It is no coincidence that the garment industry gained a foothold in Pennsylvania's hard-coal region as mines were closing or reducing operations. "Runaway" factories, especially ones from Manhattan, set up shop in mining towns where labor was plentiful and unions scarce. By the 1930s, garment factories employed thousands of wives and daughters of unemployed or underemployed coal miners in the Wyoming Valley. Organizing workers would prove difficult for the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU).

Fighting for the Union Label tells the story of how...

The Knox Mine Disaster is much more than a history of an accident--or an industry, for that matter. Because the book draws on the recollections of miners and their families, industry officials, and individuals involved in the legal aftermath of the disaster, it is an epic drama that is as spellbinding as it is sensational. Candid photographs of members of this cast of characters lend a human element that overshadows the gaping hole in the riverbed, the billions of gallons of water that crashed through it, and the tons of twisted equipment and machinery.

Relive the drama of the Knox Mine Disaster of January 22, 1959, through the voices of survivors, the victims' families, contemporary newspaper accounts, and the literature and music generated by the tragedy. Read the poignant and often shocking first-person accounts of those who lived through one of the most devastating disasters in American mining history. This companion volume to the best-selling book The Knox Mine Disaster, published in 1999 by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, also offers a detailed study on how the citizens of northeastern Pennsylvania have...