Description
Book Synopsis2022 International Labor History Association Book of the YearA dramatic, deeply researched account of how legal repression and vigilantism brought down the Wobbliesand how the destruction of their union haunts us to this day. 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 the promise of a better world. But its growth, coinciding with World War I and the Russian Revolution and driven by uncompromising militancy, was seen by powerful capitalists and government officials as an existential threat that had to be eliminated. In Under the Iron Heel, Ahmed White documents the torrent of legal persecution and extralegal, som
Trade Review"A comprehensive account of the campaign waged by the American state to destroy the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, or ‘Wobblies’) in the decade surrounding the First World War. . . . Harrowing reading." * World Socialist Website *
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Under the Iron Heel examines the role that progressive and conservative policymakers played in subduing the union, raising questions about political tolerance for organized labor today." * Yale Law Report *
Table of ContentsContents
Introduction
Face to Face with Tragedy
1. Socialism with Its Working Clothes On
Industrial Capitalism, Radical Unionism, and the Roots of Repression
2. Protecting the Business People
Class, Law, and the Criminalization of Radical Industrial Unionism
3. In the War of Capital against Labor Someone Must Suffer
The War and the IWW
4. I’ll Take neither Mercy nor Pity
Repression and the IWW during the Red Scare
5. Dealing the Death Blow
Repression and the IWW after the Red Scare
6. Between the Drowning and the Broken
Punishment, Law, and the Legacies of Repression
Conclusion
A Vision We Don’t Possess
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
