Headings are "New Stuff", "Local Interest", General Interest," and "IWW": This reading list has a lot of notes stuck in it. Click here for the shorter one.
New Stuff
**
Philip S Foner and Ronald L Lewis, editors. Black Workers. A documentary History From Colonial Times to the Present. Temple University. Philadelphia. 1989. They collected writings from all through American history. Up to the CIO period, the labor movement doesn't look so great. Terrific index.
**
A.L. Morton, The Life and Ideas of Robert Owen. International Publishers. New York, 1978. A great deal of Owen's historical fame comes from his early success at New Lanark mills 1813-1821, but I note on pg 18 that there was a tremendous rise in the industry all through that whole period. It might have been hard to not succeed!
In 1824 he brought his lecture tour to the U.S.A. He bought Harmony in Indiana and had another of his spectacular failures there. His New Harmony experiment opened May 25, 1825.
All through the book, it is evident that Owen saw the reforming of society of coming from enlightened factory owners such as himself. "power to the people" would have been an alien class concept to him. Nevertheless, he enjoyed great fame. In a section from anti-duhring, Engels says, "He was the most popular man in Europe." (p 234 Owen book)
**
Alwyn Barr and Robert A Calvert, Editors, Black Leaders, Texans for their Times. Texas State Historical Association, 1981. Covers "Dave, a Rebellious Slave," "William Goyens of Nacogdoches",“Matt Gains, Reconstruction politician," “William M "gooseneck" McDonald, business and fraternal leader," “Mary Branch, educator,” “WR Banks, Educator,” “Heman Marion Sweatt, Civil Rights Plaintiff,” and “John Biggers, Artist." I was really impressed with this effort to reveal the lives of Black Texans through a few biographies covering pre-revolutionary to modern times.
Pg 19: in 1860 there were 355 free blacks in Texas, maybe less
P20: In 1850 there were 397 free Negroes in Texas and 434,495 in the United States. Texas was 15th among the slave states. Apparently, there were a lot more before 1836.
Pg 22 idea of "one drop of blood."
25: Mixed marriages were 21 in 1860
28 the site of Goyens Hill in Nacogdoches
30 Texas sucks, always did
error in pages 32-34
35 Lamar Sucks, always did. He was president 12/38
35 Summer of 1839 was Cherokee removal
37 locates Goyens' grave
pg 30: Texas constitution in 1836 said "No free person of African descent either in whole or in part, shall be permitted to reside permanently in the republic, without the consent of Congress." Manumission of slaves within the nation was forbidden without congressional consent.
93: In 1890s Texas Republican Party split into "Black and Tan" faction and "Lily Whites," who wanted to eliminate Blacks from the party. Ft Worth's William M. McDonald was a leader of the Black and Tans for decades.
117: 1/17/81 Tillotson college opened in Austin
161: 10/12/45 Lulua White, NAACP in Houston named Heman Marion Sweatt, a mail carrier, as plaintiff for case to integrate UT
162: Oct 1913 in Chattanooga, National Alliance of Postal Employees formed with Houstonian Henry L. Mims as first president
170: March 1947 measure passed to create Houston College for Negroes which later became Texas Southern University
172: Thurgood Marshall believed that Black Texans were more opposed to segregation than anybody else.
177: "Sweatt supported the movement to have Henry Wallace's Progressive party placed on the ballot in Texas in the 1948 presidential election. So many of the people he agreed with were accused of being communistic that Sweatt was loath to deny that he himself was one...."
Alwyn Barr has another interesting title "Black Texans: A history of Negroes in Texas, 1528-1971 (Austin, 1973)
I will probably loan this book to Angela Johnson as she wants it.
**
Robyn Duff Ladino with Foreword by Alwyn Barr, Desegregating Texas Schools. Eisenhower, Shivers, and the Crisis at Mansfield High. U T, Austin 1996. With pictures and journalistic reporting, Ladino explains one of the most important events in the modern civil rights movement. But it wasn't a happy event. The three students eventually went to Ft Worth by bus, just as they had for a long time.
P22: Ft Worth Atty L Clifford Davis was civil rts attorney. Governor Alan Shivers gets a lot of the blame. He supported Ike in 1952 and 1956. Ike waggled and dodged the issue.
7/28/56 Texans voted more than 3 to 1 for segregation measures
Yarborough's governor campaign was also for segregation
P 71: Tom Moody was President of Mansfield NAACP
P 72 Ulysses Simpson Tates was NAACP Lawyer. John F Lawson
Three plaintsiffs: Charles Moody, Floyd Moody, Nathaniel Jackson. All teenagers attending high school in Ft Worth
P79: 10-7-55 Davis filed class action suit: Nathaniel Jackson, a minor, et al V O.C. Rawdon, et al
P 79: JA "Tiny" Gooch of Dallas was Atty for school board
P 93: 8-27-56 Federal District Court ordered Mansfield to integrate the High School Was first in Texas.
Mob rule, with implicit and direct support from the governor, Texas rangers, and local law "enforcement" officers stopped the effort.
8-30-56 to 9-40-56 an effigy hung from flagpole at Mansfield High School. Another effigy was hung on August 31 and remained above the school's main entrance for several more days.
P96: Principal Willie Pigg refused to remove effigy
P108 Rep Joe Pool was especially loathsome in supporting segregation
P109 Owen Metcalf led the segregationists
P133 says an investigator questioned residents about their knowledge of Davis' activities. Only black interviewed was "the owner of the barbecue stand where blacks and whites ate in separate areas." Could this have been Hershel Matthews, the first Black steward at UAW 893? Excellent index
**
Paul LaFargue and Wilhelm Liebknecht, Karl Marx His Life and Work. (remembrances) International Publishers, NY, 1943. Marx's household, his personal work habits are described. Both of these guys were proteges, especially in England.
**
Ruth A Allen, East Texas Lumber Workers. An Economic and Social Picture, 1870-1950. Univ of Texas Press, 1961. Dallas Public Library 331.7634 A428e. Allen was an economist and most of the book consists of documenting the poverty in the timber country of East Texas. However, on page 165 there begins a riveting chapter "Labor Unrest in the Pineries". Allen documents efforts of the Knights of Labor, the IWW, American Labor Union, The Brotherhood of Timber Workers, and the Timber Workers of the World to organize and keep contracts with the lumber barons from 1870 on.
Ruth A Allen, The Southwest Railroad Strike. It's kind of unbelievable in places, but Ms Allen did a great service by writing the only existing history of the strike that ruined the Knights of Labor.
Archie Green, Only a Miner (U of I Press, 1972). On February 21, 1931, about a year before he became one of America's most famous entertainers, Gene Autry recorded "The Death of Mother Jones" in New York. Autry was born in Tioga, in Grayson County. Pages 249-252 investigates the ties between Autry and the radical movement of his times. He pretty much draws a blank except that Autry recorded the Mother Jones tune after getting it from his
agent, R. Calaway.
Bush, Charles G. "The Green Corn Rebellion". University of Oklahoma, 1932. This unpublished master's thesis is apparently the basis for almost all historical references to the Greencorn Rebellion. Odd, because it presents few facts and has a definite anti-labor bias that distorts the entire history.
Randolph B. Campbell. Grass-Roots Reconstruction in Texas, 1865-1880. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997. x + 280 pp. Maps, notes, bibliography, index. $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-8071-2194-0. Covers 6 Texas counties during Reconstruction. I have a long review from H-net, but I didn't read it yet myself.
Carleton, Don E, Red Scare. Right-wing Hysteria Fifties Fanaticism and Their Legacy in Texas. Texas Monthly Press, 1985. Mostly about the "Minute-Women" fascist bunch that dominated the Houston School district for a while. Gertrude Barnstone is the hero of the story.
L.D. Clark, A Bright Tragic thing. A Tale of Civil War Texas. Cinco Puntos Press, El Paso, Texas. 1992. I borrowed it from Lakewood Library. Fictional account of Great Hangings of
Gainesville in 1862. Clark is Great Grandson of Nathanial Miles Clark, who was hanged then. His picture is on front. Book isn't very good. It meanders and brings in a sexual romantic improbably scene. I found several better books in the Gainsville public library.
TR Fehrenbach, Lone Star, A History of Texas and the Texans. Collier Books, New York, 1968. Reputed to be "the best history of Texas." I borrowed copy from Roy Hudson. It's a history of racism and genocide. Since it's true, that's OK. But the problem is that Fehrenbach seems to approve of it, even glory in it to an extent. The Texas Rangers are big heroes in this book. When they gun down innocent Native Americans or Mexicans, the author compliments them for their directness. No mention of labor developments nor of Texas Ranger role.
Patricia Evridge Hill, "Real Women and True Womanhood. Grassroots Organizing Among Dallas Dressmakers in 1935." is in Labor's Heritage, a slick historical magazine sponsored by the AFL-CIO. The establishment in Dallas played mean, violent, and underhanded against
women organizing for a decent living in 1935. With terrific pictures and 11 pages of text, it documents one of North Texas' most important historical struggles. Our side eventually lost the battle but won the war. The International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) and the Committee for Industrial Organizing (CIO) both became well established in North Texas by 1941. Labor's Heritage costs $19.95/year. Write to Labor's Heritage, Meany Archives, 10000 New Hampshire Av Silver Spring, Md 20903
Patricia Everidge Hill, Dallas. The Making of a Modern City. UT Austin, 1996. A "Must Read" for anybody who wants to know anything about Dallas history. Dallas was a center of progressivism up to about 1930 when the Citizen's Alliance asserted itself. It's still
asserting itself now. (Reviewed more fully in the history section)
Roscoe C. Martin, THE PEOPLE'S PARTY IN TEXAS. A Study in Third Party Politics. University of Texas Press, 1933,1970. You can't really understand the progressives in Texas until you read this.
Walter and Elizabeth Rogers, Big Wheels Rolled in Texas. Box 51294, New Orleans, LA. 70151. 1970. 479 typed pages. A middle-aged heiress marries an IWW organizer and moves to "Universe" Texas in 1940. The frontispiece says this is a "non-fiction novel about working people." It's badly printed and really hard to read. Also, their desire to keep identities of people and geographical areas secret gets confusing. There are long sections of sermonettes on politics and labor history. It's kind of crazy, but I really liked it. It gave me some idea of what kinds of things people were interested in during the critical period of Texas labor history. Before this one, they wrote John Donar: Common Man. I'll put a short review in the "IWW" section of this page.
Jim Schutze's, "Peep Hole Power" in the Dallas Observer11/5/98. He gives a background and viewpoint on the Dallas Citizens Council. "If Dallas really is Oz, then, for better or for worse, the Citizens Council is its wizard." Discusses the origins and the present role of the Dallas Citizens' Council. It is a group of businesspersons who run the city. I think you can still download from http:\\www.dallasobserver.com. I recommend it.
Mary Ann Slater "Politics & Art. the Controversial Birth of the Oklahoma Writers Project" pg 72 Chronicles of Oklahoma Vol 68 1990-91.
Texas AFL-CIO "The Labor Story" 8 1/2 X 11 pamphlet of 47 pages. Starts with slavery days and goes up to about 1989 in Texas. It's so good that it's unbelievable that nobody takes credit for writing it. Interesting photos, but the printing process doesn't do them
justice. I have some free copies (1/29/99).
Sherry Warnick, "Radical Labor in Oklahoma: The Working Class Union" pg 180 of Chronicles of Oklahoma Vol 52, 1974-75.
Warren, Leslie, Dallas Public and Private; Aspects of an American City. Grossman Publishers, NY, 1964. Leslie was a reporter at the Dallas Morning News when Kennedy was assassinated. He had lived in Dallas for a number of years. Immediately after November 22, 1962, there was a lot of interest in Dallas because many Americans blamed the city itself for the assassination. Leslie states openly that Dallas isn't that much different from other cities, while insinuating at the same time that unbelievable, even comical, right-wing elements are given free rein here. His view of the history of the city is the same as the Chamber of Commerce's, but his close-up view of contemporary 1964 Dallas is worth reading.
As a suppressed psychological evaluation of the city said at the time of the assassination: "I would agree that this is not the only place where this could have happened. But it is one of the places where it or something like it was quite likely to happen...." Leslie gives some background on the KKK, General Edwin Walker, the Minute Women, and the public violence against Lyndon & Lady Bird Johnson and against Adlai E Stevenson prior to the assassination. From the constant large numbers of people gathered in Dealy Plaza and pointing at the School Book Depository every day in Dallas, I have to assume there would still be interest in Leslie's book.
John Womack Jr. "Oklahoma's Green corn Rebellion, the Importance of Fools" has no date. typed manuscript in OU library F700 .W64. It has the same viewpoint as the Bush article above.
American Social History Project, Who Built America, v I & II, New York, Pantheon, 1992
Steve Babson with Ron Alpern, Dave Elsila, and John Revitte, Working Detroit, the Making of a Union Town. Adama Books, New York, 1984. It kind of sluffs over the Reuther role. Especially good on women's and civil rights issues. I didn't know there were race riots in downtown Detroit after the Packard strike. Lots of good historical pictures. In the back, there's a map of "Working Detroit Sites" that would make a fine walking tour. Excellent bibliography. This is a good way to get into history of UAW, which is big in North Texas.
Boyer, Richard O and Herbert M Morais, Labor's Untold Story. United Electrical Workers, Pittsburgh, 1965. This is simply the best one-volume summary of American labor history that I have read.
Brooks, Thomas R, Toil And Trouble. A History of American Labor. Dell Publishing, NY, 1964. Dallas AFL-CIO leader Gene Freeland recommended including this book in our labor history reading list. In 300 pages, Mr. Brooks attempts to recapitulate the story of American labor, draw its lessons, and recommend a course of action. Because of his unique point of view, his work adds to the story told in other histories. In general, he thinks that American labor was in decline in 1964 (actually, I think that membership peaked in 1958) and that the solution is to "mobilize grassroots political sentiment in favor of Federal responsibility for full production, full distribution, and full employment." Brooks' unique viewpoint is both the strength of the book, because he emphasizes different aspects of the story than other authors, and its weakness. His viewpoint is strongly influenced by the "Great Society" thinking of the Johnson period and by the witch-hunting anti-communism that had dominated American political thinking throughout the period after World War II. The book jacket says that Brooks had been an assistant labor editor of Business Week magazine. --Gene Lantz
William Cahn, Lawrence 1912, the Bread & Roses Strike. Pilgrim Press, New York, 1977. The pictures will break your heart. Half of them are of children, aged 10-14 or so, working long hours in textile mills. Many of worked barefoot, so little were they paid!
Catton, William and Bruce. TWO ROADS TO SUMTER. McGray-Hill paperback, New York, 1963. I bought this at half price for .75. It is biographies of Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, compared and contrasted. They were born near one another in Kentucky; one moved North and the other South. It makes it clear in detail that the cause of the Civil War was the insistence of the Slave States on their "right" to expand into new territories. Lincoln's party adamantly opposed the extension of slavery and that is entirely and completely what the war was
about.
John R Commons, ed. A Documentary History of American Industrial Society. Vol I-X., Cleveland: Arthur H Clark Co., 1910
Clarence Darrow, The story of my Life. Grossett & Dunlap, New York, 1932.
Patricia Daniels, Famous Labor Leaders. Dodd, Mead & co, New York, 1970. Short biographies on Sylvis Powderly Gompers Haywood Green Lewis Murray Hillman APhilip Randolph, Dubinsky, Meany & Reuther. Short stuff on Debs, Hoffa, & Harry Bridges. Photo portraits.
Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine, John L Lewis, a Biography. Univ of Illinois. 1986. Abridged Edition. I borrowed this from Darryl Sullivan. Nearly 400 pages of facts about the man and his times. Lewis was very close to the Republicans through most of his career, especially to Herbert Hoover. Although the book chronicles the man's great achievements, the commentary seems to disparage him
Ronald L Filippelli, Labor in the USA: A History. New York, Alfred A Knopf, 1984
Foner, Philip S, History of the Labor Movement in the United States (10 volumes). International Publishers, 1994. This is the last of the excellent series because Foner died. It takes us up to 1929.
Foner, Philip S, US Labor and the Vietnam War. International Publishers, New York,1989
Philip S. Foner, The Workingmen's Party of the United States. A History of the First Marxist Party in the Americas. MEP Publications, Minneapolis, 1984. Dallas Public Library 324.2737 F673W.
Janet Wells Green, From Forge to Fast Food: A History of Child Labor in New York State. Troy NY, Council for Citizenship Ed, 1995
ILWU, "The ILWU Story, Six Decades of Militant Unionism," International Longshoremen's & Warehousemen's Union, 1188 Franklin Street, San Francisco, CA 94109, 1997. 88 pages of pictures and text prepared by Eugene Dennis Vrana, who is the archivist at the ILWU building. This pamphlet stands up proud and honest. There's also a swell video available from the same place. We got to talk to Vrana in Spring, 1999, and were really impressed with the union and with their commitment to honestly preserving and presenting their history.
Henry Kraus, Heroes of Unwritten Story. The UAW, 1934-39. Univ of Chicago Press, 1993. Kraus earlier wrote The Many and the Few. In 1934, he was a writer looking for ties to regular people. Came across Wyndham Mortimer and the early auto workers union in Cleveland and became their writer. Edited first UAW newspaper from Cleveland.
Henry Kraus, The Many and the Few. A Chronicle of the Dynamic Auto Workers. University of Illinois Press, 1947.
Saul Kreas. My Life and Struggle for a Better World. 1977.
Lorence, James J, "Controlling the Reserve Army. The United Automobile Workers and Michigan's Unemployed, 1935-1941." In Labor's Heritage
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Civil War in the U.S.. From their writings in the Vienna Presse and the New York Daily Tribune and from their correspondence to one another, 1861 and 1862. Copyright 1937, 1961, International Publishers Inc. NY. Although Engels was not positive, Marx never wavered in his belief that the North would prevail. They played a role in keeping England out of the war.
William S. McFeely, Frederick Douglass. Touchstone Book published by Simon & Schuster, New York, 1991. Photos & exhaustive life of Douglass. But a gossipy thing.
Morris, Richard B (Editor) US Department of Labor, The American Worker. Columbia University. No copyright date, but it's probably around 1976. It has a decent time line in the back. Picture book with fine photos, short descriptions, and poetry. I borrowed copy from Dallas CLC.
Juliet B. Schor, The Overworked American. The Unexpected Decline of Leisure. Basic Books, Harper Collins Publishers, 1991. Basic book about America's working hours. Everybody else quotes her. Put this together with the book by Roedigger and Foner, and you start doing some serious thinking about working hours & days, unemployment, economic problems, social problems….
Maurice Sugar, The Ford Hunger March. Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, Berkeley, California, 1980. 146 pages. Sugar was a labor lawyer in the 1930s. He would become the first general counsel for the United Auto Workers and would remain so until fired by Walter Reuther. This is his account of the Ford Hunger March of March 7, 1932, taken from his autobiographical notes and edited. There are lots of statistics and quotes that paint a picture of depression era.
Zeese Papanikolas, Buried Unsung. Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre. Foreword by Wallace Stegner. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London, 1982. As far as I know, this is the only work on Tikas, who was a strike captain in the Ludlow tent colony when he
was brutally murdered right at the beginning of the Ludlow Massacre.
Upton Sinclair, The Flivver King. A Story of Ford-America. 1937 Charles H Kerr. Chicago
Smith, James (Editor) Labor History course II volume I Labor
Education Program USWA, College of business Administration, U of H,
Includes contribution by Dr George Green.Starts with Agricultural
revolution of 11,000 years ago. Ends 1970s. It raises questions well,
but doesn't provide very good answers
Stein, Leon (Editor), Out of the Sweatshop. The Struggle for Industrial Democracy. Quadrangle/ The NY Times book Co.. 1977. Articles & essays from the time of the sweatshops to 1970s. Lots of original material from the big names of that period such as Jacob A
Riis, Theodore Dreiser, John R Commons, etc. For some reason it completely skips the period of the CIO.
Sweeney, John J (President of AFL-CIO) with David Kusnet, America Needs a Raise, Righting for Economic Security and Social Justice. Houghton Miflin, Boston New York, 1996.
Pg8: “Our ultimate goal is a new social contract, by which workers will share not only in prosperity but in power.”
P95: Explains his slate’s victory in October, 1995 “first contested election of AFL-CIO” Central Bodies sent 488 delegates (up from 186 in 1992) and ¾ of them went for the New Voice slate. Other details of their program, including more inclusion of women & minorities.
P122: “It means organizing for economic security and social justice in our workplaces, in our communities, and at every level of the political process. And that means building a new movement of working people.”
P131: “Because so many low-wage industries have settled in the South, that region is a special focus of our organizing efforts….Maybe you remember the horrible fire that killed twenty-five workers at the Imperial food Products Plant in Hamlet, North Carolina, on September 3, 1991. With grim irony, that was the day after Labor Day.”
P136: Living Wage first passed by Baltimore City Council. “As of July 1, 1995, all workers employed by city contractors were to be paid at least $6.10 an hour. And within four years, their minimum wage is to jump to $7.70. That victory not only raised workers’ wages, but lifted their spirits, as they saw what they could accomplish by working together.”
P149: Sweeney “soft” on labor-management schemes. “…there are already examples of partnerships between employers and employees that are beneficial to both sides and that improve quality and competitiveness. These examples offer a glimpse of what we can accomplish together with the new social contract we seek.”
My conclusions as of (9/1/00): I celebrate the victory of the Sweeney leadership virtually every day in the labor movement. They have brought us back to labor militancy and back to the idea of working with our allies among environmentalists, students, minorities, women, churches, immigrants-rights groups, labor “radicals”, community organizations, etc. We have returned to the fight and we have re-learned how to fight.
My criticisms are twofold: (1) the “new” leadership ignores history completely, and I worry that they will lose their way, although they certainly haven’t yet; and (2) This “partnership” business is a ticket to labor destruction. Fortunately, the corporations’ aggressiveness in destroying labor economically and politically has precluded any serious “partnership” arguments among the rank and file.
***
UAW Education Department, "The history of organized labor and the UAW" Jan 1992. about 30 pages of short history.
U.S. Dept of Labor, Important Events in Labor History. General Printing Office, DC
Bernard A Weisberger, Samuel Gompers (from series on illustrious Americans). Silver Burdett Company, Moristown, New jersey, 1967. Contains pictures, lots of quotes, whole articles, and a bio of Samuel Gompers
William W Winpisinger, RECLAIMING OUR FUTURE; AN AGENDA FOR AMERICAN LABOR. Edited by John Logue; foreword by Senator Edward M Kennedy. Westview Press, Inc, 5500 Central Avenue, Boulder, Colorado 80301; 1989. "Wimpy" Winpisinger was the President of the International
Association of Machinists (IAM). The ideas in the book were apparently developed by a series of speeches and papers that he prepared during 1977-1988
C. Vann Woodward. The Strange Career of Jim Crow. Second Revised Edition. Oxford University Press. NY. 1966. Ask almost anybody when Jim Crow segregation began in the South and they will tell you it began with the end of the Civil War. But in truth it did not.
IWW
James P Cannon compilation, Notebook of an Agitator pg 32-36. Pathfinder Press. Has an account of Frank Little in Duluth and a lot of praise of him.
Ralph Chaplin, Wobbly, the Rough and Tumble Story of an American Radical. Univ of Chicago Press. 1948. pg 167 Chicago Hunger Demo was 1/17/15. First singing of "Solidarity Forever" attacked by police
Melvyn Dubofsky, We Shall be All. A History of the Industrial Workers of the World. University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago. 1969. This is the definitive history of IWW. Many references to Frank Little. I don't have this but I need it: Industrial
Democracy (or was it solidarity?) July 28, 1917. Has 3 page article by Frank Little. For interlibrary loan try RLIN CUBG86-53796. Also the 3/24/17 Solidarity has comparison of war policies of IWW and AFL.
Harrison George, "The IWW Trial. Story of the Greatest Trial in Labor's History by one of the Defendants." Arno Press & The New York Times 1969. Dallas Public Library 343.31 H427i. George took notes while he and 112 other defendants were tried for conspiracy by the
United States Government. 166 leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) had been indicted, but all of them weren't found in time for the trial to start. It is my understanding that the transcripts & other stuff are in some DoL archives in Ft Worth.
Arnon Gutfeld, "The murder of Frank Little; Radical labor agitation in Butte, Montana, 1917.
Lehman, Ted, Pamphlet in Fresno, California, library dated 25 May 1971 "The Constitution Guarantees Freedom of Speech--Rats! The Fresno Free Speech Fight" I think he was reporter for the Fresno Bee or Sacramento Bee. Tells about Fresno Free Speech fight (1913?) Pretty uncomplimentary about Fred Little, Frank's brother. Fred and Emma may have had two sons, and this is where the trail of Frank Little's writings and personal effects leaves off.
pamphlet by Priscilla Long, "Mother Jones, Woman Organizer," is published by South End Press in Boston
Henry E McGuckin "Memoirs of a Wobbly" $6.95 Charles H. Kerr Publishing Co 1740 West Greenleaf Av #7, Chicago Il 60626.
Patrick Renshaw, The Wobblies. The story of Syndicalism in the United States. Anchor Books. Doubleday & Company, Garden City, NY 1967.
David R Roediger & Philip S. Foner OUR OWN TIME. A History of American Labor and the Working Day. Verso Press, London, New York, 1989. First published by Greenwood Press, 1989. This is a finely detailed documentation of American labor's economic and political struggle for shorter working hours. Their thesis is that shorter hours was the goal that unified various workers' groups. For notes from the book, check out the history reading list at another site. Click here
Rogers, Walter & Elizabeth, John Donar: Common Man. Unlike Big Wheels Rolled in Texas, which I reviewed in the first section of this page, the couple's first collaboration is an easy read. I guess it's an autobiography of Walter Rogers using psydonym of John Donar. I'm not completely sure which is the pseudonym, but I have met one person who knew them, and he says Rogers was their actual name. Anyway, "John Donar" ran away from home in Pennsylvania when he was 12. He knocked around itinerant farm work and a few jails before landing in WWI. He served very honorably, but deserted when he was about to be forced to attack striking miners in Appalachia. He joined the IWW and spends the rest of the book, to 1940, as "10-day John;" in other words, a traveling IWW man whose average employment lasted only 10 days because he only took each job to organize the workers to begin with. He apparently led a really exciting life as an independent labor organizer and had some role in great struggles of the period. Just the parts about his life as a soldier in Europe are well worth the price of the book, if one can be found.
Irving Werstein, Pie in the Sky, An American Struggle. The Wobblies and their Times. Delacorte Press, NY,1969. in OU library.
Donald E Winters Jr. The Soul of the Wobblies. The IWW, Religion, and American Culture in the Progressive Era 1905-1917. Greenwood Press, Westport, Cn 1985.
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