The Trial of a New Society: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Trial of a New Society, credited to Justus Ebert, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of The Trial of a New Society by Justus Ebert. Read in English by Joanna Michal Hoyt. In 1912 textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, mostly immigrants, went on strike in response to a pay cut, speedups, and unsafe working conditions. Representatives from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW/Wobblies) came in to help organize the strike. The city declared martial law and a tense standoff went on for weeks. National newspapers provided breathless coverage of the strike and painted drastically different pictures of what was happening and who was to blame. When a woman was shot in ambiguous circumstances, strike leaders were tried for murder--not for shooting her, but for purportedly inciting mob violence leading to her death. They were acquitted. This book by an ardent IWW member, which seems to have been written in haste as well as in great enthusiasm, gives a vivid journalistic account of labor conditions, of the strike which was afterward known as the Bread and Roses strike, of the trial of strike leaders Joseph Ettor and Arturo Giovanitti, and of the general strike organized to support them. The linked text includes reproductions of various cartoons, posters, and leaflets from the strike, which have not been read aloud. It also includes many footnotes, detailed citations of sources for quotes, which also have not been read aloud--only those footnotes required to explain quotes which had no attribution in the main text have been included. (Summary by Joanna Michal Hoyt)

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Trial of a New Society
• Author credits: Justus Ebert
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 8
• Listed recording duration: 3:30:43

Catalogue topics

• history
• socialism
• immigrants
• strike
• labor
• Union
• iww
• America

Track guide

1. 00 - Introduction — 5:32
2. 01 - Chapter I: The Industrial Democracy Arrives — 31:55
3. 02 - Chapter II: The Industrial Democracy Gets Into Action — 20:13
4. 03 - Chapter III: The Industrial Democracy Overcomes All Opposition — 48:17
5. 04 - Chapter IV: The Industrial Democracy Re-Asserts Itself — 25:00
6. 05 - Chapter V: The Industrial Democracy Triumphs In Court — 34:43
7. 06 - Chapter V, part 2 — 34:06
8. 07 - Chapter VI: Will The Industrial Democracy Endure? — 10:57

Listen to this recording

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.