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Child laborers cleaning fruit.

The Child Labor of Early Capitalism Is Making a Big Comeback in the US

Child labor was common in urban, industrial America for most of the country’s history. Now lawmakers are making concerted efforts to repeal statutes that prohibit it.
by Steve Fraser via Jacobin on July 7, 2023
Two garment workers picketing in New York City during a 1910 strike.

We've Been Fighting Fast Fashion Since the Industrial Revolution

From the Triangle Factory Fire to Shein, fast fashion can’t escape ethical quandaries.
by Einav Rabinovitch-Fox via Zócalo Public Square on March 23, 2023
Vintage drawing of a man attempting to hypnotize a crowd of people, sitting in chairs.

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.
by Emily Ogden, Matthew Wills via JSTOR Daily on January 18, 2022
Industry at Night, by Horatio C. Forjohn, 1940.

Weary of Work

When factories created a population of tired workers, a new frontier in fatigue studies was born.
by Emily K. Abel via Lapham’s Quarterly on April 28, 2021
A car being made in a car factory

Talking About Auto Work Means Talking About Constant, Brutal Violence

It's remembered as one of the best industrial jobs a worker could get in postwar America. Less remembered is how brutal life on the factory floor was – and still is.
by Jeremy Milloy, Micah Uetricht via Jacobin on October 23, 2020
Picket line march of auto workers.

Detroit Autoworkers’ Elusive Postwar Boom

The men who made the cars could not afford to buy them.
by Daniel Clark via The Metropole on January 30, 2020

Factory Made

A history of modernity as a history of factories struggles to see beyond their walls.
by Padraic X. Scanlan via The New Inquiry on March 30, 2018
Firefighters trying to put out the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in 1911.

How Poor, Mostly Jewish Immigrants Organized 20,000 and Fought for Workers Rights

These women came ready to fight.
by Meagan Day via Timeline on March 9, 2018
The Miss Portland diner.

The Making of the American Diner

Today's diners would surprise a 1940s patron. These restaurants were once vulgar boy’s clubs before becoming today's family-friendly establishments.
by Andrew Hurley, Erin Blakemore via JSTOR Daily on June 17, 2017

How Andrew Carnegie's Genius and Blue-Collar Grit Made Pittsburgh the Steel City

A third-generation mill worker pays homage to the controversial industrialist.
by Ken Kobus via Zócalo Public Square on April 7, 2017
Blue and yellow photo of a woman holding up a sign with the word "Union" on it

Unspooling Norma Rae

The story of Norma Rae, based on the union organizer Crystal Lee Sutton.
by Kit Duckworth via Oxford American
Skeletons in a museum posed with varying postures, as if they are performing different tasks.

Why Americans Are Obsessed With Poor Posture

The 20th-century movement to fix slouching questions the moral and political dimensions of addressing bad backs over wider public health concerns.
by Zoe Adams via The Nation on November 20, 2024

The Making of the Springfield Working Class

Each generation of this country’s workforce has always been urged to detest the next—to come up with its own fantasies of cat-eating immigrants.
by Gabriel Winant via New York Review of Books on September 30, 2024
Uncle Sam sleeping on the job, avoiding looking at x-rays of damaged lungs.

Asbestos Is Finally Banned in the U.S. Here’s Why It Took So Long.

The carcinogenic effects of asbestos have been known for decades. We should have banned it long ago.
by Naomi Oreskes via Scientific American on May 14, 2024
The cover of "Beyond Norma Rae" by Aimee Loiselle

Who Makes the American Working Class: Women Workers and Culture

Female industrial workers across the country and from diverse racial backgrounds fought to tell their own stories.
by Brock Schnoke via UNC Press Blog on March 13, 2024
A group of Transappalachain migrant workers in Department 312 of the Anderson Delco-Remy plant pose for a photograph in February 1953.

On the New Book, "Hillbilly Highway"

Recovering the long-overlooked significance of the “hillbilly highway” in the US, with implications for labor history as well as US history broadly.
by Max Fraser, Joseph Rathke via LaborOnline on December 15, 2023
Display selling nuts

“Girls, We Can’t Lose!”: In 1930s St Louis, Black Women Workers Went on Strike and Won

During the Great Depression, St. Louis's Funsten Nut Factory was racially divided. But Black workers went on strike — and got their white coworkers to join them.
by Devin Thomas O’Shea via Jacobin on November 8, 2023
Employees working at desks in post office

Guaranteed Income? 14th Grade? Before AI, Tech Fears Drove Bold Ideas.

Three-quarters of a century before artificial intelligence concerns, rapid advances in automation prompted panic about mass unemployment—and radical solutions.
by Jerry Prout via Retropolis on October 29, 2023
African American factory worker assembling an automobile engine.

How the UAW Broke Ford’s Stranglehold Over Black Detroit

The UAW's patient organizing cemented an alliance that would bear fruit for decades.
by Paul Prescod via Jacobin on October 23, 2023
Crowd holding shirts with names of Triangle Fire victims

A Memorial Restores Humanity To The 146 Ghosts of the Triangle Fire

Over a century after one of New York City’s deadliest industrial accidents, the names of its victims, most of them women, are being enshrined in steel.
by David Von Drehle via Washington Post on October 9, 2023

Eight and Skate

The age of optimism that lasted in the US from the 1940s to the 1970s looked, basically, like a car.
by Gabriel Winant via New York Review of Books on September 23, 2023
Poster of Kate Mullaney holding an iron in a fist above her head, with the words "Don't iron while the strike is hot."

Reopened Museum Honors Women's Fight for Fairness

Kate Mullany's former home in Troy, New York honors one of the earliest women's labor unions that sought fair pay and safe working conditions.
by Ann Morrow via American Heritage on September 13, 2023
Lebanese auto worker Eva Habib in her work coveralls in 1929.

Arab American Labor

On the centrality of the working classes to the Arab American immigrant experience and the pivotal roles Arab Americans played in American labor.
by Akram Khater, Chelsea Lundquist-Wentz, Nicole Ackman, Ginni Leeman, Lindsey Waldenberg via Khayrallah Center For Lebanese Diaspora Studies on September 4, 2023
Barbie doll

Barbie and the Problem of Corporate Power

Stars of the movie about an iconic Mattel toy are on strike. Both the company’s history and Barbie’s plot illuminate how powerful corporations really are.
by Rithika Ramamurthy via Nonprofit Quarterly on July 31, 2023
Dilapidated traffic sign reading "School Bus Stop Ahead."
partner

Child Labor In America Is Back In A Big Way

The historical record says we shouldn’t be surprised.
by Beth English via Made By History on April 18, 2023
Nineteenth century nuclear family.

How Government Helped Create the “Traditional” Family

Since the mid-nineteenth century, many labor regulations in the US have been crafted with the express purpose of strengthening the male-breadwinner family.
by Livia Gershon, Arianne Renan Barzilay via JSTOR Daily on April 12, 2023
Elon Musk celebrating with both hands in the air.
partner

Elon Musk’s Utopian Town Will Disappoint — Like Most Company Towns

America’s utopian communities have traditionally promoted egalitarianism and alternatives to capitalism. Company towns do the opposite.
by Victoria W. Wolcott via Made By History on March 27, 2023
A poster made by Ghazal Foroutan showing solidarity with the women of Iran

Was She Really Rosie?

The unlikely, true story of the Westinghouse “We Can Do It” work-incentive poster that became an international emblem of women’s empowerment.
by Michelle C. Smith via JSTOR Daily on March 15, 2023
A Foxconn factory in San Jeronimo, Chihuahua state, Mexico, as seen from Santa Teresa, N.M.
partner

History Shows Moving Manufacturing to North America Isn’t a Cure-all

The initial promise of Mexican factories in the 1960s gave way to impoverished communities and capital flight in search of higher profits.
by Sean Harvey via Made By History on March 6, 2023

The Fight for the Sabbath

The partnership between rabbis and labor that delivered the two-day weekend.
by Avi Garelick via Jewish Currents on February 21, 2023
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