This review describes the rail-connected quarries of the UK-based Aggregates Industries group, trading as Bardon Aggregates, a company that started from small beginnings in Leicestershire to become the country's largest rail-operated stone extractive company, with four 'super-sized' quarries, each operating privately owned mineral railways. The author explains how these and several other acquired quarries, which formerly used railway transport, came to make up the massive organisation that is today's Aggregate Industries Ltd. The histories of the various quarries are described, including the development of their internal railways and connections with the main-line network, their railway operations, and their locomotives and rolling stock, from steam to diesel, and from the colourful private owner wagon era to the huge block trains of today. The text is supported by maps and plans, as well as many archive and present-day photographs, and paintings specially executed by the author. The quarry operations concerned are: Bardon Hill Croft Pitts Cleave, Hay Tor and Forder Stoneycombe Westleigh Meldon Dulcote, Torr and Mendip Rail Ltd

This remarkable book looks at hundreds of autobiographies penned between 1760 and 1900 to offer an intimate firsthand account of how the Industrial Revolution was experienced by the working class. The Industrial Revolution brought not simply misery and poverty. On the contrary, Griffin shows how it raised incomes, improved literacy, and offered exciting opportunities for political action. For many, this was a period of new, and much valued, sexual and cultural freedom. This rich personal account focuses on the social impact of the Industrial Revolution, rather than its economic and political histories. In the tradition of best-selling books by Liza Picard, Judith Flanders, and Jerry White, Griffin gets under the skin of the period and creates a cast of colorful characters, including factory workers, miners, shoemakers, carpenters, servants, and farm laborers.

Starting from a broad definition of labour relations as the full range of vertical and horizontal social relations under which work is performed, both within and outside the household, this volume examines the way states have shaped and interacted with labour relations in a wide range of periods and places, from the sixteenth-century silver mines of Potosi in the Andes to late twentieth-century Sweden, and from seventeenth-century Dzungharia to early twentieth-century colonial Mozambique. The articles presented look at very different types of states, from local and regional power holders to nation states and empires, and explore the activities of these states and their impact on labour relations in three roles, as conquerors, employers and arbiters. The volume finds diversity, but also a remarkable degree of similarity across space and time in the mechanisms deployed by states to extract and allocate the labour required to carry out their essential tasks.

Until this century, Northern Nigeria was a major center of textile production and trade. Textile Ascendancies: Aesthetics, Production, and Trade in Northern Nigeria examines this dramatic change in textile aesthetics, technologies, and social values in order to explain the extraordinary shift in textile demand, production, and trade. Textile Ascendancies provides information for the study of the demise of textile manufacturing outside Nigeria. The book also suggests the conundrum considered by George Orwell concerning the benefits and disadvantages of "mechanical progress", and digital progress, for human existence. While textile mill workers in northern Nigeria were proud to participate in the mechanization of weaving, the "tendency for the mechanization of the world" represented by more efficient looms and printing equipment in China has contributed to the closing of Nigerian mills and unemployment. Textile Ascendancies will appeal to anthropologists for its analyses of social identity as well as how the ethnic identity of consumers influences continued handwoven textile production. The consideration of aesthetics and fashionable dress will appeal to specialists in textiles and clothing. It will be useful to economic historians for the comparative analysis of textile manufacturing decline in the 21st century. It will also be of interest to those thinking about global futures, about digitalization, and how new ways of making cloth and clothing may provide both employment and environmentally sound production practices.

The Great Depression of the 1930s nearly brought the agricultural community to a standstill. As markets went into an economic freefall, farmers who had suffered through a post–World War I economic depression in the 1920s would now struggle to produce crops, livestock, and other commodities that could return more than the cost to produce them. In Indiana, the county agents of the Purdue University Cooperative Extension Service saw this desperation firsthand. As they looked into the worried faces of the people they were asked to assist, the trust they had worked to build in their communities during the previous two decades would be put to the test. Throughout the painful years of the Great Depression, the county agents would stand side by side with Hoosier farmers, relying on science-based advice and proven strategies to help them produce more bushels per acre, more pigs per litter, more gallons of milk per cow, and more eggs per chicken. Then, as the decade drew to a close, the start of World War II in Europe soon placed farmers on the frontlines at home, producing the agricultural commodities needed in the United States and in war-torn locations abroad. The federal government quickly called on county agents to push farmers to meet historic production quotas—not an easy task with farm machinery, tires, and fuel rationed, and a severe labor shortage resulting from farm workers being drafted for military service or opting for higher-paying jobs in factories. Using the observations and reports of county agents, Planting the Seeds of Hope offers a behind-the-scenes look at what it was like to live through these historic events in rural Indiana. The agents' own words and numerous accompanying photographs provide a one-of-a-kind perspective that brings their stories and those of the agricultural community they served to life at a pivotal time in American history.

Focusing on urban development and the influence of urbanization on industrialization, this volume reflects a radical rethinking of the traditional approaches to the development of cities. Originally published in 1981. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

According to the Marxist interpretation still dominant in Japanese studies, the last century and a half of the Tokugawa period was a time of economic and demographic stagnation. Professors Hanley and Yamamura argue that a more satisfactory explanation can be provided within the framework of modem economic theory, and they advance and test three important new hypotheses in this book. The authors suggest that the Japanese economy grew throughout the Tokugawa period, though slowly by modern standards and unevenly. This growth, they show, tended to exceed the rate of population increase even in the poorer regions, thus raising the living standard despite major famines. Population growth was controlled by a variety of methods, including abortion and infanticide, for the primary purpose of raising the standard of living. Contrary to the prevailing view of scholars, thus, the conclusions advanced here indicate that the basis for Japan's rapid industrialization in the Meiji period was in many ways already established during the latter part of the Tokugawa period. The authors' analysis combines original fieldwork with study of data based on findings of the postwar years. Originally published in 1978. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The history of automobiles is not just the story of invention, manufacturing, and marketing; it is also a story of repair. "Auto Mechanics" opens the repair shop to historical study--for the first time--by tracing the emergence of a dirty, difficult, and important profession.

Kevin L. Borg's study spans a century of automotive technology--from the horseless carriage of the late nineteenth century to the "check engine" light of the late twentieth. Drawing from a diverse body of source material, Borg explores how the mechanic's occupation formed and evolved within the context of broad American fault lines of class, race, and gender and how vocational education entwined these tensions around the mechanic's unique expertise. He further shows how aspects of the consumer rights and environmental movements, as well as the design of automotive electronics, reflected and challenged the social identity and expertise of the mechanic.

In the history of the American auto mechanic, Borg finds the origins of a persistent anxiety that even today accompanies the prospect of taking one's car in for repair.

From best-selling railway expert, Julian Holland, explore Britain's historical railways in All Aboard. The history of Britain's railways is a long and fascinating one, filled with stories of grand endeavours, noted figures and record-breaking feats. Julian Holland brings together a unique miscellany of intriguing tales and engaging trivia - the perfect collection for every railway enthusiast. Stories range from Bulleid's 'Chinese Laundries', trainspotting trips in Wales and Scotland and Liverpool's 'Dockers' Umbrella' to railway artists and clergy, a railway-owned airline and railways that were never built. Find out about * The Royal Scot's 11,000-mile journey in the USA and Canada * A narrow gauge island railway in the middle of the Bristol Channel * How the London & South Western Railway saved the British Empire * Mallard's unbeaten world speed record of 1938 * How to fly by Great Western Railway from Cardiff to Plymouth * The 75-mile network of narrow gauge railways on the Isle of Skye * How another 4,500 miles of railway escaped closure by Dr Beeching All Aboard is a delightful miscellany for every railway enthusiast, filled with fascinating and obscure stories, facts and figures.

In this study of Akron's Cascade Locks, canal historian Jack Gieck examines the story of this remarkable lock system, including a look at early-nineteenth-century entrepreneurs who exploited the precipitous terrain to found one of the first industrial centers in the American Midwest. A steep staircase of sixteen locks was required to raise canal boats 149 feet in a single mile in order to reach the Akron Summit - the highest point on the 309-mile-long Ohio & Erie Canal. But what was considered by some to be an impossible feat of engineering represented a commercial opportunity for others, beginning with Dr. Eliakim Crosby, who built a two-mile millrace from a dam on the Little Cuyahoga River at Middlebury to his Stone Mill at Lock 5 on the canal. After turning Crosby's millstones, the water became the Cascade Race, flowing down the steep slope parallel to the canal, giving rise to more than a dozen industries, including several iron furnaces, a foundry, a woolen mill, a furniture factory, a distillery, several grist mills, and two rubber plants - all of them turned by waterpower. And they shipped their products to markets from New York to New Orleans via the canal running by their back doors. Early Akron's ""Industrial Valley"" is illustrated with photographs from the author's collection and the archives of the Canal Society of Ohio, the Ohio Historical Society, the University of Akron, and the Cascade Locks Park Association. It contains a guide for Canalway hikers and bikers on the towpath through Akron's Cascade Locks Park with original maps by Chuck Ayers. This book will be welcomed by historians and engineers as well as by the many who find the surviving canals to be fascinating symbols of Ohio's heritage.

The Road to Dr Pepper, Texas is the story of Dublin Dr Pepper Bottling Co., a David-Goliath case study of the world's first Dr Pepper bottling plant and the only one that has always used pure cane sugar in spite of compelling reasons to switch sweeteners. The book traces the story from the founder's birth through the contemporary struggles of a tiny independent, family-owned franchise against industry giants. Owners of the plant have been touched by every major social, economic, and political issue of the past 114 years, and many of those forces threatened the survival of the plant. The Dublin plant's 100th birthday in 1991 was a turning point because the national media created an identity so unique that it has taken on a life of its own. Thanks to the Travel Channel, Food Network, Texas Monthly, Southern Living, and others, the Dublin plant and museum attract tens of thousands of tourists every year, and Dublin Dr Pepper is consumed around the world through Internet sales. ""The Road to Dr Pepper, Texas"" tells how a small plant ignored most of the cherished rules of production and marketing - and succeeded - in spite of not speeding up production, not expanding its franchise area, not cutting production costs, and not adapting to changing times.

Located in a region blessed by geology with nutrient-rich, lush, black soil, DeKalb County, Illinois, is known for its agricultural prosperity. Here, in 1912, an enterprising group of successful farmers, businessmen, and bankers joined together to form an agricultural organization dedicated to improving crop production, the DeKalb County Soil Improvement Association. Aided by its capable farm advisor, William G. Eckhardt, this coalition evolved into the DeKalb County Farm Bureau-a new type of organization that soon proliferated throughout the United States, offering educational and farming services to rural communities. One of the oldest in the United States, the DeKalb County Farm Bureau is also one of the most innovative and influential. Originating as a private soil improvement association, it grew to offer a wide variety of assistance to farmers, rural families, and the community. By the 1960s, the DeKalb County Farm Bureau had become such a strong organization that its leadership effectively lobbied in the U.S. Congress for legislation supporting agricultural interests. In the 1970s, it entered into the international agricultural commodity marketing business, shipping local grain to Europe and Asia. The history of this influential organization reflects the plight of American agriculture during the past century, from the early years of promise through two world wars and several economic crises. Historian Eric Mogren explains how one group of progressive farmers attempted to cope with the problems they faced as agriculture turned mechanized and productive farming required scientific and technological advances. Native Soil will be of interest to historians of agriculture and to those who have witnessed the positive effects of the farm bureau on the agrarian community.

The Lake District mountains are full of mineral veins. Many have been discovered and worked over the past 1,000 years. Many still remain to be discovered. The last working metal-ore mine in the Lake District, the Force Crag Mine, closed in 1986. It is believed that mining commenced at Force Crag during the fifteenth century. Today, remains of this past extensive industry lie abandoned on the mountainsides and are now considered to be an iconic reflection of the Lake District's industrial past. They blend in well with other iconic 'industrial' structures such as stone walls, drove roads and fell farms that exist throughout the district. For many years now industrial historians have studied these workings and also the lives of the skilled miners who spent their careers high on Lake District mountainsides, working the veins. Concern for the loss of many of these ancient sites has developed over recent years. In 1989 a report produced by local industrial archaeologists highlighted a list of twenty-seven former mining sites on the fells considered to be of such exceptional importance to the history of the Lake District communities that they should be given future protection. Many of these sites have been included in this definitive illustrated guide.

James Moore Swank (1832 1914) was a US expert on iron and steel, and wrote widely about the industry. In 1873 he became secretary of the American Iron and Steel Association. This second edition (1892) of his influential book on iron manufacture was significantly expanded compared to the 1884 original, with 132 more pages, 15 extra chapters, and revisions throughout the text. Swank aimed to move away from the highly technical approach and European focus that had dominated previous works. Instead, he would emphasise names, dates, facts and results, and give special attention to the growth of the industry in the United States while providing an international context. He includes every country and US state that produced iron. The book is organised chronologically, and provides a fascinating account of the manufacture of iron from the ancient Egyptian period through early modern Britain to late nineteenth-century America.

The impact of constant technological change upon our perception of the world is so pervasive as to have become a commonplace of modern society. But this was not always the case; as Wolfgang Schivelbusch points out in this fascinating study, our adaptation to technological change--the development of our modern, industrialized consciousness--was very much a learned behavior. In The Railway Journey, Schivelbusch examines the origins of this industrialized consciousness by exploring the reaction in the nineteenth century to the first dramatic avatar of technological change, the railroad. In a highly original and engaging fashion, Schivelbusch discusses the ways in which our perceptions of distance, time, autonomy, speed and risk were altered by railway travel. As a history, not of technology, but of the surprising ways in which technology and culture interact, this book covers a wide range of topics, including the changing perception of landscapes, the death of conversation while traveling, the problematic nature of the railway compartment, the space of glass architecture, the pathology of the railway journey, industrial fatigue and the history of shock, and the railroad and the city. Belonging to a distinguished European tradition of critical sociology best exemplified by the work of Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin, The Railway Journey is anchored in rich empirical data, and full of striking insights about railway travel, the industrial revolution, and technological change.

For a long time guilds have been condemned as a major obstacle to economic progress in the pre-industrial era. This re-examination of the role of guilds in the early modern European economy challenges that view by taking into account fresh research on innovation, technological change and entrepreneurship. Leading economic historians argue that industry before the Industrial Revolution was much more innovative than previous studies have allowed for and explore the different products and production techniques that were launched and developed in this period. Much of this innovation was fostered by the craft guilds that formed the backbone of industrial production before the rise of the steam engine. The book traces the manifold ways in which guilds in a variety of industries in Italy, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Britain helped to create an institutional environment conducive to technological and marketing innovations.

"Pre-eminent among historians of labor history." --Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
The textbook history of the 1920s is a story of Prohibition, flappers, and unbounded prosperity. For millions of industrial workers, however, the "roaring twenties" looked very different. Working-class communities were already in crisis in the years before the stock market crash of 1929. Strikes in the 1920s and attempts to organize the unemployed and fight evictions in the early 1930s often fell victim to police violence and repression.
Here, Irving Bernstein recaptures the social history of the decade leading up to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's inauguration, uncovers its widespread inequality, and sheds light on the long-forgotten struggles that form the prelude to the great labor victories of the 1930s.
"In other words, viewed from afar, most of the people who were suffering the hardships of the Depression were depressed and even ashamed, ready to blame themselves for their plight. But the train of developments that connects changes in social conditions to a changed consciousness is not simple. People, including ordinary people, harbor somewhere in their memories the building blocks of different and contradictory interpretations of what it is that is happening to them, of who should be blamed, and what can be done about it. Even the hangdog and ashamed unemployed worker who swings his lunch box and strides down the street so the neighbors will think he is going to a job can also have other ideas that only have to be evoked, and when they are make it possible for him on another day to rally with others and rise up in anger at his condition.
--From the new introduction by Frances Fox Piven

A groundbreaking moment in the discourse of the labour movement and a classic text which revolutionised social history. Bernstein uncovers a period when industrial trade unionism, working-class power and socialism became a rallying cry for millions of workers; from fields, mills, mines and factories. This is the second instalment of Bernstein's critically acclaimed trilogy on the American labour movement which charts how the New Deal and labour unions preserved democracy and capitalism at a time when the survival of both was unclear.

In 1900 the manufacture of rubber products in the United States was concentrated in several hundred small plants around New York and Boston that employed low-paid immigrant workers with no intervention from unions. By the mid-1930s, thanks to the automobile and the Depression, production was concentrated in Ohio, the labor force was largely native born and highly paid, and labor organizations had a decisive influence on the industry. Daniel Nelson tells the story of these changes as a case study of union growth against a background of critical developments in twentieth-century economic life. The author emphasizes the years after 1910, when a crucial distinction arose between big, mass-production rubber producers and those that were smaller and more labor intensive. In the 1930s mass-production workers took the lead in organizing the labor movement, and they dominated the international union, the United Rubber Workers, until the end of the decade. Professor Nelson discusses not only labor's triumph over adversity but also the problems that occurred with union victories: the flight of the industry to low-wage communities in the South and Midwest, internal tensions in the union, and rivalry with the American Federation of Labor. The experiences of the URW in the late 1930s foreshadowed the longer-term challenges that the labor movement has faced in recent decades. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Eric Davis challenges classic theories of dependency and imperialism and explains the history of the Bank Misr by interrelating world market forces, Egyptian class structure, and the Egyptian nationalist movement and state apparatus. Originally published in 1983. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

It is widely admitted that organized economic interests determine political decision making at many levels of the French political process. This first comprehensive description of the French employers' and trade association movement shows how these pressure groups operate and indicates the extent of their influence. Originally published in 1957. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Since Russian tradition and institutions resemble those of Asia and Africa as much if not more than the patterns of Western societies, the pre-1917 industrial history of Russia, as the last part of the tsarist regime, provides one of the most important examples of early industrialization in world history. In this broad, ambitious reconstruction of the early stages of Russia's industrial development--English-Professor Blackwell shows that the period from 1800 to 1860 was one of necessary preparation for the rapid industrialization of the later 19th century. The book is based upon a wide variety of primary and secondary sources in the Russian language. Originally published in 1968. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

It is widely admitted that organized economic interests determine political decision making at many levels of the French political process. This first comprehensive description of the French employers' and trade association movement shows how these pressure groups operate and indicates the extent of their influence. Originally published in 1957. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

At the periphery of the Chinese empire, a group of innovative entrepreneurs built companies that dominated the Chinese salt trade and created thousands of jobs in the Sichuan region. From its dramatic expansion in the early nineteenth century to its decline on the eve of the Sino-Japanese War in the late 1930s, salt production in Zigong was one of the largest and one of the only indigenous large-scale industries in China. Madeleine Zelin recounts the history of the salt industry to reveal a fascinating chapter in China's history and provide new insight into the forces and institutions that shaped Chinese economic and social development independent of Western or Japanese influence. Her book challenges long-held beliefs that social structure, state extraction, the absence of modern banking, and cultural bias against business precluded industrial development in China.

Zelin details the novel ways in which Zigong merchants mobilized capital through financial-industrial networks. She describes how entrepreneurs spurred growth by developing new technologies, capturing markets, and building integrated business organizations. Without the state establishing and enforcing rules, Zigong businessmen were free to regulate themselves, utilize contracts, and shape their industry. However, this freedom came at a price, and ultimately the merchants suffered from the underdevelopment of a transportation infrastructure, the political instability of early-twentieth-century China, and the absence of a legislative forum to develop and codify business practices.

Zelin's analysis of the political and economic contexts that allowed for the rise and fall of the salt industry also considers why its success did not contribute to "industrial takeoff" during that period in China. Based on extensive research, Zelin's work offers a comprehensive study of the growth of a major Chinese industry and resituates the history of Chinese business within the larger story of worldwide industrial development.

This academic history of diamond mining in Kimberley is a major study of the beginning of South Africa's mineral revolution. It includes the first analysis of the formation of De Beers Consolidated Mines, one of the most successful companies ever to have been established in Africa. Based on documentary sources, notably in the Standard Bank Archive, the Rothschild Archive and the Philipson Stow Papers, it includes an interpretation of the Black Flag Revolt and of the celebrated amalgamation struggle between Cecil Rhodes and Barney Barnato for the control of the diamond-mining industry. It also contains a narrative and analysis of strikes in mines in South Africa and an extended treatment of the social and economic structure of illicit diamond buying. But at its heart lies the introduction of the compound system and the structural explanation of the role played by this institution in the accummulation of diamond-mining capital.