The Maintainers of Safety and Efficiency: The Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, 1900-1940

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dc.contributor.advisorSicilia, Daviden_US
dc.contributor.authorWilliams, Robert Cen_US
dc.contributor.departmentHistoryen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2008-06-20T05:38:28Z
dc.date.available2008-06-20T05:38:28Z
dc.date.issued2008-05-09en_US
dc.description.abstractThe Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen is a little-known technical and political organization that gained power during the opening decades of the twentieth century through the increasingly complex nature of members' work, the vision of its leaders, and their abilities to gather support from other unions and the federal government. This thesis is organized around three themes: first, how the growing complexity of signal systems continually challenged signalmen to broaden signalmen's skills, which, in turn, gave them an advantage in asking for recognition as a skilled craft union; second, how the skills that signalmen employed brought them into conflict with other unions over signal department jobs; and third, how, despite having only between 10,000 and 19,000 members, the organization's leaders learned to negotiate using reason, evidence, and logic to demonstrate the union's importance in the industry as the custodians of public safety and rail traffic efficiency.en_US
dc.format.extent4174234 bytes
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/8215
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledHistory of Scienceen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledHistory, United Statesen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledHistory of Scienceen_US
dc.titleThe Maintainers of Safety and Efficiency: The Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, 1900-1940en_US
dc.typeThesisen_US

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