Capital Moves: RCA's Seventy-Year Quest for Cheap Labor (with a New Epilogue)
by Jefferson Cowie
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Description
Find a pool of cheap, pliable workers and give them jobs-and soon they cease to be as cheap or as pliable. What is an employer to do then? Why, find another poor community desperate for work. This route-one taken time and again by major American manufacturers-is vividly chronicled in this fascinating account of RCA's half century-long search for desirable sources of labor. Capital Moves introduces us to the people most affected by the migration of industry and, most importantly, recounts how show more they came to fight against the idea that they were simply "cheap labor."Jefferson Cowie tells the dramatic story of four communities, each irrevocably transformed by the opening of an industrial plant. From the manufacturer's first factory in Camden, New Jersey, where it employed large numbers of southern and eastern European immigrants, RCA moved to rural Indiana in 1940, hiring Americans of Scotch-Irish descent for its plant in Bloomington. Then, in the volatile 1960s, the company relocated to Memphis where African Americans made up the core of the labor pool. Finally, the company landed in northern Mexico in the 1970s-a region rapidly becoming one of the most industrialized on the continent. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
An interesting view from the left wing of RCA's progression from New Jersey to Indiana to Mexico in search of cheap labor. I found much of the language to be needlessly antagonistic to capitalism, but if you are at all interested in the histories of Camden, NJ or Bloomington, IN this is a must-read.
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Labor History
77 works; 5 members
Author Information
5 Works 674 Members
Jefferson Cowie is the James G. Stahlman Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class His work has also appeared in such publications as the New York Times, the New Republic, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Awards and Honors
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1999
- Important places
- Bloomington, Indiana, USA; Camden, New Jersey, USA
Classifications
- Genres
- Economics, Nonfiction, History, Business, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 338.7 — Society, Government, and Culture Economics Production Business Enterprises
- LCC
- HD9696 .A3 .U5334 — Social sciences Industries. Land use. Labor Industries. Land use. Labor Special industries and trades Mechanical industries
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 106
- Popularity
- 304,731
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.86)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 4
- ASINs
- 1
