Labor History Commons^™

Moving Narration: A Journey Through History, Yincheng Zhu

Masters Theses

The Central Pacific, as the first transcontinental railroad, is a remarkable achievement in the history of the United States. However, the story of what happened during its construction, including the struggles of the first generation of immigrants from China who built the tracks, and the resistance of native Americans to cede their lands, is largely forgotten. The California Zephyr, as a long-trip train that currently runs on the Central Pacific tracks, is not only a means of transportation but should also tell the history of survival and resistance embodied by the landscape it moves through and tracks it travels over. …

Liquid Border, Yingfan Jia

Masters Theses

A River is a mighty and constantly-evolving force, leaving behind an intricately designed and constantly changing system. Not just a river, the Rio Grande stretches all the way from Colorado before intersecting with the US-Mexico Border in southern Texas - a point where the powerful forces of nature now merge with a clearly-defined political boundary. The outcome of this is a unique ecological niche, which may often go unnoticed despite its distinctiveness.

Texas is famous for its farms and ranches, and the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas was once an agricultural hub. However, urbanization and the depletion of water …

Wanderers Of Empire: The Tropical Tramp In Latin America, 1870-1930, Jack Werner

Masters Theses

U.S. public and private imperial interests confronted the problem of labor and labor power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as the U.S. empire expanded into Latin America and the Caribbean. The question of how to make an empire work spurred the creation of new labor regimes reliant on black West Indians who traveled to work in the Panama Canal Zone and on United Fruit Company (UFCO) banana plantations. Just as importantly, new labor regimes engendered new categories for troublesome laborers. One of these classifications, “tramp,” surfaced in the United States after the U.S. Civil War as a …

"Who's Hiring The Indochinese Worker? Your Competition, Probably": Work, Welfare Dependency, And Southeast Asian Refugee Resettlement In Lowell, Massachusetts, 1975-1985, Janelle Bourgeois

Masters Theses

This Master’s thesis uses the Indochinese Refugee Foundation of Lowell, Massachusetts, a federally funded social service provider, as a case study in the local politics of Southeast Asian refugee resettlement. I argue that the Foundation’s archives offered an opportunity to study the local implementation of the “economic self-sufficiency” mandate of the 1980 Refugee Act, which led the Foundation to increasingly scramble to get refugees off of the welfare rolls and in the labor market as quickly as possible. I conclude that this served to push refugees into low-wage, unskilled, insecure positions such as electronics assembly, and also led to an …

The Evolution Of Child Labor Legislation In Illinois: 1818-1917, Frank Edward Storment

Masters Theses

"The Evolution of Child Labor Legislation in Illinois, 1818-1917" traces the development of social, economic, and political attitudes towards child labor in the State of Illinois. These attitudes evolved from a general acceptance of working children as part of the socio-economic structure to the realization that the industrial employment was causing a moral, social, and economic degeneration of American life. These changing attitudes were reflected in the legislation passed by the Illinois General Assembly between 1818 and 1917.

Between 1818 and 1874 most legislation offered token protection to the child, but emphasized the moral well-being rather than the physical and …

The Illinois State Federation Of Labor During World War I, Nancy Wilson Owen

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

John H. Walker, Labor Leader Of Illinois, 1905-1933, Anthony Barger Barrette

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.