The Butcher Workmen

The Butcher Workmen

Author: David Brody

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1964

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 9780674089259

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The advance of trade unionism in the early 20th century to a dominant place in the American economy brought a major change in the life of the nation. This is the first book to deal with the process of unionization. Brody presents a detailed study of one industry--meat packing and retailing--with implications that apply to unionization in general.


Congressional Record

Congressional Record

Author: United States. Congress

Publisher:

Published: 1970

Total Pages: 1468

ISBN-13:

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The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published daily when Congress is in session. The Congressional Record began publication in 1873. Debates for sessions prior to 1873 are recorded in The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (1789-1824), the Register of Debates in Congress (1824-1837), and the Congressional Globe (1833-1873)


The Ordeal of the Jungle

The Ordeal of the Jungle

Author: David Bates

Publisher: SIU Press

Published: 2019-07-08

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 0809337452

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Between 1910 and 1920, the Chicago Federation of Labor (CFL) inaugurated a massive organizing drive in the city’s meatpacking and steel industries. Although the CFL sought legitimately progressive goals, worked earnestly to organize an interracial union, and made major inroads among both black and white workers, their efforts resulted in a bitter defeat. David Bates provides a clear picture of how even the most progressive of intentions can be ground to a halt. By organizing workers into neighborhood locals, which connected workplace struggles to ethnic and religious identities, the CFL facilitated a surge in the organization’s membership, particularly among African American workers, and afforded the federation the opportunity to aggressively confront employers. The CFL’s innovative structure, however, was ultimately its demise. Linking union locals to neighborhoods proved to be a form of de facto segregation. Over time union structures, rank-and-file conflicts, and employer resistance combined to turn the union’s hopeful calls for solidarity into animosity and estrangement. Tensions were exacerbated by violent shop floor confrontations and exploded in the bloody 1919 Chicago Race Riot. By the early 1920s, the CFL had collapsed. The Ordeal of the Jungle explores the choices of a variety of people while showing a complex, overarching interplay of black and white workers and their employers. In addition to analyzing union structures and on-the-ground relations between workers, Bates synthesizes and challenges previous scholarship on interracial organizing to explain the failure of progressive unionism in Chicago.