Union Busting in the Gilded Age

Professor Chad Pearson joins me to talk about his latest book Capital's Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen, and Employers in the Long Nineteenth Century. The book explores the way in which employer organizations helped stope industrial action and bust union activism. The tactics "employed" will shock you, even if you know a great deal about the period. Pearson also makes a strong case for thinking about these groups in a broader manner than past scholars have, including the KKK in the typically class-centric story.

Essential Reading:

Chad Pearson, Capital's Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen, and Employers in the Long Nineteenth Century (2022).

Recommended Reading:

Vilja Hulden, The Bosses' Union: How Employers Organized to Fight Labor before the New Deal (2023).

Aaron Goings, The Port of Missing Men: Billy Gohl, Labor, and Brutal Times in the Pacific Northwest (2020).

James Gray Pope, "Snubbed Landmark: Why United States v. Cruikshank (1876) Belongs at the Heart of the American Constitutional Canon," Harvard Civil Rights - Civil Liberties Law Review 49 (2014): 385-447.

Brian D. Palmer, "The New New Poor Law: A Chapter in the Current Class War Waged from Above," Labour / Le Travail 84 (Fall 2019), 53–105.

Steven Hahn, "Emancipation, Incarceration, and the Boundaries of Coercion," Journal of Southern History 88, no. 1 (February 2022): 5-38. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.