Deceived

2020 ◽  
pp. 21-42

Chapter 1 examines the grievances many rural farmers and laborers faced, including exploitation, workplace dishonesty, and questionable stock investment procedures in the Gilded Age. Workers cast a wary eye at their bosses, bankers, stockbrokers, lawyers, and government officials, who rural workers viewed as dishonest individuals looking to take advantage of hardworking farmers and laborers. This mistrust at times extended to union organizers and officers of organizations like the Knights of Labor and the National Federation of Miners. When the leaders of these two groups tried to merge to create one large miners’ union, workers wondered whether the union representatives truly cared about the workers’ interests.

2020 ◽  
pp. 139-162

Chapter 6 explores the numerous fights between union leaders in the Gilded Age to show that “organized labor” was far from unified. Historians have long noted that these fights, such as those between and within the American Federation of Labor and the Knights of Labor, weakened unions during this period. This chapter, however, argues that the fights between union leadership in the Gilded Age were part of a large but disorganized effort to “purify” labor organizations of corrupt and complacent leadership. The tumult this created tore unions apart, created rival organizations like the Independent Order of the Knights of Labor, and caused workers to doubt which leaders and organizations were trustworthy. This confusion became even more pronounced during the Populist push in the 1896 national election, when rural farmers and laborers, disillusioned with the organizations and individuals who claimed to help them, could not agree on which candidate would best look after their interests.


Author(s):  
Stephanie J. Smith

Chapter 1 focuses on the founding of Mexico’s Communist Party in 1919, and the Party’s links to the influential national and international artistic movement active in Mexico throughout the 1920s. Although during these early years the Party’s official membership numbers remained relatively insignificant, this chapter argues that the extraordinary influence of these creative participants, both female and male, on the politics of the period was far from trivial. Art and politics intertwined as artists played major roles in political affairs, and government officials appropriated the arts to transmit the “official” national history.


2020 ◽  
pp. 43-66

This chapter looks at the capitalist endeavors rural workers and farmers pursued in the Gilded Age. Although they condemned their employers for cutting costs to increase their profit, rural workers often pursued capitalist gain in ways similar to their bosses. Farmer and laborers' decisions to work extra jobs, purchase stock shares, or jointly own small companies often caused rural workers to see themselves as businessmen or capitalists. As with corporations, profit motive quickly undermined collective agendas, sometimes even with cooperatives run by labor organizations. Workers took shortcuts, accepted less pay, undercut their coworkers, and broke neighbors’ strikes all because these actions increased their personal incomes. Ultimately, this need to earn greater profit shaped worker relationships with labor unions. In some cases, workers worked lower than union wages. In other instances, union leaders, concerned about the sustainability of their organizations, ordered workers to accept wage reductions rather than strike. This stance frequently angered laborers who cared more about securing their immediate incomes than reaching their union’s long-term goals.


Author(s):  
María Cristina García

Chapter 1 discusses American responses to refugee flows during the transitional period of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Fleeing a communist state had previously maximized one’s chances of admission to the United States, but as early as 1980, policymakers had questioned the logic of assuming that those fleeing communism had more legitimate needs for protection than other refugees. As government officials struggled to define a coherent refugee policy for the post–Cold War era, a wide range of domestic actors also tried to influence policy, advocating and lobbying on behalf of particular populations whose rights they felt had been ignored. The case studies in this chapter—the Soviet refuseniks, the Chinese university students, the Haitian and Cuban boat people—illustrate the changing political landscape both abroad and at home, as well as the importance of advocacy in eliciting responses from the Executive and Legislative branches of government.


Author(s):  
Kathryn C. Ibata-Arens

This chapter develops a matrix that plots variations in open/tacit versus closed/codified system architectures supporting or limiting innovation capacity and new-business creation in targeted sectors. Aggregate global- and microlevel data are analyzed to identify concentrations of innovation and firm-level activity. Emerging hubs of knowledge and firm creation in biomedical industries, including biopharmaceuticals, are identified. Aggregate data is supplemented with firm-level case studies and interviews with entrepreneurs, government officials, incubation managers, and investors. The conceptual framework outlined in Chapter 1 and specified in Chapter 2 provides the lens through which innovation and entrepreneurship strategies in China, India, Japan, and Singapore are viewed. The analysis is supplemented with firm-level entrepreneurial case studies.


2020 ◽  
pp. 119-138

This chapter examines the differences between union leaders and workers regarding union goals. As the 1893 depression set in, rural workers in multiple occupations mobilized to change the economic structures of Gilded Age society. The American Railway Union went on strike, and marchers across the country joined Jacob Coxey and other leaders in a populist push for social and economic change. Their efforts coincided with the centralization efforts of organizations like the United Mine Workers, which sought to capitalize on the grassroots activism by organizing nationwide strikes. Nonunion coal miners heartily joined strike efforts like the 1894 United Mine Workers coal strike, but they soon discovered that the union assumed more authority than the rank and file was willing to accept. As the officers reached a settlement and called off the strike without seeking approval from the rank and file, strikers refused to obey the order to return to work. Their refusal indicated that while workers were willing to use unions to achieve goals like earning higher pay, they rejected union leaders making decisions on their behalf.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-220
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Costaguta

AbstractThis article investigates ideas of race in Gilded Age socialism by analyzing the intellectual production of the leaders of the Socialist Party of America (SLP) from 1876 to 1882. Existing scholarship on socialism and race during the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era rarely addresses socialist conceptions of race prior to 1901 and fails to recognize the centrality of scientific racialism and Darwinism in influencing socialist thought. By positioning American socialism within a transatlantic scenario and reconstructing how the immigrant origins of Gilded Age socialists influenced their perceptions of race, this article argues that scientific racialism and Darwinism competed with color-blind internationalism in shaping the racial policies of the SLP during the Gilded Age. Moreover, a transatlantic investigation of American socialist ideas of race presents a reinterpretation of the early phases of the history of the SLP and addresses its historical legacies. While advocates of scientific racialism and Darwinism determined the racial policies of the SLP in the 1880s, color-blind internationalists abandoned the party and extended their influence beyond organized socialism, especially in the Knights of Labor.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20

This section presents an overview of the book. It sketches out the conflicts between corporations and Gilded Age unions, like the Knights of Labor and the United Mine Workers. It argues that workers were frequently situated between the two sides. Workers’ goals to increase their economic standings at times pulled workers into unions, but in other instances just as easily pulled them into the capitalist mindset of their employers.


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