Smokestacks in the Hills: Rural-Industrial Workers in West Virginia (Working Class in American History) - Softcover

Martin, Lou

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252081021 ISBN 13: 9780252081026

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2015

Synopsis

Long considered an urban phenomenon, industrialization also transformed the American countryside. Lou Martin weaves the narrative of how the relocation of steel and pottery factories to Hancock County, West Virginia, created a rural and small-town working class--and what that meant for communities and for labor. As Martin shows, access to land in and around steel and pottery towns allowed residents to preserve rural habits and culture. Workers in these places valued place and local community. Because of their belief in localism, an individualistic ethic of "making do," and company loyalty, they often worked to place limits on union influence. At the same time, this localism allowed workers to adapt to the dictates of industrial capitalism and a continually changing world on their own terms--and retain rural ways to a degree unknown among their urbanized peers. Throughout, Martin ties these themes to illuminating discussions of capital mobility, the ways in which changing work experiences defined gender roles, and the persistent myth that modernizing forces bulldozed docile local cultures. Revealing and incisive, Smokestacks in the Hills reappraises an overlooked stratum of American labor history and contributes to the ongoing dialogue on shifts in national politics in the postwar era.

About this title

Book Description:

Welding together factory life and local ways in a changing countryside

About the Author:

Lou Martin is an assistant professor of history at Chatham University.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0252081021
• ISBN 13: 9780252081026
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 264