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E-book Poor Man's Fortune : White Working-Class Conservatism in American Metal Mining, 1850–1950

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Penilaian

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This book is about white working-class American men who opposed social democratic labor unions and politics in the century that culminated in the New Deal. It follows five generations of miners who, beginning in the 1850s, discovered and developed a rich swath of zinc and lead that straddled the boundaries between Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma. By the 1920s, the Tri-State district led the nation in the production of these unheralded but essential metals. From the beginning, the miners pursued class interests that differed, to varying degrees, from those of the men who controlled the land, bought the ore, and smelted the metal. Yet for sixty years, from 1880 to 1940, national labor unions could not organize the Tri-State miners. This outcome mattered. The miners developed a powerful animus against the idea of class-based solidarity, particularly as practiced by the Western Federation of Miners (WFM), a pioneer of radical unionism, and later by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Tri-State miners worked, willingly and re-peatedly, as strikebreakers against the WFM in a series of clashes across the western United States between 1896 and 1910. Their actions helped to de-feat and nearly destroy the WFM. These outcomes also mattered in Tri-State mining communities. Miners resisted government efforts, often backed by unions, to impose health and safety regulations despite the obvious dangers, the worst of which was silicosis, a fatal lung disease. Even during the Great Depression, when the federal government encouraged workers like them to organize for higher pay and greater security, Tri-State miners remained ob-stinate. The district’s majority crushed a promising drive by some of their peers to realize the full benefits of New Deal collective bargaining rights. Rarely, it seemed, had so many American workers fought so long to remain at the raw edge of industrial capitalism.Tri-State miners baffled, frustrated, and enraged those who tried to get them to change. WFM leaders called them “a dangerous class” with a “de-plorable lack of intelligence.” Twenty years later, an American Federation of Labor (AFL) organizer blamed the absence of unions in the district on “the stupid miner himself.” Reformers likewise struggled to make sense of them. A social worker concluded that a “feverish unsteadiness” warped their “so cial instincts and ideals.” Government health and safety investigators, mean-while, found that the miners “seem indifferent, even fatalistic, and will take precautions only if compelled to do so.” These commentators concluded, as we might also conclude, that something was wrong with Tri-State miners and that it made them act against their own interests.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

330.112 ROL p

Penerbit

USA : The University of North Carolina Press., 2020

Deskripsi Fisik

357 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781469656304

Klasifikasi

330.112

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Capitalism Economics

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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