Focusing on the city of Worcester, Massachusetts the author takes the reader to the saloons, the amusement parks, and the movie houses where American industrial workers spent their leisure hours, to explore the nature of working-class culture and class relations during this era.

This volume presents for the first time an edited version of Harold D. Woodbury's «Notes on the History of Woodbury & Company, Inc.» This history offers a fascinating glimpse into the workings of a family firm that emerged as the largest commercial engraver in central New England in the 1890s. The company specialized in Bird's-Eye-Views of factories and industrial buildings, large numbers of which graced the walls of boardrooms and executive suites in the Northeast and throughout North America. A notable success for the company, in addition to its excellence in engraved letterheads, was its series of First Day Covers, pictorial impressions of commemorative stamps. The introduction to this volume focuses on printing and printing-related businesses in Worcester, Massachusetts: their founders, contributions to technological innovation, and contributions to New England's workforce.

Life and Labor brings together the most stimulating scholarship in the field of labor history today. Its fifteen essays explore the impact of industrialization and technology on the lives of working people and their responses to the changes in society over the past one-hundred-fifty years. Focusing on the everyday life of working-class Americans, it discusses such topics as production technology, occupational mobility, industrial violence, working women, resistance to exploitation, fraternal organizations, and social and leisure-time activities. The essays are written in a lively manner accessible to an undergraduate audience and also provide insights and a solid background for graduate students and scholars in the field of American labor and social history. The book presents the work of members of the generation of labor and social historians who matured in the 1970s and who are now establishing themselves as leaders in their fields.