The word was that you could earn $17,000 a month in the Bakken Oilfield of North Dakota. So they flooded in: the profiteers, deadbeats, ex-cons, dreamers, and doers. And so too did Maya Rao, a journalist who embedded herself in the surreal new American frontier. With an eye for the dark, humorous, and absurd, Rao set out in steel-toed boots to chronicle the largest oil boom since the 1968 discovery of oil in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. Businessmen turned up to restart their careers after bankruptcy or fraud allegations from the financial crisis. An ex-con found his niche as a YouTube celebrity exposing the underside of oilfield life. A high-rolling Englishman blew investors' money on $400 shots of cognac as authorities started to catch on that his housing developments were part of a worldwide Ponzi scheme. Part Barbara Ehrenreich, part Upton Sinclair, this is an on-the-ground narrative of capitalism and industrialization as a rural, insular community transformed into a colony of outsiders hustling for profit-a sobering exploration of twenty-first century America that reads like a frontier novel.

In this book Eileen Wallace focuses on the lives of working children in nineteenth-century Hertfordshire employed in agriculture, straw-plaiting, silk-throwing, paper and brickmaking and as chimney sweeps. In Hertfordshire, as elsewhere, children of a very young age worked long hours, received little education and endured poor housing, hunger and dreadful sanitation. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Hertfordshire was still predominantly rural. A great many children worked on the land from an early age and were expected to be able to plough from ten years old. Other families employed their young children to carry out the heaviest tasks in brickmaking. Small boys, in particular, were also much sought after to climb and sweep chimneys, a practice which continued until the last quarter of the century in spite of earlier laws intended to abolish it. Many diseases afflicted these young chimney-sweeps, although deaths and injuries to children working in other industries were all too frequent as well. It is a common assumption that, during the Industrial Revolution, factories and mills existed only in the north of England but, as this book documents, there was industry in the south of the country too, including silk-throwing and papermaking, the working conditions of which matched those in the northern manufactories. Drawing on contemporary reports and illustrations, Eileen Wallace details the contributions of the children towards their families' livelihoods in hard times and the high price they paid in terms of poor health and diet and missed opportunities for education - regular attendance at school was unusual. Whilst there were rare examples of enlightened factory-owners such as John Dickinson, an innovative papermaker who built good housing for his employees to rent, the overall picture that emerges is one of harsh conditions and gruelling labour for Hertfordshire's children during this period.

Glass plays an essential role in our lives and has done for centuries. Glass has not always been so ubiquitous and this book charts the development of the English glass industry from the medieval period to recent times. Medieval glass was a scarce, luxury material used to furnish the tables of the wealthiest members of society, and to glaze only churches and palaces. The industry was small and largely based in rural areas, where the necessary raw materials (in particular wood for fuel) were abundant. In the 16th century, glass manufacture increased and benefited from technological development (largely brought by immigrant glass makers). This encouraged a drop in prices for customers which probably helped to increase the demand for glass. Throughout the 17th century the English glass industry was transformed by the use of new coal-fuelled furnaces, and raw materials, especially seaweed and lead. By the 18th century, glass was routinely used to glaze houses even for the less wealthy members of society, store wine and beer, and serve drinks. The scientific analysis of glass and glass working waste from this period has advanced considerably in recent years and has enriched our understanding of the raw materials and technologies employed in glass manufacture.

This book vividly reconstructs the social world of upper middle-class Belfast during the time of the city's greatest growth, between the 1830s and the 1880s. Using extensive primary material including personal correspondence, memoirs, diaries and newspapers, the author draws a rich portrait of Belfast society and explores both the public and inner lives of Victorian bourgeois families. Leading business families like the Corrys and the Workmans, alongside their professional counterparts, dominated Victorian Belfast's civic affairs, taking pride in their locale and investing their time and money in improving it. This social group displayed a strong work ethic, a business-oriented attitude and religious commitment, and its female members led active lives in the domains of family, church and philanthropy. While the Belfast bourgeoisie had parallels with other British urban elites, they inhabited a unique place and time: 'Linenopolis' was the only industrial city in Ireland, a city that was neither fully Irish nor fully British, and at the very time that its industry boomed, an unusually violent form of sectarianism emerged. Middle-Class Life in Victorian Belfast provides a fresh examination of familiar themes such as civic activism, working lives, philanthropy, associational culture, evangelicalism, recreation, marriage and family life, and represents a substantial and important contribution to Irish social history.

In this innovative grassroots to global study, Kathleen Mapes explores how the sugar beet industry transformed the rural Midwest through the introduction of large factories, contract farming, and foreign migrant labor. Sweet Tyranny calls into question the traditional portrait of the rural Midwest as a classless and homogenous place untouched by industrialization and imperialism. Identifying rural areas as centers for modern American industrialism, Mapes contributes to the ongoing expansion of labor history from urban factory workers to rural migrant workers. She engages with a full range of people involved in this industry, including midwestern family farmers, industrialists, eastern European and Mexican immigrants, child laborers, rural reformers, Washington politicos, and colonial interests. Engagingly written, this book demonstrates that capitalism was not solely a force from above but was influenced by the people below who defended their interests in an ever-expanding market of imperialist capitalism. The fact that the United States acquired its own sugar producing empire at the very moment that its domestic sugar beet industry was coming into its own, as well as the fact that the domestic sugar beet industry came to depend on immigrant workers as the basis of its field labor force, magnified the local and global ties as well as the political battles that ensued. As such, the issue of how Americans would satiate their growing demand for sweetness--whether with beet sugar grown at home or with cane sugar raised in colonies abroad--became part of a much larger debate about the path of industrial agriculture, the shape of American imperialism, and the future of immigration.

Race, Labor, and Violence in the Delta examines the history of labor relations and racial conflict in the Mississippi Valley from the Civil War into the late twentieth century. This essay collection grew out of a conference marking the hundredth anniversary of one of the nation's deadliest labor conflicts-the 1919 Elaine Massacre, during which white mobs ruthlessly slaughtered over two hundred African Americans across Phillips County, Arkansas, in response to a meeting of unionized Black sharecroppers. The essays here demonstrate that the brutality that unfolded in Phillips County was characteristic of the culture of race- and labor-based violence that prevailed in the century after the Civil War. They detail how Delta landowners began seeking cheap labor as soon as the slave system ended-securing a workforce by inflicting racial terror, eroding the Reconstruction Amendments in the courts, and obstructing federal financial-relief efforts. The result was a system of peonage that continued to exploit Blacks and poor whites for their labor, sometimes fatally. In response, laborers devised their own methods for sustaining themselves and their communities: forming unions, calling strikes, relocating, and occasionally operating outside the law. By shedding light on the broader context of the Elaine Massacre, Race, Labor, and Violence in the Delta reveals that the fight against white supremacy in the Delta was necessarily a fight for better working conditions, fair labor practices, and economic justice.

The pottery industry was key for Burton-in-Lonsdale on the borders of Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cumbria for nearly three centuries until its demise in 1944. This book tells the story of Richard Bateson, the last potter of Black Burton, a renowned thrower and teacher. It encapsulates the history and traditions of this lost trade; the personalities, the struggles, the humour alongside the hard work. The book is a grand contribution to the history of Burton, the history of pottery and the story of rural arts in transformation from an industrial to a more artistic endeavour. "The most comprehensive collection of history, stories, first-hand accounts and photographs we are ever likely to see... social history of a high order; rooted in its context, explored by those who really understand how it was." From the Foreword by Mark McKergow "(Richard) didn't like Bernard Leach's pots, because all Leach's pots had a wobble and Richard's never did." David Frith, Brookhouse Pottery

This book is a study of workers activism and labour unions in the eight years between the recognition of Indonesian sovereignty by the Netherlands at the end of December 1949 and the nationalisation of Dutch assets in December 1957. It contributes to a re-evaluation of the era of liberal parliamentary democracy in Indonesia. The focus is on the agency of workers and the structures, strategies and industrial campaigns of unions in the context of intense ideological conflict, competing union federations, the opposition of employers to collective action and the efforts by the Indonesian state to manage industrial conflict. The imposition of martial law in March 1957 was the deathblow to parliamentary democracy and to the freedom of workers and unions to engage in collective action. It was not until Suharto's 'New Order' regime collapsed in 1998 that Indonesian workers regained the freedom of association and the right to engage incollective action.

Newspapers do more than provide information. They enter into the process of forming communities, from voluntary associations to cities to nation-states.

Widely acknowledged as one of our most insightful commentators on the history of American journalism, David Paul Nord offers a lively and wide-ranging discussion of journalism as a vital component of community. In settings ranging from the religion-infused towns of colonial America to the rapidly expanding urban metropolises of the late nineteenth century, Nord explores the cultural work of the press.

Nord perceives the daily press as an arena in which a broad cross-section of the populace -- ethnically diverse, geographically diffuse, and economically stratified -- could participate in a common culture. During times of crisis, such as the yellow fever epidemic that gripped Philadelphia in 1793, newspapers sustained the bonds of community life. Amassing concrete historical evidence, Nord also examines how ordinary readers make sense of what they read and how they use journalism to form community attachments and engage in civic life.

Illuminating how newspapers have intersected with religion, politics, reform, and urban life over nearly three centuries, Communities of Journalism is a deeply satisfying contribution to the cultural history of American journalism and to the history of reading.

Women's emancipation through productive labour was a key tenet of socialist politics in post-World War II Yugoslavia. Mass industrialisation under Tito led many young women to join traditionally 'feminised' sectors, and as a consequence the textile sector grew rapidly, fast becoming a gendered symbol of industrialisation, consumption and socialist modernity. By the 1980s Yugoslavia was one of the world's leading producers of textiles and garments. The break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991, however, resulted in factory closures, bankruptcy and layoffs, forcing thousands of garment industry workers into precarious and often exploitative private-sector jobs. Drawing on more than 60 oral history interviews with former and current garment workers, as well as workplace periodicals and contemporary press material collected across Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Slovenia, Women and Industry in the Balkans charts the rise and fall of the Yugoslav textile sector, as well as the implications of this post-socialist transition, for the first time. In the process, the book explores broader questions about memories of socialism, lingering feelings of attachment to the socialist welfare system and the complexity of the post-socialist era. This is important reading for all scholars working on the history and politics of Yugoslavia and the Balkans, oral history, memory studies and gender studies.

During the mid-nineteenth century, a quarter of a million travelers-men, women, and children-followed the "road across the plains" to gold rush California. This magnificent chronicle-the second installment of Will Bagley's sweeping Overland West series-captures the danger, excitement, and heartbreak of America's first great rush for riches and its enduring consequences. With narrative scope and detail unmatched by earlier histories, With Golden Visions Bright Before Them retells this classic American saga through the voices of the people whose eyewitness testimonies vividly evoke the most dramatic era of westward migration. Traditional histories of the overland roads paint the gold rush migration as a heroic epic of progress that opened new lands and a continental treasure house for the advancement of civilization. Yet, according to Bagley, the transformation of the American West during this period is more complex and contentious than legend pretends. The gold rush epoch witnessed untold suffering and sacrifice, and the trails and their trials were enough to make many people turn back. For America's Native peoples, the effect of the massive migration was no less than ruinous. The impact that tens of thousands of intruders had on Native peoples and their homelands is at the center of this story, not on its margins. Beautifully written and richly illustrated with photographs and maps, With Golden Visions Bright Before Them continues the saga that began with Bagley's highly acclaimed, award-winning So Rugged and Mountainous: Blazing the Trails to Oregon and California, 1812-1848, hailed by critics as a classic of western history.

This further volume in this series, looking at the changing patterns of rail freight from 1968 to the present day, examines the gradual shift from wagonload to trainload operation, the cull of public goods depots and small private sidings and the Speedlink years, together with details of wagon types and terminal facilities, and many charts, diagrams and plans.

The most significant debate in global economic history over the past twenty years has dealt with the Great Divergence, the economic gap between different parts of the world. Thus far, this debate has focused on China, India and north-western Europe, particularly Great Britain. This book shifts the focus to ask how Japan became the only non-western county that managed, at least partially, to modernize its economy and start to industrialize in the 19th century. Using a range of empirical data, Peer Vries analyses the role of the state in Japan's economic growth from the Meiji Restoration to World War II, and asks whether Japan's economic success can be attributed to the rise of state power. Asserting that the state's involvement was fundamental in Japan's economic 'catching up', he demonstrates how this was built on legacies from the previous Tokugawa period. In this book, Vries deepens our understanding of the Great Divergence in global history by re-examining how Japan developed and modernized against the odds.

The hands of Cornish miners bore scars of one of the most sophisticated traditions of hard-rock mining in the world. Toughened "Cousin Jacks" brought generations of toilsome underground experience to the Americas from one of the oldest mining regions of the world. Once here, their skill with granite and ore won their fame as the industrial elite of western mining camps. Heirs of a perfected system of excavation, a valuable terminology, and the technical edge of a culture immersed in sinkings, stopes, and winzes, they were the world's best hard-rock miners. Pioneers in American mine operation, Cornish miners utilized tribute pay to raise output and made themselves partners with a grueling industry. Expertise made them company men, superintendents, captains, and drillers, with their success dependent almost entirely on their own initiative, coolness, and skill. They are part of a culture that has survived because its very roughness gave a resilience and durability that could be transplanted and take root in an alien soil. The courage and determination of these "Cousin Jacks" in their struggle against overwhelming odds is dramatically illustrated in numerous personal stories. The Atlantic crossing, and the journey overland to the new mining districts, were exhausting trials. Although their skill in working with rock and water was soon recognized, the extremes of weather and temperature, strange sicknesses, the constant danger of accidents, and the lawlessness of the camps, all made life hard to endure. Many did not survive to send home for their families, yet the majority persevered to spread their legendary mining skills and to bring social as well as religious stability to mining areas that extended from Wisconsin to California. In the continent-wide search for bonanzas, Cornish miners and their families played a vital part in the opening-up of the American West, and in the shaping of modern industrial America. The author follows them across the Atlantic to the lead mines and farms of Wisconsin, along the trails to Oregon and Death Valley, the Sierras and the Sacramento in California, then to the copper and iron ranges in the Hiawatha country of Upper Michigan; from there to the silver and gold canyons of the Rockies and the notorious Comstock Lode in Nevada, and finally to the deserts of Utah, Idaho, and Arizona. Originally published in 1967, this new edition contains an updated introduction by Dr. Todd. With extensive footnotes and index, handsomely printed on acid-free paper stock with cloth cover which is stamped in gold foil on the spine and cover.

The historic town of Colchester has a long history stretching back over 2,000 years to when it was the capital of Roman Britain, and before that a prominent centre during the Iron Age. Throughout the centuries the inhabitants of the town have engaged in all manner of occupational activities, bringing much prosperity to the area. During the Middle Ages the town grew rapidly as a centre for the manufacture of woollen cloth, and following the arrival of a large number of cloth workers from the Low Countries in the sixteenth century went on to achieve international fame as a centre for high-quality workmanship. In later years, the Industrial Revolution brought several new industries to the town, including Paxman's engineering works, which came to be one of the leading suppliers of diesel engines both in this country and abroad. Other industries to have boomed at this time include the boot and shoe industry and also the rag trade where the town flourished as a centre for the production of men's ready-to-wear clothing. The author has also included a chapter highlighting the working lives of a number of Colchester residents who were employed in the town during the early to middle decades of the twentieth century. Today Colchester is one of the fastest-growing communities in the country, benefitting from its university, new residential developments and its close proximity to Stansted Airport, Felixstowe and Harwich seaports and good connections to London. Colchester at Work explores the working life of this Essex town, and will appeal to all those with an interest in the history of this part of the country.

Lockheed has been one of American's largest corporations and most important defense contractors from World War II to the present day (since 1995 as part of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company). During the postwar era, its executives enacted complicated business responses to black demands for equality. Based on the papers of a personnel executive, the memoir of an African American employee, interviews, and company publications, this narrative history offers a unique inside perspective on the evolution of equal employment and affirmative action policies at Lockheed Aircraft's massive Georgia plant from the early 1950s through the early 1980s. Randall L. Patton provides a rare, perhaps unique, account of African American struggle and management response, set within the context of the regional and national struggles for civil rights. The book describes the complex interplay of black protest, federal policy, and management action in a crucial space in the national economy and within the South, contributing to business history, policy history, labor history, and civil rights history.

Forbidding canyons, raging rapids and menacing rocks--this was the daily challenge that faced whitewater men who worked the wild rivers and creeks to bring freight and supplies to northern BC in the years before the Grand Trunk Railway. In particular, the Grand Canyon of British Columbia's Fraser River was infamous for swallowing at least 200 luckless occupants of rafts and small craft between the years 1862-1921. "Sternwheelers and Canyon Cats: Whitewater Freighting on the Upper Fraser" is the story of the "Canyon Cats" who made their living running the Grand Canyon and other equally dangerous waterways; men such as George Williams, affectionately known to his peers as "The Wizard of the River," and Frank Freeman, a powder expert who tamed the wildest water by blowing out many of the worst boulders and logjams thereby allowing safer passage for the scows, sternwheelers, rafts and boats that travelled the murky river.
A total of twelve steamers worked the upper Fraser River during the period 1862-1921 and the dangers faced by these vessels and their steel-nerved captains are legend. It was a perilous existence hauling supplies to the isolated construction camps of the GTP Railroad and in retrospect it seems ironic that these steamers were made obsolete by this same railway upon its completion. "Sternwheelers and Canyon Cats: Whitewater Freighting on the Upper Fraser" is a chronicle of the men whose feats almost defy belief and whose contribution to BC history has gone long unrecognized.

It is 1615. Shakespeare is still alive and the country is at peace. James 1 of England (James VI of Scotland) has been on the throne since the childless Elisabeth I died in 1603. He claimed the throne by virtue of the fact that he was direct in line of descent from Henry VII, his great-grandfather. The English Navy, which had been founded as a standing force by Henry VIII and had defended the country from several Spanish Armadas during the Elisabethan era, had been neglected. It needed rebuilding and this meant new ships and plenty of stout English (and Welsh) oak. Luckily for James, one of his closest advisors was an admiral, Sir Robert Mansell, who having given up his naval career and become an industrialist and entrepreneur (as well as a Member of Parliament), saw an opportunity to secure his new-found business of coal mining and glass-making. Mansell applied to the King to grant him a patent forbidding the use of timber for smelting (mainly iron and glass) and on 23 May 1615 the papers were signed. Thus, with the stroke of his quill, the king started the industrial revolution that turned the British Isles from an agrarian economy, based upon wool, water power and wind power, to one where coal and steam brought about unimaginable developments in trade and industry. It was following the signing of the 1615 patent that glassmaking in Britain went from a peripatetic, nomadic business which chased the fuel from clearing to clearing in the dwindling forests, to one where the fuel travelled to the kilns. By virtue of the fact that kilns didn't have to move as the wood ran out, they could be bigger and better, brick-built with chimneys and flues, which made the glass stronger and more durable. It was into this exciting, changing world of glassmaking that Sir Kenelm Digby developed his strong verre Anglais bottles which enabled the production of (lightly) sparkling bottle-fermented ciders and wines. The Knight who invented Champagne is the story of King James I, Admiral Sir Robert Mansell and Sir Kenelm Digby and the part they played between 1615 and 1630 in revolutionising the production of glass. The changes they helped bring about led to the development and production of stronger glass that could be used for making bottles that would withstand the pressure caused by a secondary-fermentation in the bottle. By 1662 we know that it was common practice by cidermakers, vintners and coopers to add raisins and sugar to wine and cider at bottling to start a secondary fermentation in the bottle. All of this happened several years before Dom Perignon, often credited with 'inventing Champagne', took up his position as cellarer at the Abbaye Saint-Pierre d'Hautvillers.

One of the world's largest sellers of footwear, the Bata Company of Zlin, Moravia has a remarkable history that touches on crucial aspects of what made the world modern. In the twilight of the Habsburg Empire, the company Americanized its production model while also trying to Americanize its workforce. It promised a technocratic form of governance in the chaos of postwar Czechoslovakia, and during the Roaring Twenties, it became synonymous with rationalization across Europe and thus a flashpoint for a continent-wide debate. While other companies contracted in response to the Great Depression, Bata did the opposite, becoming the first shoe company to unlock the potential of globalization. As Bata expanded worldwide, it became an example of corporate national indifference, where company personnel were trained to be able to slip into and out of national identifications with ease. Such indifference, however, was seriously challenged by the geopolitical crisis of the 1930s, and by the cusp of the Second World War, Bata management had turned nationalist, even fascist. In the Kingdom of Shoes unravels the way the Bata project swept away tradition and enmeshed the lives of thousands of people around the world in the industrial production of shoes. Using a rich array of archival materials from two continents, the book answers how Bata's rise to the world's largest producer of shoes challenged the nation-state, democracy, and Americanization.

In the past 100-plus years, forestland ownerships have gone through two structural changes in the US and other parts of the world: the accumulation of industrial timberlands between 1900s and 1980s and the transformation of industrial timberlands to institutional ownerships afterwards. This book is about the history and economics of these two structural changes with the emphasis on the latter. The scale of both changes is unprecedented and truly revolutionary, impacting tens of millions of acres of private landholdings and billions of dollars of investment and affecting industrial structure, forest management and policy, research and development, community welfare, and forest sustainability. Looking though a historical count of key events, players, prevailing management philosophies, public policy, and institutional factors, the author of this book searches for an economic explanation and assesses the impact of these two changes. Its main contributions are three folds. First, it explains why industrial firms were able to profit from owning large areas of forest lands in the first place and how institutional investors could purchase these lands later. Many details of the history that could have otherwise been lost are revealed in this book for the first time. Second, it compares private and public equity timberland investments with respect to risk-adjusted returns as well as such other dimensions of interest to investors and forest managers including alignment of interests, capacity to exploit market inefficiencies, and their forest management and conservation records. Finally, it provides thoughtful commentary into the future of institutional timberland investments and global forest sustainability. This book is required reading for anyone interested in understanding the workings of the modern forest sector in the U.S. and elsewhere, forest investment, and forest sustainability.