Reviews
"Offers a clear view of the cyclical life of trade and work as the city developed from a small settlement in the 1630s to the present."
"The six appendixes are themselves a reader's treat. Highly recommended."
--CHOICE, vol. 48 no.6
Here, in one volume, elements of the social, labour and economic history of the Irish longshorement in Portland are brought together: battles with business interests for economic independence; the social battles for acceptance by the scions of old New England, the rise of militant anti-Catholicism in the form of the Ku Klux Kland in Maine in the early twentieth century and the longshoremen's fight for better conditions and pay and the technologies they favoured. A timely addition to the cultural and economic history of Portland, Maine.
--The Northern Mariner/le martin du nord
"Economics, politics, and racial changes have all played a major role in the history of labor and the history of the working people. As a case in point, this story of the longshoremen of Portland, Maine, demonstrates the importance of outside factors in the growth and, unfortunately, the decline of unions. The moral of the book is to change with the future or die with the past."
--Labor Studies Journal
"For over a quarter century Connolly has worked to uncover and preserve the invaluable Portland sources that made possible this extraordinary book, a model of local working-class, ethnic, and religious history."
--The Journal of American History
"This study has much to commend it. It offers a story of change, hope, and resignation."
--International Journal of Maritime History, vol. XXIII, no. 1
"Maritime historians have given New England longshoremen short shrift. Until now, the people who worked the wharves have remained in the shadows. Michael C. Connolly, professor of history at Saint Joseph's College of Maine, has filled this gap with a new social history of the longshoremen of Portland, Maine, a port that once considered itself a potential rival to Boston and Halifax."
--The New England Quartely
"Connolly bravely opened an uncharted field in Portland history."
--Labour/Le Travail
"[Adds] rich detail to our understanding of the diversity of the longshore labor experience in the United States."
--American Studies