Best of
Labor

1969

We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World


Melvyn Dubofsky - 1969
    Originally published in 1969, Melvyn Dubofsky's We Shall Be All has remained the definitive archive-based history of the IWW. While much has been written on aspects of the IWW's history in the past three decades, nothing has duplicated or surpassed this authoritative work. The present volume, an abridged version of this labor history classic, makes the compelling story of the IWW accessible to a new generation of readers. In its heyday, between 1905 and 1919, the IWW nourished a dream of a better America where poverty-–material and spiritual–-would be erased and where all people, regardless of nationality or color, would walk free and equal. More than half a century ago the Wobblies tried in their own ways to grapple with issues that still plague the nation in a more sophisticated and properous era. Their example has inspired radicals in America and abroad over the greater part of a century

Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California


Carey McWilliams - 1969
    Factories in the Field—together with the work of Dorothea Lange, Paul Taylor, and John Steinbeck—dramatizes the misery of the dust bowl migrants hoping to find work in California agriculture. McWilliams starts with the scandals of the Spanish land grant purchases, and continues on to examine the experience of the various ethnic groups that have provided labor for California's agricultural industry—Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos, Armenians—the strikes, and the efforts to organize labor unions

The Autobiographies of the Haymarket Martyrs


Philip S. Foner - 1969
    Written from prison, these accounts present a living portrait of the labor movement of the time, as well as the lives and ideas of these fighters for workers' rights"--Publisher marketing.

Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850


Ivy Pinchbeck - 1969
    Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Sit-Down: The General Motors Strike of 1936-1937


Sidney Fine - 1969
    Basing his account on an impressive variety of manuscript sources, the author analyzes the strategy and tactics of GM and the UAW, describes the life of the workers in the occupied plants, and examines the troubled governmental and public reaction to the alleged breakdown of law and order in the strikes. In addition, Dr. Fine provides vivid portraits of Governor Frank Murphy and the major figures on both sides of the conflict: Alfred Sloan, Jr., William Knudson, Robert Travis, Roy Victor, and Walter Reuther, Homer Martin, and Wyndham Mortimer. Of particular interest today are the author's concluding remarks regarding the similarities between the sit-down strike movement of the 1930's and the civil rights movement and the college sit-ins of our own era.The GM sit-down strike marks the close of one era of labor-management relations in the United States and the beginning of another. Professor Fine has provided us with the definitive account of that momentous conflict.