Back of the Yards: The Making of a Local Democracy

by Robert A. Slayton

Book Overview

"Robert A. Slayton's Back of the Yards is one of the finest accounts I have ever read on an urban, working-class neighborhood in twentieth-century America. Its focus on family, politics, and worklife is penetrating and its conclusions reinforce an emerging scholarly picture of ordinary people exercising unique forms of power."-John Bodnar, author of The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226761983
• ISBN13: 9780226761985
• Release Date: January 1986
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 278 Pages
• Weight: 1.34 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A Good History Lesson

I enjoyed this book. It takes place near the Chicago stockyards and provides ample evidence on how this partcular neighborhood developed over the years mainly via immigration. Much of the history takes place during the 19th century when there was no regulations regarding child labor etc. The work in the slaughterhouses was long, hard and dangerous with management paying little heed for these peoples welfare. Over the years, it all began to change when the worker's started to get some rights of their own by either taking matters in their own hands ...........