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Dissertation Information for Elizabeth Cocke Ricketts

NAME:
- Elizabeth Cocke Ricketts

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- History

SCHOOL:
- Emory University (USA) (1996)

ADVISORS:
- Jonathan Prude

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Allen Tullos
- Nick Salvatore

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: "Our battle for industrial freedom": Radical politics in the coal fields of Central Pennsylvania, 1916-1926

Abstract: This study explores the political economy of the coal-mining communities of Central Pennsylvania, on the years 1916 to 1926. The study begins with an examination of the relationship between the everyday experiences of life and work, and the political sensibility expressed by the coal-mining population of the region in the period before World War I, and then moves to a consideration of the impact of the war era, including the 1919 strike.

The years from 1916 to 1926 comprised the period during which John Brophy was president of UMWA District 2 in Central Pennsylvania. During the Brophy presidency, the protest politics of the District merged with the articulate idealism of John Brophy to produce a formal critique of American society that included an agenda for radical social and economic change. That critique, "The Miners' Program," called for nationalization of the mines under democratic management, shared work through a thirty-hour week, a national labor party, and a broad program of workers' education. The tenets of "The Miners' Program" became the ideological center of the radical wing of the UMWA which, in the decade of the 1920's, challenged not only the structures of corporate capitalism, but also the business unionism of John L. Lewis.

The study examines the unsuccessful efforts to implement "The Miners' Program" through the Nationalization Research Committee (chaired by Brophy) and the unionization drive conducted during 1922 coal strike, with attention to the District's connection to an emerging network of New York based socialist institutions such as the Bureau of Industrial Research, the League for Industrial Democracy, the Workers' Education Bureau, the Garland Fund, Brookwood Labor College, and the American Civil Liberties Union, which shared its social and economic agenda.

Finally, the study considers the divisive nature of the Ku Klux Klan, and the open-shop drive during the mid-1920's, and details the District's response, particularly in efforts at workers' education and the development of local labor chautauquas. The study concludes with discussion of Brophy's run for the UMWA presidency in 1926, and the political aftermath of his defeat.

MPACT Scores for Elizabeth Cocke Ricketts

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-03-31 11:56:09

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Students under Elizabeth Cocke Ricketts

ADVISEES:
- None

COMMITTEESHIPS:
- None