped quell this sympathy, and new ire was eventually directed at the workingman. By examining the progress of industrial labor in an agrarian state, Lee shows how Kansans, like many Americans, could eagerly accept the federal largesse of the New Deal but at the same time bitterly denounce its philosophy and goals in the wake of the Great Depression.

Tar Creek

Tar Creek PDF

Author: Larry G. Johnson

Publisher: Tate Publishing

Published: 2009-03

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 1606965557

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A small tribe of Indians, the Quapaws, survived civilization. A group of criminals, the likes of Bonnie and Clyde, found refuge. The wealth that poured from the ground created some of the richest Indians in the World. And Mickey Mantle got his start as a lead and zinc miner. All these events, and more, took place in or around a small community known as Picher, Oklahoma. And from the early part of the twentieth century, that community was nearly hidden under millions of tons of chat waste piles. Join author Larry Johnson on an exciting adventure starting with the origin of the Native American tribes, leading up to the horrific environmental hazards and final destruction of this town in the May 2008 tornadoes. Tar Creek effectively spins the true tale of the Quapaw Indians, the world's greatest discovery of lead and zinc, and the making of the oldest and largest environmental Superfund site in America. Organically encompassed in this tale are the first footsteps of the American Indian in the Western Hemisphere, the founding of the United States, and the transition of Indian Territories into statehood. Tar Creek is an hourglass with the discovery of lead and zinc at Picher as the skinny neck through which all of the interconnected acts and events preceding the discovery are slowly moving, resulting in the repercussions ninety years later. You'll be engaged and awed as you learn the real story on the journey to Tar Creek.

Nonviolent Action

Nonviolent Action PDF

Author: Ronald M. McCarthy

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-07-04

Total Pages: 752

ISBN-13: 1135067546

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This comprehensive guide to research, sources, and theories about nonviolent action as a technique of struggle in social and political conficts discusses the methods and techniques used by groups in various encounters. Although violence and its causes have received a great deal of attention, nonviolent action has not received its due as an international phenomenon with a long history. An introduction that explains the theories and research used in the study provides a practical guide to this essential bibliography of English-language sources. The first part of the book covers case-study materials divided by region and subdivided by country. Within each country, materials are arranged chronologically and topically. The second major part examines the methods and theory of nonviolent action, principled nonviolence, and several closely related areas in social science, such as conflict analysis and social movements. The book is indexed by author and subject.