Synopses & Reviews
This is the first systematic study of strikebreaking, intimidation, and anti-unionism in the United States, subjects essential to a full understanding of labor's
fortunes in the twentieth century. Paradoxically, the country that pioneered the expansion of civil liberties allowed corporations to assemble private armies to
disrupt union organizing, spy on workers, and break strikes. Using a social-historical approach, Stephen Norwood focuses on the mercenaries the corporations
enlisted in their anti-union efforts -- particularly college students, African American men, the unemployed, and men associated with organized crime. Norwood
also considers the paramilitary methods unions developed to counter mercenary violence. The book covers a wide range of industries across much of the
country.
Norwood explores how the early twentieth-century crisis of masculinity shaped strikebreaking's appeal to elite youth and the media's romanticization of the
strikebreaker as a new soldier of fortune. He examines how mining communities' perception of mercenaries as agents of a ribald, sexually unrestrained, new
urban culture intensified labor conflict. The book traces the ways in which economic restructuring, as well as shifting attitudes toward masculinity and anger,
transformed corporate anti-unionism from World War II to the present.
Review
An outstanding contribution to U.S. labor and social historiography. (Robert H. Zieger, author of The CIO, 1935-1955)
Review
This is a fresh and expansive probe into a mercenary underworld heretofore the stuff of lore and legend. By opening our eyes to the culture, ideology, and technique of early twentieth century strikebreaking, Norwood skillfully brings us back to a future with which we are again becoming woefully familiar. (Nelson Lichtenstein, author of State of the Union: A Century of American Labor)
Review
Norwood, who writes with an eye for the apt quotation and telling detail, has organized a complex subject into a coherent and effective narrative. An intelligent work of prize-winning caliber, it provides a model for labor historians to follow. (Paul Avrich, City University of New York )
Synopsis
In the first systematic study of anti-unionism and strikebreaking in the U.S., Norwood traces the history of violence between strikers and the mercenary forces (whose diverse ranks included college students, African Americans, the unemployed, and organized crime associates) called in by corporations to break strikes.
Table of Contents
An outstanding contribution to U.S. labor and social historiography. (Robert H. Zieger, author of
The CIO, 1935-1955) This is a fresh and expansive probe into a mercenary underworld heretofore the stuff of lore and legend. By opening our eyes to the culture, ideology, and technique of early twentieth century strikebreaking, Norwood skillfully brings us back to a future with which we are again becoming woefully familiar. (Nelson Lichtenstein, author of
State of the Union: A Century of American Labor) Norwood, who writes with an eye for the apt quotation and telling detail, has organized a complex subject into a coherent and effective narrative. An intelligent work of prize-winning caliber, it provides a model for labor historians to follow. (Paul Avrich, City University of New York )