The First World War is famous for the unprecedented loss of life on a global scale; it was a conflict that affected the world forever. However, it wasn't only in terms of bloodshed that the war rocked the nation: it also massively impacted the industrial integrity of Britain. This was a war not just of fighting, but of technological and industrial advances. All areas of industry, from aviation to food production, leapt ahead in terms of development over the four-year period: from the Wright Brothers in 1903 to the Sopwith Camel in 1917, and from the first motorcars to the tank within twenty years. On a social level, working Britain experienced change as well: with the men at war, it fell to the women of the country to keep the factories going, challenging preconceptions as they did. Here Anthony Burton shows how the First World War produced fundamental changes in British society.

Veins of iron run deep in the history of America. Iron making began almost as soon as European settlement, with the establishment of the first ironworks in colonial Massachusetts. Yet it was Great Britain that became the Atlantic world's dominant low-cost, high-volume producer of iron, a position it retained throughout the nineteenth century. It was not until after the Civil War that American iron producers began to match the scale and efficiency of the British iron industry. In "Mastering Iron", Anne Kelly Knowles argues that the prolonged development of the American iron industry was largely due to geographical problems the British did not face. Pairing exhaustive manuscript research with analysis of a detailed geospatial database that she built of the industry, Knowles reconstructs the American iron industry in unprecedented depth, from locating hundreds of iron companies in their social and environmental contexts to explaining workplace culture and social relations between workers and managers. She demonstrates how ironworks in Alabama, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia struggled to replicate British technologies but, in the attempt, brought about changes in the American industry that set the stage for the subsequent age of steel. Richly illustrated with dozens of original maps and period art work, all in full color, "Mastering Iron" sheds new light on American ambitions and high-lights the challenges a young nation faced as it grappled with its geographic conditions.

"Works of Man" is a chronicle of man's attempts from prehistoric times to the space age to exploit for his own purposes the slowly discerned laws of nature. Exciting, instructive, and eminently readable, this mine of information covers the broad sweep of technological achievements, from the invention of the wheel more than six millennia ago to the miniaturization of the electronic computer.Beginning with a description of the early builders in the days of ancient Babylon, continuing through to the end of the Roman Empire, the author goes on to explain the engineering principles that were gradually developed in the Dark Ages, enabling men to build the medieval cathedrals; to try to drain the Pontine marshes near Rome, the meres of Holland, and the British fenlands; and to raise the new military defenses that transformed warfare. Discussion of the work of Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo leads on to the development of steam as a new source of power, and to the growth of civil engineering that followed in Europe and the rest of the world. Further chapters cover the change from sail to steam; canals; railways; the use of electricity; the growth of manned flight; the rise of the plastics industry; nuclear engineering; and the problems of space exploration.

Did you know that apart from Lancashire, the greatest concentration of Boulton & Watt steam engines was in London, demonstrating the enormous and often overlooked significance of London as an industrial centre? The story behind the many industries found in the capital is described in this unique book. London once had scores of breweries; the world's first plastic material was synthesised in the East End; there was even a gasworks opposite the Palace of Westminster. Clerkenwell was a centre for watch and clock makers; the River Thames used to be full of colliers bringing coal from Newcastle; Joseph Bramah invented his water closet and hydraulic pump here, and Henry Maudslay made machines to make machines. Many household names began in London: Schweppes, Crosse & Blackwell, and Vauxhall motor cars. The list of fascinating facts goes on. In this, the first book of its kind on the subject, Geoff Marshall provides an enthralling overview of London's industrial face through history.

In 1963 Dr Beeching's infamous report signalled the end for over 15,000 miles of track, a third of Britain's stations, and for 70,000 jobs, as well as making irrevocable changes to the way of life of many consumers. Much misery was caused and Beeching's name was muddied, but in hindsight the report probably did more than any other single factor to preserve the nation's railway heritage. Without the Beeching cuts, much of the locomotives, stock, tracks, signals and signs would have crumbled, been forgotten or rotted. However, the gentle railway gradients lend themselves perfectly to walkways and cycle paths; buildings have been refurbished; memorabilia now commands prices at auction which would astonish those who painted the metal. And of course, the heritage lines continue to draw many thousands of visitors each year. After the initial shock of the cuts, this fresh appraisal considers these benefits and more, which may not have come about without the Beeching Report.

The invasion of AD 43 began the Romans' settlement of Britain. The Romans brought with them a level of expertise that raised iron production in Britain from small localised sites to an enormous industry. Rome thrived on war and iron was vital to the Roman military establishment as well as to the civil population. In this pioneering work, David Sim combines current ideas of iron-making in Roman times with experimental archaeology. The Roman Iron Industry in Britain stretches far beyond dry theory and metallurgy alone; it covers all the stages of this essential process, from prospecting to distribution, and describes the whole cycle of iron production. Photographs and line drawings illustrate the text well enough to allow keen readers to reproduce the artefacts for themselves. Fascinating to the general reader and all those with an interest in Roman history, this book is invaluable to students of archaeology and professional archaeologists alike. Dr David Sim is an archaeologist who has combined studies of the technology of the Roman Empire with his skills as a blacksmith.

From a farming background in Cumbria, John Wilkinson's remarkable abilities and ambitions ensured his rise to pre-eminence among the gifted pioneers of the industrial revolution. His colleagues and friends were similarly talented characters, including James Watt, Josiah Wedgwood, Richard Crawshay and Thomas Telford. Wilkinson achieved great leaps in the iron industry and munitions, including the first use of sound castings and accurate boring for cannon manufacture, but he was also influential in the development of steam railway engines, waterways, and copper refining, and worked extensively with lead and chemicals. But while Wilkinson's technological triumphs were admired by his contemporaries, his personal affairs were complicated and sometimes tragic. This well-informed and readable book, based on research by the author born of a fascination with Wilkinson after living at his family home, gives a unique insight into the character and thinking of the man Telford named 'King of the Ironmasters'.

Coal is a topic that has been, remains, and will continue to be of significant interest to those concerned with the causes, course and consequences of industrialization and de-industrialization. This six-volume, reset collection provides scholars with a wide variety of sources relating to the Victorian coal industry.

In this extraordinary tale of union democracy, Dana L. Cloud engages union reformers at Boeing in Wichita and Seattle to reveal how ordinary workers attempted to take command of their futures by chipping away at the cozy partnership between union leadership and corporate management. Taking readers into the central dilemma of having to fight an institution while simultaneously using it as a bastion of basic self-defense, We Are the Union offers a sophisticated exploration of the structural opportunities and balance of forces at play in modern unions told through a highly relevant case study. Focusing on the 1995 strike at Boeing, Cloud renders a multi-layered account of the battles between company and the union and within the union led by Unionists for Democratic Change and two other dissident groups. She gives voice to the company's claims of the hardships of competitiveness and the entrenched union leaders' calls for concessions in the name of job security, alongside the democratic union reformers' fight for a rank-and-file upsurge against both the company and the union leaders. We Are the Union is grounded in on-site research and interviews and focuses on the efforts by Unionists for Democratic Change to reform unions from within. Incorporating theory and methods from the fields of organizational communication as well as labor studies, Cloud methodically uncovers and analyzes the goals, strategies, and dilemmas of the dissidents who, while wanting to uphold the ideas and ideals of the union, took up the gauntlet to make it more responsive to workers and less conciliatory toward management, especially in times of economic stress or crisis. Cloud calls for a revival of militant unionism as a response to union leaders' embracing of management and training programs that put workers in the same camp as management, arguing that reform groups should look to the emergence of powerful industrial unions in the United States for guidance on revolutionizing existing institutions and building new ones that truly accommodate workers' needs. Drawing from communication studies, labor history, and oral history and including a chapter co-written with Boeing worker Keith Thomas, We Are the Union contextualizes what happened at Boeing as an exemplar of agency that speaks both to the past and the future.

Still working hard in his seventies, Samuel Gompers gave no thought to retiring. But he faced a world of challenges in his final years as president of the American Federation of Labor. Ascendant Republicans were hostile. Conflicts over tactics and strategies divided the labour movement. And continuing unemployment kept the workforce in check. Despite all this, Gompers kept the faith, helping revitalize the AFL's nonpartisan political efforts, launching a campaign to organize women workers, and strengthening the Pan-American Federation of Labor. At the same time, he challenged government agencies like the Railroad Labor Board and continued his efforts to abolish child labor and fight labour injunctions. Although historians often assess these years as the most conservative and least productive period of Gompers's life, this final volume of the Samuel Gompers Papers demonstrates that even in this tumultuous time he continued his forward-looking leadership of the labor movement and retained his keen sense of judgment.

How much do you know about the big-name brands we live by? Virgin, BP, Land Rover, Barclays, Cadbury's, BBC and M&S. In our times the PLCs have been seen as giants, the backbone of commerce and society. Yet seen through a historical perspective they are vulnerable creatures, flowering only briefly. In fact, on the Fortune 500 - a roll-call of power if ever there was one - there's just one company, General Electric, which was on the list half a century ago. The rest have gone: broken, bankrupt, merged, raided for their parts. More like mayflies than megacorps. And getting more fragile all the time. The great corporations that now dominate our lives are treated by the law courts as if they were people.They have the same rights, but unlike us they have no emotions, morals or life histories.The only corporate biographies you find are celebratory, promotional portraits with the warts left out. So, we don't really know where most great brands came from or where they are going. This book spills the beans by telling the real life stories of some of the biggest corporate names, and finds them as dramatic, flawed and revealing as any human biography.

In The Labor Question in America: Economic Democracy in the Gilded Age, Rosanne Currarino traces the struggle to define the nature of democratic life in an era of industrial strife. As Americans confronted the glaring disparity between democracy's promises of independence and prosperity and the grim realities of economic want and wage labor, they asked, "What should constitute full participation in American society? What standard of living should citizens expect and demand?" Currarino traces the diverse efforts to answer to these questions, from the fledgling trade union movement to contests over immigration, from economic theory to popular literature, from legal debates to social reform. The contradictory answers that emerged--one stressing economic participation in a consumer society, the other emphasizing property ownership and self-reliance--remain pressing today as contemporary scholars, journalists, and social critics grapple with the meaning of democracy in post-industrial America.

The increased participation of women in the labour force was one of the most significant changes to Canadian social life during the quarter century after the close of the Second World War. Transforming Labour offers one of the first critical assessments of women's paid labour in this era, a period when more and more women, particularly those with families, were going 'out to work'.

Using case studies from across Canada, Joan Sangster explores a range of themes, including women's experiences within unions, Aboriginal women's changing patterns of work, and the challenges faced by immigrant women. By charting women's own efforts to ameliorate their work lives as well as factors that re-shaped the labour force, Sangster challenges the commonplace perception of this era as one of conformity, domesticity for women, and feminist inactivity. Working women's collective grievances fuelled their desire for change, culminating in challenges to the status quo in the 1960s, when they voiced their discontent, calling for a new world of work and better opportunities for themselves and their daughters.

In this elegantly written and far-reaching narrative, acclaimed author Gerard Koeppel tells the astonishing story of the creation of the Erie Canal and the memorable characters who turned a visionary plan into a successful venture. Koeppel's long years of research fill the pages with new findings about the construction of the canal and its enormous impact, providing a unique perspective on America's self perception as an empire destined to expand to the Pacific.

Many studies have concluded that the effects of early industrialization on traditional craftsworkers were largely negative. Robert B. Kristofferson demonstrates, however, that in at least one area this was not the case. Craft Capitalism focuses on Hamilton, Ontario, demonstrating how the preservation of traditional work arrangements, craft mobility networks, and other aspects of craft culture ensured that craftworkers in that city enjoyed an essentially positive introduction to industrial capitalism.

Kristofferson argues that as former craftsworkers themselves, the majority of the city's industrial proprietors helped younger craftsworkers achieve independence. Conflict rooted in capitalist class experience, while present, was not yet dominant. Furthermore, he argues, while craftsworkers' experience of the change was more informed by the residual cultures of craft than by the emergent logic of capitalism, craft culture in Hamilton was not retrogressive. Rather, this situation served as a center of social creation in ways that built on the positive aspects of both systems.

Based on extensive archival research, this controversial and engaging study makes an important contribution to the study of industrialization and class formation in Canada.

In 1950, Mexican American miners went on strike for fair working conditions in Hanover, New Mexico. When an injunction prohibited miners from picketing, their wives took over the picket lines - an unprecedented act that disrupted mining families but ultimately ensured the strikers' victory in 1952. In ""On Strike and on Film"", Ellen Baker examines the building of a leftist union that linked class justice to ethnic equality. She shows how women's participation in union activities paved the way for their taking over the picket lines and thereby forcing their husbands, and the union, to face troubling questions about gender equality. Baker also explores the collaboration between mining families and blacklisted Hollywood filmmakers that resulted in the controversial 1954 film ""Salt of the Earth"". She shows how this worker-artist alliance gave the mining families a unique chance to clarify the meanings of the strike in their own lives and allowed the filmmakers to create a progressive alternative to Hollywood productions. An inspiring story of working-class solidarity, Mexican American dignity, and women's liberation, ""Salt of the Earth"" was itself blacklisted by powerful anticommunists, yet the movie has endured as a vital contribution to American cinema.

The arrival of telegraphy and railroads changed power relations throughout the world in the nineteenth century. In the Mesilla region of the American Southwest, it contributed to two distinct and rapid shifts in political and economic power from the 1850s to the 1920s. Torsten Kathke illustrates how the changes these technologies wrought everywhere could be seen at a much accelerated pace here. A local Hispano elite was replaced first by a Hispano-Anglo one, and finally a nationally oriented Anglo elite. As various groups tried to gain, hold, and defend power, the region became bound ever closer to the US economy and to the federal government.

From the Model T to today's "lean manufacturing": the assembly line as crucial, yet controversial, agent of social and economic transformation. The mechanized assembly line was invented in 1913 and has been in continuous operation ever since. It is the most familiar form of mass production. Both praised as a boon to workers and condemned for exploiting them, it has been celebrated and satirized. (We can still picture Chaplin's little tramp trying to keep up with a factory conveyor belt.) In America's Assembly Line, David Nye examines the industrial innovation that made the United States productive and wealthy in the twentieth century. The assembly line-developed at the Ford Motor Company in 1913 for the mass production of Model Ts-first created and then served an expanding mass market. It also transformed industrial labor. By 1980, Japan had reinvented the assembly line as a system of "lean manufacturing"; American industry reluctantly adopted the new approach. Nye describes this evolution and the new global landscape of increasingly automated factories, with fewer industrial jobs in America and questionable working conditions in developing countries. A century after Ford's pioneering innovation, the assembly line continues to evolve toward more sustainable manufacturing.

Closely linked essays examine distinctive national patterns of industrialization. This collection of essays offers new perspectives on the Industrial Revolution as a global phenomenon. The fifteen contributors go beyond the longstanding view of industrialization as a linear process marked by discrete stages. Instead, they examine a lengthy and creative period in the history of industrialization, 1750 to 1914, reassessing the nature of and explanations for England's industrial primacy, and comparing significant industrial developments in countries ranging from China to Brazil. Each chapter explores a distinctive national production ecology, a complex blend of natural resources, demographic pressures, cultural impulses, technological assets, and commercial practices. At the same time, the chapters also reveal the portability of skilled workers and the permeability of political borders. The Industrial Revolution comes to life in discussions of British eagerness for stylish, middle-class products; the Enlightenment's contribution to European industrial growth; early America's incremental (rather than revolutionary) industrialization; the complex connections between Czarist and Stalinist periods of industrial change in Russia; Japan's late and rapid turn to mechanized production; and Brazil's industrial-financial boom. By exploring unique national patterns of industrialization as well as reciprocal exchanges and furtive borrowing among these states, the book refreshes the discussion of early industrial transformations and raises issues still relevant in today's era of globalization.

From the late 1940s to the early 1970s, farmers in the Corn Belt transformed their region into a new, industrial powerhouse of large-scale production, mechanization, specialization, and efficiency. Many farm experts and implement manufacturers had urged farmers in this direction for decades, but it was the persistent labor shortage and cost-price squeeze following WWII that prompted farmers to pave the way to industrializing agriculture. Anderson examines the changes in Iowa, a representative state of the Corn Belt, in order to explore why farmers adopted particular technologies and how, over time, they integrated new tools and techniques. In addition to the impressive field machinery, grain storage facilities, and automated feeding systems were the less visible, but no less potent, chemical technologies-antibiotics and growth hormones administered to livestock, as well as insecticide, herbicide, and fertilizer applied to crops. Much of this new technology created unintended consequences: pesticides encouraged the proliferation of resistant strains of plants and insects while also polluting the environment and threatening wildlife, and the use of feed additives triggered concern about the health effects to consumers. In Industrializing the Corn Belt, J. L. Anderson explains that the cost of equipment and chemicals made unprecedented demands on farm capital, and in order to maximize production, farmers planted more acres with fewer but more profitable crops or specialized in raising large herds of a single livestock species. The industrialization of agriculture gave rural Americans a lifestyle resembling that of their urban and suburban counterparts. Yet the rural population continued to dwindle as farms required less human labor, and many small farmers, unable or unwilling to compete, chose to sell out. Based on farm records, cooperative extension reports, USDA publications, oral interviews, trade literature, and agricultural periodicals, Industrializing the Corn Belt offers a fresh look at an important period of revolutionary change in agriculture through the eyes of those who grew the crops, raised the livestock, implemented new technology, and ultimately made the decisions that transformed the nature of the family farm and the Midwestern landscape.

For a long time, the idea of China as a culture and society which was voluntarily secluding itself from the rest of the world was dominant. But, in reality, China has always been part of the world, just as the world has always sought to penetrate China. The relationship between China and the world was, in the past, sometimes smooth, and at other times it was difficult, but nevertheless the bond remained alive.This collection presents an analysis of China from a global perspective within a broad temporal and spatial spectrum. It reveals the early relations established between the Roman Empire and China, the dynamics developed with the countries of the Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia and Japan, and the gradual path of Europeans and Americans towards China. The book reviews the development of diplomatic relations, the signing of agreements and alliances, and the rise and resolution of conflicts. It also analyses the forging of economic relations, the establishment of commercial exchanges and the creation of companies, professional bodies and institutions of collaboration.

This book takes an unflinching look at one of the most contentious labour conflicts in North American history, and a brave indictment of the destructive collusion between business interests and Mexico's government.

This volume contains selected essays which together re-frame the roles of guilds in medieval and early modern European cities. They focus on the different ways in which we can understand the interfaces between regulatory frameworks, represented by guild and civic regulations, and the wider world of labour and production. Through case studies of single cities, economic sectors, and of territories, they address a range of questions about the operation of labour markets, the nature of guild regulation within and outside guild jurisdictions, and the interaction between `regulation' and `freedom' as expressed in legislation and in the organization of production and distribution. In doing so, they offer a means to compare and contrast experiences across Europe and the circumstances which determined and altered economic structures and, in turn, political and social structures in cities.

The strike of 1984/5 cut deep into the traditional mining communities yet in the midst of this wholesale destruction something unexpected happened. From the dark corners of obscurity came the voices of the wives, mothers and daughters of miners - previously unheard, inexperienced, unrehearsed. Out of desperation they found the strength and courage to not only stand and fight alongside their men but to become political activists in their own right. Overnight they mastered the media, learnt which journalists to trust and began to appear in the newspapers, and on radio and TV. But when the strike ended in defeat the media lost interest. The women were dumped, allowed to slip back into the shadows. For some the strike brought about a change; they had seen an existence beyond the slagheaps and embraced it. For others the end of the strike meant coming back to earth with a bump. Two decades later Triona Holden, who was one of the BBC correspondents reporting on the strike, takes the reader into the lives of these remarkable women and reveals that what is good and inextinguishable about the mining communities lives on in these women's articulate, funny and frank stories.

In 1998, there was the latest in a long and complex history of takeovers that had bedevilled Rolls-Royce and Bentley since the companies were founded. This resulted in Volkswagen taking ownership of the factory in Crewe, together with the Bentley range and name, while BMW moved Rolls-Royce production to a new site in Sussex. On 30 August 2002, the last Crewe-built Rolls-Royce rolled off the production line, bringing the era of Crewe-built Rolls-Royces to an end. Peter Ollerhead, an ex-Rolls-Royce employee, has spent years researching the history of the company in Crewe, from 1938 to 1998, focusing on the endeavours and the experiences of its employees: this is a book about people. The detailed text, illustrated with over 80 photographs, explains how the initial establishment of a Merlin aero engine factory was thwarted by the problems of building on a greenfield site, where the early days of skill shortages, a chronic need for housing and a strike were followed by a bombing raid in 1940, in which seventeen employees were killed. The arrival of car production just after the Second World War is fully covered, as are the other enterprises that helped to keep the company afloat, from War Department power units to hip joints for the NHS. Despite a troubled history - with two major fires, bankruptcy and large-scale redundancies - Rolls-Royce was Crewe's largest employer for many years, produced the world's best luxury cars, and influenced and shaped the town as no other company has done. This book is a fitting tribute to the generations of workers who made it all possible.