author
James C. Beeks
Best known for a vivid account of a major Chicago labor struggle, this little-known 19th-century writer left behind a firsthand-feeling record of workers, employers, and the tensions of industrial America.
1 Audiobook
30,000 locked out : the great strike of the building trades in Chicago
by James C. Beeks
About the author
James C. Beeks is remembered chiefly for 30,000 Locked Out: The Great Strike of the Building Trades in Chicago, a book published in 1887 and now preserved by Project Gutenberg. The work centers on a huge Chicago building-trades strike and has helped keep his name alive for readers interested in labor history.
Reliable biographical details about Beeks are scarce, so it is safest to describe him as a late 19th-century American author associated with historical writing on labor conflict. A separate Indiana library record identifies a portrait as "James C. Beeks, possibly Fort Wayne, Indiana, circa 1870," which suggests a connection to Indiana, but that detail is not certain enough to state as fact.
What makes Beeks interesting today is the way his surviving work captures the scale and intensity of organized labor in his era. For listeners drawn to social history, strikes, and the everyday struggles behind industrial growth, his writing offers a direct window into that world.