A comprehensive look at the history of the American labor movement. Takes the reader from the Molly Maguires through Eugene Debs and the Pullman Strike, Big Bill Haywood and the Wobblies, and the 1937 Flint sitdowns to the 1970 General Motors strike.

An account of the bloody and revolutionary battles that marked the rise of the American labor movement. From the first famous martyrs, the "Molly Maguires" in the 1870s Pennsylvania coal fields, to the crucial workers' victory of the 1930s in the sitdown strike against General Motors, it was a history of pitched battle that frequently erupted into open warfare. One union even won a naval engagement (against a shipload of scabs). But this is also the story of the factional wars within the movement itself, and of the great leaders the movement generated: Eugene V. Debs, Samuel Gompers, William Z. Foster, Bill Haywood, John L. Lewis, Walter Reuther, and many more. Their lives, and the life of the movement they built, carry a special relevance today, even though labor chieftains now hold meetings poolside at resorts. For the labor wars were fought violently and often illegally, against the arrayed power of antagonistic courts, sheriffs, police, National Guardsmen and even Presidents.--From publisher description.