| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Gregg Andrews. City Of Dust: A Cement Company Town in the Land of Tom Sawyer. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. 1996. Pp. xii, 360. $42.50.

For many years now, American labor historians have collectively recreated the diversity of American workers' experience. In this study of Ilasco, Missouri, Gregg Andrews carefully reconstructs life and work in a community that was hardly at the center of American industrialization. By closely analyzing this small place, Andrews hopes to provide new insights into larger issues in labor, race, and ethnic studies. 1

The context for the creation of Ilasco was the dramatic expansion of the U.S. economy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With demand for cement soaring, the Atlas Portland Cement Company sought new sources of raw materials and found them in plentiful supply in and around the caves along the Mississipi River outside Hannibal, Missouri. Here as elsewhere in America, local boosters agressively courted the Atlas corporation in hopes of moving the area away from heavy dependence on agriculture. As Andrews tells the story, the boosters achieved their goals, for the presence of Atlas soon began attracting natives of the area seeking alternatives to farming. European immigrants seeking freedom from poverty and various forms of political oppression soon joined the natives. In some of the best sections of the book, Andrews describes the experiences of these early Atlas employees through the use of personal stories. . . .

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