Product Description

FROM the beginning of the Industrial Age and continuing into the twenty-first century, companies faced with militant workers and organizers have often turned to agencies that specialized in ending strikes and breaking unions. Although their secretive nature has made it difficult to fully explore the history of this industry, From Blackjacks to Briefcases does just that. By digging through subpoenaed documents of strike-bound companies, their mercenaries, and the testimony of executive officers and rank-and-file strike-breakers, Robert Smith examines the inner workings of the antiunion industry. In a clear and lively style, he brings to life the violent armed guards employed on the picket line or in the coal camps; the ruffians who filled the armies marshaled by the "King of the Strike-breakers," Pearl Bergoff; the labor spies who wrecked countless unions; and, after the Wagner Act, those who manipulated national labor law to serve their clients. In From Blackjacks to Briefcases, Smith follows the history of this ongoing struggle and tells a compelling story that parallels the history of the United States over the last century and a half.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1021106 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Review
"This work will become the convenient handbook for the distasteful but necessary look at the rearguard tactics that still too often shape American labor-management relations." - Scott Molloy, Labor Research Center, University of Rhode Island

About the Author
Robert Michael Smith is the author of a number of articles on labor relations and the progressive movement. He is a professor of history at Sinclair Community College, Dayton, Ohio.

Customer Reviews

A good read
A thorough study of a little known aspect of the labor story. Smith explains that the labor movement has never taken hold in the United States partly because employers, since the dawn of the age of industrial upheaval and continuing until today have turned to contractors who specialized in breaking strikes and smashing unions. Packed with great quotes, plenty of insight and lots of vilonce he plows virgin ground as he uncovers the wide spread use of hired guards, like the Pinkertons or Baldwin-Felts thugs, the tactics of armies of professional strikebreakers and the machinations of labor spies and labor relations consultants. A must read for labor historian, labor members and anyone interested in modern American history.

Labor Studies Journal review
From Blackjacks to Briefcases: A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States. By Robert Michael Smith. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2003. 179 pages. $44.95 hardback $16.95 paper. This book is as interesting as the title promises. It is an excellent little volume, succinct and well-researched. The main thesis of the book is compellingly laid out, bringing readers easily to share the author's contention that unionbusting today is much the same as it was in 1880. From Blackjacks to Briefcases deserves a place in the personal lending library of every labor educator and trade unionist in the country, and it should be passed from reader to reader. This book will fire up union supporters with frustration that labor's story is not told. Few people, even in the labor movement, know the tremendous investment and effort put into unionbusting over the past century. The book vividly demonstrates the need for labor history as an integral part of labor education and a stimulus to activism. For those who need convincing, this book presents compelling evidence of class warfare in America, even to this current day.