In 1909 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, on his way back to South Africa from London, wrote his now celebrated tract "Hind Swaraj," laying out his vision for the future of India and famously rejecting the technological innovations of Western civilization. Despite his protestations, Western technology endured and helped to make India one of the leading economies in our globalized world. Few would question the dominant role that technology plays in modern life, but to fully understand how India first advanced into technological modernity, argues David Arnold, we must consider the technology of the everyday. "Everyday Technology" is a pioneering account of how small machines and consumer goods that originated in Europe and North America became objects of everyday use in India in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Rather than investigate "big" technologies such as railways and irrigation projects, Arnold examines the assimilation and appropriation of bicycles, rice mills, sewing machines, and typewriters in India, and follows their impact on the ways in which people worked and traveled, the clothes they wore, and the kind of food they ate. But the effects of these machines were not limited to the daily rituals of Indian society, and Arnold demonstrates how such small-scale technologies became integral to new ways of thinking about class, race, and gender, as well as about the politics of colonial rule and Indian nationhood. Arnold's fascinating book offers new perspectives on the globalization of modern technologies and shows us that to truly understand what modernity became, we need to look at the everyday experiences of people in all walks of life, taking stock of how they repurposed small technologies to reinvent their world and themselves.

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.

The Dreiser Committee, including writers Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, and Sherwood Anderson, investigated the desperate situation of striking Kentucky miners in November 1931. When the Communist-led National Miners Union competed against the more conservative United Mine Workers of America for greater union membership, class resentment turned to warfare. Harlan Miners Speak, originally published in 1932, is an invaluable record that illustrates the living and working conditions of the miners during the 1930s. This edition of Harlan Miners Speak, with a new introduction by noted historian John C. Hennen, offers readers an in-depth look at a pivotal crisis in the complex history of this controversial form of energy production.

This volume in the Perspectives in American Social History series reveals the long reach of the Industrial Revolution into the work lives and self-perceptions of average Americans. Industrial Revolution: People and Perspectives offers a well-informed look at the impact of new labor practices in the 1800s. It analyzes this pivotal moment in the broader context of the nation's economic development, measuring its consequences for Americans as both workers and consumers in all regions of the country. Industrial Revolution examines what industrialization meant for American artisans, women workers, slaves, and manufacturers. It shows how this new working world led to sharpening class divisions and expanded consumerism. Throughout, groundbreaking social historians draw on 19th-century primary documents and the latest research to show how the Industrial Revolution transformed the life the average American. Primary documents including Alexander Hamilton's "Report on Manufactures," poetry from the labor newspaper, The Voice of Industry, and William Gregg's "Practical Results of Southern Manufactures" A chronology highlighting key developments in the Industrial Revolution, including the invention of the cotton gin, the steamship, the telegraph, and the sewing machine

This is a firsthand account of a bomb factory's impact on small town life in South Carolina. First published in 1971, grade school teacher Louise Cassels' poignant memoir recounts the displacement of the residents of Ellenton, South Carolina, in the early 1950s to make way for the massive Savannah River Plant, a critical cold-war nuclear weapons facility. In late 1950, amid escalating cold-war tensions, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission announced plans to construct facilities to produce plutonium and tritium for use in hydrogen bombs. One such facility, the SRP, was built at a cost of $1.3 billion at a site that encompassed more than 315 square miles in South Carolina's Barnwell, Allendale, and Aiken counties. Some fifteen hundred families residing in small communities within the new plant's borders were forced to leave their homes. The largest of the affected towns was Ellenton, with a population of 760 residents. Detailing the period of evacuation and resettlement, ""The Unexpected Exodus"" recalls the dramatic personal consequences of the cold war on the South through the narrative of one uprooted family. Cassels touches on such enduring historical themes as southerners' sense of place and antipathy toward the federal government as she struggles to maintain equilibrium through life-changing circumstances. Throughout the text her extreme pride and patriotism are set against profound feelings of bitterness and loss. Frederickson's new introduction to this edition places Cassels' compelling tale against the historical backdrop of the cold war's impact on the South, a history often lost in the shadow of more widely read civil-rights narratives from the same era.

Ordinary working people, convinced their life could be better than it was, demanded not only a fair share in Mexico's progress but also to be respected for their contribution to that progress. Anderson integrates the story of these workers into the broader social experience of the Mexican Republic as it underwent the transition from a rural-agrarian society to an urban-industrial complex. This study demonstrates how the workers resisted the radical ideology of foreign revolutionary dogmas and based their demands on indigenous sociopolitical traditions.

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.

Deindustrialization is not simply an economic process, but a social and cultural one as well. The rusting detritus of our industrial past the wrecked hulks of factories, abandoned machinery too large to remove, and now-useless infrastructures has for decades been a part of the North American landscape. In recent years, however, these modern ruins have become cultural attractions, drawing increasing numbers of adventurers, artists, and those curious about a forgotten heritage.

Through a unique blend of oral history, photographs, and interpretive essays, Corporate Wasteland investigates this fascinating terrain and the phenomenon of its loss and rediscovery. Steven High and David W. Lewis begin by exploring an emerging aesthetic they term the deindustrial sublime, explaining how the ritualized demolition of landmark industrial structures served as dramatic punctuations between changing eras. They then follow the narrative path blazed by urban spelunkers, explorers who infiltrate former industrial sites and then share accounts and images of their exploits in a vibrant online community. And to understand the ways in which geographic and emotional proximity affects how deindustrialization is remembered and represented, High and Lewis focus on Youngstown, Ohio, where residents and former steelworkers still live amid the reminders of more prosperous times.

Corporate Wasteland concludes with photo essays of sites in Michigan, Ontario, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania that pair haunting images with the poignant testimonies of those who remember industrial sites as workplaces rather than monuments. Forcing readers to look beyond nostalgia, High and Lewis reinterpret our deindustrialized landscape as a historical and imaginative challenge to the ways in which we comprehend and respond to the profound disruptions wrought by globalization."

Majestic and lyrically written, The Conquest of Nature traces the rise of Germany through the development of water and landscape. David Blackbourn begins his morality tale in the mid-1700s, with the epic story of Frederick the Great, who attempted by importing the great scientific minds of the West and by harnessing the power of his army to transform the uninhabitable marshlands of his scattered kingdom into a modern state. Chronicling the great engineering projects that reshaped the mighty Rhine, the emergence of an ambitious German navy, and the development of hydroelectric power to fuel Germany's convulsive industrial growth before World War I, Blackbourn goes on to show how Nazi racial policies rested on German ideas of mastery of the natural world. Filled with striking reproductions of paintings, maps, and photographs, this grand work of modern history links culture, politics, and the environment in an exploration of the perils faced by nations that attempt to conquer nature."

The Victorian values of Liberalism and nonconformity permeated all aspects of society, not excluding industry and business. This insightful study follows 10 remarkable Victorian industrialists who came from relatively humble origins and rose through hard work, inventiveness, and application to become among the richest and most influential men of their generation. Each revolutionary showed an active and practical concern for his community and employees, providing them with housing, health care, education, recreation, and entertainment. For all their good deeds, these companies were also hugely profitable in the marketplace and include such household names as Cadburys, Colmans, Boots, and Unilever. This is the story of the rise of compassionate industry and the men who rode a wave of philanthropy to financial success.

Britain's supremacy in the nineteenth century depended in large part on its vast deposits of coal. This coal not only powered steam engines in factories, ships, and railway locomotives but also warmed homes and cooked food. As coal consumption skyrocketed, the air in Britain's cities and towns became filled with ever-greater and denser clouds of smoke. In this far-reaching study, Peter Thorsheim explains that, for much of the nineteenth century, few people in Britain even considered coal smoke to be pollution. To them, pollution meant miasma: invisible gases generated by decomposing plant and animal matter. Far from viewing coal smoke as pollution, most people considered smoke to be a valuable disinfectant, for its carbon and sulfur were thought capable of rendering miasma harmless. Inventing Pollution examines the radically new understanding of pollution that emerged in the late nineteenth century, one that centered not on organic decay but on coal combustion. This change, as Peter Thorsheim argues, gave birth to the smoke-abatement movement and to new ways of thinking about the relationships among humanity, technology, and the environment.

One of the great food fads of the 1980s, fajitas, brought widespread acclaim to Tex-Mex restaurants, but this novelty was simply the traditional Mexican method of preparing beef. Hispanic carne asada, thin cuts of freshly slaughtered meat cooked briefly on a hot grill, differed dramatically from thick Anglo-American steaks and roasts, which were aged to tenderize the meat. When investors sought to import the Chicago model of centralized meatpacking and refrigerated railroad distribution, these cultural preferences for freshness inspired widespread opposition by Mexican butchers and consumers alike, culminating in a veritable sausage rebellion.

Through a detailed examination of meat provisioning, this book illuminates the process of industrialization in the final two decades of the Porfirio Daz dictatorship and the popular origins of the Revolution of 1910 in Mexico City. Archival sources from Mexico and the United States provide a unique perspective on high-level Porfirian negotiations with foreign investors. The book also examines revolutionary resistance, including strikes, industrial sabotage, and assassination attempts on the foreign managers. Unlike the meatpacking "Jungle" of Chicago, Mexican butchers succeeded in preserving their traditional craft.

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.

Embracing individualism and antistatism, the United States traditionally has favored a limited role for government. Yet state intervention both against and on behalf of labor has a long history, culminating in the labor law reforms of the New Deal. How do we account for this irony? And how do we explain why, between World War I and the Great Depression, another leading industrial nation with similar ideological commitments, Great Britain, developed a different model? By comparing the United States and Britain, Larry G. Gerber makes clear that, in the development of industrial relations policies, ideology was secondary to economic realities-the structure of business, the market system, and the configuration of unions. Nonetheless, industrial policy developed within the broader context of the transition from the individualistic laissez-faire capitalism of the nineteenth century to a collectivist political economy in which the state and organized groups played increasingly important roles while pluralist and corporatist models contended for influence. In Britain, where most business enterprises remained comparatively small, collective bargaining between workers and management became the norm. In the United States, however, large-scale corporations quickly rose to dominance. Eager to retain control of the production process, corporate elites resisted negotiating with workers and occasionally called upon the state to resolve labor crises. American workers, who initially opposed state involvement, eventually turned to the state for assistance as well. The New Deal administration responded with a series of new labor policies designed to balance the interests of employers and employees alike. Since state intervention did nothing to permanently change employers' hostility toward unions, the New Deal legislation was short-lived. Gerber's broad study of this momentous period in labor history helps explain the conundrum of a nation with a typically limited government whose intense intervention in labor relations caused long-lasting effects.

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.

Sugar cane has long been one of the world's most important cash crops, and the sugar cane industry can be regarded as one of the world's oldest industries. The industry involves three basic processes: the cultivation of cane, the milling of the cane to extract the juice and the rendering of the juice into crystal sugar. This book is a geography of the sugar cane industry from its origins to 1914. It describes the spread of the industry from India into the Mediterranean during medieval times, across to the Americas in the early years of European colonization, and its subsequent diffusion to most parts of the tropics. It examines changes in agricultural techniques over the centuries, the significance of improvements in milling and manufacturing techniques, and the role of the industry through its demand for labor in forming the multicultural societies of the tropical world. It is the first authoritative study of the development of the industry, in English, in forty years.

A celebrated triumph of historiography, "Rockdale" tells the story of the Industrial Revolution as it was experienced by the men, women, and children of the cotton-manufacturing town of Rockdale, Pennsylvania. The lives of workers, managers, inventors, owners, and entrepreneurs are brilliantly illuminated by Anthony F. C. Wallace, who also describes the complex technology that governed all of Rockdale's townspeople. Wallace examines the new relationships between employer and employee as work and workers moved out of the fields into the closed-in world of the spinning mule, the power loom, and the mill office. He brings to light the impassioned battle for the soul of the mill worker, a struggle between the exponents of the Enlightenment and Utopian Socialism, on the one hand, and, on the other, the ultimately triumphant champions of evangelical Christianity.

Henry Wells (1805-78) and William Fargo (1818-81) first worked together when they broke the Post Office monopoly on mail service along the Erie Canal in the 1840s. In 1852 they incorporated Wells, Fargo & Company and went into the express business in California, carrying gold, letters, packages, and freight between the mining regions and the financial centers of the East. They registered the miners to receive deliveries, guarded the gold-dust shipments, apprehended stage robbers, recovered stolen gold and silver, and established a reliable, conservative banking house in the world's wickedest city, San Francisco. They survived the collapse of the mining industry, the great California panic of 1855, the depredations of bandits such as Rattlesnake Dick and Black Bart, the dominance of the railroads, and the San Francisco earthquake and fire. Acclaimed Western writer Ralph Moody tells the exciting story of Henry Wells and his drivers, messengers, and riders; his accountants, managers, and detectives; and how they built a lasting empire in a business most entrepreneurs thought too risky to try. Moody, author of more than a dozen books on Western subjects, gives an action-packed account that readers young and old will enjoy.

'Fascinating' 'Books of the Year', Financial Times 'London's twelve great rail termini are the epic survivors of the Victorian age... Wolmar brings them to life with the knowledge of an expert and the panache of a connoisseur.' Simon Jenkins 'A wonderful tour, full of vivid incident and surprising detail.' Simon Bradley London hosts twelve major railway stations, more than any other city in the world. They range from the grand and palatial, such as King's Cross and Paddington, to the modest and lesser known, such as Fenchurch Street and Cannon Street. These monuments to the age of the train are the hub of London's transport system and their development, decline and recent renewal have determined the history of the capital in many ways. Built between 1836 and 1899 by competing private train companies seeking to outdo one another, the construction of these terminuses caused tremendous upheaval and had a widespread impact on their local surroundings. What were once called 'slums' were demolished, green spaces and cemeteries were concreted over, and vast marshalling yards, engine sheds and carriage depots sprung up in their place. In a compelling and dramatic narrative, Christian Wolmar traces the development of these magnificent cathedrals of steam, provides unique insights into their history, with many entertaining anecdotes, and celebrates the recent transformation of several of these stations into wonderful blends of the old and the new.

Charlotte-based NationsBank, formerly named NCNB, became one of the nation's leading financial powers following its acquisition in 1988 of First Republic Bank of Texas and its merger in 1991 with Atlanta-based C&S/Sovran. The authors provide a corporate history of this maverick financial institution.

Winner of the 2008 Holyer An Gof Award for non-fiction. An investigation of the popular tradition of 'Australia's Little Cornwall': how one town in South Australia gained and perpetuated this identity into the twenty-first century. This book is about Moonta and its special place in the Cornish transnational identity. Today Moonta is a small town on South Australia's northern Yorke Peninsula; along with the neighbouring townships of of Wallaroo and Kadina, it is an agricultural and heritage tourism centre. In the second half of the nineteenth century, however, Moonta was the focus of a major copper mining industry. This book is about Moonta and its special place in the Cornish transnational identity. Today Moonta is a small town on South Australia's northern Yorke Peninsula; along with the neighbouring townships of of Wallaroo and Kadina, it is an agricultural and heritage tourism centre. In the second half of the nineteenth century, however, Moonta was the focus of a major copper mining industry. From the beginning, Moonta cast itself as unique among Cornish immigrant communities, becoming 'the hub of the universe' according to its inhabitants, forging the myth of 'Australia's Little Cornwall': a myth perpetuated by Oswald Pryor and others that survived the collapse of the copper mines in 1923-and remains vibrant and intact today.

__________________________ 'The universal significance of this historic event becomes ever more relevant in our own turbulent times.' MIKE LEIGH, director of the award-winning film Peterloo __________________________ The Peterloo Massacre is a revealing and compelling account of one of the darkest days in Britain's social history. On 16 August 1819, a strong force of yeomanry and regular cavalry charged into a crowd of more than 100,000 workers who had gathered on St Peter's Field in Manchester for a meeting about Parliamentary reform. Many were killed. This violent, startling event became known as Peterloo, one of the darkest days in Britain's social history. The Peterloo Massacre provides a revealing narrative account of the events leading up to Peterloo, starkly describes the actions of that fateful day, and examines its aftermath. It offers a new perspective on the political and military activities of the time, and shows how the very nature of society was powerfully influenced by irreversible technological change: a pattern that, two-hundred years later, still has relevance in understanding the forces shaping our world today. __________________________ 'One of our nation's defining moments.' STUART MACONIE 'Vivid and rather brilliant.' THE TIMES 'an absorbing analysis of one of the blackest days for civil liberties which this country has ever known. It is a story of heroes and villains, of suffering and carnage and of incompetence, betrayal and brutality, told with the skill of a master craftsman who makes history leap from the page fresh as the morning's newspapers' EVENING CHRONICLE 'There are many accounts of the Peterloo Massacre but none as thoroughly researched as this one. The characters . . . come alive in his easy to read style . . . there is much to be learned from Robert Reid's description and analysis of the role and effects of technology, and I hope his book will be widely read. It should be in every school library and discussed by all those involved in the continuing search for civilised solutions to the social and political problems currently facing our people.' CAMDEN JOURNAL

The coal mine represented much more than a way of making a living to the miners of Thurber, Texas, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries--it represented a way of life. Coal mining dominated Thurber's work life, and miners dominated its social life. The large immigrant population that filled the mines in Thurber had arrived from more than a dozen nations, which lent a certain distinctiveness to this Texas town. In 1888 Robert D. Hunter and the Texas & Pacific Coal Company founded the town of Thurber on the site of Johnson Mines, a small coalmining village on the western edge of North Central Texas where Palo Pinto, Erath, and Eastland counties converged. William Whipple and Harvey E. Johnson first established a small community there in 1886 as the railroads' demand for coal enhanced the possibility of financial reward for entrepreneurs willing to risk the effort to tap the thin bituminous coal veins that lay beneath the ground. Where the first comers failed, Hunter and his stockholders prevailed. For almost forty years the company mined coal and owned and operated a town that by 1910 served as home to more than three thousand residents. In some respects, the town mirrored the work and culture of bituminous coal mining communities throughout the United States. Like most, it experienced labor upheaval that reached a dramatic climax in 1903 when the United Mine Workers, emboldened and strengthened by successes in other parts of the Southwest, organized Thurber's miners. Unlike elsewhere, however, the miners' success at Thurber was not fraught with violence and loss of life; furthermore, in the strike's aftermath good relations generally characterized employer/employeenegotiations. Marilyn Rhinehart examines the culture of the miners' work, the demographics and social life of the community, and the benefits and constraints of life in a company town. Above all she demonstrates the features both at work and after work of a culture shaped by the occupation of coal mining.

Using a series of case studies from five industries, Dicke analyzes franchising, a marketing system that combines large and small firms into a single administrative unit, strengthening both in the process. He studies the franchise industry from the 1840s to the 1980s, closely examining the rights and obligations of both the parent company and the franchise owner.
Originally published in 1992.
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.

The Thurber coal district sprang to life in the late 1880s in northern Erath County, Texas, some seventy miles west of Fort Worth. The mines were opened by the Texas & Pacific Coal Company to fuel the locomotives of its railway, whose tracks crossed the state from Marshall to El Paso. The company also built the town of Thurber to service the mines. It then imported workers from distant points, eventually including some twenty nationalities, whose old country ways contrasted sharply with neighboring farm life. John Spratt grew to manhood in Mingus, just three miles north of Thurber during the 1920s. His chronicle of the Thurber district is not only a nostalgic trip back in time but also a case study of the impact of technological change on one part of modern America.