Dissertation Information for Stephen Ray Henson NAME: - Stephen Ray Henson
DEGREE:
- Ph.D.
DISCIPLINE:
- History
SCHOOL:
- Emory University (USA) (1982)
ADVISORS: - Jonathan Prude
COMMITTEE MEMBERS: - None
MPACT Status: Incomplete - Inspected
Title: INDUSTRIAL WORKERS IN THE MID NINETEENTH-CENTURY SOUTH: ATLANTA RAILWAYMEN, 1840-1870
Abstract: This study of railwaymen in Atlanta during the first thirty years of the town's history shows that the south was not isolated from industrial change. Railroads have long been recognized as a major industrializing technology. The workforce assembled by Georgia railroads was very diverse. Atlanta railwaymen included European immigrants, northern-born mechanics, laborers from the surrounding countryside, slaves, and later, freedmen. The labor of these men was directed by a new breed of manager, many of whom were northern-born civil engineers.
In Atlanta in the mid-nineteenth century there was no tradition of the mission gone awry. Atlanta was a frontier town in a heathen land. In 1840, working with one's hands, if it was reflectively considered at all, was thought of by many as the job of slaves, of black men. The arrival of northern mechanics and engineers in Atlanta began a rise in the status of work in this southern locale. By 1861, the Atlanta Southern Confederacy newspaper was proudly displaying on its masthead a brawny railway mechanic.
Although Atlanta railwaymen were not cast in a drama of declension, their stories will nonetheless sound familiar to labor historians. Initially, the southern locale benefitted white skilled tradesmen who accepted offers of higher pay to come to Atlanta. Lesser skilled white men were plentiful in the surrounding countryside; their reduced salaries made up for the premiums that had to be paid to engineers and mechanics. During the antebellum period, the labor of black men filled in wherever slaves could be hired for less money than a free man would cost, and wherever the presence of slaves would be accepted. After the war, blacks struggled against new forms of discrimination, and all workers were caught up in the machinations of Reconstruction politics.
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MPACT Scores for Stephen Ray Henson A = 0
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calculated 2008-06-03 10:14:05
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