Class-Conscious Coal Miners: The Emergence of a Working-Class Movement in Central Pennsylvania

Author:   Alan J. Singer
Publisher:   State University of New York Press
ISBN:  

9781438497723


Pages:   256
Publication Date:   02 November 2024
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Not yet available   Availability explained
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Class-Conscious Coal Miners: The Emergence of a Working-Class Movement in Central Pennsylvania


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Overview

Bituminous coal miners in Central Pennsylvania were among the most militant and class-conscious workers in the United States in the post-World War I era. Class-Conscious Coal Miners examines the development of working-class consciousness as they fought to sustain their union, jobs, communities, and work pejoratives, what they described as the Miner's Freedom, against mechanization and operator open shop drives in the 1920s. Their struggles brought them into conflict with coal companies, a pro-business federal government, and the business-unionist leadership of the United Mine Workers of America. After the collapse of the bituminous coal industry in Central Pennsylvania starting in the 1950s, working-class consciousness gradually diminished until, in the present century, there has been a marked shift toward political conservatism.

Full Product Details

Author:   Alan J. Singer
Publisher:   State University of New York Press
Imprint:   State University of New York Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.227kg
ISBN:  

9781438497723


ISBN 10:   1438497725
Pages:   256
Publication Date:   02 November 2024
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available   Availability explained
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

Table of Contents

"List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Glossary for General Readers Introduction Part I: Bituminous Coal Industry 1. Ideological and Structural Conflict in the United Mine Workers of America 2. Chaotic Production and the Inadequacies of the Business-Unionist Program 3. Ethnic Division in the Coalfields 4. Coal-Patch Community Part II: Rank-and-File Miners 5. Rank-and-File Miners Challenge Business Unionism 6. John Brophy and the ""Miners' Program"" 7. Combating the Open-Shop Drive Part III: Nanty Glo 8. Nanty Glo, Pennsylvania 9. Nanty Glo versus the Open Shop Part IV: Save the Union 10. 1926 UMWA Presidential Campaign 11. Save the Union Committee Part V: Revival and Collapse 12. New Deal and World War II 13. Aftermath: Communities in Distress Bibliography Index"

Reviews

""A fine-grained social history of the rebellious miners in Central Pennsylvania in the 1920s, Alan Singer's Class-Conscious Coal Miners brings us significant insights about radicalism and repression. Singer shows why miners have more in common with today's precarious workers, why mining communities in the coal fields were incubators for alternative views on political economy, and why they rebelled not only against coal operators but against their own union. In Singer's telling the 1920s become an incubator for the rebellious 1930s."" — Rosemary Feurer, author of Radical Unionism in the Midwest 1900–1950 ""Alan J. Singer has written a highly readable and original book that makes a major contribution to the history of its field and US history in general. Although a number of scholarly works exist about labor-related events that took place in central Pennsylvania during the 1920s, none do what he has done or ask the questions he has. His goal was not simply to relate detailed information but to clarify how and why existing conditions created a working-class-conscious movement that potentially challenged business unionism, the structure of the nation's coal industry, and the direction of the country.""—Mildred Allen Beik, author of The Miners of Windber: The Struggles of New Immigrants for Unionization, 1890s–1930s


"""A fine-grained social history of the rebellious miners in Central Pennsylvania in the 1920s, Alan Singer's Class-Conscious Coal Miners brings us significant insights about radicalism and repression. Singer shows why miners have more in common with today's precarious workers, why mining communities in the coal fields were incubators for alternative views on political economy, and why they rebelled not only against coal operators but against their own union. In Singer's telling the 1920s become an incubator for the rebellious 1930s."" — Rosemary Feurer, author of Radical Unionism in the Midwest 1900–1950 ""Alan J. Singer has written a highly readable and original book that makes a major contribution to the history of its field and US history in general. Although a number of scholarly works exist about labor-related events that took place in central Pennsylvania during the 1920s, none do what he has done or ask the questions he has. His goal was not simply to relate detailed information but to clarify how and why existing conditions created a working-class-conscious movement that potentially challenged business unionism, the structure of the nation's coal industry, and the direction of the country.""—Mildred Allen Beik, author of The Miners of Windber: The Struggles of New Immigrants for Unionization, 1890s–1930s"


Author Information

Alan J. Singer is Professor of Education at Hofstra University. He is the author of New York and Slavery: Time to Teach the Truth and New York's Grand Emancipation Jubilee: Essays on Slavery, Resistance, Abolition, Teaching, and Historical Memory, both also published by SUNY Press.

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