The remnants of slate mining and quarrying form as much a part of the Lakeland historic landscape as the stone walls, heathered moorlands and Lakeland farms do. A significant number of local families currently living in Lake District villages has had some connections with the slate industry in the past, and a few are still involved in the industry today. Although many believe that slate was worked during the Roman era, the present 'style' of slate-working started shortly after the Norman Conquest to help build the Norman castles, abbeys and priories in Britain. The Normans were familiar with slate; it had been worked for centuries earlier at sites in the Ardennes and in the Loire valley. By 1280 there are references to slate being worked at Longsleddale and by the fifteenth century the industry was well established throughout the district. Using historic detail, photographs and captions, Slate Mining in the Lake District: An Illustrated History explores the history of the industry in the Lake District. Considering slate mining's key role in the heritage of this iconic national park, Alastair Cameron also details its present-day operations.

This volume tells a story of Welsh industrial history different from the one traditionally dominated by the coal and iron communities of Victorian and Edwardian Wales. Extending the chronological scope from the early eighteenth- to the late twentieth-century, and encompassing a wider range of industries, the contributors combine studies of the internal organisation of workplace and production with outward-facing perspectives of Welsh industry in the context of the global economy. The volume offers important new insights into the companies, the employers, the markets and the money behind some of the key sectors of the Welsh economy - from coal to copper, and from steel to manufacturing - and challenges us to reconsider what we think of as constituting 'industry' in Wales.

If you don’t know the Tobacco Wars, you don’t know American history.

Imagine a lawless militia of 10,000 masked men roaming the cities and countrysides of the United States. Brandishing firearms, these “Night Riders” set fire to warehouses and barns, destroy millions of dollars of product, and tear businessmen from their homes to torture them—their revenge against an apathetic One Percent who profit off the misery of the working class. This is not a scene from an apocalyptic movie. It’s a fact of American history.

The most violent and prolonged conflict between the Civil War and the Civil Rights struggles, the Tobacco Wars changed the course of American history—and America’s economy. So why haven’t you ever heard of it? In Tobacco, Trusts And Trump: How America’s Forgotten War Created Big Government, entrepreneur Jim Rumford draws from one of the largest private collections of Tobacco Wars primary documents, as well as his own family ties to the conflict, to show how the United States today is spiraling toward the same chaos that sparked the bloody war between the working class of America’s heartland and the Great Tobacco Trust—and why the Establishment doesn’t want you to know about it. Citing nearly three hundred sources, Rumford weaves a compelling narrative to show how the subjects of recent headlines—the TEA Party, Silicon Valley oligopolies, Occupy Wall Street protests, the Socialist rhetoric of Senator Bernie Sanders, outsourcing of blue collar careers, and the election of President Donald J. Trump—echo those of a century ago.

From Big Business monopolies that triggered financial recessions to the Populist and Progressive movements that enabled Big Government to strip Americans of numerous freedoms, the consequences of the Tobacco Wars could not be more relevant today.

West German Industrialists and the Making of the Economic Miracle investigates the mentality of post-war German (heavy) industrialists through an analysis of their attitudes, thinking and views on social, political and, of course, economic matters at the time, including the 'social market economy' and how they saw their own role in society, with this investigation taking place against the backdrop of the 'economic miracle' and the Cold War of the 1950s and 60s. The book also includes an assessment of whether the self-declared, new 'aristocracy of merit' justified its place in society and carried out its actions in a new spirit of political responsibility. This is an important text for all students interested in the history of Germany and the modern economic history of Europe.

Few cultural activities speak more powerfully to international histories of the modern world than football. In the late nineteenth century, this cheap and simple sport emerged as a major legacy of Britain's formal and informal empires and spread quickly across Europe, South America, and Africa. Today, football (known to many as soccer) is arguably the world's most popular pastime, an activity played and watched by millions of people around the globe. Contested Fields introduces readers to key aspects of the global game, synthesizing research on football's transnational role in reflecting and shaping political, socio-economic, and cultural developments over the past 150 years. Each chapter uses case studies and cutting-edge scholarship to analyze an important element of football's international story: migration, money, competition, gender, race, space, spectatorship, and confrontation.

This book, originally published in 1901, provides an introduction to the industrial and social history of England from prehistoric times to the early nineteenth century. Topics discussed include: the organization or rural life and town life; medieval trade and commerce; the Black Death and the Peasants Rebellion; the end of the medieval system; the expansion of England; the Industrial Revolution; the extension of government control; and the extension of voluntary associations, trade unions, and trusts.

This is a brief story of the long agitation for textile unions in the South. To evaluate the contributions of textile unions and to determine whether they are socially desirable, it is necessary to know the history of the union movement and the effect unions have had in educating workers. Mitchell gives a clear, succinct account of the movement in the South. Originally published in 1931. A UNC Press Enduring Edition - UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

They Taught Us Skills for Life: We are the Engineers! Scotland's labour history has been the subject of many important studies, surveys, articles and books. Some of those published represent the invaluable collection of local groups and amateur historians, while others have been, and are, produced by academics and labour officials. The general expectation, even in Scotland, is that these works should be written in Standard English, regardless of the everyday speech of the workforce. For this publication, however, it seemed more important to transcribe, as recorded, the voices of folk whose vitality of language and expression gives a brighter reflection of their experiences during work and leisure.This book has grown out of an oral history project, 'The End of the Shift', which aims to record the working practices and conditions of skilled workers in Scotland's past industries. Publicity about the project caught the interest of a group of retired engineers, who had all served apprenticeships with a prestigious Kirkcaldy firm, Melville-Brodie Engineering Company.Having lived through times when Scotland seemed blighted by industrial closures, the engineers could identify with 'the end of the shift' as they had experienced the effect of closing down Melville-Brodie Engineering Company. The entire workforce was dispersed, and with it, the skills, expertise and wisdom of generations. Kirkcaldy also lost a company that had been the pride of Scottish engineering.Over the years, as the retired engineers reflected on the radical changes that have taken place since their 'second to none' training, they began to realise the importance of recording knowledge and skills for posterity. They also wanted to remember the firm that trained them, and so they planned a memorial to be erected on the site of Melville-Brodie Engineering works. It was to be designed and made by the men themselves, and in May 2014,the group had the satisfaction of seeing the plaque unveiled by Mrs June Shanks, daughter of the celebrated engineer, Robert Burt Brodie. Standing beside her were the two oldest Melville- Brodie 'boys' (aged 94 and 89), Bob Thomson and Willie Black, and the Secretary of the Melville-Brodie Retired Engineers' Club, Dougie Reid.Councillor for Kirkcaldy East, Kay Carrington, who supported the project, represented Fife Council as she addressed the audience and the media:This is a really exciting project because it shows our past history, how we made a difference, not just in Kirkcaldy, but in the wider world. Melville-Brodie engineers did everything that we're proud of in Scotland. We need to keep the story alive to enable us to take that forward to children and grandchildren in the future.

In the first book ever written about the impact of phosphate mining on the South Carolina plantation economy, Shepherd McKinley explains how the convergence of the phosphate and fertilizer industries carried long-term impacts for America and the South. Fueling the rapid growth of lowcountry fertilizer companies, phosphate mining provided elite plantation owners a way to stem losses from emancipation. At the same time, mining created an autonomous alternative to sharecropping, enabling freed people to extract housing and labor concessions. Stinking Stones and Rocks of Gold develops an overarching view of what can be considered one of many key factors in the birth of southern industry. This top-down, bottom-up history (business, labor, social, and economic) analyzes an alternative path for all peoples in the post-emancipation South.

This is the story of one of the most important strikes in labour history revealing the significance and truth of what actually happened. In July 1888, fourteen hundred women and girls employed by the matchmakers Bryant and May walked out of their East End factory and into the history books. Louise Raw gives us a challenging new interpretation of events proving that the women themselves, not celebrity socialists like Annie Besant, began it. She provides unequivocal evidence to show that the matchwomen greatly influenced the Dock Strike of 1889, which until now was thought to be the key event of new unionism, and repositions them as the mothers of the modern labour movement. Returning to the stories of the women themselves, and by interviewing their relatives today, Raw is able to construct a new history which challenges existing accounts of the strike itself and radically alters the accepted history of the labour movement in Britain.

The Tenants' Movement is both a history of tenant organization and mobilization, and a guide to understanding how the struggles of tenant organizers have come to shape housing policy today. Charting the history of tenant mobilization, and the rise of consumer movements in housing, it is one of the first cross-cultural, historical analyses of tenants' organizations' roles in housing policy. The Tenants' Movement shows both the past and future of tenant mobilization. The book's approach applies social movement theory to housing studies, and bridges gaps between research in urban sociology, urban studies, and the built environment, and provides a challenging study of the ability of contemporary social movements, community campaigns and urban struggles to shape the debate around public services and engage with the unfinished project of welfare reform.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel was Britain's greatest engineer, he was the man who built everything on a huge scale, he built Britain's biggest ship, some of Britain's most spectacular bridges, a tunnel under the Thames and the finest railway line in Britain, the London to Bristol route of the Great Western Railway. Everything he did was on a scale not seen before, not just in Britain, but in the world. Brunel left a legacy of industrial architecture and design, from the vaulted roof of Paddington station to the SS Great Britain, the first true ocean greyhound, from the Clifton Suspension Bridge to the Tamar Bridge, which bears his name on its approaches. His life was one of superlatives - bigger, wider, taller and faster. Nearly drowning in the Thames Tunnel, he eventually suffered a stroke aboard his Great Eastern, the world's largest vessel for almost half a century, and died two days before her maiden voyage. As the historian Dan Cruikshank put it, Brunel was quite simply 'a one-man Industrial Revolution'. Here, John Christopher tells the story of the man and his tunnels, bridges, railways, ships and buildings, with many new illustrations accompanying the old, showing the changes time has made to Brunel's greatest legacy - the things he designed and built that we still take for granted and use every day, over a century and a half since his death.

From the beginning of the eighteenth century to the high water mark of the Victorian era, the world was transformed by a technological revolution the like of which had never been seen before. Inventors, businessmen, scientists, explorers all had their part to play in the story of the Industrial Revolution and in this Brief History Thomas Crump brings their story to life, and shows why it is a chapter in English history that can not be ignored. Previous praise for Thomas Crump's A Brief History of Science: 'A serious and fully furnished history of science, from which anyone interested in the development of ideas . . . will greatly profit.' A. C. Grayling, Financial Times 'Provides an enduring sense of the extraordinary ingenuity that defines our relationship with nature.' Guardian 'An excellent account . . Crump writes with authority.' TLS

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Small businesses were at the heart of the economic growth and social transformation that characterized the industrial revolution in Britain. In towns across north-west England, shops and workshops dominated the streetscape, and helped to satisfy an increasing desire for consumer goods. Yet despite their significance, we know surprisingly little about these firms and the people who ran them, for whilst those engaged in craft-based manufacturing, retailing, and allied trades constituted a significant proportion of the urban population, they have been generally overlooked by historians. Instead, our view of the world of business is more usually taken up by narratives of particularly successful firms, and especially those involved in new modes of production. By examining some of the forgotten businesses of the industrial revolution, and the men and women who worked in them, Family and Business during the Industrial Revolution presents a largely unfamiliar commercial world. Its approach, which spans economic, social, and cultural history, as well as encompassing business history and the histories of the emotions, space, and material culture, alongside studies of personal testimony, testatory practice, and property ownership, tests current understandings of gender, work, family, class, and power in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It provides us with new insights into the lives of ordinary men and women in trade, whose relatively mundane lives are easily overlooked, but who were central to the story of a pivotal period in British history.