Racial Factors in American Industry

New York/London: Harper & Brothers. Very Good. 1931. 1st Edition (A-F). Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [modest shelfwear, bumping and minor fraying at several corners, gilt spine lettering heavily rubbed and just barely readable, tiny hole in spine cloth, one-time owner's pencil signature at top of front endpaper]. This survey essentially amounts to a comprehensive catalog (and indictment) of the myriad ways in which various racial and ethnic groups were being discriminated against and exploited by American industries. From the Foreword, by Raymond B. Fosdick: "The evidence which the authors of this book have marshaled with regard to present practices is far from comforting. Their picture of the economic exploitation of the Negro and the Oriental, of the racial prejudice which determines the work and pay of these 'inferior' races, of the careless assumptions and easy-going indifference which fix their status and environment in the communities where they live -- this is not a picture in which we Americans can take any pride." Fosdick served as a trustee of numerous philanthropic organizations linked to the Rockefeller Foundation, and was a trusted advisor to John D. Rockefeller himself. One such organization, apparently, was a group called The Inquiry, the sponsor of this volume, described as "a movement for the improvement of human relations through the development of improved social techniques," with a special concern for "conflicts between persons and groups of different race, religion, class or nationality." (The front matter lists four other titles published under the organization's auspices.) ***This book is among the nearly 150 items offered in ReadInk's new Catalog Number 4, "Booking Passage: Books on the Immigrant Experience." You can access this catalog and its contents in any one of three ways: (1) email us to request a PDF to be emailed to you; (2) view or download the catalog from the link on our website's main page; (3) browse the books individually (including a few that didn't make the cut for the catalog) on our website under these two subject headings: "Immigration: Fiction" and "Immigration: Non-fiction." .