All That Glitters
About the Book
At the turn of the century, Colorado's Cripple Creek District captured the national imagination with the extraordinary wealth of its gold mines and the unquestionable strength of the militant Western Federation of Miners.Elizabeth Jameson tells the entertaining story of Cripple Creek, the scene in 1894 of one of radical labor's most stunning victories and, in 1903 and 1904, of one of its most crushing defeats. Jameson draws on working-class oral histories, the Victor and Cripple Creek Daily Press published by 34 of the local labor unions, and the 1900 manuscript census. She connects unions with lodges and fraternal associations, ethnic identity, families, households, and partisan politics. Through these ties, she probes the differences in age, skill, gender, marital status, and ethnicity that strained working-class unity and contributed to the fall of labor in Cripple Creek.
Jameson's book will be required reading for western, ethnic, and working-class historians seeking an alternative interpretation of western mining struggles that emphasizes class, gender, and multiple sources of social identity.
About the Author
Elizabeth Jameson is a professor emerita of history at the University of Calgary. She is coeditor of The Women's West and Writing the Range: Race, Class, and Culture in the Women's West.Reviews
"A model of nuanced social history."--Dana Frank, Journal of American History"No historian has so effectively brought to life the richness, strength, and contradictions of working-class life and politics in the West."--Gunther Peck, Western Historical Quarterly
Awards
A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, 1999. Winner of the Rodman W. Paul Award for Outstanding Contributions to Mining History, 1999.Related Titles
