Monthly Labor Review

Monthly Labor Review
Author: United States. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Publisher:
Total Pages: 30
Release: 1931
Genre: Labor
ISBN:

Publishes in-depth articles on labor subjects, current labor statistics, information about current labor contracts, and book reviews.

The Bootleg Coal Rebellion

The Bootleg Coal Rebellion
Author: Mitch Troutman
Publisher: PM Press
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2022-08-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1629639478

Told with great intimacy and compassion, The Bootleg Coal Rebellion uncovers a long-buried history of resistance and resilience among depression-era miners in Pennsylvania, who sunk their own mines on company grounds and fought police, bankers, coal companies and courts to form a union that would safeguard not just their livelihoods, but protect their collective autonomy as citizens and workers for decades. Community and Labor organizer Mitch Troutman brings this explosive and accessible American tale to life through the bootleggers’ own words. Scholars, historians, organizers and activists will celebrate this story of the people who literally seized mountains and stood their ground to create the Equalization movement, the miners’ union democracy movement, and the Communist-led Unemployed Councils of the anthracite region. This epic story of work, love and community stands as a testament to the power of collective action; a story that is sorely needed as communities today rise to confront neoliberal policies ravaging our planet.

Forgotten Radicals

Forgotten Radicals
Author: Walter T. Howard
Publisher: University Press of America
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780761830900

This detailed investigation of Communists and their Party in the hard coal fields of northeastern Pennsylvania, known as the Anthracite, draws on sources such as the central archives of the Communist Party of the United States to examine the origins, growth, and decline of the relatively small but active Marxist-Leninist organization that operated there during the first half of the 20th century. Anthracite. Just mentioning the name of the hard coal region of Pennsylvania conjures up classic images of labor violence and class conflict: Molly Maguires, Lattimer and the 1902 national coal strike. Yet this legendary tradition of labor and class discord has prompted no historian to chronicle the complete story of the region's largest and most active radical group in the 20th century: American Communists. They are forgotten radicals. Chronicling the story of these forgotten radicals allows us to examine American Communism in an important area of the highly industrialized state of Pennsylvania where a major capitalist enterprise, the hard coal industry, employed a large contingent of immigrant workers for about half of the 20th century. To be sure, studying these radicals permits us to explore the overall historical pattern of American Communism_the founding of the Party in 1919, the challenges of the 1920s, the heyday of the thirties, the turns of World War II, and the decline during the McCarthy period_in a regional context. Thus, Forgotten Radicals fills a niche in local studies of rank and file Communist activity.