Strikebreaking and Intimidation: Mercenaries and Masculinity in Twentieth-Century America / Edition 1

by Stephen H. Norwood

Overview

This is the first systematic study of strikebreaking, intimidation, and anti-unionism in the United States, subjects essential to a full understanding of labor's fortunes in the twentieth century. Paradoxically, the country that pioneered the expansion of civil liberties allowed corporations to assemble private armies to disrupt union organizing, spy on workers, and break strikes. Using a social-historical approach, Stephen Norwood focuses on the mercenaries the corporations enlisted in their anti-union efforts—particularly college students, African American men, the unemployed, and men associated with organized crime. Norwood also considers the paramilitary methods unions developed to counter mercenary violence. The book covers a wide range of industries across much of the country.

Norwood explores how the early twentieth-century crisis of masculinity shaped strikebreaking's appeal to elite youth and the media's romanticization of the strikebreaker as a new soldier of fortune. He examines how mining communities' perception of mercenaries as agents of a ribald, sexually unrestrained, new urban culture intensified labor conflict. The book traces the ways in which economic restructuring, as well as shifting attitudes toward masculinity and anger, transformed corporate anti-unionism from World War II to the present.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807853733
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	05/27/2002
Series:	Gender and American Culture Series
Edition description:	1
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.80(d)
Lexile:	1440L (what's this?)

About the Author

Stephen H. Norwood, professor of history at the University of Oklahoma, is author of the award-winning Labor's Flaming Youth: Telephone Operators and Worker Militancy, 1878-1923.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Emergence of the Anti-Labor Mercenary

1 The Student as Strikebreaker: College Youth and the Crisis of Masculinity in the Early Twentieth Century

2 Gunfighters on the Urban Frontier: Strikebreakers in the Car Wars

3 Forging a New Masculinity: African American Strikebreaking in the North in the Early Twentieth Century

4 Cossacks of the Coal Fields: Corporate Mercenaries in the Mine Wars

5 Ford's Brass Knuckles: Harry Bennett, the Cult of Muscularity, and Anti-Labor Terror, 1920-1945

6 They Shall Not Pass: Paramilitary Combat against Strikebreaking in the Auto Industry, 1933-1939

Epilogue: Anti-Unionism in America, 1945-2000

Notes

Bibliography

Index

What People are Saying About This

Nelson Lichtenstein

This is a fresh and expansive probe into a mercenary underworld heretofore the stuff of lore and legend. By opening our eyes to the culture, ideology, and technique of early twentieth century strikebreaking, Norwood skillfully brings us back to a future with which we are again becoming woefully familiar.

Robert H. Zieger

An outstanding contribution to U.S. labor and social historiography.

From the Publisher

An important collection of essays that deserves the attention of labor historians.—Labor

It is easy to become engaged with this book. Norwood's writing is colorful and immediate. . . . Importantly, Strike-breaking and Intimidation reminds us of things that should not be forgotten—the intensity and unrelenting nature of class struggle, the power of capital and the fortitude of working people and their families.—Journal of Gender Studies

By enriching traditional labor history with more recent discourses on gender roles and identities in the American workplace, Norwood has put together a solid, well researched, and enjoyable book. . . . Its style and content make it an excellent reading for laymen wishing to familiarize themselves with the new labor history; Norwood's skillful treatment of the subject matter, theoretical consistency, and thorough research make it mandatory reading for all serious students of American labor history.—Journal of Mississippi History

Both labor historians and those currently contemplating college-sports-related riots will find much to think about in Norwood's story.—Journal of American History

Norwood offers a fine survey of American anti-unionism. His treatment of the bitter Chicago teamster and meatpacking strikes of 1904-1905 adds much to the existing literature on those events.—American Historical Review

Strikebreaking and Intimidation is a wonderfully readable, evocative, and economical work of history. Focused and well-crafted, the book draws the reader quickly and engagingly into the central issues and cultural processes at stake.—Journal of Social History

An outstanding contribution to U.S. labor and social historiography.—Robert H. Zieger, University of Florida

This is a fresh and expansive probe into a mercenary underworld heretofore the stuff of lore and legend. By opening our eyes to the culture, ideology, and technique of early-twentieth-century strikebreaking, Norwood skillfully brings us back to a future with which we are again becoming woefully familiar.—Nelson Lichtenstein, University of California, Santa Barbara

Well-organized, clearly written, and meticulously documented, Stephen Norwood's remarkable book makes a major contribution to the history of American labor. Norwood, who writes with an eye for the apt quotation and telling detail, has organized a complex subject into a coherent and effective narrative. An intelligent work of prize-winning caliber, it provides a model for labor historians to follow. It should be of interest to both undergraduate and graduate students, as well as to the educated general reader.—Paul Avrich, City University of New York

Editorial Reviews

An outstanding contribution to U.S. labor and social historiography. (Robert H. Zieger, author of "The CIO, 1935-1955")

This is a fresh and expansive probe into a mercenary underworld heretofore the stuff of lore and legend. By opening our eyes to the culture, ideology, and technique of early twentieth century strikebreaking, Norwood skillfully brings us back to a future with which we are again becoming woefully familiar. (Nelson Lichtenstein, author of "State of the Union: A Century of American Labor")

Norwood, who writes with an eye for the apt quotation and telling detail, has organized a complex subject into a coherent and effective narrative. An intelligent work of prize-winning caliber, it provides a model for labor historians to follow. (Paul Avrich, City University of New York )

From the Publisher