Alan Derickson
Biographic Data
| ID | 692927 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alan Derickson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alan |
| FAMILY NAME | Derickson |
| SIGNATURE | DERICKSON A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Pennsylvania State University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 39 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
A Widespread Superstition”: The Purported Invulnerability of Workers of Color to Occupational Heat Stress
This study explores the history of the denial of the vulnerability of non-White workers to risks of heat illness. Defenders of chattel slavery argued for the capacity of workers of African descent to tolerate extreme environmental temperatures. In Hawai‘i, advocates of racial segregation emphasized the perils to Whites of strenuous work in tropical climates and the advantages of using Chinese immigrants. Growing reliance on Mexican immigrants in …
Naphtha Drunks, Lead Colic, and the Smelter Shakes: The Inordinate Exposure of Immigrant Workers to Occupational Health Hazards at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Research Article| January 01 2018 Naphtha Drunks, Lead Colic, and the Smelter Shakes: The Inordinate Exposure of Immigrant Workers to Occupational Health Hazards at the Turn of the Twentieth Century Alan Derickson Alan Derickson Alan Derickson is Professor of Labor Studies and History at Penn State University. He has written three books on the history of occupational health—Workers’ Health, Workers’ Democracy: The Western Miners’ Struggle, 1891–1…
Inventing the Right to Know: Herbert Abrams’s Efforts to Democratize Access to Workplace Health Hazard Information in the 1950s
In the 1980s, the right-to-know movement won American workers unprecedented access to information about the health hazards they faced on the job. The precursors and origins of these initiatives to extend workplace democracy remain quite obscure. This study brings to light the efforts of one of the early proponents of wider dissemination of information related to hazard recognition and control. Through his work as a state public health official an…
Gateway to Hell: African American Coking Workers, Racial Discrimination, and the Struggle Against Occupational Cancer
Surviving a “Carcinogen Rich Environment”: Steelworkers’ Democratic Intrusion into the Regulation of Coke-Oven Emissions
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Nuisance Dust”: Unprotective Limits for Exposure to Coal Mine Dust in the United States, 1934–1969
I examine the dismissal of coal mine dust as a mere nuisance, not a potentially serious threat to extractive workers who inhaled it. In the 1930s, the US Public Health Service played a major role in conceptualizing coal mine dust as virtually harmless. Dissent from this position by some federal officials failed to dislodge either that view or the recommendation of minimal limitations on workplace exposure that flowed from it. Privatization of reg…
No Such Thing as a Night's Sleep: The Embattled Sleep of American Fighting Men from World War II to the Present
This project aims to contribute to our understanding of the fraught relations of sleep and wakefulness in late modern America. The essay argues that the experience of sleep loss has been a widely prevalent phenomenon within the ranks of the modern American military. The study focuses on the Second World War, an inflection point in the trend toward sustained and continuous operations and other marathon activities. The nature of much combat in that…
Asleep and Awake at the Same Time”: Sleep Denial among Pullman Porters
Research Article| September 01 2008 “Asleep and Awake at the Same Time”: Sleep Denial among Pullman Porters Alan Derickson Alan Derickson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Labor (2008) 5 (3): 13–44. https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-2008-004 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Alan Derickson; “Asleep and Awake at the Same Time”: Sleep Denial among Pullman Porters. Labor 1 September 2008…
Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty: Environmental Politics, Technoscience, and Women Workers
Book Review| September 01 2007 Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty: Environmental Politics, Technoscience, and Women Workers Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty: Environmental Politics, Technoscience, and Women Workers Michelle Murphy Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006 x + 253 pp., $74.95 (cloth); $21.95 (paper) Alan Derickson Alan Derickson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Labor …
Health for Three-Thirds of the Nation”: Public Health Advocacy of Universal Access to Medical Care in the United States
The public health community has made important, original contributions to the debate over universal access to health services in the United States. Well before the decision of the American Public Health Association in 1944 to endorse a health plan encompassing virtually the entire populace, prominent public health practitioners and scholars embraced universality as an essential principle of health policy. Influenced by Arthur Newsholme, C.-E. A. …
Take Health from the List of Luxuries: Labor and the Right to Health Care, 1915-1949
(2000). 'Take Health from the List of Luxuries': Labor and the Right to Health Care, 1915-1949. Labor History: Vol. 41, No. 2, pp. 171-187
Black Lung: Anatomy of a Public Health Disaster
Black Lung: Anatomy of a Public Health Disaster
Coal: A Memoir and Critique
Black Lung. Anatomy of a Public Health Disaster
Hazards of the Job: From Industrial Disease to Environmental Health Science (review)
Reviewed by: Hazards of the Job: From Industrial Disease to Environmental Health Science Alan Derickson Christopher C. Sellers. Hazards of the Job: From Industrial Disease to Environmental Health Science. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. xv + 331 pp. Ill. $45.00. In Hazards of the Job, Christopher Sellers traces the rise and transformation of industrial hygiene—the paradigm within which biomedical investigators in the United…
The House of Falk: The paranoid style in American health politics
The onset of the Cold War had a blighting effect on the campaign for a national health insurance program in the United States. In the highly charged atmosphere of the late 1940s, proponents of social insurance spent considerable time and energy denying that they were agents of foreign powers. In one widely promoted conspiratorial formulation, some on the right traced the origins of subversion not only to Moscow but also to Geneva, Switzerland, ho…
Health Security for All? Social Unionism and Universal Health Insurance, 1935-1958
Journal Article Health Security for All? Social Unionism and Universal Health Insurance, 1935–1958 Get access Alan Derickson Alan Derickson associate professor of labor studies and industrial relations Pennsylvania State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 80, Issue 4, March 1994, Pages 1333–1356, https://doi.org/10.2307/2080603 Published: 01 March 1994
Physiological Science and Scientific Management in the Progressive Era: Frederic S. Lee and the Committee on Industrial Fatigue
This article explores the first attempt by American physiologists to assist employers with the stubborn problem of tired workers. It examines the work of Frederic Lee and the Committee on Industrial Fatigue, which was set up to increase productivity in the face of the long hours deemed necessary for war readiness. Despite the biomedical investigators' strenuous efforts and their incisive critique of Taylorism, however, corporate management found …
Making human junk: Child labor as a health issue in the Progressive Era
The adverse health effects of work on approximately 2 million employed children troubled many in the United States during the early 20th century. Advocates of reform initially built a rationale for protective legislation primarily from informal, lay observations of the broad developmental outcomes of premature employment. In this endeavor, they projected a dismal scenario of impending national deterioration. This argument received strong criticis…
From company doctors to union hospitals: The first democratic health-care experiments of the United Mine Workers of America
A successful co-operative store, a well built attractive union hall, an up-to-date-hospital—any practical achievement of the working class—is worth more than all the revolutionary talks which may be made between now and doom's day. A workers' republic will be built only by men and women who have learned things. Talk is cheap. Illinois Miner, 1922
Cradle to Grave: Life, Work, and Death at the Lake Superior Copper Mines
The United Mine Workers of American and the recognition of occupational respiratory diseases, 1902-1968
This study examines the early efforts of the United Mine Workers of America to illuminate the problem of occupational respiratory diseases in the coal fields. The union used the hearings of the US Anthracite Coal Strike Commission of 1902-3 to draw public attention to "miners' asthma." In 1915, it began to agitate for the provision of workers' compensation benefits for victims of this disorder. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the union's Welfare …
Workers' Health, Workers' Democracy: The Western Miners' Struggle, 1891-1925
Journal Article Workers' Health, Workers' Democracy: The Western Miners' Struggle, 1891–1925. By Alan Derickson. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988. xviii + 251 pp. $26.95.) Get access Allan Kent Powell Allan Kent Powell Utah State Historical Society Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 76, Issue 4, March 1990, Page 1289, https://doi.org/10.2307/2936664 Published: 01 Mar…
Workers' Health, Workers' Democracy: The Western Miners' Struggle, 1891-1925
Health Security for All? Social Unionism and Universal Health Insurance, 1935-1958
Journal Article Health Security for All? Social Unionism and Universal Health Insurance, 1935–1958 Get access Alan Derickson Alan Derickson associate professor of labor studies and industrial relations Pennsylvania State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 80, Issue 4, March 1994, Pages 1333–1356, https://doi.org/10.2307/2080603 Published: 01 March 1994
The House of Falk: The paranoid style in American health politics
The onset of the Cold War had a blighting effect on the campaign for a national health insurance program in the United States. In the highly charged atmosphere of the late 1940s, proponents of social insurance spent considerable time and energy denying that they were agents of foreign powers. In one widely promoted conspiratorial formulation, some on the right traced the origins of subversion not only to Moscow but also to Geneva, Switzerland, ho…
Physiological Science and Scientific Management in the Progressive Era: Frederic S. Lee and the Committee on Industrial Fatigue
This article explores the first attempt by American physiologists to assist employers with the stubborn problem of tired workers. It examines the work of Frederic Lee and the Committee on Industrial Fatigue, which was set up to increase productivity in the face of the long hours deemed necessary for war readiness. Despite the biomedical investigators' strenuous efforts and their incisive critique of Taylorism, however, corporate management found …
Industrial refugees: The migration of silicotics from the mines of North America and South Africa in the early 20th century
Additional informationNotes on contributorsAlan DericksonI am happy to acknowledge the helpful criticism provided by David Brody, Jamie Robinson, and Peggy Spear
Cradle to Grave: Life, Work, and Death at the Lake Superior Copper Mines
On the Dump Heap”: Employee Medical Screening in the Tri-State Zinc-Lead Industry, 1924–1932
In the following article, Professor Derickson examines the motivation for and the results of employee medical screening of workers in a midwestern mining community. He argues that, contrary to the goals of the associative state as envisioned by Herbert Hoover and others, government and mine operator efforts to determine the extent of respiratory disease among mine workers in the Tri-State were neither impelled by a concern for workers' welfare no…
A Widespread Superstition”: The Purported Invulnerability of Workers of Color to Occupational Heat Stress
This study explores the history of the denial of the vulnerability of non-White workers to risks of heat illness. Defenders of chattel slavery argued for the capacity of workers of African descent to tolerate extreme environmental temperatures. In Hawai‘i, advocates of racial segregation emphasized the perils to Whites of strenuous work in tropical climates and the advantages of using Chinese immigrants. Growing reliance on Mexican immigrants in …
Nuisance Dust”: Unprotective Limits for Exposure to Coal Mine Dust in the United States, 1934–1969
I examine the dismissal of coal mine dust as a mere nuisance, not a potentially serious threat to extractive workers who inhaled it. In the 1930s, the US Public Health Service played a major role in conceptualizing coal mine dust as virtually harmless. Dissent from this position by some federal officials failed to dislodge either that view or the recommendation of minimal limitations on workplace exposure that flowed from it. Privatization of reg…
Asleep and Awake at the Same Time”: Sleep Denial among Pullman Porters
Research Article| September 01 2008 “Asleep and Awake at the Same Time”: Sleep Denial among Pullman Porters Alan Derickson Alan Derickson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Labor (2008) 5 (3): 13–44. https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-2008-004 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Alan Derickson; “Asleep and Awake at the Same Time”: Sleep Denial among Pullman Porters. Labor 1 September 2008…
Health for Three-Thirds of the Nation”: Public Health Advocacy of Universal Access to Medical Care in the United States
The public health community has made important, original contributions to the debate over universal access to health services in the United States. Well before the decision of the American Public Health Association in 1944 to endorse a health plan encompassing virtually the entire populace, prominent public health practitioners and scholars embraced universality as an essential principle of health policy. Influenced by Arthur Newsholme, C.-E. A. …
Take Health from the List of Luxuries: Labor and the Right to Health Care, 1915-1949
(2000). 'Take Health from the List of Luxuries': Labor and the Right to Health Care, 1915-1949. Labor History: Vol. 41, No. 2, pp. 171-187
Making human junk: Child labor as a health issue in the Progressive Era
The adverse health effects of work on approximately 2 million employed children troubled many in the United States during the early 20th century. Advocates of reform initially built a rationale for protective legislation primarily from informal, lay observations of the broad developmental outcomes of premature employment. In this endeavor, they projected a dismal scenario of impending national deterioration. This argument received strong criticis…
The United Mine Workers of American and the recognition of occupational respiratory diseases, 1902-1968
This study examines the early efforts of the United Mine Workers of America to illuminate the problem of occupational respiratory diseases in the coal fields. The union used the hearings of the US Anthracite Coal Strike Commission of 1902-3 to draw public attention to "miners' asthma." In 1915, it began to agitate for the provision of workers' compensation benefits for victims of this disorder. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the union's Welfare …
Industrial refugees: The migration of silicotics from the mines of North America and South Africa in the early 20th century
Additional informationNotes on contributorsAlan DericksonI am happy to acknowledge the helpful criticism provided by David Brody, Jamie Robinson, and Peggy Spear
On the Dump Heap”: Employee Medical Screening in the Tri-State Zinc-Lead Industry, 1924–1932
In the following article, Professor Derickson examines the motivation for and the results of employee medical screening of workers in a midwestern mining community. He argues that, contrary to the goals of the associative state as envisioned by Herbert Hoover and others, government and mine operator efforts to determine the extent of respiratory disease among mine workers in the Tri-State were neither impelled by a concern for workers' welfare no…
Working-Class Heroes and Others
Workers' Health, Workers' Democracy: The Western Miners' Struggle, 1891-1925
Workers' Health, Workers' Democracy: The Western Miners' Struggle, 1891-1925
Journal Article Workers' Health, Workers' Democracy: The Western Miners' Struggle, 1891–1925. By Alan Derickson. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988. xviii + 251 pp. $26.95.) Get access Allan Kent Powell Allan Kent Powell Utah State Historical Society Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 76, Issue 4, March 1990, Page 1289, https://doi.org/10.2307/2936664 Published: 01 Mar…
Workers' Health, Workers' Democracy: The Western Miners' Struggle, 1891-1925
Workers' Health, Workers' Democracy: The Western Miners' Struggle, 1891-1925
Journal Article Workers' Health, Workers' Democracy: the Western Miners' Struggle, 1891–1925 Get access Workers' Health, Workers' Democracy: the Western Miners' Struggle, 1891–1925. By Derickson Alan. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988. xiv +251 pp. Illustrations, maps, tables, notes, bibliography, index. $26.95.) Duane A. Smith Duane A. Smith Fort Lewis College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Western…
Workers' Health, Workers' Democracy: The Western Miners' Struggle, 1891-1925
The United Mine Workers of American and the recognition of occupational respiratory diseases, 1902-1968
This study examines the early efforts of the United Mine Workers of America to illuminate the problem of occupational respiratory diseases in the coal fields. The union used the hearings of the US Anthracite Coal Strike Commission of 1902-3 to draw public attention to "miners' asthma." In 1915, it began to agitate for the provision of workers' compensation benefits for victims of this disorder. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the union's Welfare …
Making human junk: Child labor as a health issue in the Progressive Era
The adverse health effects of work on approximately 2 million employed children troubled many in the United States during the early 20th century. Advocates of reform initially built a rationale for protective legislation primarily from informal, lay observations of the broad developmental outcomes of premature employment. In this endeavor, they projected a dismal scenario of impending national deterioration. This argument received strong criticis…
From company doctors to union hospitals: The first democratic health-care experiments of the United Mine Workers of America
A successful co-operative store, a well built attractive union hall, an up-to-date-hospital—any practical achievement of the working class—is worth more than all the revolutionary talks which may be made between now and doom's day. A workers' republic will be built only by men and women who have learned things. Talk is cheap. Illinois Miner, 1922
Cradle to Grave: Life, Work, and Death at the Lake Superior Copper Mines
Health Security for All? Social Unionism and Universal Health Insurance, 1935-1958
Journal Article Health Security for All? Social Unionism and Universal Health Insurance, 1935–1958 Get access Alan Derickson Alan Derickson associate professor of labor studies and industrial relations Pennsylvania State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 80, Issue 4, March 1994, Pages 1333–1356, https://doi.org/10.2307/2080603 Published: 01 March 1994
Physiological Science and Scientific Management in the Progressive Era: Frederic S. Lee and the Committee on Industrial Fatigue
This article explores the first attempt by American physiologists to assist employers with the stubborn problem of tired workers. It examines the work of Frederic Lee and the Committee on Industrial Fatigue, which was set up to increase productivity in the face of the long hours deemed necessary for war readiness. Despite the biomedical investigators' strenuous efforts and their incisive critique of Taylorism, however, corporate management found …
The House of Falk: The paranoid style in American health politics
The onset of the Cold War had a blighting effect on the campaign for a national health insurance program in the United States. In the highly charged atmosphere of the late 1940s, proponents of social insurance spent considerable time and energy denying that they were agents of foreign powers. In one widely promoted conspiratorial formulation, some on the right traced the origins of subversion not only to Moscow but also to Geneva, Switzerland, ho…
Hazards of the Job: From Industrial Disease to Environmental Health Science (review)
Reviewed by: Hazards of the Job: From Industrial Disease to Environmental Health Science Alan Derickson Christopher C. Sellers. Hazards of the Job: From Industrial Disease to Environmental Health Science. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. xv + 331 pp. Ill. $45.00. In Hazards of the Job, Christopher Sellers traces the rise and transformation of industrial hygiene—the paradigm within which biomedical investigators in the United…
Coal: A Memoir and Critique
Black Lung. Anatomy of a Public Health Disaster
Take Health from the List of Luxuries: Labor and the Right to Health Care, 1915-1949
(2000). 'Take Health from the List of Luxuries': Labor and the Right to Health Care, 1915-1949. Labor History: Vol. 41, No. 2, pp. 171-187
Black Lung: Anatomy of a Public Health Disaster
Black Lung: Anatomy of a Public Health Disaster
Health for Three-Thirds of the Nation”: Public Health Advocacy of Universal Access to Medical Care in the United States
The public health community has made important, original contributions to the debate over universal access to health services in the United States. Well before the decision of the American Public Health Association in 1944 to endorse a health plan encompassing virtually the entire populace, prominent public health practitioners and scholars embraced universality as an essential principle of health policy. Influenced by Arthur Newsholme, C.-E. A. …
Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty: Environmental Politics, Technoscience, and Women Workers
Book Review| September 01 2007 Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty: Environmental Politics, Technoscience, and Women Workers Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty: Environmental Politics, Technoscience, and Women Workers Michelle Murphy Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006 x + 253 pp., $74.95 (cloth); $21.95 (paper) Alan Derickson Alan Derickson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Labor …
Asleep and Awake at the Same Time”: Sleep Denial among Pullman Porters
Research Article| September 01 2008 “Asleep and Awake at the Same Time”: Sleep Denial among Pullman Porters Alan Derickson Alan Derickson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Labor (2008) 5 (3): 13–44. https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-2008-004 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Alan Derickson; “Asleep and Awake at the Same Time”: Sleep Denial among Pullman Porters. Labor 1 September 2008…
Nuisance Dust”: Unprotective Limits for Exposure to Coal Mine Dust in the United States, 1934–1969
I examine the dismissal of coal mine dust as a mere nuisance, not a potentially serious threat to extractive workers who inhaled it. In the 1930s, the US Public Health Service played a major role in conceptualizing coal mine dust as virtually harmless. Dissent from this position by some federal officials failed to dislodge either that view or the recommendation of minimal limitations on workplace exposure that flowed from it. Privatization of reg…
Political science (24 works) · Law (21 works) · Medicine (13 works) · Politics (11 works) · Law (10 works) · History (9 works) · Democracy (8 works) · Race, History, and American Society (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Engineering (7 works)