Violence and Class Solidarity: How Employers Organized to Fight Unions in the Nineteenth Century, an Interview with Chad Pearson

In this episode, Pete interviews Chad Pearson about his new book, Capital’s Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen, and Employers in the Long Nineteenth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2022).  They talk about the use of violence to discipline workforces, labor battles in the long nineteenth century, the need to study the way business owners organized nationally to fight unionization, and more.

Chad Pearson is a labor historian primarily interested in ruling-class organizations and violence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He has authored two books: Capital’s Terrorists and Reform or Repression: Organizing America’s Anti-Union Movement (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). Additionally, he is co-editor with Rosemary Feurer of Against Labor: How US Employers Organized to Defeat Union Activism (University of Illinois Press, 2017). Finally, I have published essays in Counterpunch, History Compass, Jacobin, Journal of Labor and Society, Labor History, Labour/Le Travail, and Monthly Review.