The Hamlet Chicken Processing Plant Fire is a seemingly isolated event in American labor history. 
On September 3rd, 1991, a fire at the Imperial Foods processing plant killed 25 people in the small town of Hamlet, North Carolina. It was the worst industrial disaster in the state’s history, and a stark reminder of the dangers workers face in America’s continuing industrial evolution.
But as historian Bryant Simon writes in his new book “The Hamlet Fire: A Tragic Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives,” the disaster is emblematic of a shift in an American ethos that values cheap commerce over anything else.
In this special collaboration with The Center For Georgia Studies at Georgia College, Simon talks with Georgia College history professor Mark Huddle about the Hamlet Chicken Processing Plant Fire and the culture of cheap that is hollowing out the American way of life.

Learn more about Bryant Simon’s book “The Hamlet Fire:
A Tragic Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives” at https://thenewpress.com/books/hamlet-fire

Bryant Simon on The Hamlet Fire And The Politics Of Cheap

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