Labor History Commons^™

Huelgas En El Campo: Mexican Workers, Strikes And Political Radicalism In The Us Southwest, 1920-1934, Patrick J. Artur

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

The political and economic conditions of Mexican workers in the American Southwest during the Interwar Period, their alignment with American and Mexican radical political traditions, and their labor struggles in the region’s agriculture.

"The Bottom Would Drop Out Of Everything": A Brief History Of The Battle For Blair Mountain, Brandon Neely

Student Publications

In the summer of 1921, thousands of Appalachian miners took up arms and marched in southwest West Virginia. Fighting back against attacks on miners' unions like the United Mine Workers of America, the conflict quickly turned violent. The Battle for Blair Mountain, as it came to be known, was one of the largest labor strikes in American history and impacted the history of the Coal Wars and the United States for decades to come. This analysis uses interviews with people who experienced the battle as well as the speeches of labor leaders Samuel Gompers and John Lewis to discuss the …

Ms-226: Nineteenth Century Pennsylvania Trade Cards, Olivia R. Simmet

All Finding Aids

This collection contains 80 nineteenth century trade cards from businesses primarily in Philadelphia (six are from other Pennsylvania location) as well as two decorative images and one three- dimensional square map of Central Europe in German. The cards advertise for a variety of goods and services, including clothing, groceries, beauty and health products, printers, plumbers, jewelers, florists, and more. Many of the cards depict cherubic children, fashionable men and women, prudent consumers using the products advertised, fine art, and include poems, promotions, and manufacturer guarantees. These cards may be of interest to anyone studying methods of advertisement and marketing, graphic …

Migrant Laborers And Their Stories, John M. Rudy

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

In November of 1960, Edward R. Murrow presented a documentary. It was Thanksgiving and the fame investigative reporter was thinking about food. "Harvest of Shame," focused on how Americans got food and the men of women who brought in the bountiful crops of America. Murrow's vision was less than glowing. The CBS news team interviewed the migrant laborers who traveled with the sun and the seasons, starting in Florida and working their ways up the east coast. [excerpt]

"We Are Americans, Too:" Interracial Relations In Detroit's Postwar Auto Industry, Andrew C. Nosti

Student Publications

This analysis looks at the interracial relations and conflicts within the postwar Detroit auto industry. In doing so, it examines the role the UAW, the government, the corporations, and the workers themselves played, and how race and/or gender contributed to interactive negotiations within the employment sector at the time.

Vietnamese Contract Workers In The East German Republic, Sean W. Hough

Celebration

This paper will analyze the historical and cultural conditions that affected how the German Democratic Republic treated one of its largest minority groups, the Vietnamese. During the height of the Cold War and as Decolonization reached its peak phase in the 1960s and 70s, these two factors pushed the GDR and Vietnam closer, which resulted in an exchange in workers. Contract Workers were brought to the GDR to work in an environment "united in socialist solidarity." However, despite this rhetoric, age-old racism, xenophobia, and Orientalism still infiltrated the so called "Socialist Paradise," as the GDR was often called by its …

"Pray For The People Who Feed You": Voices Of Pauper Children In The Industrial Age, Rebecca S. Duffy, Jill Ogline Titus

Schmucker Art Catalogs

Following the Industrial Revolution in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, countries such as the United States and England experienced a widening gap between the rich industrialists and the impoverished working class. As a result, poverty quickly shifted from a localized problem to a national epidemic. Each country was faced with the challenges of addressing and alleviating poverty on a national scale. With a limited amount of resources, questions arose about who should receive relief. What should it look like? How should it be administered? And how would poverty and policy affect political, economic, social and familial structures? [ …

The Influences Of The Musselman Family, Yifei Zhang

Student Publications

For almost a century, the Musselman family has had huge influences on Adams County, PA. Many of those contributions are unknown by people today. So, based on the research of the Musselman Canning Company and the two Musselman Foundations, this paper is a study of the impacts the Musselman family has had on others and how it has achieved that influence. The main primary sources include the company’s publication, The Processor, the articles on local newspaper, and the collections in the Special Collection in Gettysburg College’s Musselman Library.

A Century Of Brickmaking At Berlin Junction: A History Of The Alwine Brick Company, Duane F. Alwin

Adams County History

The Alwine family name had been associated with brickmaking in York and Adams Counties at least since the early 1850s, when Peter Samuel Alwine started his first brickyard on a farm in Paradise Township of York County.1 He learned the trade of brickmaking during his youth and by the age of seventeen had become a skilled artisan. He learned how to make bricks by working in the spring and summer months at a brickmaking operation in Peach Bottom Township, located in the southeastern corner of York County. He did not set up his own brickyard until later, and following his …

Black Labor At Pine Grove & Caledonia Furnaces, 1789-1860, Troy D. Harman

Adams County History

Black labor operating under various degrees of freedom found a suitable working environment, if not a safe haven, in several iron forges of South Central Pennsylvania, from the late 1790s through the 1850s. Primary accounts indicate that two in particular, Pine Grove Furnace of Cumberland County, and Caledonia Furnace of Franklin County, harbored runaway slaves to augment their work force. Pine Grove records, dating from 1789 – 1801, specify names of “negro” employees, verifying that black labor coexisted with white, but day books, journals, and ledgers do not denote status.1 Whether they were free men, or slaves rented out by …

Adams County History 2008

Adams County History

No abstract provided.

Ms-036: Radical Pamphlets, 1965 – 1975, Christine M. Ameduri

All Finding Aids

This collection is divided into two sections. Radical Pamphlets, consists of pamphlets on broad topics such as labor, communism, ecology, poverty, racism and women’s rights. The second series is the Peace Movement and consists of pamphlets, papers, newspaper clippings and correspondence dealing with the Vietnam Conflict and Peace Movement in the United States compiled by David Mozes, a friend of Scott, Nancy and Jim Scott, and Michael J. Hobor, Class of 1969.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information about each …

Ms-012: Robert Weidensall Collection, Christine M. Ameduri

All Finding Aids

Credited with establishing a YMCA branch on the Gettysburg College campus in 1867, Robert Weidensall (1836 - 1922) was elected the first national field secretary of the International Committee of the YMCA in 1868, a position which he held until his retirement in 1918.

The collection is almost exclusively comprised of materials relating to Weidensall's work with the International YMCA, much of it authored by himself. No personal information other than his employment history with the association is included.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids …

Ms-032: Letters Of The Toomey Family During World War I, Jaclyn Campbell

All Finding Aids

The Toomey collection is composed primarily of correspondence and is arranged into four sections including letters to Leo Toomey, Joe Toomey, Mary Ellen Toomey, and other miscellaneous correspondence.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information about each collection in addition to inventories of their content. More information about our collections can be found on our website https://www.gettysburg.edu/special-collections/collections/.

1. Some Major Factors Of The Contemporary Social World: The American Example, Robert L. Bloom, Basil L. Crapster, Harold L. Dunkelberger, Charles H. Glatfelter, Richard T. Mara, Norman E. Richardson, W. Richard Schubart

Section XIX: An Analysis of the Contemporary World’s Search for Meaning

One of the major factors of the contemporary social world is industrialization. Recent industrial developments have moved in two major directions. First, there has been a tremendous increase in technological innovation, reaching the stage which we call automation. The machines which we have developed are doing their work only too well, including some tasks which we had long though could be done only by human hands and heads. Not only the blue-collar worker but also the white-collar worker seems to be faced with the possibility of technological unemployment. [excerpt]

5. Some Social Effects Of The Industrial Revolution, Robert L. Bloom, Basil L. Crapster, Harold L. Dunkelberger, Charles H. Glatfelter, Richard T. Mara, Norman E. Richardson, W. Richard Schubart

Section XIV: The Industrial Revolution, Classical Economics, and Economic Liberalism

The demands made by industrialization upon the worker were often severe, whether in England or France, Russia or the United States. He had to give up the somewhat desultory habits of work which had usually sufficed him and his ancestors from the beginnings of time. Significantly enough, one of Arkwright's first steps after establishing his factory was to draw up a code of discipline designed to keep his employees steadily on the job. The worker also gave up the ownership of his tools, if he had not already done so under the domestic system, and was thus left a proletarian, …

5. The Democracies Between The Wars (1919-1939), Robert L. Bloom, Basil L. Crapster, Harold L. Dunkelberger, Charles H. Glatfelter, Richard T. Mara, Norman E. Richardson, W. Richard Schubart

Section XVIII: The Western World in the Twentieth Century: The Historical Setting

At first glance, the events of World War I seemed to be a triumphant vindication of the spirit of 1848. It was the leading democratic great powers - Britain, France, and the United States - who had emerged the victors. In the political reconstruction of Europe, republics had replaces many monarchies. West of Russia, new and apparently democratic constitutions were established in Germany, Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. Yet the sad truth was that by the outbreak of World War II in 1939 the majority of the once democratic states of central and eastern Europe …