Labor Systems of Early America

Native American Labor

• A short guide to the tribes of North America  (site also has a bibliography)

• Richard Hakluyt Discourse of Western Planting (1584)
• Manners and Customs of the Indians 1637 (New England)
• ' Their Extraordinary Great Labor”: Roger Williams Observes Indian Customs and Language, 1643
• ' Your People Live Only Upon Cod”: An Algonquian Response to European Claims of Cultural Superiority
• Pedro Naranjo Relates the Pueblo Revolt, 1680—the Pueblo revolt was an anti-colonial labor uprising
• ' The Moment That The Snows Are Melted The Indian Women Begin Their Work”: Iroquois Women Work the Fields

• Some Occupations of Colonial America
• Website on the Diary of Martha Ballard terrific site--with documents, teaching lessons, lots more; Ballard was a midwife in 18th century Maine

Indentured Servants

• Indentured Servants 2 sample contracts from the Virtual Jamestown site
• A list of those executed in Bacon's Rebellion (1676) from Virtual Jamestown website
• Indentured servants and transported convicts from Stratford Hall Virginia website
• Ads for Runaway indentured Servants
• Ran off. Ads for runaway slaves and runaway wives
• "Our Plantation Is Very Weak": The Experiences of an Indentured Servant in Virginia, 1623
• They Live Well in the Time of their Service: George Alsop Writes of Servants in Maryland, 1663 
• Work and Labor in this New Land are Very Hard (1750, German immigrant to Philadelphia Gottlieb Mitteberger describes redemptioners)
• Gottlieb Mittelberger Warns His Countryman of the Perils of Emigration, 1750—on the trip over; compare with Equiano (in Slave labor section)
• The Infortunate William Moraley Tries His Luck in America, 1729.
• We Unfortunate English People Suffer Here: An English Servant Writes Home 1756

Slave Labor

Chronologies & bibliographies & source collections

• Chronology of the History of Slavery Holt House
• A Chronology of Slavery, Abolition, and Emancipation
• Bibliography from Digital History
• WWW-VL: HISTORY: US: SLAVERY
• Historical documents from Brown University contains high resolution images of over one hundred and fifty historical documents, some six hundred manuscript pages in all, including sales of slaves
• The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record  from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
• Documenting Louisiana Sugar 1845-1917two fully searchable databases that allow users to examine the evolution of one of plantation labor crop, cane sugar.

Great Sale of Slaves ad, 1855

Slave Narratives

• WPA-collected Slave Narratives (oral history from 1930s, memories of 19th century slavery))
• Library of Congress Slave Narratives 2300 narratives, 500 black and white photos

Slave Labor and the law

• Slaves and the Courts 1740-1860  American Memory collection of the Library of Congress. It contains 105 documents (8700 pages) that cover an assortment of trials and cases both from the United States and Great Britain; documents of both slaveholders and abolitionists
•  Servants and Slaves and their legal disposition 17th century Virginia
• Slavery and Law in Virginia from Colonial Williamsburg website -- Chronology and statistics

Sources/Lesson Plans

• A Slave Frees Himself and his Family
• Johann Bolzius Writes to Germany About Slave Labor in Carolina and Georgia, 1750
• Job Hortop and the British Enter the Slave Trade, 1567
• Olaudah Equiano describes the middle passage, 1789
• Olaudah Equiano site, with links to bibliography, maps, etc
• Hugh Jones Describes Virginia’s Slave Society, 1724
• Transcriptions of Virginia Gazette Runaway Slave Ads
• Documents and Perspectives on Slavery from PBS website Africans in America
• Lesson Plan for K-12 on ' Jobs in Jamestown, Virginia” from Virtual Jamestown – there are also other lesson plans on same site
• Lesson Plan for K-12 on ' Language and Runaway Slaves”
• Diagram of 1808 slave ship
• "The Happiest Laboring Class in the World": Two Virginia Slaveholders Debate Methods of Slave Management, 1837. –terrific document, both for the institution and slave resistance
• Slave Resistance Lesson plan for high school, using slave narratives and other primary documents
• Charles Ball's Journey to South Carolina, 1837--escaping slavery and fearing recapture
• Charles Ball's description of one plantation (pdf)
• Solomon Northrup  Remembers the New Orleans Slave Market
• In the Richmond Slave Market
• Child Rearing of Slaves
• White Slaveowners Fear that the Haitian Revolution Has Arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, 1797
• The Growth of Slavery and Southern Railroad Development (Georgia, Carolinas)
• Work Songs of African-Americans
  • Ring-Shout Song
  • Trouble So Hard      

Slave Resistance brought the "map of servitude"

for 1,235 images, see The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record

• photo of slaves and overseer
• Photo of ex-slaves scarred back, a sign of slave resistance photographed in 1863
• Great Sale of Slaves ad, 1855
• Depiction of provision day for slaves, 1860

Revolution Through Early National Period

•     "I Was Sure of Getting a Trade": John Fitch's Long Journey Towards Becoming an Artisan, 1760     
• Charles Woodmason Visits the Carolina Backcountry, 1768 -plebian culture and anti-elitism
•    Herman Husband  and the North Carolina Regulators, 1769 North Carolina Regulator movement of farmers, tenants, and laborers challenged the government in the 1760s
•   Many Hundreds are Starving for Want of  Employment: John Harrower Leaves London for Virginia, 1774   
•   "We Are All Equally Free": New York City  Workingmen Demand A Voice in the Revolutionary  Struggle      
• "Natural and Inalienable Right to Freedom" : Slaves' Petition for Freedom to the Massachusetts Legislature,  1777      
• A Shoemaker and the Tea Party by George Robert Twelve Hewes     
•   George Hewes' Recollection of the Boston Massacre    
• William Manning's The Key of Libberty, Shewing the Causes Why a Free Government Has Always Failed, and a Remidy Against It. Written in 1798 by William Manning (early anti-capitalist critique)
•   William Manning, A Laborer, Explains Shays  Rebellion in Massachusetts     
• Massachusetts  Yeomen Oppose the "Aristocratickal" Constitution, January, 1788.     
• "The Sentiments of a Labourer": William Manning Inquires in the Key of Liberty, 1798 how ordinary laborer conceived of issues of rights and organizing citizenry     
• ' The Print of My Ancestors’ Houses are Every Where to  be Seen: Little Turtle Balks at Giving Up Land to General Anthony Wayne, 1795 
• A Young Womans diary 1790s-- how farm households depended on women’s labor (Massachusetts) 
• "The Treatment of the Help in Those Days Was Cruel": Hiram Munger Remembers Factory Life 1790s
• The Rights of Man to Property by Thomas Skidmore (labor radical)
• "A Working Man" Remembers Life in New York City, 1830s
• Excerpt from An Address to the Working-Men of New-England (1832)

Early 19th-Antebellum

• John Doyle Writes Home to Ireland, 1818 opportunities for the Irish migrant
• The Panic of 1819 The first of many economic collapses in the 19th century
•   A Working Man's  Recollections of America, 1825–35 ·
• Panic and Depression of 1832
• Shoemakers in a ' ten-footer shop.
• Pace and Control of Work By Shipyard Artisans and Mechanics, 1830s
• An Old Apprentice Laments Changes in the Workplace, New York, 1826
• Dumping Ground at the Foot of Beach Street.” Engraving, scavenging in New York
• A Factory Manager and his Problems, 1829 ·       
• A look at early 19th century Working Men's parties from Samuel Gompers papers, links to primary source documents on these short-lived organizations
• Workingmens Declaration of Independence, 1829  --by George Evans, founder of NY Workingmans Party
• Thomas Skidmore's The Rights of Man to Property! (1829) For context, read this for an explanation of how he connected revolutionary values to the dawning capitalist system
• Factories are talked about as schools of vice: Elias Nason Considers Careers
• Panic and Depression of 1836
• Is This America?: An English Family Travels Up the Mississippi to Their New Home in Illinois, 1831
• Equal Rights Party Declaration, 1836
• Panic of 1837
• Six Year Depression 1837-1943
•         Sally Rice on the Life of A Domestic Servant, 1838
•         David Johnson Recalls the Shoemakers’ Shops of Lynn, Massachusetts
•   I Believe in the Divinity of Labor”: George Ripley Tries to Convince Ralph Waldo Emerson to Join Brook Farm, Boston, 1840
•       Dame Shirley Describes Life in Gold Mining Camp, 1850s ·  
•       This Muddy Place”: Mary Ballou, a Boardinghouse Keeper in the California Gold Rush, 1852 ·       
•   I Was a Very Apt Scholar in This Kind of Street Etiquette”: William Otter Brawls His Way Through New York City, 1830s ·     
•     New York Police Chief George W. Matsell Describes the City’s Vagrant and Delinquent Children, 1849
•      ' We Are Not Slaves”: Female Shoe and Textile Workers in Marblehead, Massachusetts, 1860 ·    
•      White Artisans in South Contest the Labor of Black Workers, 1838 ·   
•       ' Job Visited by a Master Tailor from Broadway.”  Illustration about class stratification, 1841 ·      
•    ' The Great Meeting of Foreigners in the Park. Anti-immigrant sentiments about labor unrest, 1855 ·   
•       Comparing Plantation and Factory Rules - a lesson plan with links to primary documents, showing comparison between northern ' free labor” textile mills and slave labor plantations ·   
•       ' Elevate Us to a Free and Independent Position”: William J. Brown Looks for Work, 1831, Rhode Island
• Panic of 1857
•     Washington Spradling Discusses the Condition of Free Blacks in the South, 1863 Kentucky

Lowell Mills

Prof. Zahavi's selections on early industrial period, from his website, with emphasis on Lowell Mills

• Excerpts from a Ten-Hour Day Circular (1835)
• An Account from a Visitor to Lowell (1836)
• Orestes A. Brownson on "Free Labor" (1840)
• Letters of Emeline Larcom (1840)\
• A Selection from the Lowell Offering (1844)
• "A Second Peep at Factory Life" (From the Lowell Offering, 1845)
• Letters of Mary Paul (1845-48)
• Poems by Lucy Larcom.
• "A Week in the Mill," from the Lowell Offering (1845)
• Recruitment of Lowell Operatives (1846)
  
  
•   Lowell Women Workers Campaign for a Ten Hour Workday
•    The Lowell Mills Go on Strike, 1836 ·        
• Factory Rules for Lowell Mills, 1848 and other documents from the labor unrest of 1840s
•   Timetable of the Lowell Mills (1853)
•     Sources and Lesson Plans University of Maryland

  including The Lowell Offering: A Letter From Miss Martineau
  Among Lowell Mill Girls: A Reminiscence. 

•   ' Starting for Lowell. engraving    The latest model. engraving
• CENTER FOR LOWELL HISTORY Univ of Mass digitized publications

Lesson Plans:

•   How Did Sarah Bagley Contribute to the Ten-Hour Movement in Lowell and How
  Did Her Labor Activism Flow into Other Reform Movements, 1836-1870?
• Sources and Lesson Plans University of Maryland
• Talk Show on the Lowell Strike of 1834 or 1836   lesson plan for High school, with links to primary documents
• Liberty Rhetoric and the Lowell Mill Girls -"a website for student discovery": documents with questions for discussion/reflection

Civil War, Reconstruction and Labor 1863-1877

• Chronology of Emancipation
• Panic of 1869-1871
• Panic of 1873
• After Slavery: Race, Labor and Politics in Post-Emancipation Carolinas combines latest scholarship on understanding the struggles of this period as land and labor struggles and the search for freedom. Teachers resources, documents and summaries of scholarship are a wonderful resource for all levels of teaching.
• Freedmen and Southern Society website includes many on-line documents relating to labor issues
• Freedmen's Bureau material on labor
• Testimony from Victims of New York's Draft Riots, July, 1863
• A New York Sewing Woman Protests Wages and Working Conditions, 1863
• Photo of ex-slaves scarred back, a sign of slave resistance photographed in 1863
• Black Labor, Contrabands and the U.S. Military Railroads in the Civil War
• Louisiana Planters to the Commander of the Department of the Gulf, January 14, 1863 Writing to Union General Nathaniel P. Banks, sugar planters lamented the effect of slave flight and Union military occupation on plantation operations.
• Testimony by a South Carolina Freedman before the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission, June 1863  Testifying before a War Department commission that was investigating the condition and prospects of ex-slaves, Harry McMillandiscussed his people's lives in bondage and their aspirations in freedom.
• Plantation Regulations by a U.S. Treasury Agent, February 1864 [image (86K)]A broadside announced the rules governing the employment of black laborers on plantations in Union-occupied Louisiana.
• Meeting between Black Religious Leaders and Union Military Authorities, January 12, 1865 A Northern newspaper reported the proceedings of a remarkable gathering: At Savannah, Georgia, twenty black ministers and lay leaders joined Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and General William T. Sherman to consider the future of the thousands of slaves freed by the march of Sherman's army.
• Sherman's Special Field Order 15  January 15, 1865      Intending chiefly to disencumber his mobile army of the fugitive slaves who followed in its train, General William T. Sherman reserved a swath of land along the south Atlantic coast for settlement exclusively by former slaves, promising the settlers "possessory title" to small tracts. (this is the basis for the We Demand Land document claims)
• Freedman's Bureau Archive Documents from The Freedmen's Bureau -
• Freedmen and Southern Society  First hand accounts of life after slavery, and much more --click on the documents hyperlink to access sample documents
• ' There Was Never Any Pay-day For the Negroes':  Ex-slave Jourdon Anderson Demands Wages (and reparation), 1865
• Fountain Hughes Recalls His Life in Slavery and Freedom, Baltimore, 1944
• When We Worked on Shares, We Couldn't Make Nothing: Henry Blake Talks About Sharecropping after  the Civil War (document)
• The South's Recovery: Who Paid the Price of Success?
• ' Almost Broken Spirits': Farmers in the New South  -- commodity production affected white and black farmer
• A Year's Wage for Three Peaches: A Black Man Tells of Exploitation in the Late 19th century South fear of the chain gang
• Forced Labor in the ' New South, 1904 
• White Women Protest the Hiring of Black ' Wage-Slaves'
• William H. Sylvis, The Life, Speeches, Labors and Essays of William H. Sylvis, (1872)-organizer of National Labor Union

Casual' laborers–all women and children--on a Georgetown, SC rice plantation, ca. 1895|
South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina

Freedpeople and their allies struggled to remake the south, mounting struggles that were preserved in memory for decades. But their rights to full citizenship were denied with force in the south, when white power was restored through legal and extra-legal means. Similarly, in the southwest and parts of the west citizenship rights such as those of the loggers below were denied in order to produce a robust capitalist accumulation in the late 19th century.

Late 19th century through Early 20th century  

Experiences

• America at Work, America at Leisure 150 films accessed from the Library of Congress collections, digitized, 1890s-1915
• Illinois during the gilded age
• Transcontinental Railroad from PBS
• Railroad Workers mid 19th century
• Strikes, Blacklists, and Dismissals--Railroad Workers' Spatial History on the Great Plains
• ' Store Pay Is Our Ruin': The Tyranny of the Company Store 1878, Ohio
• Six Families Budget Their Money, Illinois, 1884
• An Old New York Cabinet Maker: Experiences of Ernest Hagen handcraft work and resisting mechanization
• Late Nineteenth-Century Rail Worker Describes Management's Tyranny
• The Working Girls of Boston, 1884
• A German Radical Emigrates to America in 1885
• Elfido López Recalls Rural Mexican-American Life in the Late 19th century -transformation of the countryside
• A cowboy remembers work as a wage laborer in the late 19th century
• A Cowboy's Work is Never Done: George Martin
• African-American Cowboy Will Crittendon
• The Labor Movement: the Problem of To-day, ed. George E. McNeil (1887) (entire book)
• Terrence V. Powderly, Thirty Years of Labor, 1859 to 1889 (entire book)
• Panic of 1893 also from Presidential papers
• John Swinton, et. al. Striking for Life: Labor's Side of the Labor Question ( 1894) (entire book)
• Shying Away: Samuel Gompers on  Steering Clear of the Farmers' Alliance
• Slumming Among the Unemployed: William Wycoff Studies Joblessness in the 1890s
• Hobo, 1894
• A Year's Wage for Three Peaches: A Black Man Tells of Exploitation in the Late 19th century South –fear of the chain gang
• Forced Labor in the ' New South', 1904 
• White Women Protest the Hiring of Black ' Wage-Slaves'
• Jacob A. Riis, How the Other Half Lives (1890)
• Chicago Stockyards, with links to bibliography of sources
• The Pullman Era with links to bibliography of sources
• Polish Immigrants Letters Back Home in early 20th century
• ' We Ran Silent Movies For Years': An Italian Immigrant Goes Into Show Business in the Early Twentieth Century
• Eight Hours in the Forenoon, Eight Hours in the Afternoon: An IWW Organizer Describes the Horrors of Rural Work
• Panic of 1901 - chaos Part II and at the Stock Exchange
•  Inside the Westinghouse factory, 1904
• On the Lower East Side: Observations of Life in Lower Manhattan at the Turn of the Century   This collection of articles, documentary sources, and study guides was compiled to accompany the course, An Urban Experience: New York City's Lower East Side, 1880-1920
• New York Tenement Museum
• Working Chicago 1870-1930 from Homicides in Illinois website 
• Hull-House and its neighborhoods in Chicago primary sources, photos, teachers resources
• 20 years at Hull-House by Jane Adams (entire book)
• Zone Policeman 88: A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and Its Workers (entire book by Harry Frank) "intimate picture of the men who handle the steam shovels, tamp the dynamite cartridges, build the concrete locks, and run the never-ending procession of earth trains."
• Westinghouse Strike 1916 - Coroner's Case Files Cases of three workers killed when Westinghouse marchers went to Braddock and were fired upon by troops.
• Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World - based on the acclaimed book Like A Family, this site includes some primary documents, oral histories, teaching ideas, photos of the Piedmont mill world from late 19th through 1930s
• Labor activist Oscar Ameringer Discovers the Cincinnati Public Library in 1888
• An IWW Organizer Describes the Horrors of Rural Work, 1915 -seasonal day laborers
• Marot, Helen. American Labor Unions (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1914; BoondocksNet Edition, 2001). a great source of information about the era.
• When Toil Meant Trouble: Labor in Butte, Montana (miners, mine disasters, IWW)
• Mother Jones, ' Civilization in Southern Mills” (1901)
• Home Sweet Home: Building and Loan Associations Lend a Hand 1889-- ' self-help” in working class culture
• ' ' It Was Considered Low Music': Pianist Eubie Blake on the Birth of Ragtime at the Turn of the Century
• ' Cotton Belt Blues': Lizzie Miles's Blues Song
• Dancing After Dark: A Rural Woman recalls Farm life in Early 20th century  
• Dissatisfaction of Farm Women, 1913
• Hours and Conditions of Mercantile Jobs for Women, Indiana, 1914
• Report on conditions of women and children in 19 volumes, 1912-1916 (selected volumes slowly becoming digitized)

Cutting redwoods in California

Asian Labor (and reaction to) in the late 19th century U.S.

Documents

• Teaching Forum: Chinese Exclusion resource on how to pose the fundamental question: Is the U.S. a nation of immigrants or a gatekeeper? Teaching With Documents: Affidavit and Flyers from the Chinese Boycott Case from National Archives "coolie" labor boycotts
• Chinese laborers exclusion act
• Kearneyism, the Chinese, and Labor Unrest in California 1877
• ' Kearney Agitation in California,” by Henry George 1880
• ' Asiatic Coolie Invasion 1906
• ' Our Misery and Despair: Kearney Blasts Chinese Immigration (1878)
• The Fight Begins at Home: Jewett Defends Asian Immigrants (1878)
• Fair's Fair: McDonnell Argues for Acceptance of Aliens (1878)
• Eye on the East: Labor Calls for Ban on Chinese Immigration (1901)
• Rock Springs Massacre, Wyoming, 1885
• Excerpt from Some Reasons for Chinese Exclusion: Meat vs. Rice (1903 AFL pamphlet)
• ' A Foretaste of the Orient: John Murray Criticizes the AFL for excluding Asian-Americans (1903 farm workers strike)
• A Chinese Immigrant Makes His Home in Turn-of-the-Century America
• ' We Chinese Are Viewed Like Thieves and Enemies”: Pun Chi Appeals to Congress to Protect the Rights of Chinese, ca. 1860

Sweatshops/Child Labor late 19th-early 20th

• Between a Rock and a Hard Place: A History of  American Sweatshops, 1820-Present
• Child Labor in America
• ' The Poisonous Occupations in Illinois-- ' Dangerous Trades' at the Turn of the Century
• No Way Out: Two New York City Firemen Testify about the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
• ' Oh God, For One More Breath': Early 20th century Tennessee Coal Miners’ Last Words
• Excerpt from Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (packinghouses in Chicago)
• Teaching With Documents: Photographs of Lewis Hine from National Archives
• Using Lewis Hine's Child Labor Photographs an open forum on how to interpret Hine's photographs of child laborers taken between 1908 and 1912 for the National Child Labor Committee. A great teaching resource/ background
• Using Lewis Hine Child Labor Photographs, Part Two: Miners uses the newly available Library of Congress originals to interrogate Hine's intentions. Great resource for exploring the deeper meaning of iconic photography in Progressive era.
• Working Her Fingers to the Bone: Agnes Nestor's Story 60 hour weeks in the glove factories
• On the Lower East Side Life in New York's tenement district, numerous links to primary documents
• Jacob Riis Tours NewYork City's Fourth Ward
• Jacob Riis How the Other Half Lives
• No Rest for the Weary: Children in the Coal Mines (1906)
• The Boys in the Breakers
• Mr. Coal's Story
• Mother Jones, ' Civilization in Southern Mills' (1901)
• Keating-Owen Child Labor Act (1916)
• documents from the Fulton Cotton Bag mill on child labor
• Playing for the Press: Strike Coverage by the Media (document on Cripple Creek StrikeCoverage in 1904)

Miners and mine strikes

"Miner Joe" From Life of the People on-line Exhibition

Kelso Ballantine, a Scottish miner who moved to Braidwood Illinois

Sites

• Coal Mining in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era - Pictures and Texts-this web site gives an overview of coal mining and its dangers. Material on Mollie Maguires, child labor in the mines, and the 1902 anthracite strike
• Mining Museums and Monuments (state by state listings)
• Early Days of Coal Mining in Illinois
• Description of anthracite mining circa 1902
• Mother Jones Collection for additional letters dealing with the strike
• Mother Jones Museum
• Union Miners’ Cemetery, Mt. Olive Illinois
• West Virginia Coal mInes
•   Butte, Montana mining district
• Minonk, Illinois Coal mining
• Kentucky Coal Miners including section on Harlan County and links for more info
• Tim pinnick's advice on researching black coal miners and Pinnick's website
• United Mine Workers of America Site -some historical information included there

Films:

• A Lifetime in the Mines An Essay on Watching Films about Coal Mining + Complete filmography (PDF, 102 pages, 558 kb) by Steven Fesenmaier -- terrific!!!!
• Battle of Blair Mountain films (pdf, 45 kb) --by Steven Fesenmaier (Blair Mountain was the largest armed uprising of workers in US history)
• Virden film (this is my site, it is not yet updated, but will be. this is a project on the class and race conflict in Central and southern Illinois in the late 1890s

Documents

• The Molly Maguires. From Allan Pinkerton’s depiction
• Pinkertons in the Couer d'Alene Uprising of 1892 (primary source)
• Digging for Answers: A Black Miner Ponders Racism, 1891
• ' In the Sight of God': Woes of a Miner's Wife, 1900 (document)
• The Ultimate Redemption of Coal Miners (document)
• No Rest for the Weary: Children in the Coal Mines (1906)
• The Boys in the Breakers
• Mr. Coal's Story
• Anthracite Coal Strike digitized cartoons dealing with the 1902 strike. Also see the
• The Sayings of Henry Stephens (pdf) African-American miner, Springfield, Illinois, 1917
• Copper mining in Michigan - on line exhibits
• Calumet Mine strike 1913-1914
• Italian Hall Fire Incident during the Calumet Mine Strike this site is a wonderful compilation of materials on this tragic incident, believed by miners to be the work of union opponents
• United Mine Workers section of the University of Pittsburgh On-line exhibit, links to police reports, Coal and Iron Police photos, Somerset County Coal Strike, 1922 - 1923 Pennsylvania
• Herrin ' Massacre southern Illinois 1922 ILHS, with links to essays
• Mine Disasters 1900-1972
• Borkowski case murder of union supporter by the Coal and Iron Polic

Cherry Mine Disaster , 1909

• Cherry Mine Disaster site -- amazing, many many photos, and materials and reflections
• CSPAN discussion from panel commemoration
• Eight Days In A Burning Mine first hand account of Cherry Mine Disaster
• Report on the Cherry Mine Disaster
• Materials from the Samuel Gompers Papers on the disaster

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

-see section on garment workers labor organization below as well

• Triangle Shirtwaist Fire On-Line Exhibit numerous primary document selections, photos, etc
• Triangle Shirtwaist Trial-including timeline, documents , including newspaper accounts, court files, maps, list of victims, images
• NPR feature story on the Fire interview with last survivor's daughter
• Working for the Triangle Shirtwaist Company –document          
• Lament for Lives Lost: Rose Schneiderman and the Triangle Fire -document
• No Way Out: Two New York City Firemen Testify about the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire-document

Labor Organization and Rebellion Late 19th through early 20th century

• Pilgrims' Progress: A Seventeenth-Century Solution to the Nineteenth-Century Conflict between Labor and Capital
• Vincent, Leopold. The Alliance and Labor Songster. Indianapolis: Vincent Bros., 1891 (sound recordings and lyrics).
• Law and Order: William Law and the Power of Organization
• A Labor Newspaper Derides the Myth of the Self-Made  Man, 1877
• Molly Maguires excerpt from Labor's Untold Story
• The Man with the Hoe: Labor & Society Debated ' Edwin Markham's 1899 poem sparked a debate on issues ranging from the dignity of labor to the effects of imperialism and trusts
• Excerpt from Frank Donner, Protectors of Privilege: Red Squads and Police Repression in Urban America  (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990), pp.12-22. (pdf file)
• Excerpt from Strikers, Communists, Tramps, and Detectives by Alan Pinkerton-
• Spies for Hire: Ads for the Pinkerton Detective Agency (primary document)

1877 uprising

• Short essay on the events and meaning
• Paul LeBlanc The Railroad strike of 1877
• The spread of the strike across the nation
• Documents on the strike
• The Great Railway Strike of 1877 and Newspaper Coverage
• Materials on 1877 from Maryland State Archives, with links to primary documents (newspaper, government, photos) and suggested reading materials and lesson plans
• Photos of the events from University of Pittsburgh
• The Communist Manifesto Karl Marx
• Fears of the ' Tramp Menace ad for Gun
• Workers, Indians, Immigrants as the menace to national order
• Jesse James, the railroad robber as folk hero (song)     Woody Guthrie Version
• Excerpt from Strikers, Communists, Tramps, and Detectives by Alan Pinkerton-
• "Fair Wages,"  commentary in the North American Review reflecting on the strike
• Chicago during the 1877 strike – From Chicago Historical Society Haymarket website
• General Strikes Across the Globe 
• Siege and Commune of Paris, 1870-1871

Haymarket, 1886 and the Great Upheaval

• Chicago Anarchists on Trial: Evidence from the Haymarket Affair 1886-1887 Extension of the Chicago Historical Society material listed below
• The Dramas of Haymarket - Chicago Historical Society exhibit on Haymarket
• Haymarket Digital Collection - primary source material, especially trial transcripts, of the Chicago Historical Society materials on Haymarket
• Haymarket Massacre Archive
• Richard Schneirov on the Haymarket from the NIU digitization project These on-line videos feature Richard Schneirov, of Indiana State University, discussing the circumstances that led to the Haymarket incident, the major characters involved in the Anarchist movement, and the effect that Haymarket had on the political landscape of Chicago, Illinois, and the rest of the United States.
• Haymarket Trial Website
• PBS site on "8 anarchists" profiles on each
• The Lucy Parsons Project Wife of Haymarket Martyr, organizer for Knights of Labor and IWW
• From Frank Donner, Protectors of Privilege: Red Squads and Police Repression in Urban America  (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990), pp.12-22.(pdf)
• Albert Parsons on Anarchy
• George Engel on Anarchy
• Oscar Neebe, The Crimes I have committed (pdf)
• Louis Lingg's address to the court (pdf)
• Albert Parsons Last Words (pdf)
• Schilling to Lucy Parsons (pdf) condemning anarchist
• Terrence Powderly of Knights of Labor Attacks Anarchy and Monopoly
• The Great Trial of the Chicago Anarchists Socialistic Publishing Co., 1886.On-line book
• Life of Albert Parsons by Lucy Parsons (1889-entire book)
• Parsons, Lucy. Famous Speeches of the Eight Chicago Anarchists . New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1969.
• Facts concerning the condemned men Leon Lewis, 1887
• Many images from the Haymarket events
• Labor's Martyrs by Vito Marcantonio (entire book)
• The Bay View Tragedy at Rolling Mills May 5, 1886 Wisconsin’s most historic and bloody labor incident occurred on May 5, 1886 on the shores of Lake Michigan in the Bay View area of Milwaukee.

Labor Day/May Day/shorter hours

• May Day the forgotten holiday
• Holt Labor Library feature on May Day  Bibliography, websites links, archives links
• 6 hour day website
• 8 hour day poem.(pdf)
• May Day and Labor Day by David Montgomery
• First Labor Day Parade by Ted Watts
• A Short History of Labor Day
• The origins of Labor Day
• Printer Albert R. Parsons Testifies before Congress about the Eight Hour Day 1878--labor argues against legal notions of 'freedom of contract'
• Samuel Gompers Quotes on shorter hours
• Documents on the 8 hour day
• Eight hours for what we will! (1916)
• References for shorters hours and American Labor history

Left: Walter Crane's "Workers' Maypole"

Knights of Labor

• Knights of Labor short introduction from the Samuel Gompers website
• Knights of Labor still exists, this is their website which has their current platform and historical documents including
  
  ' The Baby Was Made Delegate No. 800: Frances Willard Meets Elizabeth Rodgers in the 1880s Knights of Labor and women
  • Altared States: Marriage Ends an Organizer's Career Knights of Labor and women
  • Racial Controversy at the Richmond 1886 Convention
  • Drawing the Line on Black-White Equality 1886 convention
  • ' Making Common Cause: The Knights' Assembly Hall diverse social, political, and intellectual functions that the meeting hall played for its members
  • ' In the Beginning . . .: A Knight's Sacred Oath
  • Divided We Conquer: A White Plantation Owner Undermines the Knights of Labor
  • Making Common Cause: The Knights Assembly Hall diverse social, political, and intellectual functions that themeeting hall played for its member
  • When Women Were Knights short synopsis-ILHS
  • T.V. Powderly (Knights leader) on the history & significance of Labor Day.

AFL/Samuel Gompers

• AFL short introduction from the Samuel Gompers website
• Biographical sketch of Samuel Gompers  Quotations from Samuel Gompers on Immigration, Socialism, Child Labor,  and many other subjects
• Making the Case for Socialism in the AFL J. Mahlon Barnes of the Cigarmakers’ International Union and member of the Socialist Labor Party, helped defeat AFL leader Samuel Gompers for the Presidency of the AFL in 1894. Here he criticizes Gompers style of unionism
• Gompers on Socialism
• The AFL Protests Unemployment, 1893
• Samuel Gompers Papers - biography, photos, documents
• What Does Labor Want? Speech by Gompers
• Chapter 26 from Samuel Gompers, Seventy Years of Life and Labor (1925).-from Prof. Gerald Zahavi's website
• A look at the legislative demands of AFL unions in 1895
• Samuel Gompers' view on political action (1918)

  Read Gompers 1918 speech on why he opposed a labor party

Labor and Religion in 19th century/early 20th

• Was Christ a Union Man
• The Workingman's Ten Commandments, 1878
• Labor's ' Catechism, 1887
• Introducing New Recruits to ' Labor's Catechism'
• ' The Brotherhood of Man'-a unionist and the bible 1899
• Cain and Abel Revisited: A Case for Keeping thy Brother –religious arguments for solidarity over individualism
• "In the Sight of God": Woes of a Miner's Wife
• "Pumpkin Smasher" Predicts the Ultimate Redemption of Coal Miners
• Bouck White's The Call of the Carpenter (1911) suggested Jesus was a revolutionary worker

Homestead 1892

Pinkerton agents surrender to workers during the Homestead strike of 1892

In 1892, Carnegie Steel mill owner Andrew Carnegie and his Homestead manager Henry Frick decided to break the steelworkers union. Frick locked out the workers and and hired Pinkerton agents to transport scabs. Community support for the workers initially allowed workers the upper hand, and in a bloody battle they defeated the Pinkertons. But the militia helped the owners eventually break the union, for another generation.

• Summary and photos from Battle of Homestead Site which also struggles to keep the memory of these events alive
• The Strike At Homestead Ohio State University, links to a number of documents and photo
• After the Battle of Homestead: Counting the Dead and Criminalizing the Strikers  links to documents "results of the coroner's inquest was to blame the event on unlawful assembly by the steelworkers" University of Pittsburgh Archives Service Center site
• PBS site on The Richest Man in the World: Andrew Carnegie with links to Homestead
• Andrew Carnegie's Ode to Steelmaking
• A Workingman's Prayer for the Masses – satire on Andrew Carnegie’s ' On Wealth”
• "An Awful Battle at Homestead, Pa."The National Police Gazette portrayal " expressing sympathy toward strikers while also exploiting the more sensational aspects of the events."
• Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth: Workers Protest Carnegie Library many towns rejected Carnegie libraries; here workers ask how they will have time to read with Carnegie's standards
• Musical Saga of Homestead
• Henry Frick on the necessity of battle with the strikers
• "I Will Kill Frick": Emma Goldman on why anarchist Berkman decided to kill Frick
• A Show of Support: Farmers Feed Homestead Strikers (1892)
• Swinton's Silver Lining: Taking Comfort in the 1892 Strikes Argues that the Homestead workers willingness to fight back prevented more attacks
• Fort Frick (by Myron Stowell -- 1893 book)
• Telling Tales: Byington's Study of Homestead  -- how life was shaped by the union defeat==from the perspective of1907
• Outside Looking In: Byington on Homestead’s Women (1907)

Pullman, 1894 and beyond

Thousands of troops, including calvary, were used to crush the Pullman strike of 1894, where terrific and ferocious fight was launched for labor rights

• Pullman strike short summary from ILHS site
• Timeline and background & Images
• Context: Illinois During the Gilded Age
• Richard Schneirov summarizes the context for Pullman- on-line Video,
• Pullman Worker Denounces ' Father Pullman, 1895
• Broken Spirits: Letters on the Pullman Strike
• ' Chicago Under the Mob: Pullman strike illustration
• Are Sleepers Protected by the Constitution?: Mr. Dooley on the Pullman Strike
• George Pullman answers the strikers
• Senator Sherman on the Pullman Strike
• Gene Debs Pullman & ARU
• Historic Pullman  Guided walking tour
• Cawardine, The Pullman strike (entire book from 1894)
• The Pullman Boycott. A Complete History of the Great R. R. Strike . 1894.
• Chicago Today The Labour War in America . London: Review of Reviews Office, 1894
• The Strike at Pullman. Statements of President Geo. M. Pullman and Second Vice-President T. H. Wickes, Before the U. S. Strike Commission. Also Published Statements of the Company During the Continuance of the Strike . Publication Place unknown: Publisher unknown, 1894.

Labor and Imperialism

• Satires on Kipling's Poem (The White Man's Burden):
  • The Real White Man's Burdens 1902
  • The Poor Man's Burden
  • The Black Man's Burden
  • Charles Conant, The Economic Basis to Imperialism  Conant was the Wall Street Advisor to 4 American presidents in the late 19th and early 20th century
  • Samuel Gompers on Imperialism (book chapter) ; or newspaper excerpt
  • The Man with the Hoe: Labor & Society Debated Edwin Markham's 1899 poem sparked a debate on issues ranging from the dignity of labor to the effects of imperialism and trusts

Other events/ subjects

• Boycott Fever
• Great Burlington Strike of 1888
• Virden ' massacre of I898' and Centennial Commemoration

Labor Organization, Radicalism and Uprisings of the Early 20th century

Uprisings of the early 20th century

• Anthracite Coal Strike (1902)
• Chicago strike of 1905 article from The World's Work, Vol. 10, 1905.
• The Sun Recalls a Garment Striker’s Fate 1909 garment strike
• Teaching the
• The Uprising of Twenty Thousand. Documents, mostly newspaper sources, from December 1909 to February 1910;  relationship between strikers and the strike's wealthy women supporters, and socialist activists

Cripple Creek strike

• Emma Langdon's book on the events
• Ideas in Conflict: Opposing Views of the Cripple Creek Strike
• Gompers Calls for Action Over Cripple Creek
• Playing for the Press: Strike Coverage by the Media
• Union-Busting at Cripple Creek

Emma Langdon was a labor journalist/ activist who was there and wrote accounts of the events. The photo is from her book.

It is signed, "Yours in unionism."

WWI Era, Postwar Uprisings and Red Scare:

• The Origins of Puerto Rican Migration: U.S.  Employment Service Bulletin (1918)
• A  Puerto Rican Migrant Protests Labor Conditions During  World War I
• Puerto Rican Laborers during World War I
• History of the Farmer-Labor Movement, 1917-1948
• Housewives in Uniform: Domesticity as Military Duty (WWI)
• Eight hours for what we will!
• Bisbee Deportation of 1917  -- from University of Arizona; striking miners of 1917, IWW; tremendous amount of source documents, and materials from the Wobblies trials
• Arizona Memory Project-Bisbee Deportation documents 1,600 court documents regarding the cases
• Boston Police Strike of 1918-1919
• Boston Police Strike (pdf) A unit that allows you to teach public worker unionism or WWI issues
• Herrin "Massacre" southern Illinois 1922 ILHS, with links to essays
• Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer Makes ' The Case against the Reds”
• Red Scare (images and documents-vast collection)
• Basic Background to the Red Scare
• Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer Makes ' The Case against the Reds'
• ' The Making of a Red” –satire on how easy it was to label someone as unpatriotic
• Emma Goldman Describes Her Deportation in the Era of the Red Scare
• Red Scare- major set of photographs from the Literary Digest, a mainstream publication, depicting the great fear of subversion
• ' Under the Stars and Stripes' Bolshevik serpent in the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper, carried a strong anti-immigrant message.

click pledge for larger document view

Loyalty pledge required of workers at Wagner Electric, St. Louis, during WWI

Seattle General Strike

• Seattle General Strike Projectextraordinarily rich resource loaded with information
• Seattle General Strike of 1919 and 1934 strike

Chicago Race Riot of 1919

• 38 documents and a lesson plan on the Chicago Race Riot
• ' Chicago and Its Eight Reasons'
• ' Ghastly Deeds of Race Rioters Told'
• ' Says Lax Conditions Caused Race Riots'
• ' The Problem' and ' Family Histories'
• The Chicago Daily Tribune Reports the Chicago Race Riot, 1919

1919 Steel Strike

• The Great Steel Strike of 1919 Historical Marker
• Senate Hearings
• Colsten Warne's book about the strike

• ' They Are Mostly All Foreigners on Strike”: Joseph Fish  Speaks on the 1919 Steel Strike
• ' We Do Not Understand the Foreigners”: John J. Martin Testifies on the 1919 Steel Strike
• ' The Men Seem To Be Pretty Well Satisfied”: John Anderson on the 1919 Steel Strike
• ' It Is Entirely the Bolshevik Spirit”: Mill superintendent W. M. Mink Explains the 1919 Steel Strike
• ' Forty-Two Cents an Hour” for Twelve to Fourteen Hours a Day
• ' We Did Not Have Enough Money”
• ' We Ought to Have the Right to Belong to the Union”
• ' Eight Hours a Day and Better Conditions”
•  ' I Witnessed the Steel Strike”

Centralia 1919

• Centralia, 1919 (excerpt from Elizabeth Gurley Flynn biography)
• Centralia Site dozens of digitized documents from the University of Washington

Fannie Sellins

• The Murder of Fannie Sellins by the Pennsylvania Cossacks—documents
• The Killing of Fannie Sellins
• Fannie Sellins, agitator and labor ' martyr'

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Matewan

• West Virginia Mine War site with documents
• Matewan-Lon Savage website –numerous links, including bibliography

Sacco/Vanzetti Case

• The Never-Ending Wrong Sacco-Vanzetti (on-line exhibit) from Syracuse university
• The Sacco and Vanzetti case- a summary and links
• Felix Frankfurter on Sacco and Vanzetti-essay from The Nation (1927) with links about the nature of the judicial system and why this case was remembered by legal scholars and historians and activists through the 1990s
• ' They Are Dead Now': Eulogy for Sacco and Vanzetti
• ' Save Sacco and Vanzetti': The Defense Committee's Plea
• ' March On, O Dago Christs': Sacco and Vanzetti Memorialized
• ' We Stand Defeated America': Sacco and Vanzetti in John Dos Passos' U.S.A.
• The Trial of Sacco and Vanzetti

Preparing for the General Strike, Seattle, 1919

Credit: Historical Society of Western Pa.

In 1919, the steel mills used bribery, threats and intimidation, and the press to break the strike. Asserting that the walk out had already failed, this advertisement, written in eight languages, associated union leadership with "aliens\" and the "un-American teachings of radical strike agitators."

Scot Tissue Towels ad from 1920s. "Employees lose respect for a company that failes to provide decent facilities for their comfort."

1920s

• Calvin Coolidge on the Spirituality of Commerce
• ' A Man's Thanksgiving': A Hymn to the God of Business
• ' Business . . . the Salvation of the World': Celebrating Big Business
• ' When the Whistle Blows . . . I Come Home and Get Supper': Women and Work in the Interwar Years
• Textile Worker reflects on life in a 1920s mill village: "Like One Big Family"
• Evening in A Lumber Town, 1926 by Meridel LeSeuer
• 11 cents cotton, 40 cents meat written in 1932, but speaks to the agricultural and textiles depression of the 1920s
• ' I Was More of a Citizen': A Puerto Rican Garment Worker Describes Discrimination in the 1920s
• Bobbed Hair Blues: A Mexican-American Song Laments ' Las Pelonas'
• Put on a happy face.
• A. F. of L. Delegates. Radical depiction of union bureaucrats
• Weisbord's Farewell to Passaic, 1926 by Mary Heaton Vorse
• The Battle of Passaic, 1926 by Mary Heaton Vorse
• 1928 Imperial Valley strike investigation (mexican voices, digital history)

Great Depression Era

• Huge Collection of Documents on many subjects of the Great Depression, organized by Subjects
• Committee on Economic Security Reports , 1934
• Radical Responses to the Great Depression -On-Line Exhibit from University of Michigan
• Voices from the Dust Bowl ' documenting the everyday life of residents of Farm Security Administration (FSA) migrant work camps in central California in 1940 and 1941. This collection consists of audio recordings, photographs, manuscript materials, publications, and ephemera generated during two separate documentation trips supported by the Archive of American Folk Song (now the Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center).
• The Great Depression in Washington State -links to a variety of materials to explore the subject
• Shorter Work Week As The Solution To The Great Depression The popular solution to the Great Depression was the 30 hour work week, which passed the Senate in 1933, and seemed the destiny of the nation…What happened.? Site has polemical commentary, but cites historical research.
• The Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the CIO—perspective by Bill Fletcher
• History of the Farmer-Labor Movement, 1917-1948 (thesis)

Documents:

Unemployed experiences and protest movements

• Unemployed Organizing in the Pittsburgh area
• Unemployed Organizing in the Great Depression oral history
• Unemployed Councils of the 1930s oral history
• A Woman Remembers Hoboes of the 1930s
• The Vagrant in Fiction: Emblematic American?
• School for Bums, 1931 by Mary Heaton Vorse
• U.S. Trailer Camps, 1935 by Mary Heaton Vorse
• Ford Hunger March - brief history and song from The Forgotten Show
• Unemployed mobilization in St. Louis (pdf)
• What was a Hooverville?

Bonus Army (unemployed vets march on Washington)

• 40 Documents and lesson plan on the Bonus March
• Bonus March memories
• FBI file on the Bonus Expeditionary Force (unemployed vets)

Farmers and Farm Labor

• Losing the Business: The Donners Recall the Great Depression
• Hard Times in Dubuque, Iowa
• ' Like a Thick Wall”: Blocking Farm Auctions in Iowa
•  Meridel LeSeuer describes the farm troubles of the midwest in 1934
•    Black Cotton Farmers and the AAA
•  Carey McWilliams on migrant workers
• In Dubious Battle website  John Steinbeck’s novel about organizing agricultural workers

Harlan County Strike

• Harlan County - which side are you on? (John Dos Passos)
• Harlan: Working under the Gun Harlan Coal Strike of 1931 harbinger of 1930s labor strife
• Three Los Angeles Dressmakers Strike of 1933: Anita Andrade Castro Becomes a Union Activist
  
• Mine Wars in Illinois in the 1930s-- Before John L. Lewis became famous for organizing the CIO, he was well-hated among Illinois miners for his undemocratic style. Greg Boozell's site has the story as part of his developing film on the struggles for democratic unionism

• 1934 strikes

  • 1934 general textile strike
  • 1934 San Francisco Longshoremen/ General Strike
  • Waterfront Workers History Project complete editions of the Waterfront Worker
  • The general Strike of 1934 - brief history and 3 short films
    • The General Strike begins
    • Open War in the Streets Newsreel
    • Silent footage of early weeks of strike
  •  Tillie Lerner on the 1934 Longshoremen’s strike
  • ' Bloody Thursday' and the General Strike – 1934 (news coverage of the first day of the strike)
    Musicians' Union Report on the General Strike '1934 (november 1934) from observers in one of the unions
    ' Century of Commerce,' Labor Strife Along The Embarcadero - 1935 (management's perspectives-see part 3)
  • Mike Quinn, the Big Strike excerpt on the 1934 San Francisco Strike
  • Congress Investigates the 1934 San Francisco Strike 

Minneapolis 1934

• video from You Tube ; another selection
• Minneapolis Teamsters/General Strike -much material, including American City, the contemporary account of the strike newspaper accounts, as well as union accounts, such as Women Active on firing line
• Murder in Minneapolis, 1934 by Meridel LeSeuer
• Farrell Dobbs on the Minneapolis events and socialism (audio-scroll down from top of page)
  
• Pittsburgh Central Labor Union records, 1934-1935
• Audio file: "On The Line: Radical Women in the Labor Movement." From Labor Audio collection
• ' Must a Fellow Wait to Die?”: Workers Write to Frances Perkins
• ' Hearty Big Strong Men All Died”: The Lasting Impact of the Silicosis ' Plague” in the 1930sThe reality of life when earning wages depends on agreeing to horrible conditions.
• Medical Aspects of Silicosis
• Deaf and Unemployed in the Great Depression –hard times multiplied by handicaps. One of many interviews conducted by the Federal Writers’ Project (in second part of New Deal programs)
• Slaves of the Great Depression: Textile Workers write to Washington  powerful testimony to how awful conditions got on the job, and the degree to which government agencies avoided assistance of the struggle to change those conditions
• Women Needleworkers & New Deal Labor Policies in Puerto Rico --Alexander Street lesson plan and documents
• Waitin’ on Mr. Roosevelt by Langston Hughes
• ' The Republic Is Imperiled”: John L. Lewis Warns of Ignoring Laboring People
• "The Wagner Bill is behind you!"
• ' Right After That They Walked Out': Alice Wolfson Recalls the Origins of the CIO
• ' We Are Americans!': The Homestead Workers Issue a Declaration of Independence in 1936
• ' That Broke Down the Ethnic Barriers': A Steelworker Describes the Decline of Ethnic Hostility in the 1930s
• Forgotten Show -- opera based on the life of William Bradford Reynolds-- tells story of organizing Ford motor company -

• 1936-37 GM sit down and other sitdowns

  • Flint Sit-Down Strike Audio Gallery audio essays, including slideshows, a timeline, strike map , and search engine
  • Genora (Johnson) Dollinger Remembers the 1936-37 General Motors Sit-Down Strike (long-oral history account)
  • ' This Is the Pressure That They Used”: Genora Dollinger Recalls the Flint Sit-Down Strike
  • ' I Was Able to Make My Voice Really Ring Out”: The Women's Emergency Brigade in the Flint Sit-Down Strike
  • ' Hello, Mama. We're makin' history.' Cartoon on the sit-downs
• • Migrant Mother 1936 from Eyewitness to History site
  • ' Susie Steno': A Union's View of Clerical Workers
  • 1938 San Antonio Pecan Shellers strike; Mexican American activists and civil rights issues in the 1930s ( restricted to subscribers)
  • The Story of Hosea Hudson: Lessons of a "Black worker in the deep South" still loom large — Communist Party member and CIO organizer in the 1930's
  • Memorial Day Massacre -short history
  • Memorial Day Massacre by Howard Fast
  • Massacre at Republic Steel by W. Bork
  • ' The Man . . . Died on My Lap': One Women Recalls the Memorial Day Massacre of 1937
  • Photos and maps at NEIU
  • Video of Leonard Depres talking about Memorial Day Massacre
  • The Early History of United Electrical Workers CIO-Local 601 Shown Through Correspondence of Margaret Darin and A. Logan Burkhart
  • Margaret Darin--   Union Pioneer in  Westinghouse Electric
  • Communism in Washington State - History and Memory Project1938
  • Labor Unions Condemn Nazi Bund Meeting – 1938 (San Francisco)
  • Cartoonists on the Picket Line: The Walt Disney Studio Strike
  • Fair Labor Standards Act the statute
  • The Fair Labor Standards Act and Migratory Agricultural Workers  The effects of leaving out migratory workers from the child labor and hours provisions of the New Deal (see 1940s dates for more on FLSA and exclusions)
  • Hard, Dirty Work Should Be Paid For”: A Laundry Worker Argues for a Minimum Wage

   

• 1955 retrospective on the CIO (just before the CIO merged with the AFL)

• Songs of the era

  • Which Side Are You On? (legendary song from the Harlan County Miners Strike)
  • Songs of Woody Guthrie Songs of the Dust Bowl, labor struggles, unemployment. 
  • This Land is Your Land, original lyrics (including those you won’t sing in grade school)
  •  Pretty Boy Floyd  (comparing bankers to robbers)
  • Tom Joad  (Ode to famous protagonist in The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck)
  • Sixteen Tons
  • ' Union Dues”: Coal Miners Express Their Gratitude to FDR (song)
  • This Is What the Union Done”: The Story of the United Mine Workers of America in Song
  • Hispano Music and Culture of the Northern Rio Grande
  • Songs from the Great Depression 100s of songs, including:
    •  I Don’t Want Your Millions Mister by Jim Garland
    • I Hate the Company Bosses Sarah Ogun Gunning a different type of ' country music
  • Northern California Folk Songs from the 1930s
  • California's Living New Deal Project New Deal Projects from Past to Present-still paying off today

Unemployed Demonstrate in St. Louis, 1931

Artist Joe Jones' depiction of St. Louis unemployed protest, 1934
courtesy Butler Museum of Art

Mass strike in Minneapolis, 1934

WPA drillers

Wilsonville Illinois miners sit-down takeover of mine

Women on the Maytag strike line support workers who were occupying the factory, 1938

National Guardmen patrolling the Maytag plant after governor forced workers back to plant, below 1938

WWII

• Labor and the Holocaust Exhibit Jewish Labor Committee and the Anti-Nazi Struggle
• Rosie the Riveter: Real Women Workers in World War II
• The Michigan CIO debates the No-Strike Pledge
• War Labor Board on Equal Pay for Equal Work
• War Labor Board on Equal Pay for Black Workers
• Mexican youth and the context of the Zoot Suit riots
• ' We’re looking for suits to burn”-Zoot Suit account
• Supervising Women Workers (1944) short film Management addresses the special problems of women workers with concern and a heavy dose of sexism
• How to Explain Safety Rules to Women Workers in 1944 -short film
• GI's fight poll tax for Mexican-Americans in Texas
• The Bracero Program and Undocumented Workers
  • President's Commission on Migratory Labor
• GE woman workers' memories of WWII
• Ruth Young Jandreau's memories of the United Electrical Workers union and women during War and post-war era
• Fighters on the FarmFront: Oregon’s Emergency Farm Labor Service, 1943-1947; Farm laborers included urban youth and women, soldiers, white collar professionals, displaced Japanese- Americans, returning war veterans, workers from other states, migrant workers from Mexico and Jamaica, and even German prisoners-of-war.
• Voices from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection
• Alan Berube's presentation on the Marine Cooks and Stewards CIO union and how they overcame racism and allowed a place for gay workers in the mid-20th century (presentation by Estelle Friedman)

Cold War Era

• 1948 : We'll Turn this Whole town against the Commies shows how right-wing forces used the "Red" issue to roll back unionism, and includes excerpts of hearings from Evansville that illustrate the red-baiting style of attack--shades of Glen Beck or Bill O'Reilly will be very apparent!) A pdf version of this material
• Radical Unionism -William Sentner film page defense film launched by the UE when Sentner was persecuted under the Smith Act
• The Ordeal of the Loyalty Test by Arthur Drayton African-American postal worker targeted (pdf)
• Oral History of Ernest DeMaio (head of the United Electrical Workers Chicago-based Midwest District 11, headquartered in Chicago). The UE was one of the expelled CIO unions, hit hard by persecution.
• "They Teamed Up with The Klan" (National Maritime Union--Operation Dixie to organize the south and use of red-baiting combined with racism)
• Pete Seeger Refuses to "Sing" for HUAC
• You Are the Un-Americans, and You Ought to be Ashamed of Yourselves": Paul Robeson Appears Before HUAC
• "We Must Keep the Labor Unions Clean": "Friendly" HUAC Witnesses Ronald Reagan and Walt Disney Blame Hollywood Labor Conflicts on Communist Infiltration
• How to Spot a Communist pamphlet prepared by the U.S. First Army Headquarters in 1955, but was reprinted in popular magazines in the 1950s --
• 1948: Year of Hope, Year of Tragedy
• The Cold War Comes to Erie
• Ruth Young Jandreau's memories of the United Electrical Workers union and women during War and post-war era
• HunterBear website on Salt of the Earth
• The Union, Community Organizing, and Clifton Jencks (Salt of the Earth Strike)
•  Un-American Hearings Narrative  --read how the McCarthy period affected a labor activist
• ' Friendly”  HUAC Witnesses Ronald Reagan and Walt Disney Blame Hollywood Labor Conflicts on Communist Infiltration
• Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique: Labor Union Radicalism and Feminism in Cold War America Betty Friedan, the founder of the modern women's movement, had a secret history in the labor movement
• Harry Bridges, Communism and Deportation
• Harry Bridges: A Biography  from a ILWU local 19 site Local 19, Seattle)
• Attorney General's List of Totalitarian, Fascist, Communist, Subversive, and Other Organizations November 16, 1950
• The Literature and Culture of the 1950s  --links to numerous documents and essays on the Culture of McCarthyism
•  Seattle Oral Histories of Communists        
• Taft-Hartley: A Workers' Nightmare   
• Anti-Union Violence in the Wake of Taft-Hartley
• Union Officials Blame the Taft-Hartley Act for Mob Antiunion Violence
• ' The Laundry Loses Business to Its Customers”: An Appeal to Exempt Personal Service Businesses from Federal Minimum Wage and Maximum Hours Legislation (1949)
• Women Workers Wages in the age of affluence
• ' The Bottom of the Economic Totem Pole”: African American Women in the Workplace
• Defining a Minimum-Adequate Standard of Living in the 1940s—based on the 1937 Supreme Courts overturning of 1923 decision that outlawed minimum wages, the government now tried to establish what a woman needed to live on
• A Mill Worker Describes Effects of Layoffs on a Virginia Mill Town  1949
• Landrum Griffin Act
• Vance Packard, The Status Seekers—excerpts from this classic work "An explosive exploration of class behavior in America and the hidden barriers that affect you, your community, and your future."
• Attitudes about working women in the 1950s (video 2:52-youtube)

1960s-1970s

(this will be sorted by topic soon, and updated as well)

• We Remember—website about the 1968 Memphis garbage workers strike; few people recognize that when King was killed, he was supporting garbage truck drivers in a strike. This was in the midst of his poor people’s movement, a movement designed to unite poor people of all colors
• I AM A MAN : An Exhibit Honoring the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers' Strike
• The Poor People's Movement: oral history  memories of King's poor people's movement, designed to unite people: incredible, heartbreaking
• We Must Destroy the Capitalist System that Enslaves us: Stokely Carmichael advocates black Revolution
• Excerpts from the Kerner Commission on Civil Unrest and the relationship between economic deprivation and urban uprisings. Powerful report, unfortunately, this was never acted upon
• Kerner Commission Report on Civil Unrest: The American Dream does not exist for All people another excerpt
• Moving Beyond the Notion of the ' Black Rioter”— the reality of institutionalized racism in jobs and education. Powerful
• King's last speech in Memphis (Mountaintop speech);
• See what's become of the Lorraine Motel: The National Civil Rights Museum, with an on-line tour
• National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis 1968 garbage strike
• Seattle Oral Histories with civil rights activists (most working class)
• League of Revolutionary Black Workers — by A.Muhammad Ahmad. African-American labor organization formed in Detroit in the 1960s
• Farmworker Movement Documentation Project a massive archive: oral histories, documents, videos
• United Farm Workers in Washington State (Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies, University of Washington)
• Educating Change: Latina Activism (Coachella)
• Migrant Past Migrant Present Exhibit
• ' The White Man’s Law”: African-American Migrant Workers Tell Congress Their Version of a Strike, 1970
• The Hard Hat Riots - 1970 –  When the Construction workers fought war protestors at Wall Street, the media had a field day, leaving the perception that working class people were pro-war. In fact, the pro-war demonstration was orchestrated by the mob, in part as payback to Nixon administration. Beneath the surface were bitter class feelings, of working class people against college-educated ' draft-dodgers”, as well as assertions of manliness in a society in which gender norms were being challenged by the women’s movement. This site has historians accounts of the events and lesson plans
• Tony Imperiale Stands for Law and Order (reaction of white working class to urban uprisings of 1960s) (pdf)
• WORKING WOMEN'S HISTORY PROJECT – documents from the 1970s about work, organizing
• Mr. Smith, Take a Memo from Womankind (1971) The intensely sexist world of clerical work as told by an insider.
• Cleaning Up from Womankind (1972.) A first person account from a City Hall janitress about her fight against race and gender discrimination.
• On Being a Waitress from Womankind (1972) An experienced waitress explains what it is like to serve your food. Not always an appetizing job.
• ' I Climbed Poles, I Ran Cable, I Ran a Jackhammer:”  Faith Robinson Describes Harassment On the Job
• Lillian Roberts Describes Organizing Hospital Workers in New York City, 1960s-70s
• Debating the Equal Pay Act of 1963
• ' All Our Problems Stem from the Same Sex Based Myths”: Gloria Steinem Delineates American Gender Myths during ERA Hearings (1970)
• Explanation for why the pay gap existed in 1970, ==very good on the pay gap and limited job opportunities for women, including African American Women
•  Two Labor Union Officials Voice Opposition to the  ERA, 1970
• ' The Bottom of the Economic Totem Pole”: African-American Women in the Workplace 1970 Congressional Testimony
• Women on Welfare -- 'Having babies for profit is a lie that only men could make up." Johnnie Tillmon testimony, 1971.
• The Politics of Housework classic document from the women’s movement of the 1970s, raises critical issues about the nature of work
• Women, Race and Class The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working-Class Perspective Angela Davis 1981
• Shelley Ettinger Recalls Working for the  Ann Arbor Bus Company  -- culture of tolerance for gays in selected workplaces
• Sisters in the Brotherhoods " features audio and transcripts of the Sisters interviews as well as material from LaTour's book Sisters in the Brotherhoods: Working Women Organizing for Equality in New York City (2008)."
• Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions – advice for women steelworkers entering plants in the 1970s
• The Story of OSHA (1980) "This film tells workers how OSHA was set up to stem the tide of disease, injury, and death, and what their rights are under the law. Explains how NIOSH conducts tests, how standards are set, and how OSHA investigates complaints. Produced and distributed by OSHA in 1980. Then in 1981, the incoming head of OSHA Thorne Auchter recalled and destroyed most copies. A few copies were kept alive by renegade union officials who refused to return their copies. The penalty for being discovered in possession of one of these films was loosing all OSHA funding for their safety and health programs."
• Karen Silkwood Remembered
• United Construction Workers Association politics of fair employment in Seattle

Labor, Capital and the growing inequality of wealth 1970-present

• CONTEMPORARY LABOR ISSUES BIBLIOGRAPHY Kim Scipes' site
• Closing: The Life and Death of an American Town tackles deindustrialization from the standpoint of workers at the White Furniture Company in Mebane, North Carolina
• Retreats and Advances: Struggles Over Deindustrialization & Growth of White Collar & Service Sector Unions 1960 - 2000 (Pittsburgh)
• Deregulation and the Attack on labor –excerpt from Right Turn (pdf)
• Concession Bargaining and the Decline of Unions in the 1980s Explodes myth that concessionary bargaining by unions saved jobs; shows how it started under Jimmy Carter, not Ronald Reagan, and is related to corporate agenda in both parties; shows how it was politically, not economically conditioned
• Chrysler Workers oral history interviews, Delaware
• Executive Pay Rises While Workers Stagnate Executive Pay Watch site
• The Widening Income Gulf from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Excellent graphs
• Taxpayers have financed the erosion of jobs through OPIC
• How Bretton Woods Reordered the World 
• Reagan and the mythical Welfare Queen story (Welfare Queens and Cadillacs)
• Excerpt from Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class  by Barbara Ehrenreich (Yuppies) on the role of professionals
• How ideas were transformed by money— funding of popular books—' these people wrote  books directed at a mass audience and received funding and support from conservative sources that understood the fundamental importance of the battle of ideas.”
• The 1983 Morenci Mine Strike 
• Private Police: Armed & Dangerous
• Legacy of the Hormel Strike 1984-1985 by Peter Rachleff
• Retreats and Advances: Struggles Over Deindustrialization & Growth of White Collar & Service Sector Unions 1960 - 2000 Documents from University of Pittsburgh
• Steelworkers Face A Bleak Future After Layoffs (1984) (pdf) –Chicago – Wisconsin Steel hardship
• Joey’s problem  --from Arlie Hochschild, The Second Shift, (1993) this is a great story of how women’s personal problems are structured by expectations and demands of labor in and outside the home
• Maid to Order by Barbara Ehrenreich  --critical examination of life of maids – material not in her book, Nickeled and Dimed
• Income Inequality chart
• Boom for Whom?  Inequality dogged the ' new economy”
• Wealth Distribution
• Household Debt
• Race and Money—statistics of income and jobs
• Whose Bubble Was it? –analyzing recent trends from the stock market bubble of 1990s
• Share the Wealth United for a Fair Economy- lots of statistics
• Prison Industrial Complex – 3 part series from the Atlantic
• Paul Street on PrisonsBRC website; powerful article about the role of prisons in respect to labor surplus
• Digital Atlas of Chicago and Cook County, Illinois