Best of
Labor

1978

Grass-Roots Socialism: Radical Movements in the Southwest, 1895-1943


James R. Green - 1978
    With these widely felt grievances to build on, the Socialists led the class-conscious farmers and workers to a radicalism that was far in advance of that advocated by the earlier People's party.Examined in this broadly based study of the movement are popular leaders like Oklahoma's Oscar Ameringer ("The Mark Twain of American Socialism"), "Red Tom" Hickey of Texas, and Kate Richards O'Hare, who was second only to Eugene Debs as a Socialist orator. Included also is information on the party's propaganda techniques, especially those used in the lively newspapers which claimed fifty thousand subscribers in the Southwest by 1913, and on the attractive summer camp meetings which drew thousands of poor white tenant farmers to week-long agitation and education sessions.

History of Slavery: An Illustrated History of the Monstrous Evil


Susanne Everet - 1978
    In strictly objective terms, this book deals with the historical controversies that have surrounded the study of slavery. Illustrated with over 300 pictures, including 40 in full color, drawn from archives around the world to highlight vital facets of the subject; it also includes eyewitness accounts and other documentary evidence that complement the text. The book also traces the history of the abolition movement, beginning in eighteenth-century England (one of the prime moves in establishing the slave trade in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries). This humanitarian philosophy is now taken for granted (at least officially) by every nation on earth. The author, Susanne Everett, also reviews those societies that did not readily accept abolition - the Arabs, who ravaged East Africa for slaves until well into this century, the Belgians, who initiated a reign of terror in the Congo in the late nineteenth century, and the Southerners who struggled to preserve their dominant position through the confrontations of Civil Rights. The book concludes with a reminder that slavery remains a vital issue today. Slave labor was imposed by the Russians and Germans during the Second World War and there are isolated instances - in South America and parts of Africa - that require continued policing by Anti-Slavery Commission of the United Nations.History of Slavery is a comprehensive, thoroughly illustrated account of human bondage, and an essential volume for everyone concerned with society and man's part in it.

The Work Ethic in Industrial America, 1850-1920


Daniel T. Rodgers - 1978
    That is the issue to which Rodgers always returns: how did men and women react to the economy of unprecedented plenty that the 19th-century revolution in power and machines had produced? . . . This is certainly . . . one of the most refreshing and penetrating analyses of the relation of diverse levels of 19th-century culture that it has been my pleasure to read in a long time."—Carl N. Degler, Science

The Right to Useful Unemployment and Its Professional Enemies


Ivan Illich - 1978
    In this political essay, Ivan Illich calls for the right to useful unemployment: a positive, constructive, and even optimistic concept dealing with that activity by which people are useful to themselves and others outside the production of commodities for the market.

Worker City, Company Town: Iron and Cotton-Worker Protest in Troy and Cohoes, New York, 1855-84


Daniel J. Walkowitz - 1978
    

Creating Alternative Futures: The End of Economics (Kumarian Press Books for a World That Works)


Hazel Henderson - 1978
    Henderson explains how GNP distorts the goal of human development worldwide. She points out misleading assumptions and a redefinition of health, wealth, and progress for humanity's long-term survival. The book predicts the sweep of democratization and the new "third sector" of grassroots globalists.