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Australia and the United States have long been recognized as fertile fields for comparative history. Both the United States and the Australian colonies were “frontier societies” with considerable natural resources and without a feudal heritage. Despite their similarities, the histories of Australia and the United States are also marked by striking divergences, notably in the composition of their working classes, their labor relations, and their politics. The essays in this volume break new ground in comparative and transnational history. Together they offer considerable evidence to support the general proposition that despite similarities in the development of their economies and in fabric of their democratic institutions, the labor histories of Australia and the United States manifest notable differences. The essays in this volume make significant contributions to understanding the comparative aspects of Australian and US labor history in five areas specifically. They examine the divergent impact of the Great War on the fortunes of labor and socialist movements, the history of coerced labor, patterns of ethnic and class identification, the forms of working-class collective action and institution building, and struggles over trade union democracy and the viability of independent working-class politics. Additionally, several essays explore the ways in which radical labor and political activists from both countries developed transnational ties that cross-fertilized their respective trade union and political cultures.

Lattimer, Pennsylvania, is the location for one of labor’s forgotten massacres, a result of the xenophobic fears prevalent during the turn of the twentieth century. On September 10, 1897, about four hundred strikers of eastern and southern European descent marched to close the Lattimer colliery. Without warning, the men were fired upon by the local sheriff and his posse. The shooters stood trial for the killing of the protestors and were acquitted. Though Lattimer is one of the largest tragedies in U.S. labor history, a type of amnesia attached to the event, and the massacre has been largely forgotten in the national public memory. Many attempts to memorialize the Lattimer massacre failed, as labor and capital struggled to control memory of the event. Eventually, in 1972, the town erected a monument at the site. While Lattimer is a lesson about past labor and immigration practices, it is also about the ways in which contemporary communities perceive and deal with new immigrants. Today, northeastern Pennsylvania has experienced a new influx of immigrants from Latin America. Many belonging to the established local population are treating the new immigrants with the same prejudices and distain their own ancestors received several generations ago. Though local reaction to the immigrants reflects the larger national dialogue on immigration, there are those who struggle to change the anti-immigration rhetoric.