Guides: HI 2913: Capitalism and Its Discontents: Primary Sources

Primary Sources for History

Primary sources are materials that provide firsthand testimony to a subject under investigation. Researchers often use these firsthand accounts of specific events to understand events from the viewpoint of people living during that time period. Primary sources include documents and artifacts from the time period under study, such as letters, diaries, photographs, newspaper articles, pamphlets, government records, songs, poems, and videos. Primary sources also include writings and recordings by witnesses who experienced the events or conditions being documented. For example, oral histories, autobiographies, and memoirs are primary sources.

On this page, you'll find information about:

Primary Sources for History
WPI Archives
Books with Primary Source Collections
Library Databases with Primary Sources
Websites with Primary Sources
Examples of Primary Source Documents

WPI Archives & Special Collections

Archives and Special Collections (ASC) serves as the institutional memory of Worcester Polytechnic Institute and curates the university's collection of manuscripts, rare books, art, and objects. Our staff is committed to the preservation of the historical and cultural resources produced by WPI faculty, students, and staff while also providing support for primary source education and research. We also partner with campus units to enrich events with WPI history, curate exhibits, and foster community engagement. Access to our collections is available via the Fellman Dickens Reading Room or through Digital WPI, our online repository. Please email archives@wpi.edu to learn more or book an appointment.

Online Collection Guides: Explore our institution’s archival holdings using these organized access points with descriptions of and historical context for 65 collections across two repositories: Manuscripts and University Archives. These will help you better understand the primary sources available to you on campus. Below are listings of four collections that may be of particular interest to this course:
Digital WPI: Browse our online repository of digitized and born-digital resources, including works by WPI students and faculty (IQPs, MQPs, GPS project reports, theses, dissertations, and more), university publications, WPI historic images, Charles Dickens’s works, and some items from select manuscript collections. Below are listings of digital collections that may be of particular interest to this course:
- Interactive Qualifying Projects
- Major Qualifying Projects
- University Publications
- Campus Magazines
- Campus Newspapers
Digital Exhibits: Our newest platform offers the opportunity to explore some of our resources and campus history in narrative form.
Fellman Dickens Reading Room: Email archives@wpi.edu to book an appointment for access to our collections. We’re open M-F 9am-4pm.
Gladwin Gallery: Visit our gallery on the ground floor of the library to learn more from annual displays! Our current exhibit, “The First Century: Washburn Shops at the Horizon of America’s Industrial Revolution and Beyond,” features items from the Washburn Shops Collection, Offices of the President Records, and Worcester County Free Institute of Industrial Science Records.

Books with Primary Source Collections

Sometimes collections of primary source documents are republished in books. To find books like these, search WPI Library Search for books about your topic and add keywords like journals, papers, letters, documents, primary sources, documentary history, or sourcebook to your search terms.

Here are some examples of books containing reprinted primary sources:

Freedom: a Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867: Series 3, Volume 1: Land and Labor, 1865 by Steven Hahn (Editor); Steven F. Miller (Editor); John C. Rodrigue (Editor); Susan E. O'Donovan (Editor); Leslie S. Rowland (Editor)
Call Number: ebook
ISBN: 1469641291
Publication Date: 2017-07-01
Land and Labor, 1865 examines the transition from slavery to free labor during the tumultuous first months after the Civil War. Letters and testimony by the participants--former slaves, former slaveholders, Freedmen's Bureau agents, and others--reveal the connection between developments in workplaces across the South and an intensifying political contest over the meaning of freedom and the terms of national reunification. Essays by the editors place the documents in interpretive context and illuminate the major themes. In the tense and often violent aftermath of emancipation, former slaves seeking to ground their liberty in economic independence came into conflict with former owners determined to keep them dependent and subordinate. Overseeing that conflict were northern officials with their own notions of freedom, labor, and social order. This volume of Freedom depicts the dramatic events that ensued--the eradication of bondage and the contest over restoring land to ex-Confederates; the introduction of labor contracts and the day-to-day struggles that engulfed the region's plantations, farms, and other workplaces; the achievements of those freedpeople who attained a measure of independence; and rumors of a year-end insurrection in which ex-slaves would seize the land they had been denied and exact revenge for past oppression.
Freedom: a Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867: Series 3, Volume 2: Land and Labor, 1866-1867 by René Hayden (Editor); Steven F. Miller (Editor); Leslie S. Rowland (Editor); Stephen A. West (Editor); Susan E. O'Donovan (Editor); Anthony E. Kaye (Editor); Kate Masur (Editor); René Hayden (Editor)
Call Number: ebook
ISBN: 9781469607429
Publication Date: 2013-08-19
Land and Labor, 1866-1867 examines the remaking of the South's labor system in the tumultuous aftermath of emancipation. Using documents selected from the National Archives, this volume of Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation depicts the struggle of unenfranchised and impoverished ex-slaves to control their own labor, establish their families as viable economic units, and secure independent possession of land. Among the topics addressed are the dispossession of settlers in the Sherman reserve, the reordering of labor on plantation and farm, nonagricultural labor, new relations of credit and debt, long-distance labor migration, and the efforts of former slaves to rent, purchase, and homestead land. The documents--many of them in the freedpeople's own words--speak eloquently for themselves, while the editors' interpretive essays provide context and illuminate major themes.
Beyond Rosie: A Documentary History of Women and World War II by Julia Brock; Jennifer W. Dickey; Richard Harker; Catherine Lewis
Call Number: ebook
ISBN: 1557286701
Publication Date: 2015-03-01
More so than any war in history, World War II was a woman's war. Women, motivated by patriotism, the opportunity for new experiences, and the desire to serve, participated widely in the global conflict. Within the Allied countries, women of all ages proved to be invaluable in the fight for victory. Rosie the Riveter became the most enduring image of women's involvement in World War II. What Rosie represented, however, is only a small portion of a complex story. As wartime production workers, enlistees in auxiliary military units, members of voluntary organizations or resistance groups, wives and mothers on the home front, journalists, and USO performers, American women found ways to challenge traditional gender roles and stereotypes. Beyond Rosie offers readers an opportunity to see the numerous contributions they made to the fight against the Axis powers and how American women's roles changed during the war. The primary documents (newspapers, propaganda posters, cartoons, excerpts from oral histories and memoirs, speeches, photographs, and editorials) collected here represent cultural, political, economic, and social perspectives on the diverse roles women played during World War II.
Eyes on Labor: News Photography and America's Working Class by Carol Quirke
Call Number: ebook
ISBN: 9780199768226
Publication Date: 2012-08-13
Eyes on Labor narrates an essential chapter in American cultural history, offering a fascinating broad-stroke history of the relationship of photography to the complex and troubled history of twentieth-century labor and unionization movements. It examines a subject that is critical tounderstanding the Great Depression, the New Deal, and beyond-organized labor-in the form of its representation in a realm that has received little attention-news photography. The book provides simultaneously, a detailed history of the representation (and self-representation) of labor within labormovements (something rarely addressed, given the usual focus on iconic photographs and images of heroic, idealized workers), and of the labor movement more generally, with the process of representation highlighted as its principal narratives.It focuses on "instrumentalist" labor photojournalism, and, in particular, the visualization of militance, addressing the antithesis of the focus of the (oft-studied) Farm Security Administration. Quirke chronicles how labor activism was documented and also how that documentation - mediated bycertain publications - legitimated, expanded, and also limited organized labor's role in mid-century U.S. politics and society. Her weaving of contexts and specifics, different moments of the past and their echoes today, is sure-footed. In short, she shows that photography was essential to a largerbattle of national attitudes toward labor movements and the broader unionization movement in the US during the first half of the 20th century

Library Databases with Primary Sources

New York Times (Historical): 1851-2021 This link opens in a new window
Search full text and images 1851-2021 including news, illustrations, editorials, and advertisements.
Coverage: 1851-2021
Full Text: Yes
Search Tips
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Online archive of eBooks and complete backruns of scholarly journals in a variety of academic fields.
Coverage: 1800s-
Full Text: Yes
Titles Included | Search Tips

JSTOR: Primary Source Collections
Search 3 collections of primary sources in JSTOR: 19th Century British Pamphlets, Struggles for Freedom: Southern Africa, and World Heritage Sites: Africa.

Websites with Primary Sources

To find primary sources via Google, try adding keywords like journals, papers, letters, documents, primary sources, or documentary history to your search terms. Primary sources can often be found on library, museum, and government websites.

Examples of online primary source collections related to labor history:

American Federation of Labor Records
The records of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) span the years 1883-1925 and consist of letterpress volumes of correspondence of Samuel Gompers (1850-1924) and William Green (1870-1952), presidents of the organization, and by other officials including James Duncan, Gabriel Edmonston, Frank Keyes Foster, and John McBride. Comprising approximately 172,300 items (328,445 images) digitized from previously produced microfilm, the collection relates to the formation of local unions, meetings, charters, bylaws, ethics, publicity, arbitration, AFL's political principles, communism, socialism, anthracite coal strikes of 1897 and 1902, fund-raising, boycotts, and the United Mine Workers, American Railway Union, International Association of Machinists, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and American Federationist, the AFL's magazine.
American Labor History, George Washington University Libraries
The Special Collections Research Center collects and preserves material in American Labor History from the 19th through early 21st centuries. The flagship collection of this effort is the records of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Browse the Teamsters Digital Collections.
Best Foot Forward: The Shoe Industry in Massachusetts
In the 1800s, the small state of Massachusetts revolutionized the shoemaking industry, cladding the feet of consumers nationwide in unprecedented numbers. Massachusetts found itself at the heart of the nation’s shoemaking industry by attracting and retaining skilled shoemakers and shoe machinery engineers.
Building the First Transcontinental Railroad
The coast-to-coast railroad was the result of the work of thousands of Americans, many of whom were Chinese immigrant laborers who worked under discriminatory pressures and for lower wages than their Irish counterparts. These laborers braved incredibly harsh conditions to lay thousands of miles of track.
Changing Face of the Auto Industry
The Changing Face of the Auto Industry Collection contains images from the Detroit Public Library's National Automotive History Collection and Burton Historical Collections. These photographs and postcards document the auto industry in the Detroit area during the first half of the twentieth century. This digitized collection is the result of a partnership between the Detroit Public Library and Wayne State University.
Digital Resources Guide for the Labor Archives of Washington
A selection of materials from the Labor Archives of Washington has been digitized and added to the University of Washington's Digital Collections, to which this portal provides access. This project has made hundreds of primary textual and visual resources relating to Pacific Northwest labor history more accessible to the public.
Labor Archives and Research Center (J. Paul Leonard Library, San Francisco State University_
The Labor Archives collection includes materials from the counties surrounding San Francisco Bay, including Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara. Explore their Digital Special Collections, Labor Archives in the Internet Archive, and YouTube channel.
Labor Archives Section Directory: Labor Archives in the United States and Canada
this directory includes repositories with partial holdings relating to labor and workers, as well as repositories whose entire holdings pertain to labor. The directory is organized by state, then by repository, with Canadian repositories listed last.
Labor Arts
This online resource holds a wide variety of powerful images that encourage understanding and appreciation of the contributions working people make to our society.
Labor History and Workplace Studies (University of Maryland)
Digitized resources include: The Carpenter Magazine (a publication produced by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of American of newsworthy events within the union) and AFL-CIO News (a publication produced by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations [AFL-CIO]. Volumes 1-25 [1956-1980] are available).
Minneapolis Labor Review Archive
The Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation and the Minneapolis Labor Review are pleased to present the Labor Review Archive, covering the years 1907-2016.
Patriotic Labor: America during World War I
One of the most important, if temporary, changes brought by the war at home came from the stifled flow of labor, as men were pulled away by the draft and immigration slowed. The need for American labor provided people treated as second-class citizens, such as women and African Americans, a brief opportunity for better jobs. This glimpse would help foment in them a desire for more and equal opportunities after they were pulled away once more at war’s end.
Remembering the 1911 Triangle Factory Fire (Cornell University)
This site includes original sources on the fire held at the ILR School's Kheel Center, an archive of historical material on labor and industrial relations.
Samuel Gompers Papers (University of Maryland)
The nation’s leading trade unionist in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Samuel Gompers was president of the American Federation of Labor from 1886 until he died in 1924. The Gompers Papers website is a repository of documents, bibliographies, and research related to Samuel Gompers and US Labor History.
Sisters in the Brotherhoods
This online exhibition, produced in connection with NYLHA Executive Board Member Jane LaTour’s book, tells the story of women who entered the blue-collar workforce in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s.
Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University
The Reuther Library's collection strengths extend to the political and community life of urban and metropolitan Detroit, the civil rights movement in Michigan and nationally, and women's struggles in the workplace. Browse their Image Galleries and Online Exhibits.

Additional websites for finding primary sources (these collections are broader than those listed above but may still have relevant documents for your research):

Ad*Access (Duke University Libraries)
Over 7,000 U.S. and Canadian advertisements covering five product categories - Beauty and Hygiene, Radio, Television, Transportation, and World War II propaganda - dated between 1911 and 1955.
American Archive of Public Broadcasting
Discover historic programs of publicly funded radio and television across America.
Colonial North America at Harvard Library
Colonial North America at Harvard Library provides access to remarkable and wide-ranging materials digitized as part of an ongoing, multi-year project. When complete, the project will make available to the world approximately 650,000 digitized pages of all known archival and manuscript materials in the Harvard Library that relate to 17th- and 18th-century North America.
Digital Commonwealth: Massachusetts Collections Online
Explore historical collections from libraries, museums, and archives across Massachusetts.
Digital Public Library of America
Discover 40,821,827 images, texts, videos, and sounds from across the United States.
Historic American Newspapers (Library of Congress)
Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1789-1963.
Internet History Sourcebooks Project
Welcome to The Internet History Sourcebooks Project, a collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts presented cleanly (without advertising or excessive layout) for educational use. Primary sources are available here primarily for use in high-school and university/college courses. From the outset the site took a very broad view of the sources that should be available to students and as well as documents long associated with a "western civilization" approach to history also provides much information on Byzantine, Islamic, Jewish, Indian, East Asian, and African history. You will also find many documents especially relevant to women's history and LGBT studies.
Library of Congress: Digital Collections
The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps and manuscripts in its collections. The Library preserves and provides access to a rich, diverse and enduring source of knowledge to inform, inspire and engage you in your intellectual and creative endeavors.
Wayne State University Libraries: Digital Collections
Browse collections related to the history of Michigan and Detroit.
World Digital Library
Search 19,147 items about 193 countries between 8000 BCE and 2000.

Examples of Primary Source Documents

The Establishment of an Imperial Commission for Labor Statistics in Germany - 1892
Plehn, Carl C. “The Establishment of an Imperial Commission for Labor Statistics in Germany.” Publications of the American Statistical Association 3, no. 20 (1892): 213–19. https://doi.org/10.2307/2276618.
Morgan Documents: Correspondence on a Matter of Workman's Compensation, 1902
Correspondence between the Morgan Construction Company and the American Mutual Liability Insurance Company about an injured employee, Corneilus W(o/a)de
Portrait Study of a Beautiful Labor Statistic
Advertisement by the Boston and Maine Railroad encouraging companies to open factories in northern New England.