Name Paul Brissenden | ||
Books The I.W.W.: A Study of American Syndicalism | ||
Paul Frederick Brissenden (September 21, 1885 – November 29, 1974) was an American labor historian, who wrote on various labor issues in the first half of the 20th century. He is perhaps best known for his 1919 work on the Industrial Workers of the World, entitled The IWW: a Study of American Syndicalism.
Contents
Biography
Brissenden was born in Benzonia, Michigan, to parents James T. Brissenden and Retta Odell Geer, both of whom were born in Ohio. His father worked as a farmer. He had two younger brothers, Louis and Richard, and a younger sister, Elizabeth. He earned his Master of Arts at the University of California in 1912, and completed his doctorate in political science at Columbia University in 1917 under supervision of Henry Rogers Seager.
In 1914, Brissenden worked for the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations. From 1915 to 1920, he worked for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. He also held position of professor of economics at Columbia University and New York University.
Brissenden was married to wife Margaret, and was a father of three sons, Donald, Arik, and Hoke. He died on November 29, 1974 in San Diego, California.
Work
One of his main works was The IWW: a Study of American Syndicalism, published in 1919, a seminal work on the IWW.
In 1920, he documented labor disputes between miners in Butte and the Anaconda Copper Mining Company.
In 1923 he wrote Justice and the IWW in 1923, in which he criticized the prosecution of I.W.W. members and defended the actions of the IWW members were imprisoned. He pointed out the prosecutions failure to actually identify the 15,000 alleged deserters, challenged the legality of the evidence seized in raids based on void warrants, and argued that prosecutors lacked sufficient evidence that IWW members had directly obstructed the war, but convicted them on the basis of their association with the IWW. He concludes that members are being imprisoned just for opposing the war.