Author: Edward G. RoddyPublisher: Museum of Amer
ISBN: 9780937474044
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 148
Book Description
Mills, Mansions, and Mergers
Author: Edward G. RoddyPublisher: Museum of Amer
ISBN: 9780937474044
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 148
Book Description
The Necessity of Organization
Author: Kathleen B. NutterPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317733789
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232
Book Description
The Necessity of Organization describes Mary Kenney O'Sullivan's struggle to improve labor conditions through trade unionism. Appointed the first woman organizer for the American Federation of Labor in 1892, she went on to be a co-founder of the Women's Trade Union League, formed in 1903 as a cross-class alliance of women workers and their middle- and upper-class allies. The possibilities and limits of trade unionism for women, given the class and gender constraints of the period, are the focus of this book.
The Fight to Save the Town
Author: Michelle Wilde AndersonPublisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501195999
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 368
Book Description
A sweeping and eye-opening study of wealth inequality and the dismantling of local government in four working-class US cities that passionately argues for reinvestment in people-centered leadership and offers “a welcome reminder of what government can accomplish if given the chance” (San Francisco Chronicle). Decades of cuts to local government amidst rising concentrations of poverty have wreaked havoc on communities left behind by the modern economy. Some of these discarded places are rural. Others are big cities, small cities, or historic suburbs. Some vote blue, others red. Some are the most diverse communities in America, while others are nearly all white, all Latino, or all Black. All are routinely trashed by outsiders for their poverty and their politics. Mostly, their governments are just broke. Forty years after the anti-tax revolution began protecting wealthy taxpayers and their cities, our high-poverty cities and counties have run out of services to cut, properties to sell, bills to defer, and risky loans to take. In this “astute and powerful vision for improving America” (Publishers Weekly), urban law expert and author Michelle Wilde Anderson offers unsparing, humanistic portraits of the hardships left behind in four such places. But this book is not a eulogy or a lament. Instead, Anderson travels to four blue-collar communities that are poor, broke, and progressing. Networks of leaders and residents in these places are facing down some of the hardest challenges in American poverty today. In Stockton, California, locals are finding ways, beyond the police department, to reduce gun violence and treat the trauma it leaves behind. In Josephine County, Oregon, community leaders have enacted new taxes to support basic services in a rural area with fiercely anti-government politics. In Lawrence, Massachusetts, leaders are figuring out how to improve job security and wages in an era of backbreaking poverty for the working class. And a social movement in Detroit, Michigan, is pioneering ways to stabilize low-income housing after a wave of foreclosures and housing loss. Our smallest governments shape people’s safety, comfort, and life chances. For decades, these governments have no longer just reflected inequality—they have helped drive it. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Anderson shows that “if we learn to save our towns, we will also be learning to save ourselves” (The New York Times Book Review).
The Belles of New England
Author: William MoranPublisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429978252
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328
Book Description
The Belles of New England is a masterful, definitive, and eloquent look at the enormous cultural and economic impact on America of New England's textile mills. The author, an award-winning CBS producer, traces the history of American textile manufacturing back to the ingenuity of Francis Cabot Lodge. The early mills were an experiment in benevolent enlightened social responsibility on the part of the wealthy owners, who belonged to many of Boston's finest families. But the fledgling industry's ever-increasing profits were inextricably bound to the issues of slavery, immigration, and workers' rights. William Moran brings a newsman's eye for the telling detail to this fascinating saga that is equally compelling when dealing with rags and when dealing with riches. In part a microcosm of America's social development during the period, The Belles of New England casts a new and finer light on this rich tapestry of vast wealth, greed, discrimination, and courage.
The Company Town
Author: John GarnerPublisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195361415
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 254
Book Description
Built by industrialists whose early businesses contributed to the escalation of the Industrial Revolution, company towns flourished in countries that embraced capitalism and open-market trading. In many instances, the company town came to symbolize the wrecking of the environment, especially in places associated with extractive industries such as mining and lumber milling. Some resident industrialists, however, took a genuine interest in the welfare of their work forces, and in a number of instances hired architects to provide a model environment. Overtaken by time, these towns were either abandoned or caught up in suburban growth. The most thorough-going and only international assessment of the company town, this collection of essays by specialists and authorities of each region offers a balanced account of architectural and social history and provides a better understanding of the architectural and urban experiences of the early industrial age.
World of Possibilities
Author: Charles F. SabelPublisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521894432
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 526
Book Description
This book retells the history of Western industrialization, revealing possibilities unexplored in the nineteenth century, variants of which have come to transform present day economies. It shows that economic actors have historically been more aware of the great strategic choices they faced than standard theory credits them with being, and this surprising acuity allows them to imagine and put into practice solutions which current theories of industrial organization have scarcely anticipated. The book is therefore at one and the same time a contribution to a substantive revision of the history of mechanized production and a propaedeutic in a form of explanation that approximates the knowledge of the actor to the knowledge of the theorist. The volume groups essays presented by a multinational team of historians and social scientists drawing on intensive primary research on a wide range of firms, regions, sectors and national economies in Western Europe and the United States from the eighteenth century to the 1990s.
The Lost American Industrialist
Author: Bob FournierPublisher: FriesenPress
ISBN: 1039138357
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 291
Book Description
William Madison Wood was a gifted and successful Portuguese-American industrialist in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. His rags-to-riches story is the fulfillment of the American Dream: • His accomplishments in textile manufacturing were known throughout the world. • His dedication to American patriotism and his extreme investment in the work of wool manufacturing gave rise to accomplishments that were acknowledged worldwide. • His wealth, position, and power of influence rivaled those of other great leaders of the Gilded Age. But this great man became lost to history. Why? His work-driven philosophy of life, his obsessive drive to acquire and develop, his internal struggle with grief and anguish, his lost ethnic background, his need to rule alone, and his tragic and socially unacceptable manner of death were all part of the identity and life story of William Madison Wood. Bob Fournier unpacks Wood’s story with finesse, showing how this esteemed man fell prey to the material trappings of a life of excessive labor, power, and wealth, and the inability to temper these forces for well-being. While Wood was a man true to his era, his life story offers much to consider in today’s world. The characters may have changed, but many of the issues remain the same—race, ethnicity, autocracy, abuse of power, and immigration. Fournier enables William Wood to speak from the grave in a way he was unable to speak in life about himself, his relationships with others, and his relationship with the world.
Bread and Roses
Author: Bruce WatsonPublisher: Penguin
ISBN: 144064926X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 372
Book Description
On January 12, 1912, an army of textile workers stormed out of the mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts, commencing what has since become known as the "Bread and Roses" strike. Based on newspaper accounts, magazine reportage, and oral histories, Watson reconstructs a Dickensian drama involving thousands of parading strikers from fifty-one nations, unforgettable acts of cruelty, and even a protracted murder trial that tested the boundaries of free speech. A rousing look at a seminal and overlooked chapter of the past, Bread and Roses is indispensable reading.
From Your Loving Son
Author: Elin Williams NeitermanPublisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 9781462036967
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 400
Book Description
War was no stranger to the town of Sudbury, Massachusetts. A small farming community at the outbreak of the Civil War, Sudbury stood ready to support the cause of the Union. Uriah and Mary Moore, a local farmer and his wife, parents of ten children, sent four sons off to fight for the Union. George Frederick Moore was twenty years old when he joined the Thirty-fifth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers in 1862, along with brother, Albert. Their brother, John, had enlisted in the Thirteenth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers and had been serving since 1861. In 1864, a fourth brother, Alfred, joined the Fifty-ninth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers. The eighty-four letters in this collection span the years from August 1862 to the end of the War and include correspondence to and from Pvt. George Moore and five family members. Georges personal diaries from 1863 and 1864 are also included, as well as the 1867 diary of Sarah Jones, the girl he married. Through research the family is traced long after the war, revealing their travels and accomplishments. Explanatory passages that accompany these letters highlight the campaigns of the Thirty-fifth Regiment through the war years. George Moore took part in battles from South Mountain and Antietam to Fredericksburg, Vicksburg, Campbells Station, and the Siege of Knoxville. He participated in the Battles of the Wilderness, Cold Harbor, and the assault on Petersburg. The letters to and from George Moore and his loved ones provide an intimate glimpse of the trials, not only of the soldiers, but of the family who sent their boys off to war.
Animal Oppression and Human Violence
Author: David A. NibertPublisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231525516
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 349
Book Description
Jared Diamond and other leading scholars have argued that the domestication of animals for food, labor, and tools of war has advanced the development of human society. But by comparing practices of animal exploitation for food and resources in different societies over time, David A. Nibert reaches a strikingly different conclusion. He finds in the domestication of animals, which he renames "domesecration," a perversion of human ethics, the development of large-scale acts of violence, disastrous patterns of destruction, and growth-curbing epidemics of infectious disease. Nibert centers his study on nomadic pastoralism and the development of commercial ranching, a practice that has been largely controlled by elite groups and expanded with the rise of capitalism. Beginning with the pastoral societies of the Eurasian steppe and continuing through to the exportation of Western, meat-centered eating habits throughout today's world, Nibert connects the domesecration of animals to violence, invasion, extermination, displacement, enslavement, repression, pandemic chronic disease, and hunger. In his view, conquest and subjugation were the results of the need to appropriate land and water to maintain large groups of animals, and the gross amassing of military power has its roots in the economic benefits of the exploitation, exchange, and sale of animals. Deadly zoonotic diseases, Nibert shows, have accompanied violent developments throughout history, laying waste to whole cities, societies, and civilizations. His most powerful insight situates the domesecration of animals as a precondition for the oppression of human populations, particularly indigenous peoples, an injustice impossible to rectify while the material interests of the elite are inextricably linked to the exploitation of animals. Nibert links domesecration to some of the most critical issues facing the world today, including the depletion of fresh water, topsoil, and oil reserves; global warming; and world hunger, and he reviews the U.S. government's military response to the inevitable crises of an overheated, hungry, resource-depleted world. Most animal-advocacy campaigns reinforce current oppressive practices, Nibert argues. Instead, he suggests reforms that challenge the legitimacy of both domesecration and capitalism.