Down on the Killing Floor: Black and White Workers in Chicago's Packinghouses, 1904-54

Front Cover
University of Illinois Press, 1997 - Business & Economics - 309 pages
This detailed study of the
relationship between race relations and unionization in Chicago's meatpacking
industry draws on traditional primary and secondary materials and on an
extensive set of interviews conducted in the mid-1980s that explore subjective
dimensions of the workers' experience.
"An ideal case study
to analyze one of the central problems in American labor history--the
relation ship between racial identity and working class formation and
organization." -- James R. Barrett, author of Work and Community
in the Jungle: Chicago's Packinghouse Workers, 1894-1922
"Meticulously researched,
grounded firmly in extensive oral history and archival sources, and carefully
argued, Down on the Killing Floor will be indispensable reading
for everyone interested in race and labor."
-- Eric Arnesen, author of Waterfront Workers of New Orleans: Race,
Class and Politics, 1863-1923
A volume in the series
The Working Class in American History, edited by David Brody, Alice Kessler-Harris,
David Montgomery, and Sean Wilentz
 

Selected pages

Contents

Hog Butcher for the World Chicagos Meatpacking Industry
7
The Stockyards Labor Council
44
Chicagos Packinghouse Workers in the 1920s
73
Negro and White Unite and Fight The Rise of the Chicago PWOC
96
Organizing the Stockyards 193740
130
Chicagos Packinghouse Workers during World War II
167
The Path Not Taken The Formation of the United Packinghouse Workers of America
201
Epilogue
247
Notes
251
Index
301
Copyright

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About the author (1997)

Rick Halpern is a professor of history and Bissell-Heyd Chair of American Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough. He is the coauthor of Meatpackers: An Oral History of Black Packinghouse Workers and Their Struggle for Racial and Economic Equality.