Introduction : face to face with tragedy -- Socialism with its working clothes on : industrial capitalism, radical unionism, and the roots of repression -- Protecting the business people : class, law, and the criminalization of radical industrial unionism -- In the war of capital against labor someone must suffer : the war and the IWW -- I'll take neither mercy nor pity : repression and the IWW during the Red Scare -- Dealing the death blow : repression and the IWW after the Red Scare -- Between the drowning and the broken : Punishment, law, and the legacies of repression -- Conclusion : a vision we don't possess.
Summary:
"In 1917, the Industrial Workers of the World was rapidly gaining strength and members. Within a decade, this radical union was effectively destroyed, the victim of the most remarkable campaign of legal repression and vigilantism in American history. Under the Iron Heel is the first comprehensive account of this campaign. Founded in 1905, the IWW offered to the millions of workers aggrieved by industrial capitalism a radical and militant program that drew them into the union's ranks in great numbers. But its growth, coinciding with World War I and the Russian Revolution, was seen by powerful capitalists and government officials as an existential threat and it had to be stopped. In Under the Iron Heel, Ahmed White documents the torrent of legal persecution and extralegal, sometimes lethal violence that shattered the IWW. In so doing, he reveals the remarkable courage of those who faced this campaign, uncovers the origins of the profoundly unequal and conflicted nation we know today, and lays bare disturbing truths about the law, political repression, and the limits of free speech and association in class society"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.