Guides: HIST 431: Topics in U.S. History: Labour and Capital in U.S. History: Home

Getting Started

U.S. History
by Kristen Howard Last Updated Jan 6, 2025 196 views this year
Foreign and Comparative Law
by Ana Rogers Last Updated Feb 25, 2025 1690 views this year

The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Business, Labor, and Economic History
Publication Date: 2013
Encyclopedia of U. S. Labor and Working-Class History
Publication Date: 2006

Find Secondary Sources

Find books

Library Catalogue

Find peer-reviewed articles

America: History and Life (EBSCO)
Provides historical coverage of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Includes information abstracted from over 2,000 journals published worldwide.

Alternative Press Index
Subjects covered include anarchism, democracy, ecology, feminism, gay and lesbian issues, indigenous peoples, labor, national liberation, and socialism.

Find Primary Sources

Top Suggestion

Proquest History Vault
A collection of unique manuscript and archival materials Including multiple sub-collections in broad subject areas.
Most useful sub-collection for HIST 431:
-Workers, Labor Unions, Progressives, and Radicals
Includes multiple sub-collections in broad subject areas like Civil Rights; Southern Life, Slavery, and the Civil War; American Indians and the American West; American Politics and Society; International Relations and Military Conflicts; Women's Studies; and Workers and Labor Unions

Laws & Statistics

Historical Statistics of the United States (Cambridge)
The standard source for the quantitative facts of American history.
To find useful data, go the the Table of Contents on the lefthand side. Click the arrow for B. Work and Welfare, then for Ba. Labor. Labor Unions in particular has useful data for this class. Note that the "Essays" provide useful context for interpreting and contextualizing the statistics.
U.S. Congressional Serial Set (Readex)
Reports, documents, journals and maps published by the United States Congress. Covering public policy, infrastructure, the land, the people, military and defense, and more. Ends in 1980.
Try going to "Browse", selecting the Subcategory "Economics", and entering "Labor" as a search term.
ProQuest Congressional
Collection of historic and current congressional documents from 1789 to the present.

Govinfo
The govinfo database provides free online access to official Federal Government publications" from the U.S. Government Publishing Office. You can search government publications by date, collection, or other specific fields, or browse by collection, Congressional committee, or date. Includes the Budget of the United States Government from FY 1996-present.

U.S. Code (HeinOnline)
Consolidation and codification by subject matter of the general and permanent laws of the United States.

See more resources for US Law on the Foreign Law Guide -- US.

Newspapers, Magazines, and Periodicals

America's Historical Newspapers (Readex)
Over a thousand U.S. historical newspapers published between 1690 and 1922, including titles from all 50 states.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers
Search across all ProQuest Historical Newspapers databases -- useful for searching beyond 1922 (which the database America's Historical Newspapers ends at).
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Leftist Newspapers and Periodicals (1845-2015)
A collection of English-language publications (1845-2015) covering Communist, Socialist and Marxist thought, theory and practice. Issues covered include workers’ rights, organized labor, labor strikes, and modern-day class struggles which give rise to renewed interest in alternative social organizations.
American Periodicals (ProQuest)
Periodicals published between 1740 and 1940, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines and many other historically-significant periodicals.

Newspapers
by Humanities and Social Sciences Library Last Updated Nov 1, 2024 7685 views this year

To search for individual newspaper titles (e.g., the New York Times), search the Library Catalogue and use the format filter on the lefthand side to filter to "Newspapers."

Thematic Collections

The Gilded Age (Alexander Street)
Contains primary documents and scholarly commentary in a searchable collection. Primary material includes key treatises, songs, letters, photographs, cartoons, government documents, and ephemera, which are enhanced by video interviews with scholars and numerous topical critical documentary essays specially commissioned for the project by Alexander Street Press. Covering such themes as race, labor, immigration, commerce, western expansion, and women’s suffrage, these essays illuminate the rapidly changing cultural landscape of America during the decades between the end of the Civil War and the election of Theodore Roosevelt.
Interwar Culture (Adam Matthew)
Interwar Culture showcases popular and lesser-known periodicals published during the interwar period, 1919-1939. Articles cover culture, entertainment, fashion, home and family life, world current affairs, class, social and welfare issues.

American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1940
This collection of life histories consists of approximately 2,900 documents, compiled and transcribed by more than 300 writers from 24 states, working on the Folklore Project of the Federal Writers’ Project, a New Deal jobs program that was part of the U.S. Works Progress (later Work Projects) Administration (WPA) from 1936 to 1940.

The Sixties : primary sources and personal narratives 1960-1974 (Alexander Street)
The Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives 1960–1974 brings the 1960s alive through diaries, letters, autobiographies and other memoirs, written and oral histories, manifestos, government documents, memorabilia, and scholarly commentary.
The Nixon years, 1969-1974 (Adam Matthew)
British records (FO and FCO) of Nixon's presidency, including material on social conditions, domestic reforms, trade, culture and the environment.

Printed Primary Sources

Frequently, scholars bring together primary sources into accessible, printed formats often called "sourcebooks". In a library catalogue, the trick to finding these types of sources are to search in Subject Headings for the word "sources" (the catalogue's word for "primary sources"). To find printed primary sources, try searching the Library Catalogue for the following Subject Headings:

su: Labor movement United States History sources
su: Labor union members United States history sources

Remaking Radicalism by Dan Berger (Editor); Emily K. Hobson (Editor)
Publication Date: 2020
This book brings together documents from multiple radical movements in the recent United States from 1973 through 2001.

Citations

History as a discipline uses the Chicago Manual of Style (18th edition) for citations, and usually the Notes-Bibliography form. This requires creating properly formatted footnotes footnotes and a Bibliography for your assignments. Resources to understand the Chicago style of citations are included below.

Note: Chicago Manual of Style updated to the 18th edition in September 2024.

HCS Guide to the Chicago Manual of Style
A guide to the Chicago Manual of Style developed for students in History and Classics (18th edition).

The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th Edition
Publication Date: 2024
A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Ninth Edition by Kate L. Turabian
Call Number: LB2369 T8 2018
Publication Date: 2018
A guide to Chicago Manual of Style with more information on hard-to-cite or unusual sources than the original manual. Note that this manual has not yet been updated to reflect the changes in the 18th edition of Chicago.

Guides

Chicago Manual of Style Citation Quick Guide
McGill Library Citation Subject Guide
Under "citation styles by subject", select "History" for more resources on Chicago style.

Library Support

Chicago Workshops
McGill Librarians offer virtual Chicago Citation Style workshops every term. Follow this link to find and register for upcoming workshops!
Citation Management
Attend a workshop to learn how to use Zotero or EndNote, useful citation management systems. Zotero is highly recommended for History students!

Librarian

Emily Jaeger-McEnroe

she/her

Email me

Contact:

Humanities & Social Sciences Library

514-398-4701