Author: Ethel ArmesPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 688
Book Description
The Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama
Author: Ethel ArmesCoal Wars
Author: Richard MartinPublisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1466879246
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
Since the late 18th century, when it emerged as a source of heating and, later, steam power, coal has brought untold benefits to mankind. Even today, coal generates almost 45 percent of the world's power. Our modern technological society would be inconceivable without coal and the energy it provides. Unfortunately, that society will not survive unless we wean ourselves off coal. The largest single source of greenhouse gases, coal is responsible for 43 percent of the world's carbon emissions. Richard Martin, author of SuperFuel, argues that to limit catastrophic climate change, we must find a way to power our world with less polluting energy sources, and we must do it in the next couple of decades—or else it is "game over." It won't be easy: as coal plants shut down across the United States, and much of Europe turns to natural gas, coal use is growing in the booming economies of Asia— particularly China and India. Even in Germany, where nuclear power stations are being phased out in the wake of the Fukushima accident, coal use is growing. Led by the Sierra Club and its ambitious "Beyond Coal" campaign, environmentalists hope to drastically reduce our dependence on coal in the next decade. But doing so will require an unprecedented contraction of an established, lucrative, and politically influential worldwide industry. Big Coal will not go gently. And its decline will dramatically change lives everywhere—from Appalachian coal miners and coal company executives to activists in China's nascent environmental movement. Based on a series of journeys into the heart of coal land, from Wyoming to West Virginia to China's remote Shanxi Province, hundreds of interviews with people involved in, or affected by, the effort to shrink the industry, and deep research into the science, technology, and economics of the coal industry, Coal Wars chronicles the dramatic stories behind coal's big shutdown—and the industry's desperate attempts to remain a global behemoth. A tour de force of literary journalism, Coal Wars will be a milestone in the climate change battle.
Black Coal Miners in America
Author: Ronald L. LewisPublisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 9780813116105
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 274
Book Description
From the early day of mining in colonial Virginia and Maryland up to the time of World War II, blacks were an important part of the labor force in the coal industry. Yet in this, as in other enterprises, their role has heretofore been largely ignored. Now Roland L. Lewis redresses the balance in this comprehensive history of black coal miners in America. The experience of blacks in the industry has varied widely over time and by region, and the approach of this study is therefore more comparative than chronological. Its aim is to define the patterns of race relations that prevailed among the m.
The Devil Is Here in These Hills
Author: James GreenPublisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN: 0802192092
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 447
Book Description
“The most comprehensive and comprehendible history of the West Virginia Coal War I’ve ever read.” —John Sayles, writer and director of Matewan On September 1, 1912, the largest, most protracted, and deadliest working-class uprising in American history was waged in West Virginia. On one side were powerful corporations whose millions bought armed guards and political influence. On the other side were fifty thousand mine workers, the nation’s largest labor union, and the legendary “miners’ angel,” Mother Jones. The fight for unionization and civil rights sparked a political crisis that verged on civil war, stretching from the creeks and hollows of the Appalachians to the US Senate. Attempts to unionize were met with stiff resistance. Fundamental rights were bent—then broken. The violence evolved from bloody skirmishes to open armed conflict, as an army of more than fifty thousand miners finally marched to an explosive showdown. Extensively researched and vividly told, this definitive book about an often-overlooked chapter of American history, “gives this backwoods struggle between capital and labor the due it deserves. [Green] tells a dark, often despairing story from a century ago that rings true today” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).
Killing for Coal
Author: Thomas G. AndrewsPublisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674736680
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 414
Book Description
On a spring morning in 1914, in the stark foothills of southern Colorado, members of the United Mine Workers of America clashed with guards employed by the Rockefeller family, and a state militia beholden to Colorado’s industrial barons. When the dust settled, nineteen men, women, and children among the miners’ families lay dead. The strikers had killed at least thirty men, destroyed six mines, and laid waste to two company towns. Killing for Coal offers a bold and original perspective on the 1914 Ludlow Massacre and the “Great Coalfield War.” In a sweeping story of transformation that begins in the coal beds and culminates with the deadliest strike in American history, Thomas Andrews illuminates the causes and consequences of the militancy that erupted in colliers’ strikes over the course of nearly half a century. He reveals a complex world shaped by the connected forces of land, labor, corporate industrialization, and workers’ resistance. Brilliantly conceived and written, this book takes the organic world as its starting point. The resulting elucidation of the coalfield wars goes far beyond traditional labor history. Considering issues of social and environmental justice in the context of an economy dependent on fossil fuel, Andrews makes a powerful case for rethinking the relationships that unite and divide workers, consumers, capitalists, and the natural world.
The Coal Question; an Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal-Mines
Author: William Stanley JevonsPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 384
Book Description
The Great Coalfield War
Author: George Stanley McGovernPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 420
Book Description
"A definitive study of the Ludlow massacre and events leading up to it. This story has much drama and struggle, and it holds some crucial lessons about industrial strife and about how viciously brutal AmericaÂs capitalists were a couple of generations ago." -- Los Angeles Times -- "The effect of this work is simply enraging, for the reality that the documentation evokes, both of wickedness and of the suffering that that wickedness caused, is intolerable." -- The New Yorker -- In the early 20th century, Colorado yielded more than a million tons of coal annually -- hacked and blasted out by immigrants from Eastern Europe living in crudely built towns owned by powerful mine operators. The companies owned the stores, ran the schools, churches, hospitals, and saloons, and bribed the region's lawmen to keep union organizers out. Mine safety was all but unheard-of when in 1913 mine explosions killed more than four hundred workers in just two of the mines. The United Mineworkers' Union infiltrated the towns, and thirteen thousand miners and their families made one mass exodus to establish a tent colony near the rail outpost at Ludlow. Months of fighting between the miners and company gunmen assisted by the Colorado State National Guard culminated in the Ludlow Massacre where tents were set afire, suffocating women and children who had sought shelter in storage pits beneath tent floorboards. The resultant public scandal compelled Washington to intervene, but it would take years before Colorado's coal miners gained union protection. The Great Coalfield War is a part of western history and an especially important part in view of today's declining union enrollments and the national movement to deregulate workplace safety laws and the federal agencies that enforce them. --Midwest Book Review
Pennsylvania's Coal and Iron Police
Author: Spencer J. SadlerPublisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 9780738564708
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 132
Book Description
Pennsylvania's Coal and Iron Police ruled small patch towns and industrial cities for their coal and iron company bosses from 1865 to 1931. Armed with a gun and badge and backed by state legislation, the members of the private police force were granted power in a practically unspecified jurisdiction. Set in Pennsylvania's anthracite and bituminous regions, including Luzerne, Schuylkill, Westmoreland, Beaver, Somerset, and Indiana Counties, at a time when labor disputes were deadly, the officers are the story behind American labor history's high-profile events and attention-grabbing headlines. Paid to protect company property, their duties varied but unfortunately often resulted in strikebreaking, intimidation, and violence.
Iron Thunder
Author: AviPublisher: Hachette+ORM
ISBN: 1423140621
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 165
Book Description
When his father is killed fighting for the Union in the War Between the States, thirteen-year-old Tom Carroll must take a job to help support his family. He manages to find work at a bustling ironworks in his hometown of Brooklyn, New York, where dozens of men are frantically pounding together the strangest ship Tom has ever seen. A ship made of iron. Tom becomes assistant to the ship's inventor, a gruff, boastful man named Captain John Ericsson. He soon learns that the Union army has very important plans for this iron ship called the Monitor. It is supposed to fight the Confederate "sea monster"--another ironclad--the Merrimac. But Ericsson is practically the only person who believes the Monitor will float. Everyone else calls it "Ericsson's Folly" or "the iron coffin." Meanwhile, Tom's position as Ericsson's assistant has made him a target of Confederate spies, who offer him money for information about the ship. Tom finds himself caught between two certain dangers: an encounter with murderous spies and a battle at sea in an iron coffin
Dixie Be Damned
Author: Neal ShirleyPublisher: AK Press
ISBN: 1849352089
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280
Book Description
In 1891, when coal companies in eastern Tennessee brought in cheap convict labor to take over their jobs, workers responded by storming the stockades, freeing the prisoners, and loading them onto freight trains. Over the next year, tactics escalated to include burning company property and looting company stores. This was one of the largest insurrections in US working-class history. It happened at the same time as the widely publicized northern labor war in Homestead, Pennsylvania. And it was largely ignored, then and now. Dixie Be Damned engages seven similarly "hidden" insurrectionary episodes in Southern history to demonstrate the region's long arc of revolt. Countering images of the South as pacified and conservative, this adventurous retelling presents history in the rough. Not the image of the South many expect, this is the South of maroon rebellion, wildcat strikes, and Robert F. Williams's book Negroes with Guns, a South where the dispossessed refuse to quietly suffer their fate. This is people's history at its best: slave revolts, multiracial banditry, labor battles, prison uprisings, urban riots, and more. Neal Shirley grew up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and now lives in Durham, NC, where he is involved in several anti-prison initiatives and runs a small publishing project called the North Carolina Piece Corps. Saralee Stafford was born in the Piedmont of North Carolina. Her recent political work has focused on connecting the struggles of street organizations with those of anarchists in the area. She teaches gender-related health in Durham, North Carolina.