BREAD AND ROSES
Audio only

BREAD AND ROSES

The American Labor Movement, 1880-1940By Frank Joseph DonnellyNarrated by Delia Vasquez
Length5h 24m

About this audiobook

BREAD AND ROSES — Audiobook · Narrated by Delia Vasquez. 🎧 Listen time: 5 hours 25 minutes The complete narrative history of the American labor movement — Samuel Gompers, Mother Jones, Eugene Debs, the Wagner Act, and the sixty-year struggle for the eight-hour day, 1880–1940. On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out on the eighth floor of the Asch Building in lower Manhattan. The Triangle Waist Company's exit doors had been locked to prevent unauthorized breaks. In eighteen minutes, 146 people died, 123 of them women. Among the witnesses was Frances Perkins, who would become Franklin Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor and, with legislators Robert Wagner and Alfred E. Smith, transform the tragedy into a generation of factory safety law. This is the story of how American workers wrested the weekend, the eight-hour day, and the right to bargain collectively from resistant corporations — through strikes, court battles, Pinkerton agents, and National Guard rifles. Historian Frank Joseph Donnelly traces the full arc of American labor from the Knights of Labor, the Homestead massacre, and the Pullman strike through the IWW's Lawrence textile strike, the Red Scare's destruction of radical unionism, and the New Deal's Wagner Act. Inside this American labor history audiobook: The Homestead Strike — Carnegie and Frick's 300 Pinkerton agents against the Amalgamated steelworkers in 1892, the battle on the river, and a defeat that set back industrial unionism for forty years (Chapter 3) The Lawrence "Bread and Roses" strike, 1912 — 25,000 workers from 50 nationalities walking out after Polish women discovered their pay envelopes were 32 cents short; IWW organizer Joseph Ettor's multilingual strike committee; and the children's exodus that turned national attention (Chapter 8) The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire — the 146 dead, acquitted owners who paid $75 per victim in civil damages, and the Factory Investigating Commission that ran a direct line from locked factory doors in 1911 to OSHA in 1970 (Chapter 6) Mother Jones and the Children's Crusade — the 80-year-old organizer who marched child mill workers from Kensington, Pennsylvania to Theodore Roosevelt's door, was arrested by military tribunal, and was buried among the workers killed in the 1898 Virden Massacre (Chapter 18) Eugene Debs — sentenced under the Espionage Act in 1918, he received nearly one million votes for president from his cell (Chapter 19) The Wagner Act and the CIO's sit-down strikes — John L. Lewis's 1935 AFL punch, U.S. Steel's secret capitulation in early 1937, and the Memorial Day Massacre — Chicago police shooting ten Republic Steel strikers — that secured the moral high ground for industrial unionism (Chapters 13–16) The eight-hour day, the weekend, child labor laws, workplace safety — these were not gifts from enlightened employers. They were wrested from resistant corporations by workers who refused to yield. The labor movement was always about two things: bread, and roses too. This is the story of how both were won. For listeners of the audiobook of Doris Kearns Goodwin's THE BULLY PULPIT and Erik Larson's THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY.

Audiobook details

GenreHistory
Length5 hrs 24 mins
Narrated byDelia Vasquez
FormatAudiobook
LanguageEnglish

More from Frank Joseph Donnelly

The Gulag Archipelago Volume 3
The Gulag Archipelago Volume 3Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn21h 56m4.7 (8.9K)$46 · $0.00
Pearl of Great Price
Pearl of Great PriceJoseph Smith3h 8m4.7 (7.2K)$1.20 · $0.00
The Redeemer’s Return
The Redeemer’s ReturnArthur W. Pink13h 18m4.7 (589)$20
The Happiest Man on Earth
The Happiest Man on EarthEddie Jaku3h 48m4.6 (178K)$7 · $0.00
Motherland
MotherlandJulia Ioffe17h 52m4.7 (2.5K)$40 · $0.00
Where Cowards Go to Die
Where Cowards Go to DieBenjamin Sledge8h 42m4.7 (351)$20 · $0.00
The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America (Annotated)
The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America (Annotated)Howard Irving Chapelle, Tappan Adney13h 9m4.8 (150)$0.99 · $0.00
Revolutionaries
RevolutionariesSanjeev Sanyal11h 23m4.6 (2.6K)$29 · $0.00
We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled
We Crossed a Bridge and It TrembledWendy Pearlman6h4.6 (5.2K)$24 · $0.00
Unbroken Bonds of Battle
Unbroken Bonds of BattleJohnny Joey Jones8h 31m4.6 (2.6K)$8 · $0.00
The Daughter of Auschwitz
The Daughter of AuschwitzTova Friedman, Malcolm Brabant7h 54m4.6 (16.7K)$26 · $0.00
Lily's Promise
Lily's PromiseLily Ebert, Dov Forman8h 54m4.6 (16.1K)$29 · $0.00
Saving My Enemy
Saving My EnemyBob Welch9h 11m4.6 (2.3K)$20
On Democracies and Death Cults
On Democracies and Death CultsDouglas Murray10h 38m4.6 (6.5K)$29 · $0.00
Across the River
Across the RiverKent Babb11h 40m4.6 (927)$29 · $0.00
The Red Record (Annotated)
The Red Record (Annotated)Ida B. Wells-Barnett5h 19m4.8 (102)$0.99 · $0.00
Balcony Over Jerusalem: A Middle East Memoir - Israel, Palestine and Beyond
Balcony Over Jerusalem: A Middle East Memoir - Israel, Palestine and BeyondJohn Lyons12h 37m4.6 (1.4K)$33 · $0.00
The Fire Next Time
The Fire Next TimeJames Baldwin2h 25m4.6 (159.1K)$15
Endurance
EnduranceAlfred Lansing6h 1m4.6 (40.8K)$20
Beyond
BeyondStephen Walker15h 39m4.6 (3.2K)$33 · $0.00

You may also like

Antifa
AntifaMark Bray7h 37m4.1 (5.6K)$20
County
CountyDavid A. Ansell MD, MPH7h 6m4.2 (1.2K)$17
Army Life in a Black Regiment
Army Life in a Black RegimentThomas Wentworth Higginson9h 38m4.3 (3.8K)$2.30
Army Life in a Black Regiment
Army Life in a Black RegimentThomas Wentworth Higginson9h 19m4.2 (2.4K)$2 · $0.00
The Indispensables
The IndispensablesPatrick K. O’Donnell13h 18m4.5 (1.3K)$23
The Only Thing Worth Dying For
The Only Thing Worth Dying ForEric Blehm12h 44m4.3 (13.4K)$33 · $0.00
The Life of George Washington (Summarized Edition)
The Life of George Washington (Summarized Edition)John Marshall13h 26m4.1 (309)$2
MOTHER JONES
MOTHER JONESMother Jones5h 44m4.2 (1K)$2 · $0.00
Bound for Canaan
Bound for CanaanFergus Bordewich5h 30m4.3 (1.8K)$24 · $0.00
Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther
Selections from the Table Talk of Martin LutherMartin Luther2h 32m4.1 (299)$2 · $0.00
Desperate Sons
Desperate SonsLes Standiford10h 28m4.0 (627)$29 · $0.00
Memoirs of the Confederate War for Independence (Annotated)
Memoirs of the Confederate War for Independence (Annotated)Heros von Borcke16h 39m4.4 (268)$0.99 · $0.00
Caesar’s Legion
Caesar’s LegionStephen Dando-Collins12h 19m4.1 (3.2K)$23
Stories of the Pilgrims
Stories of the PilgrimsMargaret B. Pumphrey4h4.1 (850)$12
How to Stand Up to a Dictator
How to Stand Up to a DictatorMaria Ressa10h 14m4.4 (9.4K)$29 · $0.00
The Great Strike on the "Q"
The Great Strike on the "Q"John A. Hall3h 56m$2 · $0.00
James Madison
James MadisonJeff Broadwater9h 22m3.6 (220)$20 · $0.00
The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77
The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77Samuel Adams Drake1h 58m3.4 (10)$2 · $0.00
A Greater Goal
A Greater GoalElizabeth Rusch7h 5m4.3 (193)$24 · $0.00
15 Must-Read Civil War Books
15 Must-Read Civil War BooksJames Ford Rhodes, Jefferson Davis, Frank H. Alfriend, John Torrey Morse, John Alexander Logan, Thomas Elbert Vineyard, Ephraim Douglass Adams, John Esten Cooke, William Tecumseh Sherman, Ulysses S. Grant, John D. Billings, Charles W. Reed, Louisa May Alcott, James Madison Page, Heros von Borcke, Mary Boykin Chesnut343h 20m4.4 (11)$1.99