-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.wews.com/education/features/education-980831-205449.html <A HREF="http://www.wews.com/education/features/education-980831-205449.html">New sNet5 - A Collection Of Historic Events in t </A> ----- Many embedds. Om K ----- A Collection Of Historic Events in the Labor Movement 1806 •The union of Philadelphia Journeymen Cordwainers was convicted of and bankrupted by charges of criminal conspiracy after a strike for higher wages, setting a precedent by which the U.S. government would combat unions for years to come. April 27, 1825 •The first strike for the ten-hour workday occurred by carpenters in Boston. July 3, 1835 •Children employed in the silk mills in Paterson, NJ went on strike for the 11 hour day/6 day week. July 1851 •Two railroad strikers were shot dead and others were injured by the state militia in Portgage, New York. 1860 •Eight hundred women operatives and 4,000 workmen marched during a shoemaker's strike in Lynn, Mass. January 13, 1874 •The original Tompkins Square Riot. As unemployed workers demonstrated in New York's Tompkins Square Park, a detachment of mounted police charged into the crowd, beating men, women and children indiscriminately with billy clubs and leaving hundreds of casualties in their wake. Abram Duryee, the Commissioner of Police said, "It was the most glorious sight I ever saw." February 12, 1877 •U.S. railroad workers began strikes to protest wage cuts. June 21, 1877 •Ten coal-mining activists ("Molly Maguires") were hanged in Pennsylvania. July 14, 1877 •A general strike halted the movement of U.S. railroads. In the following days, strike riots spread across the U.S. The next week, federal troops were called out to force an end to the nationwide strike. •At the "Battle of the Viaduct" in Chicago, federal troops (recently returned from an Indian massacre) killed 30 workers and wounded over 100. September 5, 1882 •Thirty thousand workers marched in the first Labor Day parade in New York City. 1884 •The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, forerunner of the AFL, passed a resolution stating that "Eight hours shall constitute a legal day's work from and after May 1, 1886." Though the Federation did not intend to stimulate a mass insurgency, its resolution had precisely that effect. Late 1885/Early 1886 •Hundreds of thousands of American workers, increasingly determined to resist subjugation to capitalist power, poured into a fledgling labor organization, the Knights of Labor. Beginning on May 1, 1886, they took to the streets to demand the universal adoption of the eight-hour day. Chicago was the center of the movement. Workers there had been agitating for an eight-hour day for months, and on the eve of May 1, as many as 50,000 workers were already on strike. As many as 30,000 more swelled their ranks the next day, bringing most of Chicago manufacturing to a standstill. Fears of violent class conflict gripped the city. No violence occurred on May 1 -- a Saturday -- or May 2. But on Monday, May 3, a fight involving hundreds broke out at McCormick Reaper between locked-out unionists and the non-unionist workers McCormick hired to replace them. The Chicago police, swollen in number and heavily armed, quickly moved in with clubs and guns to restore order. They left four unionists dead and many others wounded. Angered by the deadly force of the police, a group of anarchists, led by August Spies and Albert Parsons, called on workers to arm themselves and participate in a massive protest demonstration in Haymarket Square on Tuesday, May 4. The demonstration appeared to be a complete bust, with only 3,000 assembling. But near the end of the evening, an individual, whose identity is still in dispute, threw a bomb that killed seven policemen and injured 67 others. Hysterical city and state government officials rounded up eight anarchists, tried them for murder, and sentenced them to death. On Nov. 11 1887, four of them, including Parsons and Spies, were executed. All of the executed advocated armed struggle and violence as revolutionary methods, but their prosecutors found no evidence that any had actually thrown the Haymarket bomb. They died for their words, not their deeds. A quarter of a million people lined Chicago's street during Parson's funeral procession to express their outrage at this gross miscarriage of justice. For radicals and trade unionists everywhere, Haymarket became a symbol of the stark inequality and injustice of capitalist society. The May 1886 Chicago events figured prominently in the decision of the founding congress of the Second International (Paris, 1889) to make May 1, 1890 a demonstration of the solidarity and power of the international working class movement. May Day has been a celebration of international socialism and (after 1917) international communism ever since. October 4, 1887 •The Louisiana Militia, aided by bands of "prominent citizens," shot 35 unarmed black sugar workers striking to gain a dollar-per-day wage, and lynched two strike leaders. July 25, 1890 •New York garment workers won the right to unionize after a seven-month strike. They secured agreements for a closed shop, and firing of all scabs. July 6, 1892 •The Homestead Strike. Pinkerton Guards, trying to pave the way for the introduction of scabs, opened fire on striking Carnegie mill steelworkers in Homestead, Pennsylvania. In the ensuing battle, three Pinkertons surrendered; then, unarmed, they were set upon and beaten by a mob of townspeople, most of them women. Seven guards and 11 strikers and spectators were shot to death. July 11, 1892 •Striking miners in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho dynamited the Frisco Mill, leaving it in ruins. July 5, 1893 •During a strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company, which had drastically reduced wages, the 1892 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago's Jackson Park was set ablaze, and seven buildings were reduced to ashes. The mobs raged on, burning and looting railroad cars and fighting police in the streets, until July 10, when 14,000 federal and state troops finally succeeded in putting down the strike. 1894 •Federal troops killed 34 American Railway Union members in the Chicago area attempting to break a strike, led by Eugene Debs, against the Pullman Company. Debs and several others were imprisoned for violating injunctions, causing disintegration of the union. September 21, 1896 •The state militia was sent to Leadville, Colorado to break a miner's strike. September 10, 1897 •19 unarmed striking coal miners and mine workers were killed and 36 wounded by a posse organized by the Luzerne County Sheriff for refusing to disperse near Lattimer, Pa. The strikers, most of whom were shot in the back, were originally brought in as strike-breakers, but later organized themselves. 1898 •A portion of the Erdman Act, which would have made it a criminal offense for railroads to dismiss employees or discriminate against prospective employees based on their union activities, was declared invalid by the United States Supreme Court. October 12, 1898 •Fourteen were killed, 25 wounded in violence resulting when Virden, Illinois mine owners attempted to break a strike by importing 200 nonunion black workers. April 29, 1899 •When their demand that only union men be employed was refused, members of the Western Federation of Miners dynamited the $250,000 mill of the Bunker Hill Company at Wardner, Idaho, destroying it completely. President McKinley responded by sending in black soldiers from Brownsville, Texas with orders to round up thousands of miners and confine them in specially built "bullpens." 1899 and 1901 •U.S. Army troops occupied the Coeur d'Alene mining region in Idaho. October 12, 1902 •Fourteen miners were killed and 22 wounded by scabherders in Pana, Illinois. November 23, 1903 •Troops were dispatched to Cripple Creek, Colorado to control rioting by striking coal miners. February 23, 1904 •William Randolph Hearst's San Francisco Chronicle began publishing articles on the menace of Japanese laborers, leading to a resolution of the California Legislature that action be taken against their immigration. June 8, 1904 •A battle between the Colorado Militia and striking miners at Dunnville ended with six union members dead and 15 taken prisoner. Seventy-nine of the strikers were deported to Kansas two days later. 1905 •The Supreme Court held that a maximum hours law for bakery workers was unconstitutional under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. 1908 •The Erdman Act was further weakened when Section 10 was declared unconstitutional. This section had made it illegal for railroad employers to fire employees for being involved in union activities (see 1898). November 22, 1909 •The "Uprising of the 20,000." Female garment workers went on strike in New York; many were arrested. A judge told those arrested, "You are on strike against God." December 25, 1910 •A dynamite bomb destroyed a portion of the Llewellyn Ironworks in Los Angeles, where a bitter strike was in progress. 1911 •The Supreme Court ordered the AFL to cease its promotion of a boycott against the Bucks Stove and Range Company. A contempt charge against union leaders (including AFL President Samuel Gompers) was dismissed on technical grounds. March 25, 1911 •The Triangle Shirtwaist Company, occupying the top three floors of a ten-story building in New York City, was consumed by fire. One hundred and forty-seven people, mostly women and young girls working in sweatshop conditions, lost their lives. Approximately 50 died as they leapt from windows to the street; the others were burned or trampled to death as they desperately attempted to escape through stairway exits locked as a precaution against "the interruption of work". December 2, 1911 •A Chicago "slugger," paid $50 by labor unions for every scab he "discouraged," described his job in an interview, "Oh, there ain't nothin' to it. I gets my fifty, then I goes out and finds the guy they wanna have slugged. I goes up to `im and I says to `im, `My friend, by way of meaning no harm,' and then I gives it to `im -- biff! in the mug. Nothin' to it." February 24, 1912 •Women and children were beaten by police during a textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts. April 18, 1912 •The National Guard was called out against striking West Virginia coal miners. 1913 •The U.S. Department of Labor, a cabinet-level arm, was established by presidential order by outgoing President Howard Taft just hours before President Woodrow Wilson took office. (Read The History of the DOL) June 11, 1911 •Police shot three maritime workers (one of whom was killed) who were striking against the United Fruit Company in New Orleans. January 5, 1914 •The Ford Motor Company raised its basic wage from $2.40 for a nine-hour day to $5 for an eight-hour day. April 20, 1914 •The "Ludlow Massacre." In an attempt to persuade strikers at Colorado's Ludlow Mine Field to return to work, company "guards," engaged by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and other mine operators and sworn into the State Militia just for the occasion, attacked a union tent camp with machine guns, then set it afire. Five men, two women and 12 children died as a result. January 19, 1915 •World famous labor leader Joe Hill was executed by a firing squad in Salt Lake City. He was convicted on trumped-up murder charges, and was executed despite worldwide protests and two attempts to intervene by President Woodrow Wilson. In a letter to Bill Haywood shortly before his death he penned the famous words, "Don't mourn - organize!" On this same day, 20 rioting strikers were shot by factory guards at Roosevelt, New Jersey. July 22, 1916 •A bomb was set off during a "Preparedness Day" parade in San Francisco, killing 10 and injuring 40 more. Thomas J. Mooney, a labor organizer and Warren K. Billings, a shoe worker, were convicted, but were both pardoned in 1939. July 12, 1917 •Several thousand armed vigilantes rounded up 1,200 members of the Industrial Workers of the World in Bisbee, Arizona and herded them into boxcars to be shipped off and dumped in the New Mexico desert. The IWW had called a strike against the Bisbee copper mines two weeks earlier; patriotism and support for the war effort were cited as reasons for the action. March 15, 1917 •The Supreme Court approved the Eight-Hour Act under the threat of a national railway strike. August 1, 1917 •IWW organizer Frank Little was lynched in Butte, Montana. September 5, 1917 •Federal agents raided the IWW headquarters in 48 cities. June 3, 1918 •A Federal child labor law, enacted two years earlier, was declared unconstitutional. A new law was enacted Feb. 24, 1919, but this one was also declared unconstitutional (on June 2, 1924). July 27, 1918 •United Mine Workers organizer Ginger Goodwin was shot by a hired private policeman outside Cumberland, British Columbia. August 26, 1919 •United Mine Worker organizer Fannie Sellins was gunned down by company guards in Brackenridge, Pennsylvania. September 9, 1919 •When the police commissioner refused to allow Boston patrolmen to unionize, three quarters of the force went out on strike, an action that precipitated widespread looting by the citizenry. Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge put down the strike by calling out the entire state militia. September 22, 1919 •The "Great Steel Strike" began. Ultimately, 350,000 steel workers walked off their jobs to demand union recognition. The AFL Iron and Steel Organizing Committee called off the strike on Jan. 8, 1920, their goals unmet. November 11, 1919 •IWW organizer Wesley Everest was lynched after a Centralia, Washington IWW hall was attacked. December 22, 1919 •Amid a strike for union recognition by 395,000 steelworkers (ultimately unsuccessful), approximately 250 "anarchists," "communists," and "labor agitators" were deported to Russia, marking the beginning of the so-called "Red Scare." January 2, 1920 •The U.S. Bureau of Investigation began carrying out the nationwide Palmer Raids. Federal agents seized labor leaders and literature in the hopes of discouraging labor activity. A number of citizens were turned over to state officials for prosecution under various anti-anarchy statutes. May 19, 1920 •The Battle of Matewan. Despite efforts by Matewan, West Virginia police chief (and former miner) Sid Hatfield and Mayor C. Testerman to protect miners from interference in their union drive, Baldwin-Felts detectives hired by the local mining company and thirteen of the company's managers arrived to evict miners and their families from the Stone Mountain Mine Camp. A gun battle ensued, resulting in the deaths of seven detectives, Mayor Testerman, and two miners. Baldwin-Felts detectives assassinated Sid Hatfield 15 months later, sparking off an armed rebellion of 10,000 West Virginia coal miners at "The Battle of Blair Mountain," dubbed "the largest insurrection this country has had since the Civil War" by The Battle of Matewan Home Page. 1920 and 1921 •Army troops were used to intervene against striking mineworkers in West Virginia. June 2, 1924 •A child labor Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was proposed; only 28 of the necessary 36 states ever ratified it. June 22, 1922 •Violence erupted during a coal-mine strike at Herrin, Illinois. Thirty-six were killed, 21 of them non-union miners. June 14, 1924 •A San Pedro, Calif. IWW hall was raided; a number of children were scalded when the hall was demolished. May 25, 1925 •Two company houses occupied by nonunion coal miners were blown up and destroyed by labor "racketeers" during a strike against the Glendale Gas and Coal Company in Wheeling, W.Va. 1926 •Textile workers fought with police in Passaic, N.J. November 21, 1927 •Picketing miners were massacred in Columbine, Colo. February 3, 1930 •"Chicagorillas" -- labor racketeers -- shot and killed contractor William Healy, with whom the Chicago Marble Setters Union had been having difficulties. April 14, 1930 •Over 100 farm workers were arrested for their unionizing activities in Imperial Valley, Calif. Eight were subsequently convicted of 'criminal syndicalism.' October 10, 1933 •Eighteen-thousand cotton workers went on strike in Pixley, Calif. Four were killed before a pay-hike was finally won. May 1934 •Police stormed striking truck drivers in Minneapolis who were attempting to prevent truck movement in the market area. November 9, 1935 •The Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) was formed to expand industrial unionism. 1936-1937 •The famous Flint Sit Down was staged by automotive factory workers in Flint, Mich. The fledgling United Auto Workers staged the sit-downs with the support of worker's families to help gain rights for factory employee. May 30, 1937 •Police killed 10 and wounded 30 during the "Memorial Day Massacre" at the Republic Steel plant in Chicago. October 24, 1940 •The 40-hour workweek went into effect under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. December 28, 1944 •President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the Army to seize the executive offices of Montgomery Ward and Company after the corporation failed to comply with a National War Labor Board directive regarding union shops. 1946 •Workers in packing houses nationwide went on strike. April 1, 1946 •A strike by 400,000 mine workers in the U.S. began. October 4, 1946 •The U.S. Navy seized oil refineries in order to break a 20-state post-war strike. June 20, 1947 •The Taft-Hartley Labor Act, curbing strikes, was vetoed by President Truman. Congress overrode the veto. April 20, 1948 •Labor leader Walter Reuther was shot and seriously wounded by would-be assassins. August 27, 1950 •President Truman ordered the U.S. Army to seize all the nation's railroads to prevent a general strike. The railroads were not returned to their owners until two years later. April 8, 1952 •President Truman ordered the U.S. Army to seize the nation's steel mills to avert a strike. The act was ruled to be illegal by the Supreme Court on June 2. December 5, 1955 •The two largest labor organizations in the U.S. merged to form the AFL-CIO, with a membership estimated at 15 million. April 5, 1955 •Columnist Victor Riesel, a crusader against labor racketeers, was blinded in New York City when a hired assailant threw sulfuric acid in his face. April 1, 1963 •The longest newspaper strike in U.S. history ended. The nine major newspapers in New York City had ceased publication over 100 days before. January 5, 1970 •Joseph A. Yablonski, unsuccessful reform candidate to unseat "Tough Tony" Boyle as President of the United Mine Workers, was murdered, along with his wife and daughter, in their Clarksville, Pa. home by assassins acting on Boyle's orders. Boyle was later convicted of the killing. West Virginia miners went on strike the following day in protest. March 18, 1970 •The first mass work stoppage in the 195-year history of the Post Office Department began with a walkout of letter carriers in Brooklyn and Manhattan, soon involving 210,000 of the nation's 750,000 postal employees. With mail service virtually paralyzed in New York, Detroit, and Philadelphia, President Nixon declared a state of national emergency and assigned military units to New York City post offices. The stand-off culminated two weeks later. July 29, 1970 •United Farm Workers forced California grape growers to sign an agreement after a five-year strike. August 3, 1981 •Federal air traffic controllers began a nationwide strike after their union rejected the government's final offer for a new contract. Most of the 13,000 striking controllers defied the back-to-work order, and were dismissed by President Reagan on Aug. 5. October 6, 1986 •Seventeen-hundred female flight attendants won an 18-year lawsuit (which included $37 million in damages) against United Airlines, which had fired them for getting married. October 24, 1987 •The 35-member executive council of the AFL-CIO decided unanimously to readmit the 1.6-million member Teamsters Union to its ranks. The scandal-ridden union had been expelled from the federation in 1957. President Jackie Presser was awaiting trial at the time, and the U.S. Justice Department was considering removal of the union's leadership because of possible links to organized crime. 1989 •Miners in Virginia went on strike against Pittston Coal. While a month-long Soviet coal strike dominated U.S. news broadcasts, the year-long Pittston strike garnered almost no press coverage whatsoever. Compiled with the help of Allen Lutins Nancy Kerrigan Sues Smut Site Several Oscar Contenders Hit The Shelves Check Out This Explosive Day In History Have Any Big Plans For The Weekend? NewsNet 5 News UpdatesWant free headlines via e-mail? Enter your address. Information about this site, our privacy policy, our ad rates and the people who care for and feed it. Entire Site © 1998, Internet Broadcasting System. ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. 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