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Prof. Gerald Zahavi
COURSE INTRODUCTION: This is a reading, lecture, internet (WWW), film, and discussion course examining the evolution of work within the North American/U.S. economy from the late 1500s, through industrialization, and into the "post-industrial" recent past. Recognizing that the emergence and growth of capitalism was as much a social, cultural, political, and environmental process as it was an economic one, we will look at both the structural economic changes that transformed work and American society in the last 400 years, as well as the cultural and political (broadly conceived) factors that textured and shaped that transformation. We shall examine work (both men's and women's) and capitalist development as they shaped--and were shaped by: family roles; class identities and struggles; political conflicts; gender, racial and ethnic relations; cultural movements and transformations. Specific topics include: Amerindian economies and work cultures; colonial labor systems, including indentured servitude and slavery; artisinal and handicraft production; the rise of factory manufacturing; the evolution of the sexual division of labor; racial and ethnic segmentation in the labor force; labor struggles and political power; craft and industrial unionism; work in a global marketplace. Course content will range over wide geographical bounds and focus on a variety of different workers and work situations, covering (for example): Mexican and Mexican-American labor as well as Yankee factory girls; immigrant midwestern farmers and farm work, as well as black Southern sharecroppers and sharecropping; urban sweatshop workers, as well as merchant seamen; office work, as well as high-tech labor. "Readings" will include several monographs and articles, primary sources, World Wide Web "texts," audio and video documentaries, and miscellaneous handouts. The course has four major objectives:
Several films and videos documenting specific events or topics will be shown during the semester. Their subjects range from the Lowell Mills in the early 19th century and the Great Strike of 1877, through the emergence of the transnational corporation and international labor markets. Films and videos are chosen specifically to complement assigned lectures and assigned texts; they are not substitutes for the readings. GRADING:
This course is offered in both writing intensive and non-writing intensive sections; the major difference between the two lies in the amount of writing expected of students. Work expectations and grading procedures for students enrolled in History 316 and History 316Z are summarized below. ALL WRITTEN ASSIGNMENTS HANDED IN SHOULD BE TYPED! Papers should follow citation guidelines outlined in Kate Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (6th revised edition, 1996). Several excellent on-line footnoting and writing guides are available; for a guide to footnoting, go to: FOOTNOTING OR TURABIAN STYLE GUIDE. For a guide to grammar go to: PURDUE UNIVERSITY: GUIDE TO GRAMMAR, SPELLING, PUNCTUATION. For a guide to research, go to: PURDUE UNIVERSITY: GUIDE TO WRITING RESEARCH PAPERS.
A fine guide to grammar is also available on the Web through Perdue University. Go to: On Line Writing will be distributed in class or posted on the WWW.
RESERVE AND ADDITIONAL READINGS : Copies of the required books are available at the bookstore. Copies of articles, individual chapters, and primary sources are in the History Department reserve shelves under "History 316/316Z." The reserve shelves are located on the second floor of Ten Broeck Hall, near my office. I am relying on the honor system to insure that these materials will be available to ALL class members. You may borrow readings for two hours at a time; please return them promptly. As noted in the syllabus, some articles are also available in electronic versions for downloading or on-line viewing. Audio sources—interviews, speeches, documentaries—all come from our Talking History archive. For more information on Talking History and to access additional programs, go to: Talking History [talkinghistory.org]. You will need access to a computer with a sound card (almost all computers have one). If you don't have speakers, purchase a cheap headphone and plug it into the "line out" jack on your sound card. You'll also need to a have the RealMedia player plug-in installed on your Web browser. You can get the most recent version of the free RealMedia Basic plug-in from the company at: www.real.com. I'll have more to say on all of this in class. FILMS AND VIDEOS: A number of films/videos selected from the following list will also be shown during the course of the semester. Cost and availability will determine the final selection. One or two of the longer feature-length films will be scheduled for optional viewing outside of class time (probably in the evening).Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter, Daughters of Free Men, Company Town, Heartland, The Great Sit Down, Modern Times, The Homefront, The Wobblies, Brass Valley, 1877: The Grand Army of Starvation, The River Ran Red, The Killing Floor, Union Maids, Seeing Red, The Global Assembly Line, Controlling Interest, With Babies and Banners, Salt of the Earth, Harlan County, USA, Clockwork, Bullet Bargaining at Ludlow, The Great Sitdown, Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggle, Matewan, Norma Rae, The Women of Summer, Business of America, Seeing Red, Northern Lights, The Prize, Minimum Wages: The New Economy, The Great Depression, Out of the Depths: The Miners' Story, Los Mineros, Our Land Too!: The STFU, Roger and Me, Cesar Chaves and the Farmworkers' Movement, The Textile Strike of 1934.
CLASS SCHEDULE
PLEASE NOTE: Required WWW documents are marked with this symbol:
RECOMMENDED READING: John Schacht, "Labor History in the Academy: A Layman's Guide to a Century of Scholarship," Labor's Heritage 5 (Winter 1994), 4-21.
World Wide Web Sites/Documents: Historians and the Study of U.S. Labor: A Bibliography A Brief Historical Overview of the U.S. Labor Movement
Introduction to the Internet and the WWW: Tutorials
Writing Guide
Key Terms, Concepts, Names to know : The New Labor History; Wisconsin School of Labor History; Selig Perlman; John R. Commons; A Theory of the Labor Movement; "nonmarket labor"; Marxist historical theory; labor market segmentation; dialectical materialism; social structure of accumulation, classical economists, neoliberalism.
Thursday, Sept. 7: The Transition to Capitalism, I: Bound Labor and Free Labor in Colonial America, I REQUIRED READING:  [AUDIO FILE] As It Was in the Beginning (28.8) [For 28.8 kbps connections] | As It Was in the Beginning (56) [For 56 kbps connections]. | As It Was in the Beginning (80) [For ISDN and T1 connections] A "sound study" exploring the settlement of Virginia. Produced by WHA Radio and the University of Wisconsin—Extension Program in 1986 with funding from the Annenberg/CPB Project. "Indentured Servants and Transported Convicts". Source: Stratford Hall Plantation Web site. [http://www.stratfordhall.org/ed-servants.htm]. Laws on Indentured Servitude. From the Virtual Jamestown Web site, Virginia Center for Digital History [http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vcdh/jamestown/servlaws.html#1].
Indenture Contract of William Buckland. From the Virtual Jamestown Web site, Virginia Center for Digital History. [http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vcdh/jamestown/wbind1.html]. Search The Bristol Registers of Servants
Sent to Foreign Plantations. From the Virtual Jamestown Web site, Virginia Center for Digital History. [http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vcdh/jamestown/servantcontracts.html].
RECOMMENDED READING: 2) Susan E. Klepp & Billy G. Smith, eds., The Infortunate: The Voyage and Adventures of William Moraley, an Indentured Servant (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992). 3) Edmund S. Morgan, "The Labor Problem at Jamestown, 1607-18," The American Historical Review, Vol. 76, No. 3. (Jun., 1971): 595-611. [JSTOR, University Library].] 4) Edmund S. Morgan, "The First American Boom: Virginia 1618 to 1630," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd. Ser., Vol. 28, No. 2. (Apr., 1971): 169-198. [JSTOR, University Library]. Additional World Wide Web Sites/Documents : A short guide to colonial occupations. From the Colonial Williamsburg Web site. Colonial Occupations. A comprehensive list with short definitions of colonial occupations.
Letters from an American Farmer, by J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur (1782)
Indenture Contract from 1726 -- Rice Thomas (High Resolution Copy of Original)
Indenture Contract from 1726 -- Rice Thomas (Low Resolution Copy of Original -- Quick Loading)
Indenture Contract from 1726 -- Rice Thomas (Text Copy)
Indenture Contract from 1740 -- James Franklin to Benjamin Franklin (High Resolution Copy of Original)
Indenture Contract from 1740 -- James Franklin to Benjamin Franklin (Low Resolution Copy of Original -- Quick Loading)
Indenture Contract from 1740 -- James Franklin to Benjamin Franklin (Text Copy)
Advertisements for Recovery of Runaway Servants [Source: Pennsylvania Packet and General Advertiser, February 10, 1772]
Advertisements for Recovery of Runaway Servants [Source: Pennsylvania Gazette [from the 1730s and 1740s]
Advertisement for Arrival and Sale of Indenture Servants [Source: Virginia Gazette, March 28, 1771]
Colonial Currency, Prices, and Exchange Rates from Essays in History 34 (1992). By Leslie V. Brock.
From Indentured Servitude to Racial Slavery. Part of the Africans in America Web site, produced by PBS. Traces the roots of racial slavery in colonial America.
Key Terms, Concepts, Names to know: indentured servitude; plantation slavery; apprenticeship; Merchant Capitalism; Chesapeake tobacco boom; joint stock companies, merchant adventurers, Bristol, Powhatan confederacy, the Fugger dynasty, the Virginia Company.
Tuesday, Sept. 12: The Transition to Capitalism, II: The Incorporation of Eden REQUIRED READING: William Cronon, Changes in the Land, chapters 3-5 (pp. 34-107). [Available on reserve at Ten Broeck and also at the reserve desk in the library.] World Wide Web Sites/Documents : Historical Sketches of North American Tribes Bibliography -- North American Tribes Thomas Morton: Manners and Customs of the Indians of
New England (1637)
Key Terms, Concepts, Names to know
Thursday, Sept. 14: The Transition to Capitalism, III: Markets, Exchange, and the Making of a Proletariat REQUIRED READING: 2) James Henretta, "Families and Farms: Mentalite in Pre-Industrial America," William and Mary Quarterly, 35(1978), 3-32. [JSTOR, University Library].]. 3) Robert E. Mutch "Yoeman and Merchant in Pre-Industrial America: Eighteenth Century Massachusetts as a Case Study," Societas 7(1977), 279-302. 4) Allan Kulikoff, "The Transition to Capitalism in Rural America," William and Mary Quarterly, 46 (Jan. 1989). [JSTOR, University Library].]. 5) Joyce Appleby, "Commercial Farming and the 'Agrarian Myth' in the Early Republic," The Journal of American History, Vol. 68, No. 4. (Mar., 1982), pp. 833-849. [JSTOR, University Library].].
Key Terms, Concepts, Names to know
Tuesday, Sept. 19: The Transition to Capitalism, IV: Household Production and Market Capitalism in the Colonial and Early National Period REQUIRED READING: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812, pp. 3-234. Film/Video: Selections from "A Midwife's Tale." Produced and Written by Laurie Kahn-Leavitt, Directed by Richard P. Rogers. RT: 88 minutes. 1997. [Full video of the film is available in the IMC: VidCas F 29 H15 U472X 1997] Key Terms, Concepts, Names to know: midwifery, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich; Martha Ballard; "canker rash"; Plymouth Company (Kennebec Proprietors); Col. Joseph North; "going to housekeeping"; patriarchy; diary entry: "7/6"; "female economy"; family production economy; Ephraim Ballard; Hallowell.
Thursday, Sept. 21: The Transition to Capitalism, V: Women and the Household Economy REQUIRED READING: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812, pp. 235-end. World Wide Web Sites/Documents: Web Site on the Diary of Martha Ballard. An exceptional Web site on the diary of Martha Ballard and on decoding and reconstructing 18th and early 19th century history from the fragments of historical records. Key Terms, Concepts, Names to know : WWW search engine; social medicine; infant mortality in late 18th century/early 19th century; "I venture to say that a female could scarce pass through the course of education requisite to prepare her, as she ought to be prepared, for the practice of midwifery, without destroying those moral qualitites of character, which are essential to the office"; Malta War; Universalism; Calvinism; Arminianism; imprisonment for debt.
Tuesday, Sept. 26: Men and Women in the Early Industrial Era REQUIRED READING: Bruce Laurie, Artisans into Workers, pp. 3-112.
World Wide Web Sites/Documents Film/Video: "Daughters of Free Men" [To be shown in class] Key Terms, Concepts, Names to know REQUIRED READING: 1) Deborah Gray White, "Female Slaves" Sex Roles and Status in the Antebellum Plantation South," Journal of Family History, vol 8, Fall 1983.
Slave Narratives. From the New Deal Network. Concentrate on the short background essays on the WPA collection of interviews with former American slaves. Sample one interview.
Excerpts from Slave Narratives -- prepared by Steven Mintz. Only documents 1-2,10-14 are required.
Slavery Bibliography (part 1 -- prepared by Steven Mintz)
Slavery Bibliography (part 2 -- prepared by Steven Mintz)
[www.afrigeneas.com/slavedata] Statistical and Raw Data on American Slaves. Part of an online database
of African American genealogical materials. Includes data from slave manifests, wills, inventories, bible records and other sources.
North American Slave Narratives, Beginnings to 1920. An outstanding library Web site, from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Library. "'North American Slave Narratives, Beginnings to 1920' documents the individual and collective story of the African American struggle for freedom and human rights in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. When completed, it will include
all the narratives of fugitive and former slaves published in broadsides, pamphlets, or book form in English up to 1920 and many of the biographies of fugitive and former slaves published in English before 1920."
Key Terms, Concepts, Names to know : Plantation slavery; West Africa; factors; slave trade; French Royal African Company; Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave; Frederick Douglas; Moynihan Report; Stanley Elkins (Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life, 1959); John Blassingame (The Slave Community, 1972); Eugene Genovese (Roll, Jordan, Roll, 1974); Cliometrics; Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman (Time on the Cross, 1974; "black work ethic"; slave culture; Protestant/Anglo Saxon work ethic; "industrial time"; "preindustrial time"; WPA (Works Progress Administration).
Tuesday, Oct. 3: The Black Working Class, II: After Slavery REQUIRED READING: Bruce Laurie, Artisans into Workers, 113-140. World Wide Web Sites/Documents
Curtis Fox's "America's Reconstruction." "
Selections from the "Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War" Web site:
Organization and Principles of the Ku Klux Klan, 1868Booker T. Washington's Views on Race, Economics, and Social ProgressB. T. Washington's Atlanta Exposition Address (1895) and selections from Up from Slavery (1901) Up From Slavery The complete text of Booker T. Washington's autobiography.Mary Church Terrell on African-American Women in the Post-Reconstruction Era (1898)"The Progress of Colored Women," by Mary Church Terrell, President, National Association of Colored Women. An address delivered before the National American Women's Suffrage Association at the Columbia Theater, Washington, D.C., February 18, 1898. Selections from W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folks, 1903Voices from the 1930s (The WPA Life Histories Collection) The Life Histories Collection is
part of the U.S. Work Progress Administration Federal Writers' Project and Historical Records Survey."Reminiscence of a Negro Preacher" (1939). One item from the above collection. Rural Blacks in Post-Reconstruction South Carolina: Mattie Hammond Harrell's Story (1938). Another selection from the Life Histories Collection.A Black North Carolina Tenant Farmer's Life (1938). Yet another selection from the WPA Life Histories Collection.
Audio -- 8 1/2 minutes. Interviews on sharecropping and tenant farming. (1984) Charles Hardy III interviews with Minnie Whitney, William Robinson, and Hughsey Childes (selections). Source: Atwater Kent Museum (Philadelphia), 1984.Key Terms, Concepts, Names to know: Southern freedmen; Reconstruction; Eric Foner; Radical Republicans; Gen. William T. Sherman; Special Order No. 15; "slave crops"; paternalistic ethos; Freedmen's Bureau; "free labor ideology"; "gang system"; "task system"; sharecropping; tenant farming; crop lien; Ku Klux Klan; Booker T. Washington; B. T. Washington's Atlanta Exposition Address; Up From Slavery.
Thursday, Oct. 5: "Free Labor" and the Turbulent Decade: The 1870s REQUIRED READING: Bruce Laurie, Artisans into Workers, 141-175. World Wide Web Sites/Documents: Horatio Alger, Ragged Dick (1868).
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto (1848). Read sections 1 ("Bourgeois and Proletarians"), 2 ("Proletarians and Communists") [OPTIONAL--addition to original assignment], and 4 ("Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties"). From the Marx and Engels Internet Archive.
Re-Assessing Tom Scott, the 'Railroad Prince', A Paper for the Mid-America Conference on History,
September 16 1995, Written by Dr. T. Lloyd Benson and Trina Rossman, Furman UniversityFilm/Video: "1877: Grand Army of Starvation" [To be shown in class] Key Terms, Concepts, Names to know : Karl Marx;The Communist Manifesto (1848); proletariat; relations of production; bourgeoisie; scientific socialism; utopian socialism; Fourierism; Owenism; The Great Strike of 1877; Knights of Labor; "robber barons"; Cornelius Vanderbilt; "Gilded Age"; Jay Cooke; the 1873 depression; "tramps"; the "Molly Maguiers"; Trainmen's Union; Brotherhood of Engineers; Albert Parsons; Workingmen's Party of the United State (WPUS); Paris Commune of 1871; Pres. Rutherford B. Hayes; American Federation of Labor.
Tuesday, Oct. 10: Immigration and the Making of a Modern Industrial and Service Working Class REQUIRED READING: Out of this Furnace, parts I - III (pp. 1-258). World Wide Web Sites/Documents:
Anti-Chinese Editorial from 1874, San Franciso Real Estate Circular "Restriction of Immigration" by Francis A. Walker, The Atlantic Monthly, June, 1896; Volume 77, No. 464; pages 822-829.
Key Terms, Concepts, Names to know: Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882; 1906 "Gentleman's Agreement"; George Kracha; the "new" immigration; yellow dog contract; Braddock; Mike Dobrejcak; "Fort Frick"; Alexander Berkman; "turns"; "Stint"; "Hunky"; J. P. Morgan; stock purchase plan; Depression of 1907; Mary Dobrejcak; Depression of 1921; AFL; "Blackjack"; boarding/boarders; Austria-Hungary; temperance movement; credit purchasing; "melting pot"; "chain migration."
Film/Video: "The River Ran Red" [To be shown in class] The Haymarket Dramas. A history of the Haymarket "Riot" of 1886. Chicago Historical Society. Homestead Strike of 1892. Primary source documents on the Homestead Strike. Ohio State University.
Home Page of the Steel Industry Heritage Corporation. Assorted historical materials on the steel industry and the 1892 Homestead Strike History of the United Steelworkers of America
Key Terms, Concepts, Names to know: Homestead strike, Pinkerton Agency, Henry Clay Frick; Amalgamated Association of Steel and Iron Workers, historian David Montgomery.
Tuesday, Oct. 17: Unions and Workers, I: Ideologies and Structures REQUIRED READING: Bruce Laurie, Artisans into Workers, 176-220. World Wide Web Sites/Documents :
A Short Biography of Samuel Gompers. Chapter 26 from Samuel Gompers, Seventy Years of Life and Labor (1925). Samuel Gompers -- Papers and Biographical Material.Key Terms, Concepts, Names to know : trade unionism; labor reform; Knights of Labor; Terence Powderly; Uriah Stevens; reform unionism; FOOTALU (or FOTLU); Pullman Strike of 1894; American Railway Union (ARU); John P. Altgeld; closed shop; open shop; business unionism; "pure and simple unionism"; American Federation of Labor; Samuel Gompers; Adolph Strasser; Haymarket Square "Riot" (1886); anarchism.
Thursday, Oct. 19: Women's Work Cultures in Early 20th Century America REQUIRED READING: See WWW site assignments below. Film: Heaven Help the Working Girl
World Wide Web Sites/Documents: "The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911."
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911 -- Web Exhibit Maintained by the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Cornell University. The Uprising of Twenty Thousand. University at Binghamton WWW Site: "The documents in this project date from the brief period between December 1909 to February 1910. During these three months more than 20,000 shirtwaist workers went out on strike and unionization in the women's clothing industry made great strides. . . . This project focuses on relations among strikers, the strike's wealthy women supporters, and socialist activists. The documents speak to two related questions: what were the relations between striking shirtwaist workers and their elite women supporters and what was the impact of socialism on those relations? Primary sources, drawn mainly from New York newspapers, help to tell the story of the shirtwaist strike."
Child Labor in America, 1908-1912: Photographs of Lewis W. Hine.This commercial site presents some of the most famous photographs of Lewis W. Hine—taken between 1908 and 1912—documenting the exploitation of children in early 20th century industrial America. Hine (1874-1940) is one of the founders of modern documentary photography and the photographs showcased at this site illustrate why his reputation is so immense; they are powerful and moving, and beautifully reproduced here with stunning clarity and contrast. Along with the photographs which contain Hine's original captions, there is a short essay about the photographer, as well as the history of child labor in the United States. Biography of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper [Link to AUDIO FILE]. A radio play version of Gilman's masterpiece. The Web site also contains biographical and literary resources. Short Biographical Profile of Mother Jones
Charlotte Perkins Stetman Gilman, Herland (1915)
Key Terms, Concepts, Names to know
Tuesday, Oct. 24: Unions and Workers, II: Socialists, Syndicalists, Anarchists REQUIRED READING: Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward. Film/Video: "The Wobblies" [Selections shown in class. Also available at IMC: VidCas HD 8055 W63X 1980] World Wide Web Sites/Documents : A [Short] History of the Socialist Party of America. Daniel DeLeon Read Reform or Revolution? (1896) -- up to the section titled "The Class Struggle." Also skim the editorial "Industrial Unionism" (1913). Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888). For those who don't want to buy the book. Emma Goldman Archives and Biographical Materials. Take a look at the section titled "online exhibition," especially material up to World War I. Miscellaneous documents on the WWW. "Cut Down the Hours of Work" (1923). A short publication of the IWW. Review of
Sally M. Miller's Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in Early Twentieth-Century American Socialism (1966) Eugene V. Debs (1904 presidential campaign speech -- audio file) Memories of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Selection from Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, The Rebel Girl: An Autobiography, My First Life (1906-1926)
Mary Licht, Rebel Girl: The Revolutionary Life and Work of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn(People's Weekly World, March 30, 1996). Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Bibliography. IWW Photographs -- including some of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Colleen O'Neill, "Domesticity Deployed:
Gender, Race, and the Construction of Class Struggle in the Bisbee Deportation,"
Labor History, 34(Spring-Summer 1993), 256-273. The Bisbee Deportation of 1917, University of Arizona Web Exhibit. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, SABOTAGE (1916) Sacco and Vanzetti.
This documentary, produced by Curtis Fox, is the second in his new history documentary series titled The Past Present. Here is his summary of the program: "Almost everyone has heard of [Nicola] Sacco and [Bartolomeo] Vanzetti, two Italian-born anarchists who were executed in 1927 for a crime they probably didn't commit--a payroll robbery and double murder in South Braintree, Massachusetts. What most people don't know, however, is that Nicola Sacco and Bartholomeo Vanzetti were part of a group of revolutionaries that conducted a bombing campaign against government officials, including Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. Historian Nunzio Pernicone discusses the anarchist background of Sacco and Vanzetti. Then Pernicone, joined by historian Richard Polenberg, examine the world-famous case that tore this country apart in the 1920s. The program includes historical audio of men involved in the case, Italian anarchist songs, Woody Guthrie ballads, and actors Joe Grifasi and Spiro Malas reading from Sacco and Vanzetti's Moving prison letters." From the TALKING HISTORY Web Site [http://talkinghistory.org]. Length -- 58:48 minutes. Key Terms, Concepts, Names to know: Edward Bellamy; Looking Backward; Daniel DeLeon; Eugene V. debs; socialism; IWW; Western Federation of Miners; syndicalism; anarchism; Industrial Democracy, Wobblies, The Little Red Song Book, Bindlestiffs, the A.W.O.; William Haywood; Mother Jones; Bolshevik Revolution; Lawrence Strike of 1912; Paterson Silkworkers Strike (1913); sabotage; free speech movement; "the Rebel Girl"; Elizabeth Gurley Flynn; sedition trials of WWI; A. Mitchell Palmer; Palmer raids; "little red Henski."
Thursday, Oct. 26: Divided Workers: Race, Ethnicity, and Labor in the Early 20th Century REQUIRED READING: 1) "Class, Race, and Ethnicity, 1917-21," chapter 6 of James R. Barret's, Work and Community in the Jungle: Chicago's Packinghouse Workers, 1894-1922. Films/Videos: Selections from "The Killing Floor" and "Matewan" will be shown in class. Both are available at IMC. I highly recommend viewing the full versions when you get a chance, especially if you are contemplating a paper on the subject. For background information on the Battle of Matewan, go to: [http://www.matewan.com/History/battle.htm]. World Wide Web Sites/Documents :
Jacob A. Riis,
How the Other Half Lives (1890) A classic work on immigrants, immigrant communities, and New York's urban ghettoes by Jacob Riis (1849-1914). http://www.cohums.ohio-state.edu/history/projects/Lessons_US/Gilded_Age/Coal_Mining/default.htm Background information on coal mining.N.Y.S. Joint Legislative Committee to Investigate Seditious Activities (Lusk Committee). Introduction to the printed guide to the records of the Joint Legislative Committee to Investigate Seditious Activities, giving background information on the Committee.Example 1: Original Scanned Informant's Report Sent to the Lusk Committee. This
document is directly drawn from Prof. Gerald Zahavi's research on labor and radicalism in America.
It, and the ones that follow, profile post-WWI radicalism in Broome County, New York. Broome
County radicals were a divided lot in late 1919. This division--shared by many of their comrades across the nation--reflected
the strength of ethnic and national chauvinisms, the general crisis in American socialism precipitated
by World War I, and the impact of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.
The vast majority of the County's radicals were right wing socialists, but there was also a substantial pro-Bolshevik left-wing.
Local socialists were organized into a number of foreign language federations -- Polish, Slovak, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Russian, and so on. This document is a report on pro-Bolshevik Lithuanians active in Binghamton N.Y. [Source: N.Y. State Archives]Example 2: Original Scanned Informant's Report Sent to the Lusk Committee. An informant's report on a recent Socialist Party meeting in Binghamton. It was written by Julia Preston, a Binghamton
Press reporter fluent in a number of East European languages. Preston, a right-wing socialist who detested pro-Bolshevik left-wingers, attended many local socialist
meetings. Little did her comrades know that she was sending regular reports on their activities to the state legislature. Preston identified herself in her correspondence as agent 100. [Source: N.Y. State Archives]Example 3: Original Scanned Informant's Report Sent to the Lusk Committee. Here's another report by Julia Preston (agent 100), this time with a fascinating profile of the cultural
world of Slovak radicals. [Source: N.Y. State Archives]Transcribed Versions of Informants' Reports and Correspondence
Sent to the Lusk Committee. Here are more informant reports, this time from A. Adomaitis, along with correspondence
from the Chief Investigator of the Lusk Committee and Binghamton attorneys
responsible for relaying the reports to the Committee.Selection from 1921 FBI File on Broome County, NY Radicals A fascinating account
of religious conflicts, Endicott radicals, and George F. Johnson, head of the Endicott-Johnson Company. E-J
was a shoe manufacturing firm with plants in Endicott, Johnson City, and Binghamton, N.Y.Red Scare, Broome County, I. An article in the Binghamton Press from 1919, illustrating the erosion of civil liberties during the red scare years.Red Scare, Broome County, II. Two articles from the Binghamton Press from 1919. More examples of the erosion of civil liberties.
A short Introduction to the Palmer Raids. From Who Built America, CD Vol 2.
Key Terms, Concepts, Names to know : Lusk Committee; Endicott Johnson Corporation; Chicago Stockyards Labor Council; Wlliam Z. Foster; International Trade Union Education League; Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen; President's Mediation Commission; Stockyards Community Clearing House; The Jungle; National War Labor Board; Robert Bedford; National Urban League; Wabash Avenue YMCA; American Unity Labor Union; race consciousness; a "race man"; "Black Belt" of Chicago; nativism.
FILMS/VIDEOS: "Up South" will be shown in class. "THE KILLING FLOOR" may also be scheduled during the evening for optional viewing. More on this in class.
Tuesday, Oct. 31: Controlling Workers: Scientific Management and Welfare Capitalism REQUIRED READING: 1) Frederick W. Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (New York, 1911): 5-29 [available at: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1911taylor.html2) Gerald Zahavi, "Negotiated Loyalty: Welfare Capitalism and the Shoeworkers of Endicott Johnson, 1920-1940," Journal of American History, 71(Dec. 1983), 602-620 [JSTOR, University Library].] RECOMMENDED READING: 1) Stephen Meyer, "The Making of Ford's Assembly Line," and Susan Porter Benson, "Taylorizing the Shopgirl," in Major Problems in the History of American Workers, pp. 333-360. Films/Videos: "Clockwork" (To be shown in class) & "Modern Times" (selection) ["Modern Times" is a Chaplin classic and is available at most video stores.] FIRST PAPER/PROJECT DUE [History 316Z students only]World Wide Web Sites/Documents : Selection from Sam Salvatore [Endicott-Johnson Corp. worker] interview by Gerald Zahavi, July 7, 1981 (audio file) Transcription of 1927 meeting between EJ head George F. Johnson and striking edge trimmers. A discussion of F. Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management. A very short biography and discussion of Frederick W. Taylor. Access to the F. W. Taylor archives -- on line! Approximately 800 documents available for primary source research. Brief introduction to Sanford M. Jacoby, a recent scholar who has written extensively on welfare capitalism. Includes references to his works.Key Terms, Concepts, Names to know: Welfare capitalism; scientific management; Fredrick W. Taylor; The Principles of Scientific Management; time studies; task and bonus system; Frank Gilbreth; micro-motion studies; corporate housing plans; profit sharing; stock ownership plans; employee representation; David Brody; Stuart Brandes.
Thursday, Nov. 2: Labor in the South: Appalachia REQUIRED READING: Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Robert Korstad, James Leloudis, "Cotton Mill People: Work, Community, and Protest in the Textile South, 1880-1940," The American Historical Review, Vol. 91, No. 2. (Apr., 1986), pp. 245-286 [JSTOR, University Library].]
RECOMMENDED READING: Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, "Disorderly Women: Gender and Labor Militancy in the Appalachian South," The Journal of American History, Vol. 73, No. 2. (Sep., 1986), pp. 354-382. [JSTOR, University Library].]
World Wide Web Sites/Documents Civilization in Southern Mills. Written by Mother Jones, this article appeared in the International Socialist Review, in March, 1901. For more on Mary Harris Jones, see below:Short biography of Mary Harris ("Mother") Jones. For some quotations from Mother Jones, go to: [http://www.igc.apc.org/laborquotes/mjones.html]; For an article on Mother Jones and child labor, go to: [http://www.bmwe.org/journal/1999/08aug/c03.htm]. For Mother Jones' full autobiography, go to: [http://www.eclipse.net/~basket42/mojones.htm].< Key Terms, Concepts, Names to know : "public work"; doffers; Southern Farmers Alliance; crop lien; fence laws; United Textile Workers of America (UTW); company towns; welfare work; Burlington Mills/Industries; "stretch-out"; National Labor Board (NLB); Piedmont region; National Civic Federation; Appalachia; Tidewater-vs-Hill country conflicts; yeoman farmers; subsistence farming; effects of Civil War on the Hill country, Post Civil War credit system in Hill country; the "New South"; cotton mill towns, Depression of 1893; National Textile Workers Unions (NTWU); Gastonia; General Textile Strike of 1934; Section 7(a) of the NIRA; "green hands"; textile code; Blue Eagle; NIRA (National Industrial Recovery Act); Wagner Act; John L. Lewis; Burlington Dynamite Case; flying squadrons.
Tuesday, Nov. 7: The Great Depression and the Rise of the CIO REQUIRED READING: Out of this Furnace, Part IV (259-end); . World Wide Web Sites/Documents :Memoranda for Mr. Harry Hopkins, From Martha Bensley Bruere, Buffalo, November 14th to 15th, 1934. Source: New Deal Network Web site. AUDIO FILE: Selections from Studs Terkel's oral history of the Great Depression.SECTION 7-A: The Clash Over the Most Disputed Clause in the Recovery Act. From Survey Graphic, vol. 23, no. 5 (May, 1934), p. 213. Source: New Deal Network Web site. Read the first nine paragraphs.New Deal Network. A vast archive of information on all aspects of the New Deal and the Great Depression. Try searching for subjects of interest. An account of the Flint sit-down strike of 1936-37." An Introduction to Sol Dollinger: The Flint "Sit-Down" for Beginners by Charlie PostVoices from the 1930s (The WPA Life Histories Collection) The Life Histories Collection is
part of the U.S. Work Progress Administration Federal Writers' Project and Historical Records Survey. From the home page of the collection, you can conduct subject searches and extract interviews on specific issues.Key Terms, Concepts, Names to know : Employee representation plans (ERPs); bank holidays; (Dobie, Julie, Tighe, Amalgamated Association, U.S. Steel -- from Out of This Furnace); Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO); unemployed councils; FDR; Bonus Army; The New Deal; The Wagner Act; Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC); UAW (United Auto Workers Union); company unions; NIRA (National Industrial Recovery Act); .
Thursday, Nov. 9: Communism and Labor REQUIRED READING: Gerald Zahavi, "'Who's Going to Dance With Somebody Who Calls You a Mainstreeter': Communism, Culture and Community in Sheridan County, Montana, 1918-1934," Great Plains Quarterly, 16 (Fall 1996): 251-286.
FILMS: Selections from "With Babies and Banners" or "Seeing Red" or "Union Maids" [To be shown in class] World Wide Web Sites/Documents :Audio file: "On The Line: Radical Women in the Labor Movement." Part three (3) of a six-part series on radical women's activism in the 1930s. Produced by WBAI-FM and the Oral History of the American Left, Tamiment Institute Library, New York University, New York, N.Y. No date. Project Directors: Paul and Mari Jo Buhle, Oral Historians: Jon Bloom & Bea Lemisch. Project Coordinator: Ruth Prago. Mixed by Steven Erickson. Produced by Beth Friend and Charles Potter. 30 minutes long.Key Terms, Concepts, Names to know : CPUSA, Sheridan County, Charles E. Taylor, Non-Partisan League, "United Front," "Third Period Communism," James Cannon (and American Trotskyism), Jay Lovestone (and "Lovestonites"), Producers News, Rodney Salisbury, Rhoda Marie Hansen, Earl Browder, "Popular Front," Comintern.
Tuesday, Nov. 14: Agricultural Labor and Radicalism in the 1930s REQUIRED READING: 1) Selection from Devra Weber, Dark Sweat, White Gold: California Farm Workers, Cotton, and the New Deal, pp. 48-111. RECOMMENDED READING:
Thomas J. Kriger, "The 1939 Dairy Farmers Union Milk Strike in Heuvelton and Canton, New York," The Journal for MultiMedia History 1(1998).
World Wide Web Sites/Documents
Steinbeck Research Center (San Jose State University) Information about John Steinbeck. Steinbeck wrote extensively about California agricultural workers.Audio File: Sam Darcy interview, Feb. 2, 1992. Long selection from a recorded interview conducted by Nelson Pichardo on February 1, 1992, from the archives of the Oral History Program, University at Albany. Darcy was the California District Organizer for the Communist Party in the early 1930s and was heavily involved in leading the efforts to organize California farmworkers. 1 hour 2 minutes long.
Audio file: "Talking Farmwork Blues." Selections from a two-part series on California Agricultural workers, produced by Margo McBane (Pacifica Radio, date of production uncertain). 32 minutes long.Key Terms, Concepts, Names to know Cotton Strike of 1933; Sam Darcy; Caroline Decker; Pat Chambers; CAWIU (Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union).
Thursday, Nov. 16: Race, Gender, and War REQUIRED READING: Read through Web sites below. Film/Video: "Rosie the Riveter" [To be shown in class] World Wide Web Sites/Documents : Dan Collison's "Port Chicago 50."
Documents on the Port Chicago 50 case. Source: Department of the Navy -- Naval Historical Center. Helen Quirini's WW II-Era Diary -- Selections [only ch. 7 is required]. Ruth Yong Jandreau's recollections of women, the UE, and the CIO in the WWII and the post-War era. NOT YET ON LINE! Audio file: recollections of Helen Quirini of World War II Years At Schenectady General Electric. Source: Helen Quirini Papers, History Documentation Center, University at Albany History Department. Audio file: Ruth Young Jandreau's recollections of women's labor struggles during the 1940s. Source: Ruth Young Papers, History Documentation Center, University at Albany History Department.Key Terms, Concepts, Names to know : The National War Labor Board; equal pay for equal work, Helen Quirini, Ruth Young Jandreau, UE.
Tuesday, Nov. 21: Labor, Race, and Culture, 1940-1970 Film/Video: "Struggles in Steel: A Story of African-American Steelworkers" [To be shown in class] REQUIRED READING: Read through Web sites below. [AUDIO FILE and TRANSCRIPT] Thomas J. Sugrue on history, race, and urban crises. Sugrue is the author of The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Post-War Detroit. Interviewed by Prof. Julian Zelizer at the Department of History, University at Albany~SUNY. Produced by Gerald Zahavi and Susan McCormick at the University at Albany production center of Talking History. Interview recorded on 4/7/99. Click here to access the transcript and the audio: http://www.albany.edu/jmmh/vol2no1/sugrue.htmlRECOMMENDED READING: Robert Korstad, Nelson Lichtenstein, "Opportunities Found and Lost: Labor, Radicals, and the Early Civil Rights Movement," The Journal of American History, Vol. 75, No. 3. (Dec., 1988), pp. 3pp. 786-811. [JSTOR, University Library].] Robin D. G. Kelley, "'We Are Not What We Seem': Re-Thinking Black Working Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South," The Journal of American History, Vol. 80, No. 1. (June 1993): 75-112. [JSTOR, University Library].]
World Wide Web Sites/Documents Key Terms, Concepts, Names to know : housing segregation, Detroit Riots of 1943, March on Washington Movement, A. Philip Randolph, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Executive Order 8802, FEPC [Fair Employment Paractices Committee of the Office of Production Management], Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, Detroit riots (Uprising) of 1967, Detroit Mayor Albert Cobo, UAW Locals 600 and Local 3 (Dodge Local 3), deindustrialization.
Thursday, Nov. 23: No Class.
Tuesday, Nov. 28: The Cold War and Labor: Cultural Conflict and Labor in the Cold War REQUIRED READING: Gerald Zahavi, "Passionate Commitements: Race, Sex, and Communism at Schenectady General Electric, 1932-1954," Journal of American History, 83 (September 1996): 514-548. Film: "SALT OF THE EARTH." Selections shown in class. Copy on reserve in my office. World Wide Web Sites/Documents : Audio file: Jules Schwerin, Assistant Director and production manager of the film Salt of the Earth, speaks about the production of the film. Recorded December 1, 1994 at the University at Albany. Introduction by Prof. Gerald Zahavi. Time: 47 minutes, 11 seconds.Project:WWW assignment. Locate two Web sites pertaining to the labor history of any decade from 1940 to the present. Hand in a page or two with the URLs of the WWW sites and a few paragraphs describing AND evaluating the content of each site.
Key Terms, Concepts, Names to know
Thursday, Nov. 30: The Modern Working Class in Fact and Fiction
REQUIRED READING: [AUDIO FILE] "Working-Class Feminism: The Other Women's Movement."
Videos -- to be shown in class: Selections from the following series -- LIFE OF RILEY (1949); THE HONEYMOONERS (1955); THE FLINSTONES (1960); JULIA (1968); ALL IN THE FAMILY (1971); LAVERNE AND SHIRLEY (1976); ROSEANNE (1988); THE SIMPSONS (1990); Also, selections from the films: ON THE WATERFRONT, HOFFA, NINE TO FIVE, WORKING GIRL, AND MORE. World Wide Web Sites : Segment summaries and more on the Honeymooners (1955). An excellent web page discussing the TV show Laverne & Shirley (1976) and its depiction of working women. ALL IN THE FAMILY (1971) web site, with segment summaries.Key Terms, Concepts, Names to know :
Tuesday, Dec. 5: Labor, Technology, and the Meaning of Progress REQUIRED READING: Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano (read first half of book); 2) Selection from interviews with Kurt Vonnegut [handout] RECOMMENDED READING: Chapter 14 (pp. 579-633) in Major Problems in the History of the History of American Workers. Film: "ROGER AND ME." Selections shown in class. Copy on reserve in my office. Key Terms, Concepts, Names to know : Player Piano; Kurt Vonnegut; Epicac; "The Meadows"; Association Island; Roger and Me; Paul Proteus; Ilium; Rudy Hertz; National Industrial Planning Board; "Reeks and Wrecks"; Reconstruction Reclamation Corps.; Dr. Lawson Shepard.
Thursday, Dec. 7: The New Economy and Labor, I REQUIRED READING:
Recommended Films/Videos: "Minimum Wages: The New Economy" and "Company Town." These films may be screened in Ten Breock. Make arrangements with me if you are interested. World Wide Web Sites :Opening Plenary Session: Introductory remarks. "The Fight for America's Future: A Teach-In with the Labor Movement," held October 3-4, 1996 at Columbia University, NYC. Plenary speeches and selective workshop sessions. Tapes courtesy of WRPI (Troy), University at Albany History and Media Project, and Thad Russell. Original tapes held by the Oral History Program, University at Albany, Albany, N.Y. Speeches by Columbia University President George Rupp, Steve Fraser, and Eric Foner -- including introduction to Betty Friedan's speech which follows. (October 3, 1996). [28:12 minutes]
Key Terms, Concepts, Names to know
Tuesday, Dec. 12: The New Economy and Labor, II Film: "The Global Assembly Line."
LAST PAPER/PROJECT IS DUE BY 4 PM, DECEMBER 13! RETURN TO TOP OF COURSE SYLLABUS
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