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Labor books pdf free download, books on work. Labor movement history, child labor, work life. Vintage & modern books free online.


Book Collections on Work, Labor

Work Environment Books – Collection

About 470 work environment books free pdf at the Internet Archive. Some books: The State of Working America, Working Americans 1880-2004, Nazism Fascism and the Working Class, History of the Middle and Working Classes, Working Ethics, Surviving Hard Times, The World of Working Class Women, Life in the Working-Class Family, Economic Democracy for Working Americans, The White Collar Working Class, many more free books on work environment.

Quality of Work Life Books – Collection

About 320 free Quality of Work Life books at the Internet Archive. Some books: There is No Place Like Work, The Living Organization, When 9 to 5 isn’t Enough, Workcare, Feng Shui at Work, How to Build a Balanced Life in a Workaholic World, Balancing Job Satisfaction and Performance, Productive Workplaces, Work from the Inside Out, Making Peace with your Office Life, The End of Work at You Know It, many more Quality of Work Life books free.

Unemployment Books – Collection

Over 730 unemployment books free pdf at the Internet Archive. Some books: How to Maximize Your Unemployment Benefits, Lapses from Full Employment, The Economic Horror, Standards of Unemployment Insurance, Inflation and Unemployment, Understanding Unemployment, The Unemployment Survival Handbook, Unemployment Insurance and Relief in Germany, Employment Law Handbook, many more Unemployment books free pdf.

U.S. Working Class History Books – Collection

About 100 U.S. Working Class History Books Free PDF at the Internet Archive. Some books: American Labor History, A History of the American Worker, Documentary History of American Industrial Society (many volumes), American Working Class History: a representative bibliography, American Labor and Immigration History, Toil and Trouble: A History of American Labor, Work Recreation and Culture, Work Culture and Society, The Training of the Urban Working Class, many more American Working Class History books free pdf.

More Collections on Labor Topics


Suggested Books on Labor and Work

Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants

Bacon, David
Beacon 2008 Dewey Dec. 331.6

For two decades veteran photojournalist David Bacon has documented the connections between labor, migration, and the global economy. In Illegal People Bacon explores the human side of globalization, exposing the many ways it uproots people in Latin America and Asia, driving them to migrate. At the same time, U.S. immigration policy makes the labor of those displaced people a crime in the United States. Illegal People explains why our national policy produces even more displacement, more migration, more immigration raids, and a more divided, polarized society.
Through interviews and on-the-spot reporting from both impoverished communities abroad and American immigrant workplaces and neighborhoods, Bacon shows how the United States’ trade and economic policy abroad, in seeking to create a favorable investment climate for large corporations, creates conditions to displace communities and set migration into motion. Trade policy and immigration are intimately linked, Bacon argues, and are, in fact, elements of a single economic system.

The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutiérrez – Labor Books PDF Free Download

Breslin, Jimmy
Crown 2002 Dewey Dec. 331.6

A towering achievement by one of America’s most respected journalists. A work of conscience that travels from San Matías Cuatchatyotla, a small, dusty town in central Mexico, to the cold and wet streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, this searing exposé chronicles the life and tragic death of an undocumented worker, along with broader issues of municipal corruption and America’s deadly and controversial border policy.

State of the Union: A Century of American Labor

Lichtenstein, Nelson
Princeton Univ. 2002 Dewey Dec. 331

Publisher’s Description

Nelson Lichtenstein examines how trade unionism has waxed and waned in the nation’s political and moral imagination, among both devoted partisans and intransigent foes. From the steel foundry to the burger-grill, from Woodrow Wilson to John Sweeney, from Homestead to Pittston, Lichtenstein weaves together a compelling matrix of ideas, stories, strikes, laws, and people in a streamlined narrative of work and labor in the twentieth century.

From the Folks who Brought you the Weekend: A Short, Illustrated History of Labor in the United States

Murolo, Priscilla and Chitty, A. B.
Norton 2001 Dewey Dec. 331

Hailed in a starred Publishers Weekly review as a work of “impressive even-handedness and analytic acuity . . . that gracefully handles a broad range of subject matter,” From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend is the first comprehensive look at American history through the prism of working people. From indentured servants and slaves in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake to high-tech workers in contemporary Silicon Valley, the book “[puts] a human face on the people, places, events, and social conditions that have shaped the evolution of organized labor” (Library Journal).
From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend also “thoroughly includes the contributions of women, Native Americans, African Americans, immigrants, and minorities, and considers events often ignored in other histories,” writes Booklist, which adds that “thirty pages of stirring drawings by ‘comic journalist’ Joe Sacco add an unusual dimension to the book.”

Working in America: An Eyewitness History

Reef, Catherine
Facts on File 2000 Dewey Dec. 305

Traces the history of labor in the United States, discussing how the work force was affected by slavery, Western expansion, war, the civil rights movement, and other key events in American history.
Eyewitness History is an interdisciplinary and multicultural series that reveals how significant events were seen and interpreted by people from all levels of society. Excerpts from primary sources — memoirs, diaries, letters, newspapers, speeches, advertisements, and more — provide a wide range of viewpoints and enhance a compelling narrative, prompting students to develop the critical-thinking skills that allow them to construct their own opinions about the people and their times.

The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 million Americans and their Families

Shulman, Beth
New Press 2003 Dewey Dec. 331.2

Beth Shulman’s powerfully argued book offers a full program to address the injustice faced by the 30 million Americans who work full time but do not make a living wage. As the influential Harvard Business School newsletter put it, Shulman “specifically outlines how structural changes in the economy may be achieved, thus expanding opportunities for all Americans.”

Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do

Terkel, Studs
Ballantine 1985 Dewey Dec. 331.2

Based on interviews, this study describes the working lives and feelings of people engaged in occupations ranging from interstate truck driver to stockbroker to bookbinder to corporation president. “This is not a dry, academic treatise but a sensitive portrayal of the experience of working, with all its pain, tension, frustrations, and occasional satisfactions.” -Best Sellers.

Vintage Books on Labor

VINTAGE BOOKS – American Labor History PDF

Hull-House Maps and Papers: a Presentation of Nationalities and Wages in a Congested District of Chicago – Labor Books PDF Free Download

Crowell 1895

Papers by residents of Hull-House (Chicago social .settlement) on the sweating system, wage-earning children, cloakmakers, Hebrew, Italian and Bohemian colonies, public charities, etc. – A.L.A.Catalog 1904.

See also: Addams, Jane, Twenty Years at Hull-House, with Autobiographical Notes in Illinois Social History
Bowen, Louise de Koven, Growing up with a City in Biographies & Memoirs in Illinois History

Hull-House (Chicago, Ill.), Social settlements, Settlement house,

Selected Articles on Unemployment

Johnsen, Julia E., comp.
H. W. Wilson 1915 Dewey Dec. 331.1

In the first decades of the 20th century publisher H.W. Wilson produced many volumes in its Debaters’ Handbook Series on social and political issues that were under discussion at the time. Each book contains the full text of selected articles and documents representing opposing views on the issue, along with a substantial bibliography of books and articles. American labor history books pdf.

Most of the books mentioned in these guides are likely to be freely available online. Search by title; first at the Internet Archive (archive.org), then at HathiTrust.org. Referenced magazine articles may also be available online at the same sites, with HathiTrust the preferred site for magazines.


See our books on What is Business Administration PDF


Handbook of Labor Literature

Marot, Helen, comp.
Philadelphia Free Library of Economic and Political Science 1899 Dewey Dec. 016.3 Rf

Classed and annotated list of more important books and pamphlets in English. Articles in periodicals not included. Notes descriptive rather than critical. Lists of labor song books and labor and general sociologic periodicals, publishers’ addresses, author index.
– – A.L.A.Catalog 1904.


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White Capital and Coloured Labour

Olivier, Sydney
London: Independent Labour Party 1910 Dewey Dec. 331.6

A volume in “The Socialist Library”, edited by Labour Member of Parliament Ramsay MacDonald.


Selected Articles on Minimum Wage

Reely, Mary Katharine, comp.
H. W. Wilson 1917 Dewey Dec. 331.2

In the first decades of the 20th century publisher H.W. Wilson produced many volumes in its Debaters’ Handbook Series on social and political issues that were under discussion at the time. Each book contains the full text of selected articles and documents representing opposing views on the issue, along with a substantial bibliography of books and articles. Labor issues books pdf.

Most of the books mentioned in these guides are likely to be freely available online. Search by title; first at the Internet Archive (archive.org), then at HathiTrust.org. Referenced magazine articles may also be available online at the same sites, with HathiTrust the preferred site for magazines.


America’s Working People

Spahr, Charles B.
Longmans 1900 Dewey Dec. 331

Based on personal study of conditions in New England and southern factory towns, Pennsylvania coal mines. Homestead iron mills, Chicago trades unions, farming districts of Minnesota and Dakota, and among negroes and Mormons. – A.L.A.Catalog 1904.


Day with a Tramp, and Other Days

Wyckoff, Walter A.
Scribner 1901 Dewey Dec. 331

Contents: A day with a tramp: With Iowa farmers; A section-hand on the Union Pacific railway; A burro-puncher: Incidents of the slums.
Based on author’s experiences while making sociologic investigations as a day laborer.- A.L.A.Catalog 1904.


The Workers: an Experiment in Reality. The East

– Volume 2: The West

Wyckoff, Walter A.
Scribner 1897-98 Dewey Dec. 331 P R

The East. Two months’ voluntary experience of a college-bred investigator, working as builder’s helper, summer hotel porter, farmhand, in a Pennsylvania logging camp, and while tramping between places.
The West. Further experiences as a day laborer in Chicago and in working his way westward to Pacific coast.- A.L.A.Catalog 1904.


Modern Social Movements; Descriptive Summaries and Bibliographies

Zimand, Savel
NY: Wilson 1921 Dewey Dec. 16.3, 331

Chapter headings are: Trade unionism, The Cooperative Movement, Proposed Experiments in Industrial Democracy, – Copartnership, – National Industrial Councils, – The Plumb Plan, The Single Tax, Socialism, Guild Socialism, Syndicalism, Bolshevism, Anarchism.


Book Collections on Women’s Labor History

Working Women Books – Collection

About 45 working women books free pdf on the Internet Archive. Some books: Women Working, America’s Working Women, Working Life of Women in the 17th Century, Sexual Harassment of Working Women, The Story of Working Women in America, Women Working Home, America’s White Working-Class Women, Working Women in Japan, Victorian Writing and Working Women, Getting By on the Minimum, many more Working Women books free.

VINTAGE BOOKS – Working Women – Women’s Labor History PDF

Selected Articles on the Employment of Women – Best Books on Women’s Labor History PDF to Read

Bullock, Edna D. and Johnsen, Julia E., comps.
H. W. Wilson 1920 Dewey Dec. 331.4

In the first decades of the 20th century publisher H.W. Wilson produced many volumes in its Debaters’ Handbook Series on social and political issues that were under discussion at the time. Each book contains the full text of selected articles and documents representing opposing views on the issue, along with a substantial bibliography of books and articles.

Most of the books mentioned in these guides are likely to be freely available online. Search by title; first at the Internet Archive (archive.org), then at HathiTrust.org. Referenced magazine articles may also be available online at the same sites, with HathiTrust the preferred site for magazines.


Woman Wage-earners: their Past, their Present and their Future

Campbell, Helen
Roberts 1893 Dewey Dec. 331.4

Includes a bibliography of woman’s labor and of the woman question. – A.L.A.Catalog 1904. Women in the labor movement, Women’s jobs in the 1800s. Vintage books on women at work pdf.

Also see:Bedient, Ethel Louise, The Entrance of Women into the Occupations in Illinois in Illinois Social History Books and Articles


How Women May Earn a Living

Candee, Helen Churchill
Macmillan 1900 Dewey Dec. 331.4

Outlines a variety of occupations requiring little time for preparation and gives briefly the requirements, attractions, discouragements and probable remuneration of each. Suggestive and sensible. A.L.A.Catalog 1904.


See our Customs and Traditions USA books


Educated Working Women; Essays on the Economic Position of Women Workers in the Middle Classes

Collet, Clara E.
King 1902 Dewey Dec. 331.4

Full of suggestion, tersely and forcibly written, with touches of humor and happy quotations.- A.L.A.Catalog 1904.


Report of the Bureau of Labor on the Conditions of Wage-Earning Women and Girls – 1914 Report

Report of the Bureau of Labor on the Conditions of Wage-Earning Women and Girls – 1916 Report

Holloway, Charlotte Molyneux Holloway
State of Connecticut 1914 and 1916 Dewey Dec. 331.4

The author was an industrial investigator appointed by the state of Connecticut in 1913 to look into working conditions and wages for women in a number of industries.


The Employments of Women: A Cyclopaedia of Woman’s Work

Penny, Virginia
Boston: Walker, Wise 1863 Dewey Dec. 331.4


Loom and Spindle or Life Among the Early Mill Girls

With a sketch of “The Lowell Offering” and some of its Contributors

Robinson, Harriet H.
Crowell 1898 Dewey Dec. 331.4

A history and description of life at the Lowell cotton mills in the 1830s and 1840s, by a woman who had lived and worked there. The “Lowell Offering” was a literary periodical produced by a group of the mill girls.


How Six Girls Made Money; or, Occupations for Women

Roe, Marion Edmonds
Brethren’s 1887 Dewey Dec. 331.4


Women and Economics; a Study of the Economic Relation Between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution

Stetson, Charlotte Perkins
Small 1898 Dewey Dec. 331.4

Will be widely read and discussed as the cleverest, fairest, most forcible presentation of the views of the rapidly increasing group who l(X)k with favor on extension of industrial employment of women. – A.L.A.Catalog 1904.


The Woman Who Toils; Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls

Van Vorst, Mrs. John (Bessie) and Van Vorst, Marie
Doubleday, Page 1903 Dewey Dec. 331.4

Two wealthy young ladies from Boston separately spent several months disguised as working girls, working in factories and taking rooms among the working classes. They each described their experiences and the conditions they found. Parts and chapters are:
Part 1 by Mrs. John Van Vorst: 1. Introductory, 2. In a Pittsburg Factory, 3. Perry, a New York Mill Town, 4. Making Clothing in Chicago, 5. The Meaning of it All
Part 2 by Marie Van Vorst: 6. Introductory, 7. A Maker of Shoes at Lynn, 8. The Southern Cotton Mills, 9. The Child in the Southern Mills.


Suggested Books on Women’s Labor History

Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China

Chang, Leslie T.
Spiegel & Grau 2008

The first look into the everyday lives of the migrant factory population in China. China has 130 million migrant workers—the largest migration in human history. In Factory Girls, Leslie T. Chang, a former correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Beijing, tells the story of these workers primarily through the lives of two young women, whom she follows over the course of three years as they attempt to rise from the assembly lines of Dongguan, an industrial city in China’s Pearl River Delta.

Out to Work

Kessler-Harris, Alice
Oxford Univ. 2003

First published in 1982, this pioneering work traces the transformation of “women’s work” into wage labor in the United States, identifying the social, economic, and ideological forces that have shaped our expectations of what women do. Basing her observations upon the personal experience of individual American women set against the backdrop of American society, Alice Kessler-Harris examines the effects of class, ethnic and racial patterns, changing perceptions of wage work for women, and the relationship between wage-earning and family roles.


Suggested Books about Child Labor

Children for Hire: The Perils of Child Labor in the United States

Levine, Marvin J.
Praeger 2003 Dewey Dec. 331.3

Despite popular belief, the problem of illegal child labor has not been remedied. The practice persists in the United States and even appears to be increasing. Levine, an acknowledged expert in the field, reveals the nature and magnitude of this old problem in today’s economy. Levine explains that since 1981, there has been a relaxation in enforcement of federal child labor law provisions. He presents the complicated elements and troubling implications of a problem that has come to be ignored or overlooked in American society, focusing especially on matters of occupational health and safety. This book is important reading for the general public, as well as for scholars and policymakers involved with children’s and labor issues in the United States.
The United States has more of its children in the workforce than any other developed country. They are found in textile, jewelry, and machine shops in New York and New Jersey, in Southeast supermarkets operating meat-cutting machines and paper-box bailers, in Washington state selling candy door-to-door, and in farming operations throughout the country.

Child Labor – Collection – Labor Books PDF Free Download

About 250 child labor books free pdf on the Internet Archive. Includes books on child labor laws history and child labor in the United States. Some books: Child Labor and Sweatshops, Child Labor Then and Now, Child Labor in Sub-Saharan Africa, Child Labor: a world history companion, Selected Articles on Child Labor, Crusade for the Children, Teen Rights and Freedom: labor and employment, Child Labor Practices in Africa, The Story of Child Labor Laws, Iqbal Masih and the Crusaders against Child Slavery, many more free online books to read about child labor.

Selected Articles on Child Labor

Bullock, Edna D., comp.
H. W. Wilson 1911 Dewey Dec. 331.3

Child labor laws history, child labor in the U.S. In the first decades of the 20th century publisher H.W. Wilson produced many volumes in its Debaters’ Handbook Series on social and political issues that were under discussion at the time. Each book contains the full text of selected articles and documents representing opposing views on the issue, along with a substantial bibliography of books and articles.

Most of the books mentioned in these guides are likely to be freely available online. Search by title; first at the Internet Archive (archive.org), then at HathiTrust.org. Referenced magazine articles may also be available online at the same sites, with HathiTrust the preferred site for magazines.


Book Collections about Labor Movements

Labor Movement – Collection

More than 700 Labor Movement books free PDF from the Internet Archive. Some books: Violence and the Labour Movement, Trade Unionism and Labor Problems, The Irish Labour Movement, A Short History of Industrial Labor Conditions under Capitalism, Testimonials from the Guatemalan Labor Movement, Work and Labour in Canada, Alberta Labour, The American Labor Movement, Chicago and the Labor Movement, many more pdf Labor Movement books free.

VINTAGE BOOKS – Labor Movement

Selected Articles on The Closed Shop

Beman, Lamar T., comp.
H. W. Wilson 1922 Dewey Dec. 331.8

In the first decades of the 20th century publisher H.W. Wilson produced many volumes in its Debaters’ Handbook Series on social and political issues that were under discussion at the time. Each book contains the full text of selected articles and documents representing opposing views on the issue, along with a substantial bibliography of books and articles. Labor history books pdf free download.

Most of the books mentioned in these guides are likely to be freely available online. Search by title; first at the Internet Archive (archive.org), then at HathiTrust.org. Referenced magazine articles may also be available online at the same sites, with HathiTrust the preferred site for magazines.


Selected Articles on Modern Industrial Movements

Bloomfield, Daniel, comp.
NY: Wilson 1919 Dewey Dec. 331

A volume in the publisher’s “Handbook Series. In addition to the selection of articles it contains a bibliography. Topics covered are:- Workers’ Co-operative Movement, – Syndicalism, Industrial Unionism, and the I.W.W., – Shop Stewards, – Scientific Management, – Guild Socialism, – Management Sharing, – Bolshevism, – Labor Parties.


Selected Articles on Trade Unions

Bullock, Edna D., comp.
H. W. Wilson 1913 Dewey Dec. 331.8

In the first decades of the 20th century publisher H.W. Wilson produced many volumes in its Debaters’ Handbook Series on social and political issues that were under discussion at the time. Each book contains the full text of selected articles and documents representing opposing views on the issue, along with a substantial bibliography of books and articles.

Most of the books mentioned in these guides are likely to be freely available online. Search by title; first at the Internet Archive (archive.org), then at HathiTrust.org. Referenced magazine articles may also be available online at the same sites, with HathiTrust the preferred site for magazines.


Organized Labor, its Problems, Purposes and Ideals, and the Present and Future of American Wage Earners

Mitchell, John
American Book and Bible 1903 Dewey Dec. 331.8

The author was President of the United Mine Workers.


Modern Social Movements; Descriptive Summaries and Bibliographies

Zimand, Savel
NY: Wilson 1921 Dewey Dec. 16.3, 330

Chapter headings are:

Trade unionism – The Cooperative Movement – Proposed Experiments in Industrial Democracy:(Copartnership, National Industrial Councils, The Plumb Plan); – The Single Tax – Socialism – Guild Socialism – Syndicalism – Bolshevism – Anarchism.

Visit the Home page of our Century Past Free Online Library

Labor Unions Books Free PDF – Collection – Labor Books PDF Free Download

About 1,650 labor unions books free pdf at the Internet Archive. Some books: Directory of U.S. Labor Organizations, Modern Trade Unionism, The Unions, The Story of America’s Unions, Kenya’s Trade Union Movement, Labor and Politics in Libya and Arab Africa, Inside America’s New Union Movement, Unions and Unionists in Australia, many more Labor Unions books free.


Suggested Books about Labor Movements

CORE BOOKS – Labor Movement PDF

There is Power in a Union

Dray, Philip
Doubleday 2010

A history of American labor from the dawn of the industrial age to the present day. From the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, the first real factories in America, to the triumph of unions in the twentieth-century and their waning influence today, the contest between labor and capital for their share of American bounty has shaped our national experience.


Labor in America: A History

Dubofsky, Melvyn
Harlan Davidson 2004

Even in the face of anti-union legislation and a continuing decline in the number of organised workers, the purpose of this latest book edition — the powerful and appealing story of the American worker from the colonial workshop to the modern mass-assembly line — remains the same as that of the 1st edition written more than 50years ago: to enlighten present and future generations of students about the history of work, workers and worker movements in the US, and to encourage them to learn and think about those who built America and those who will shape its future.


Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century

Shaw, Randy
University of California 2008

Cesar Chavez is the most prominent Latino in United States history books, and much has been written about Chavez and the United Farm Worker’s heyday in the 1960s and ’70s. But left untold has been their ongoing impact on 21st century social justice movements. Beyond the Fields unearths this legacy, and describes how Chavez and the UFW’s imprint can be found in the modern reshaping of the American labor movement, the building of Latino political power, the transformation of Los Angeles and California politics, the fight for environmental justice, and the burgeoning national movement for immigrant rights.


American Workers, American Unions: The Twentieth Century

Zieger, Robert H. and Gall, Gilbert J.
Johns Hopkins University 2002

Highly acclaimed and widely read, American Workers, American Unions (first published in 1986) provides a concise and compelling history of American workers and their unions in twentieth-century America.


Historical Encyclopedia of American Labor (2 Vols) – Labor Books PDF Free Download

Weir, Robert and Hanlan, James P.
Greenwood 2003

The history of the American labor movement is filled with advances, triumphs, setbacks, decline, and resurgence. American unions have not only protected workers and influenced business practices, but have also played important roles in American politics. Serving as the ideal place for students and interested readers to begin their research, this two-volume A-Z resource covers the history of organized labor in all of its complexity, from the dawn of the industrial revolution to the post-industrial age.


St. James Encyclopedia of Labor History Worldwide (2 Vols)

Schlager, Neil, ed.
St. James 2003

Provides in-depth analysis of more than 300 key events in labor history over the last 200 years, focusing on the relevance of these events to both the labor movement as a whole and to societal changes around the world. Each entry, written and signed by an expert in the field, is three to five pages in length and includes a description of the event, information about the key players involved and discusses the event in historical context.

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