Labor History Links

The clerk attended his desk and counter at the intersection of two great themes of modern historical experience: the development of a market economy and a society governed from below. Who better illustrates the daily practice and production of this modernity than someone of no particular account assigned with overseeing all the new buying and selling? In Accounting for Capitalism, Michael Zakim has written their story, a social history of capital that seeks to explain how the “bottom line” became a synonym for truth in an age shorn of absolutes, grafted onto our very sense of reason and trust.

This is a big story, told through an ostensibly marginal event: the birth of a class of “merchant clerks” in the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century. The personal trajectory of these young men from farm to metropolis, homestead to boarding house, and, most significantly, from growing things to selling them exemplified the enormous social effort required to domesticate the profit motive and turn it into the practical foundation of civic life. As Zakim reveals in his highly original study, there was nothing natural or preordained about the stunning ascendance of this capitalism and its radical transformation of the relationship between “Man and Mammon.”

Most scholarship on nineteenth-century America's transformation into a market society has focused on consumption, romanticized visions of workers, and analysis of firms and factories. Building on but moving past these studies, Capitalism Takes Command presents a history of family farming, general incorporation laws, mortgage payments, inheritance practices, office systems, and risk management an inventory of the means by which capitalism became America's new revolutionary tradition. This multidisciplinary collection of essays argues not only that capitalism reached far beyond the purview of the economy, but also that the revolution was not confined to the destruction of an agrarian past. As business ceaselessly revised its own practices, a new demographic of private bankers, insurance brokers, investors in securities, and start-up manufacturers, among many others, assumed center stage, displacing older elites and forms of property. Explaining how capital became an "ism" and how business became a political philosophy, Capitalism Takes Command brings the economy back into American social and cultural history. -- Provided by publisher
Introduction: an American revolutionary tradition / Michael Zakim and Gary J. Kornblith
The agrarian context of American capitalist development / Christopher Clark
The mortgage worked the hardest: the fate of landed independence in nineteenth-century America / Jonathan Levy
Toxic debt, liar loans, collateralized and securitized human beings and the panic of 1837 / Edward E. Baptist
Inheriting property and debt: from family security to corporate accumulation / Elizabeth Blackmar
Slave breeding and free love: an antebellum argument over slavery, capitalism, and personhood / Amy Dru Stanley
Capitalism and the rise of the corporation nation / Robert E. Wright
Capitalist aesthetics: Americans look at the London and Liverpool docks / Tamara Plakins Thornton
William Leggett and the melodrama of the market / Jeffrey Sklansky
Producing capitalism: the clerk at work / Michael Zakim
Soulless monsters and iron horses: the Civil War, institutional change and American capitalism / Sean Patrick Adams
Afterword: Anonymous history / Jean-Christophe Agnew

Class, Race, and Gender: Challenging the Injuries and Divisions of Capitalism is for those who want to understand the underlying connections among today's social justice movements. Bringing forth the basic operations of capitalist economies, it reveals what is driving many of today's most urgent and vexing problems: the common origins of the inequalities of income, wealth, and power; environmental devastation; militarism; racism and white supremacy; patriarchy and male chauvinism; periodic economic crises; and the cultural conflicts that are tearing at US life. Michael Zweig illuminates all propositions with specific examples from US history, from the first settlement of the New World to current life, including his own lived experiences as an activist, educator, and organizer over the past six decades. As such, the book is an urgently needed resource for activists and organizers seeking structural and moral transformation of life in the US. Building on his analysis, Zweig also presents strategies for political action in electoral and movement-building work.-- Provided by publisher

In the second edition of his essential book Michael Zweig warns that by allowing the working class to disappear into categories of "middle class" or "consumers," we also allow those with the dominant power, capitalists, to vanish among the rich.
Preface to the Second EditionAcknowledgments Introduction1. The Class Structure of the United States2. What We Think about When We Think about Class3. Why Is Class Important?4. Looking at the "Underclass"5. Looking at Values—Family and Otherwise6. The Working Class and Power7. Power and Globalization8. Power and the Government9. Into the MillenniumNotesIndex

Public higher education in the postwar era was a key economic and social driver in American life, making college available to millions of working men and women. Since the 1980s, however, government austerity policies and politics have severely reduced public investment in higher education, exacerbating inequality among poor and working-class students of color, as well as part-time faculty. In Austerity Blues, Michael Fabricant and Stephen Brier examine these devastating fiscal retrenchments nationally, focusing closely on New York and California, both of which were leaders in the historic expansion of public higher education in the postwar years and now are at the forefront of austerity measures.--publisher

Housed in the five-story Perienes canning factory, the Museum of Labour opened in 1995. It grew from a collection dedicated to the world of work that was gathered by students in a project supervised by the French ethnographer Michel Giacometti in 1975. The large spaces of the former factory are filled with display panels and objects. The displays cover local industry, domestic work, agriculture, commerce and especially fish canning and lithographic printing of packaging.

There are three main exhibitions. The first looks at agricultural and domestic work and presents many tools and equipment. The second exhibition traces the canning production process and displays artifacts relating to the industry, including a large and colourful collection of printed packaging. Testimonies can be read from workers who collectively helped construct the exhibition. The third exhibition is of a reconstructed grocery store from the 1920s, brought to life by bottles, barrels, weighing scales and jars.

The Handbook maps the current state of the field and presents a visionary agenda for future research by mingling the voices and perspectives of founding and emerging scholars. In addition to a framing Introduction and Conclusion written by the co-editors, the volume is divided into six sections: Methods and principles of research in working-class studies; Class and education; Work and community; Working-class cultures; Representations; and Activism and collective action. Each of the six sections opens with an overview that synthesizes research in the area and briefly summarizes each of the chapters in the section.
Throughout the volume, contributors from various disciplines explore the ways in which experiences and understandings of class have shifted rapidly as a result of economic and cultural globalization, social and political changes, and global financial crises of the past two decades
Introduction / Michele Fazio, Christie Launius, and Tim Strangleman
Class analysis from the inside: scholarly personal narrative as a signature genre of working-class studies / Sherry Lee Linkon
Reconceiving class in contemporary working-class studies / Joseph Entin
Mediating stories of class borders: first generation college students, digital storytelling, and social class / Jane A. Van Galen
The 'how to' of working-class studies: selves, stories, and working across media / Christine J. Walley
Class beyond the classroom: supporting working-class and first-generation students, faculty, and staff / Colby R. King and Sean H. McPherson
Working class student experiences: towards a social class-sensitive pedagogy for k-12 schools, teachers, and teacher educators / Colleen H. Clements and Mark D. Vagle
The pedagogy of class: teaching working-class life and culture in the academy / Lisa A. Kirby
Being working class in the English classroom / Diane Reay
Getting schooled : working-class students in higher education / Bettina Spencer
Learning our place : social reproduction in k-12 schooling / Deborah M. Warnock
Deindustrialization and its consequences / Steven High
Economic dislocation and trauma / Patrick Korte and Victor Tan Chen
Working-class studies, oral history and industrial illness / Arthur McIvor
Precarity's affects: the trauma of deindustrialization / Kathryn Marie Dudley
Feeling, re-imagined in common: working with social haunting in the English coalfields / Geoff Bright
There is a genuine working-class culture / Jack Metzgar
Class, culture, and inequality / Jessi Streib
Post-traumatic living: precarious employment and learned helplessness in the working class / Barbara Jensen
Activist class cultures / Betsy Leondar-Wright
The Australian working class in popular culture / Sarah Attfield
Writing Dubai : Indian labour migrants and taxi topographies / Christiane Schlote
The cinema of the precariat / Tom Zaniello
The 'body of labor' in U.S. postwar documentary photography : a working-class studies perspective / Carol Quirke
Mapping working-class art / Janet Zandy
'Things that are left out' : working-class writing and the idea of literature / Ben Clarke
Lit-grit : the gritty and the grim in working-class cultural production / Simon Lee
Mass incarceration, prison labor, prison writing / Nathaniel Heggins Bryant
Marketing millennial women : embodied class performativity on American television / Jennifer H. Forsberg
From stigma to solution: centering the community college through activism in the classroom and the community / Karen Gaffney
Border crossing with day laborers and affordable housing activists / Terry Easton
Finding class in food justice efforts / Leslie Hossfeld, E. Brooke Kelly, and Julia F. Waity
The mutual determination of class and race in the United States : history and current implications / Michael Zweig
Documenting Lumbee working-class history : a service-learning approach / Michele Fazio
Precarious workers and social mobilization in Portuguese call centre assembly lines / Isabel Roque
Post-Fordist Affect : unions, the labor movement, and the weight of history / Joseph Varga
Conclusion / Michele Fazio, Christie Launius and Tim Strangleman

A half-century after the women's movement of the 1960s, women still have not achieved equality in the workplace, in part because the burdens of family still fall largely upon their shoulders. This in-depth review examines legislation, social-science research, and human resources management practices dealing with women's integration of work and life roles. It explores the context and theory that explain new workplace trends and realities, and it offers practical recommendations on how women and companies can cope.The book is based on the premise that to attract and retain top talent and be competitive in the 21st century, employers must redesign their organizations to meet the needs of employees. A sort of "paper mentor" for women, it spells out the myths and realities of combining employment with motherhood and a committed relationship. The expert essays are also a guide for corporations, intended to help them understand the necessity of easing women's burdens—and nurturing their talent—through attention to work hours and to policies that can facilitate the integration of work and life roles.

The United States has a long and unfortunate history of exposing employees, the public, and the environment to dangerous work. But in April 2009, the spotlight was on Las Vegas when the Pulitzer committee awarded its public service prize to the Las Vegas Sun for its coverage of the high fatalities on Las Vegas Strip construction sites. The newspaper attributed failures in safety policy to the recent "exponential growth in the Las Vegas market." In fact, since Las Vegas' founding in 1905, rapid development has always strained occupational health and safety standards. A History of Occupational Health and Safety examines the work, hazards, and health and safety programs from the early building of the railroad through the construction of the Hoover Dam, chemical manufacturing during World War II, nuclear testing, and dense megaresort construction on the Las Vegas Strip. In doing so, this comprehensive chronicle reveals the long and unfortunate history of exposing workers, residents, tourists, and the environment to dangerous work--all while exposing the present and future to crises in the region. Complex interactions and beliefs among the actors involved are emphasized, as well as how the medical community interpreted and responded to the risks posed. Few places in the United States contain this mixture of industrial and postindustrial sites, the Las Vegas area offers unique opportunities to evaluate American occupational health during the twentieth century, and reminds us all about the relevancy of protecting our workers.

Gambling with Lives is a history of occupational health and the conflicts between workplace safety and regulations in Las Vegas, Nevada. The revised and expanded edition is updated through 2020 with new discussions of the Harvest Festival Shooting, Legionnaire's disease outbreaks at the resorts, work-related disorders in the service industry, and COVID-19.

Apparel manufacturing in the American South, by virtue of its size, its reliance upon female labor, and its broad geographic scope, is an important but often overlooked industry that connects the disparate concerns of women's history, southern cultural history, and labor history. In Striking Beauties, Michelle Haberland examines its essential features and the varied experiences of its workers during the industry's great expansion from the late 1930s through the demise of its southern branch of the twentieth century

Kate Metzel Debs was a long-time supporter of women’s suffrage. Shewas active in her local chapter of the Women’s Franchise League, which drew much support from working-class women. Kate Debs was the wife of labor organizer and Socialist Party presidential candidate, Eugene V. Debs. This articlewas published in the weekly The Appeal to Reason,the largest paid circulation socialist newspaper in the country in 1910 (with a circulation of half a million). Includes Documetn and teaching guide

The Historic Newspapers collection aims to preserve and make accessible smaller local newspapers, especially short-lived titles. It includes newspapers produced for black and migrant labor communities in the Midwest. Prominent examples include The Reformer (1967-1970), a newspaper produced by the South Bend African-American community, and The Farm News of St. Joseph County (1944-1959).

newsletters and ephemera on housing and some on working conditions in South Bend Indiana, a working class city
This collection brings together primary historical sources illuminating progress towards full civil rights for all the people of this diverse community, with a special emphasis on the history and development of the African American community. Dr. Bernard Streets Sr. and his wife, Odie Mae Streets, were instrumental leaders in the South Bend Chapter of the NAACP and in other human rights activities.

Studebaker, Oliver, Wilson Bros., South Bend Lathe...this collection houses information about the companies, large and small, that contributed to making our area a center of manufacturing and a business hub for over 150 years. 446 items including annual reports to employees and their families, company newsletters, Bulk of the material is in from the 1940s-1950s

Images of Studebaker workers, Packard workers, strikes, migrant labor, child labor, farm labor, United Autoworkers Local 5 from 1950s-1970s. This is part of a collection
collection is made up of approximately 12,000 digitized photographic negatives created by the South Bend Tribune staff from 1937-1990. The bulk of the digitized materials date from 1950-1989 and are in a variety of film formats accompanied by news clippings. The full collection of approximately 1 million items was generously donated to the library by the South Bend Tribune in 2019.. Bulk of the material is in from the 1940s-1950s

This museum features an exhibit on the working people of Upper Peninsula Michigan
The Michigan Iron Industry Museum offers a variety of presentations that are adaptable for any grade level. The presentations, some interactive, teaches students about topics such as lighthouse keepers on the Great Lakes, Iron Ore and early settlement in Michigan.

Located eight miles west of the City of Marquette in the forested ravines of the Marquette Iron Range, this modern museum facility overlooks the Carp River and the site of the first iron manufactory in the Lake Superior region. The museum tells the story of Michigan’s three iron ranges and the people who worked them, through dramatic exhibits, audio-visual programs, and outdoor interpretive trails. A high-definition video, “Iron Spirits: Life on the Michigan Iron Range,” is shown six times daily in the museum’s 88-seat auditorium.

The museum also offers an active education program including community outreach, seasonal events, a lecture series, and the Future Historians, a youth association that meets monthly during the school year. Every summer, the Future Historians share their knowledge and test their skills by providing costumed first-person interpretation for visitors at another Michigan History Center site, Fort Wilkins, through four 3-day living history camps.

Guided Tours Available MLHS can arrange for tours of “Transcending,” the Labor Legacy Landmark in Detroit, for union locals, students and teachers, community groups, and others. Tours can also be arranged during union conventions or conferences. Please contact us at: Michigan Labor History Society, 5401 Cass, Detroit MI 48202, or telephoning our office at 313-577-4003.

A map that details the labor history across Michigan. Provided by the Michigan Labor History Society

Call 313-577-4003 or visit 5401 Cass, Detroit MI 48202 to reserve your spot on Michigan Labor History Society's bus tours.

An old site that includes images, oral history excerpts audio clips with some transcripts, and maps While hard to navigate, it is worth exploring. The listing of all the materials is on the search page. See alll these interviews in another site: https://digitalarchives.umflint.edu/digital/collection/p16210coll3
To provide an introduction to the sit-down strike for those students or members of the general public who are unaware of the history of this momentous event in American history.
To provide an immediacy and personal touch to this historical knowledge through the use of digitized audio files, which contain the actual voices of former sit-downers reminiscing about their experiences.
To make a site that was usable on several levels of interactivity, with information and sound files accessible through several different galleries, a Flash-generated map, a timeline, and various search functions.
To preserve the interviews done by Leighton etal. in a form that was relatively permanent and easily accessible.

Most of the strike participants were over seventy years old at the time of their interviews, and many were over eighty. Yet their memories of what transpired more than forty years earlier turned out to be surprisingly clear. They remembered the working conditions that led to the strike, especially the dreaded "speed-up"; they remembered what they were doing during the strike, inside the plants and out; and they remembered the difficult months after the strike when the fledgling UAW was trying to establish long-term credibility. Their memories, added together, create a comprehensive oral history of the event, and are an invaluable complement to scholarly books available on the subject.

As these audio clips demonstrate, the strike itself has remained interesting because it was a classic case of David versus Goliath. In 1936, General Motors was the richest industrial corporation in the world, with plants in over fifty cities and towns across the United States. Moreover, the largest stockholders were the fabulously wealthy Du Ponts. The strikers, on the other hand, averaged about a tenth grade education, came from poor families, and consisted of many Southerners and Eastern European immigrants. As such, it was easy for strike opponents to claim that they were being forced into their acts of radicalism by "outside agitators" (code words for Communists and Socialists). To a certain degree this charge may have been true, yet it is untrue to say that the aim of most of the strikers was to take over the plants on a permanent basis. Like most of the country, they only wanted a "new deal" that might help them better their lot in life. This meant not only better working conditions and higher pay; it also meant an affirmation of their basic humanity.

This photo essay provides a visual introduction to the significant geological and mining activities which have drawn people to this region for centuries, the social aspects of the communities and lives which have occurred here, as well as the place that Michigan Technological University has had in these stories

The influence of the mining industry is critical to Copper Country history. Around the turn of the century, the big companies in the area were reaping their greatest profits. All this would come to a halt in the summer of 1913, as disenchanted miners began a strike that would tear the region apart. Aided by the Montana-based union The Western Federation of Miners (WFM), the strikers fought against local law enforcement, strike breakers, and even the Michigan National Guard. Months of vandalism, terror, harassment and violence followed. The strike finally ended following one of the greatest tragedies of the early 20th century, and its effects can still be seen and felt in the area to this day.

This section of the VUP will examine the strike. Topics include: an overview of the causes and events of the strike; exploration of the one man drill, one of the main issues at stake; and a presentation of coded telegrams sent between Quincy Mining Co. headquarters in Boston and the local office in Calumet. Also included are documents from the Copper Country Archives, available for download and further study.

The exhibit contains six panels that document the early years of the Copper Range Railroad, from the founding of the road until its initial expansion beyond the main line. The exhibit also provides a glimpse beyond the formative years, including the impact of the decline of mining in the area, the school train runs, and the dissolution of the company. This online exhibit is a companion to the traveling exhibit so that anyone with an interest in rail history can engage with the material.

Black Voices in the Copper Country: Exploring Community and Michigan Tech Campus Life, 1850-1990, an exhibit by the Michigan Technological University Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections, examines the African American experience in the Keweenaw. This online exhibit is intended to highlight materials that explore the stories of underrepresented individuals and narratives in Michigan history and serves to encourage researchers to consider more inclusivity when telling regional and state history. The Black Voices project is a multifaceted research initiative that has included substantial archival research, public programming and exhibits.

While this project aims to highlight aspects of the African American experience in the western Upper Peninsula, no project can succeed in being a holistic representation of all aspects and perspectives of regional history. This project can serve as an introduction to a topic that deserves to be acknowledged and more deeply investigated. This exhibit includes examples of primary sources related to African American individuals and broader social history in the western Upper Peninsula. We encourage researchers, students and historians to consider how African Americans contributed to the history of the Upper Peninsula. How did they make a living? What were their experiences living in the Copper Country and participating in day-to-day life in the community and at Michigan Tech? In the end, this exhibit can serve as a stepping stone to further research by encouraging critical investigation into collections held by the Michigan Tech Archives and other regional repositories to uncover stories and individuals not widely known, but still important to the rich heritage of the Copper Country and its unique history.