"An engagingly written, thorough examination of the . . . day-to-day working of the labor market."--"Journal of Economic History" "Exemplary. . . . A major contribution."--"Journal of American History" "Licht contributes greatly to an understanding of the work force, the community, and the role of government and educational institutions on the economy."--"Philadelphia Inquirer" "This is the way labor history should be practiced: not a fable about good and evil, but an engagingly written, thorough examination of the mundane, yet important, day-to-day working of the labor market."--"Journal of Economic History" "A comprehensive treatment of how people became and remained workers in one of the nation's largest cities, and in it are lessons for today."--"Journal of Interdisciplinary History" How did working people find jobs in the past? How has the process changed over time for various groups of job seekers? Are outcomes influenced more by general economic circumstances, by discriminatory practices in the labor market, or by personal initiative and competence? To tackle these questions, Walter Licht uses intensive primary-source research--including surveys of thousands of workers conducted in the decades from the 1920s to the 1950s--on a major industrial city for a period of over one hundred years. He looks at when and how workers secured their first jobs, schools and work, apprenticeship programs, unions, the role of firms in structuring work opportunities, the state as employer and as shaper of employment conditions, and the problem of losing work. Licht also examines the disparate labor market experiences of men and women and the effects of race, ethnicity, age, and social standing on employment. Walter Licht is Professor of History and Associate Dean at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of "Working for the Railroad: The Organization of Work in the Nineteenth Century" (recipient of the Philip Taft Labor History Prize), "Industrializing America: The Nineteenth Century," and coauthor of "Work Sights: Industrial Philadelphia, 1890-1950."

Previous books on the industrialization of America have focused either on the industrial revolution in the first half of the nineteenth century or on the rise of big industry in the second. In this groundbreaking study Licht provides a new perspective by focusing on industrialization first as a product and then as an agent of change. As population expansion and greater market activity fueled manufacture, he explains, industrialization led to greater social and economic developments as well as crises that required a more administered political economic order.

Walter Licht chronicles the working and personal lives of the first two generations of American railwaymen, the first workers in America to enter large-scale, bureaucratically managed, corporately owned work organizations.

Originally published in 1987.

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 paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback 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.

Walter Licht chronicles the working and personal lives of the first two generations of American railwaymen, the first workers in America to enter large-scale, bureaucratically managed, corporately owned work organizations. 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.

SAVE 20% on our new and recent titles in American History. Enter the promotional code CCHO at checkout. Discounts are applied to the price of the book, not to shipping or sales tax (if applicable).The anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania once prospered. Today, very little mining or industry remains, although residents have made valiant efforts to restore the fabric of their communities. In The Face of Decline, the noted historians Thomas Dublin and Walter Licht offer a sweeping history of this area over the course of the twentieth century. Combining business, labor, social, political, and environmental history, Dublin and Licht delve into coal communities to explore grassroots ethnic life and labor activism, economic revitalization, and the varied impact of economic decline across generations of mining families. The Face of Decline also features the responses to economic crisis of organized capital and labor, local business elites, redevelopment agencies, and state and federal governments.Dublin and Licht draw on a remarkable range of sources: oral histories and survey questionnaires; documentary photographs; the records of coal companies, local governments, and industrial development corporations; federal censuses; and community newspapers. The authors examine the impact of enduring economic decline across a wide region but focus especially on a small group of mining communities in the region's Panther Valley, from Jim Thorpe through Lansford to Tamaqua. The authors also place the anthracite region within a broader conceptual framework, comparing anthracite's decline to parallel developments in European coal basins and Appalachia and to deindustrialization in the United States moregenerally.