American Labor: A Documentary History

by M. Dubofsky, J. McCartin

Overview

This single-volume comprehensive compilation of documents integrates institutional labour history (movements and trade unions) with aspects of social and cultural history, as well as charting changes in trade union and managerial practices, and integrating the economics and politics of labour history. It includes documents that treat household relations as well as industrial relations; women as domestic workers and unpaid household labour as well as factory workers; and African American, Hispanic American (especially Mexican and Mexican American), and Asian workers as well as white workers. American Labor offers readers an insight into the full spectrum historically of workers, their daily lives, and the movements that they created.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312295653
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	03/08/2005
Edition description:	2005
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.04(d)

About the Author

MELVYN DUBOFSKY is Bartle Distinguished Professor of History & Sociology at Binghamton University, State University of New York, USA. He is author of numerous books and essays in history including The State and Labor in Modern America and Hard Work: The Making of Labor History.

JOSEPH A. MCCARTIN is Associate Professor of History in the Department of History at Georgetown University, USA. He is the author of Labor's Great War: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy and the Origins of Modern American Labor Relations, 1912-21 and editor of We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World.

Table of Contents

Introduction Acknowledgments Labor in the Colonial and Early National Periods, to 1828 The Rise of Free Labor, the Factory System, and Trades Organization, 1828-1877 Workers in a Maturing an Industrial Society, 1877-1914 Wars, Depression, and the Struggle for Industrial Democracy, 1912-1947 The Era of the Postwar Social Contract, 1947-1973 Era of Economic Change and Union Decline, Since 1973

Editorial Reviews

'American Labor: A Documentary History is an outstanding collection of materials drawn from a wide variety of sources. Responsive to the themes of gender and ethnicity that have characterized much recent scholarship, this collection by two leading labor historians does not neglect more traditional themes of union organizing, collective bargaining, and government-labor relations. The editors' introductory commentaries provide clearly rendered context for the well-chosen selections that form the heart of this book. While American Labor: A Documentary History is sure to find wide use in classes, it also provides a rich trove of primary material for general readers, much of it in the form of poignant and moving personal testimony from workers of diverse backgrounds.' - Robert H. Zieger, Distinguished Professor of History, University of Florida

'At long last we now have a reliable, comprehensive, and accessible volume of documents on the history of American labor from two of the most respected labor historians in the academy. This volume actually does justice to the very diverse field that is labor history today: no small accomplishment!' - Eric Arnesen, University of Illinois at Chicago and author of Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad Workers and the Struggle for Equality

'A rich trove of primary material .. much of it in the form of poignant and moving personal testimony from workers of diverse backgrounds.' - Robert H Zieger, University of Florida, USA

From the Publisher