The Debtor’s Blues: Music and Forced Labor
Debt peonage is often associated with agricultural labor, but in the early twentieth century, Black musicians found themselves trapped in its exploitative cycle.
The Vermont Knitters
A major labor law dispute simmered for decades. At its center? Women being paid to do piecework on knitting machines in their homes.
How the Jewish Labor Bund Changed After World War II
For those thousands involved with the Bund, the group played an important role in a era marked by trauma, displacement, and resettlement.
Internationalism and Racism in the Labor Movement
A commitment to internationalism helped build multi-ethnic campaigns within the more radical and anti-authoritarian side of the US labor movement.
Zombies of the Slaughterhouse
The oppressions of Homo sapiens and other species in the US livestock industry aren’t distinct from one another—they’re mutually constitutive.
Was There a Conspiracy to Kill a Canadian Labor Activist?
While conspiracy theories about Ginger Goodwin’s death may interest some, these complicated explanations deflect our attention from real issues.
Pullman Women at Work: From Gilded Age to Atomic Age
Pullman resisted hiring women and did his best to keep attention away from the company’s female employees.
Mesmerizing Labor
The man who introduced mesmerism to the US was a slave-owner from Guadeloupe, where planters were experimenting with “magnetizing” their enslaved people.
American Vigilantism
In the early 20th century, labor unrest and strike breaking were done not by the government, by private agencies and self-appointed vigilantes.
Joe Magarac, a Boss’s Idea of a Folk Hero?
The Paul Bunyan of the steel industry never went on strike. He was too tied up working the twenty-four-hour shifts that unions were fighting.