- 216 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
The Great Strikes of 1877
About This Book
A spectacular example of collective protest, the Great Strike of 1877--actually a sequence of related actions--was America's first national strike and the first major strike against the railroad industry. In some places, non-railroad workers also abandoned city businesses, creating one of the nation's first general strikes. Mobilizing hundreds of thousands of workers, the Great Strikes of 1877 transformed the nation's political landscape, shifting the primary political focus from Reconstruction to labor, capital, and the changing role of the state.
Probing essays by distinguished historians explore the social, political, regional, and ethnic landscape of the Great Strikes of 1877: long-term effects on state militias and national guard units; ethnic and class characterization of strikers; pictorial representations of poor laborers in the press; organizational strategies employed by railroad workers; participation by blacks; violence against Chinese immigrants; and the developing tension between capitalism and racial equality in the United States.
Contributors: Joshua Brown, Steven J. Hoffman, Michael Kazin, David Miller, Richard Schneirov, David O. Stowell, and Shelton Stromquist.
Frequently asked questions
Information
Table of contents
- Cover Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication Page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1. The Great Uprising and Pictorial Order in Gilded Age America
- 2. âOur Rights as Workingmenâ: Class Traditions and Collective Action in a Nineteenth-Century Railroad Town, Hornellsville, N.Y., 1869â82
- 3. Chicagoâs Great Upheaval of 1877: Class Polarization and Democratic Politics
- 4. Looking North: A Mid-South Perspective on the Great Strike
- 5. The July Days in San Francisco, 1877: Prelude to Kearneyism
- 6. Californiaâs Changing Society and Mexican American Conceptions of the Great Strike
- Contributors
- Index
- The Working Class in American History