"Sit down
and read.
Educate yourself for the coming conflict."
--Mother Jones,
labor organizer, 1837-1930
Bibliographies
- My Labor History Book List, organized by chronology and topic
- Worker Rights: A Bibliography
- Organization of American Historians Bibliography of Labor History (short, older)
- Check out this site's Culture page which lists bibliographies of labor-oriented movies and documentaries, as well as Novels/Literature, Art and Music
- Annual Bibliography (latest 2007) from LAWCHA website
Research Portals
Information portals with significant contributions to labor history. (A number of other research portals are categorized within topical or chronological pages on this site)
- Reference Sources In U.S. Labor Studies New York University and
- WWW Virtual Library-- Labour History -major listings of sites in US and other countries
- WWW Virtual Library--Economic and Business History
- Cornell University Labor and Working class history portal
- Holt Labor Library -- Labor Studies and Radical History including Labor and Employment Law
- Labor Research portal from Berkeley
- Labor Contracts database state by state, union name, occupation
- History Matters General Search Page many of the primary source documents that I have listed on this site are from this wonderful site which also contains syllabi, lesson plans, and is a virtual treasure trove on the net
- Women social movements history, Alexander Street , has numerous documents and lesson plan ideas; most are not accessible outside the numerous university libraries that subscribe
- Library of Congress American Memory collection use search engine to search for workers, unions, labor
- Library of Congress Labor History Sources in the Manuscript Division
- Reading Marx's Capital With David Harvey - an on-line course. From the world's foremost economic Marxist geographer, the net offers you a seat in his class
- The
George Meany Memorial Archives
Online exhibits, reference assistance and more at the archives established by the AFL-CIO to preserve its historical records and make them available for research. - The
Garment Industry in the United States, 1860-1975
A Historian’s Bibliography - How to Research a Corporation
Digitized Collections of primary sources
While this site links many primary source materials organized by topic or chronology on other pages, here I will begin to list sites with significant amounts of digitized on-line materials. I am just starting this section, so check back later for more materials.
- Early American Marxism, 1864-1946 thousands of pages of documents, searchable by year and subject.
- Haymarket Digital Collection - primary source material, especially trial transcripts, of the Chicago Historical Society materials on Haymarket
- Women Working 1800-1939 provides access to digitized historical, manuscript, and image resources selected from Harvard University's library and museum collections. 500,000 digitized pages and images including 7,500 pages of manuscripts; 3,500 books and pamphlets 1,200 photographs"
- Michigan State University sources on US radicalism -digitized
- Debs Collection at Indiana State University -many documents have been digitized
- Labor and Radical Papers of the Pacific Northwest
- The Masses On-Line
- Document Sets from University of Pittsburgh Archives " complete set or series of documents that have been scanned and can be used to do online documentary research. 1877 railroad strike to 1940s
- The Samuel Gompers Papers - hundreds of documents digitized on-line
- American Left Ephemera Collection including Socialist Party of America (SPUSA), Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA), and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Digitized items include flyers, leaflets, pamphlets, posters, postcards, illustrations, photographs, pins, ribbons, and miscellaneous objects.
- Joe Hill Collection, Tamiment
- Mother Earth (Emma Goldman)
- Radicalized Responses to the Great Depression- copies of literature, handbills,etc
- Documenting Louisiana Sugar searchable databases that allow users to examine in he evolution of cane sugar. Documents, data
- Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills Digital Collection documents the business activities and concerns of management and workers in the Atlanta mill during the early twentieth century; 1914-1915 strike in Atlanta; child labor, labor spies, police
- Farmworker
Movement Documentation Project
Digitized labor journals/directories/proceedings
- American Federationist (search for other volumes)
- Proceedings AFL (search site for other volumes)
- The Communist (St. Louis, Missouri, 1868)
- Switchmen's Journal 1893 1907 1918
- Locomotive Engineers Journal
- Railroad Trainmen 1904 1922
- Railway Conductor
- Mixer and Server,1920 (Hotel and Restaurant Workers)
- Sheet Metal Workers Journal Vol 15; see also vol 17 Vol 27
- Railway Carmen's Journal 1919; see also Volume 21
- International horseshoers' monthly magazine, Volumes 23-24
- The Painter and Decorator 1914
- Machinists' Monthly Journal Georgia State University Library Southern Labor Archives " IAMAW's official journal published from 1889 to 1956, and The Machinist, a newspaper published from 1946 to 1994. Containing images and stories of American and Canadian workers, these publications document activities of the union and its local lodges for over a century."
- 1894 St. Louis Labor Directory
- American Labor Year Book 1919-1920
Guides to Primary Source Materials
I am just beginning this section, so check back later for more listings
- Labor Unions Conventions and Proceedings, 1850-1941,
- guide from Cornell Research Guide from Tamiment
- Labor Collections at UMSL-WHMC
- Working Class Periodicals in Chicago
- Portal to 5000 libraries and archives that have primary source materials, organized by state and region. This is very useful if you don't have access to Archives USA or access to a university library.
- Dorothy Day -Catholic Worker Collection
Labor Terms & Quotes
- Glossary of Labor Terms from the American Labor Studies Center --wonderful resource for obscure or less well-known terms
- Labor History Glossary and Resources (pdf) from Wisconsin Labor History Society
- Labor Quotes from American Labor Studies Center
- Samuel Gompers quotes from SG Papers site
- Today in labor history from Union Communications Services
Organizations of Labor History
- Labor and Working Class History Association the key organization for labor historians, with numerous links and a guide to historians in the field
- Working Class Studies Association
- Center for Working-Class Studies a terrific site with many links
- H-Labor email discussion list
- New York State Labor History Association
- Pacific Northwest Labor History Association
- Southern Labor History Association
- Labor Studies Association
- Illinois Labor History Society Website: sites in Illinois history, some labor history curriculum, books, much more!
- Wisconsin Labor History Society
- Economic Policy Institute (recent historical economic trends)
- History at the Department of Labor with links to governmental agencies
Journals in the Field
Labor history is American history, global history, business history, women's history, and African-American history, etc. So any thorough search on a topic would include a search on JSTOR and other academic library search engines for the appropriate articles in the field.
- International Labor and Working Class History
- Labor History
- Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas
- Labour/LeTravail
- Labor Studies Journal
- Labour/Le Travail online (History Cooperative)
- New Labor Forum: A Journal of Ideas, Analysis and Debate
- WorkingUSA
- Left History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Historical Inquiry and Debate (York University)
- Enterprise and Society
- Business History Review