Conquest of Labour

Curtis J. Evans. The Conquest of Labor: Daniel Pratt and Southern Industrialization. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001. 337 pp. Illustrations, chart, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $49.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-8071-2695-0.

Reviewed for H-South by Randall M. Miller, Department of History, Saint Joseph's University, Philadelphia. October 2002.

A Yankee Deep in the Heart of Dixie

Frank Allaun

Frank Allaun who has died just short of his ninetieth birthday was the first and only President of the Working Class Movement Library.

He and Edmund Frow formed a friendship in the 1930's when Frank was looking after the Communist Party bookshop in Hanging Ditch and Eddie used to cycle to collect his Left Book Club monthly volumes which he then distributed among his workmates and the A.E.U. members.

Espionage and the Comintern

A new book on Comintern
Espionage and the Roots of the Cold War
By David McKnight, Frank Cass & Co, London 2002

I am writing to alert you to my new book which I thought might interest you. The book uses little known archives from Comintern to give a scholarly explanation of the circumstances which lead to Cold War ‘witch hunts’ and accusations of treachery. In their opposition to these allegations, the Left and their liberal allies scorned the possibility that there could be any truth to the charges of espionage.

Women in the North

The theme of the North West Labour History journal for 2003 will be Women in the North. We invite contributions, covering the period from the late C18th to last week, which take a look at women as political, industrial, social, cultural and community activists. We would like to cover the broadest range of topics:- from suffragettes to punkettes, Clarion cyclists to sit-ins, Chartists to feminists, barmaids to MPs and so forth.

Ambiguities of Work

The Ambiguities of Work: Controlling Knowledge, Controlling Outcomes
A conference at the Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Delaware, Nov. 7-8, 2003

From Adam Smith and Karl Marx through Harry Braverman and Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., issues of knowledge and control over economic activity have been central to the fields of labor and business history. The famous aphorism attributed to Big Bill Haywood, "The boss's brains are under the workman's cap" captures these tensions, as do recent social science explorations of embedded and tacit knowledge.

Working Class and Suburbia

The Newberry Library Labor History Seminar co-sponsored by the University of Illinois at Chicago and Urbana.

"How the Suburbs Saved the City: A Reconsideration of Working-Class Housing in the Metropolitan Region"
Joseph Bigott
Purdue University Calumet
December 6, 2002, 3:00-5:00 pm